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Sept. 10, 2019 - The Ben Shapiro Show

51:54

Trump’s Big Test Run | Ep. 857

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	President Trump tests out his 2020 message in a crucial North Carolina special election bellwether.
	Democrats hone in on Trump, but trip over themselves.
	And Google is in everybody's crosshairs.
	I'm Ben Shapiro.
	This is the Ben Shapiro Show.
	Well, today is a big election in North Carolina's 9th congressional district.
	Now, why do special elections like this matter?
	Well, typically people say that they are a bellwether.
	Ooh, a bellwether!
	We're going to find out whether this is a microcosm of the American electorate at large.
	And very often...
	These cases don't end up actually being bellwethers.
	We saw a few of them in the last election cycle.
	People thought that what happened in Georgia, they had a congressional special election.
	John Ossoff narrowly lost that seat.
	We saw a couple of other very narrow congressional elections in special election districts, and people saw it on the right as a bellwether for Trump, and on the left as a bellwether anti-Trump.
	We saw this in 2011 as well, in the lead up to 2020, in the lead up to 2012.
	There were a couple of special elections.
	One was in New York City.
	Anthony Weiner lost his seat.
	He was replaced by a Republican, Bob Turner.
	In Nevada, there was a special election where a Republican replaced a Democrat, and Republicans sort of convinced themselves that that was indicative of a wave, a Republican wave in 2012.
	Well, the Republican wave never arrived in 2012.
	It sort of crashed several miles offshore.
	Democrats are seeing the same possibility in North Carolina.
	So it's easy to overread the effect of these sort of special elections a year and a half out.
	We don't even have a Democratic nominee for president as of yet.
	It is indicative of at least a warning sign for Republicans if Democrats were to win this North Carolina district tonight.
	Why?
	Well, because this particular district was won by President Trump, not by two points, not by four points, not by eight.
	This was won by 12 points in the last election cycle, last presidential election cycle for President Trump.
	And right now it is a neck and neck race between a conservative state senator named Dan Bishop It's a vacant seat, and a Democrat named Dan McCready, who's a former Marine who earned a Harvard master's degree in business and narrowly trailed in an election for the seat last year, that was later invalidated after evidence surfaced of election fraud.
	You remember that there was this big controversy over this particular seat specifically because of allegations of election fraud.
	So that obviously does have an impact on how the voting goes in this seat, because in all likelihood, if it had not been for the election fraud, Dan McCready might have filled the seat already.
	This does have a little bit of baggage attached to it.
	It's not a clean bellwether.
	It's not a clean indicator of what's going to happen come 2020.
	It's particularly not clean also because McCready...
	Happens to be politically moderate for a Democrat.
	He's more of a blue dog Democrat than he is an AOC type or a Bernie Sanders type or an Elizabeth Warren type.
	So using a moderate Democrat in a red district that is plagued by allegations of election corruption as a stand in for 2020 is an easy override.
	With that said, obviously people are watching this because if the Republican were to blow out the Democrat, Then that would suggest that maybe there are a bunch of secret Republican voters who aren't reporting themselves to pollsters.
	If Democrats were to win the seat, that's obviously a serious siren for Republicans.
	This is a heavily suburban North Carolina seat that went heavy red for Trump in 2016.
	So, district stretches from Charlotte, according to the AP, one of the nation's financial nerve centers, through its flourishing eastern suburbs and into the less prosperous rural counties along the South Carolina line.
	With next summer's RNC convention in Charlotte, Democrats would love to boast control of a congressional district in the city where Trump will be re-nominated.
	Over half the district's votes will likely come from Charlotte's suburbs.
	Those suburbs are, of course, the real trouble spot for President Trump come 2020.
	In Texas, we've been seeing as the suburbs have been turning purple, scaring state leaders in that state as well.
	Democrats captured 39 GOP-held seats last November, took control of the House.
	Many of their pickups were in suburbs, even in states like Texas, Kansas, Utah, South Carolina, and Oklahoma.
	So President Trump now had to descend into this district to push his message.
	And so this will be one of the questions as well.
	Is it actually a benefit or a drawback when Trump shows up in suburbia in order to stump for Republican candidates?
	Now, Trump has sort of dictated in the past that he wants to show up in particular districts in particular areas.
	And Republicans have been extremely torn on this.
	I mean, I've spoken with many, many Republican Congress people who simply are not sure whether it is a benefit or a detriment if Trump shows up in their districts just prior to an election.
	He's a deeply polarizing figure.
	He does get out the base.
	He also gets out the other guy's base.
	Well, President Trump now has to descend into a district he won by 12.
	Mike Pence is also showing up in that district that Trump won by 12.
	And President Trump launched into his 2020 stump speech.
	Now, this was the best of Trump.
	OK, this was the greatest hit of Trump.
	And this is really what his campaign should look like, because nearly his entire campaign speech was directed against Democrats.
	He touted his own record, particularly on employment and on his wanting to build a wall.
	But overall, it was a it was a brutal attack on Democrats.
	And if he sticks to this for a year and a half, then he has a very solid shot at reelection.
	If, however, he gets distracted by a myriad of sillinesses, then obviously his chances go down.
	So President Trump leads off his rally last night with an optimistic message.
	The best days are yet to come.
	We are one movement, one people, one family and one glorious nation under God.
	America is thriving like never before.
	We may have right now the greatest economy in the history of our nation.
	And ladies and gentlemen of North Carolina, the best is yet to come.
	OK, so this is an upbeat message, obviously, and it's going to get out the base.
	Is it going to reach out to independents?
	Who knows?
	OK, President Trump then follows that up by touting low unemployment, which, of course, is his chief pitch.
	And the unemployment rate is extraordinarily low.
	There's a report out today that suggests that not only is the unemployment rate low, according to The Washington Post, for the first time, most new working age hires in the United States are people of color.
	The Washington Post is now reporting that women are predominantly driving the trend.
	They say the surge of minority women getting jobs has helped push the United States workforce across a historic threshold.
	For the first time, most new hires of prime working age 25 to 54 are people of color.
	Minority hires overtook white hires last year, which suggests that there are a lot of people in minority communities who are now getting jobs who wouldn't have had jobs if it were not for President Trump's economy.
	If you can attribute the economy to a presidential figure, a question of which I am somewhat doubtful, minority women began to pour into the labor market in 2015.
	They've begun to reshape the demographics of the U.S.
	workforce, especially because many white baby boomers have been retiring.
	There are 5.2 million more people in the United States with jobs than at the end of 2016.
	And 4.5 million of them are minorities, according to the post-analysis of Labor Department data.
	So that should be good news for President Trump going forward to 2020.
	Here he is touting low unemployment.
	Nearly 600,000 Americans entered the labor force last month alone.
	Think of that.
	Well, now you have the best unemployment numbers, employment and unemployment numbers, that you've ever had as African-Americans, as Asian-Americans, as Hispanic-Americans.
	The best numbers we've ever had.
	And by the way, African American youth unemployment has also reached the lowest level ever recorded in history.
	Hey, obviously that is going to have to be his pitch.
	If the economy sinks at all, then he is in trouble.
	Now, Trump himself is already saying that this particular district is, quote, not a bellwether.
	He says, I don't see it as a bellwether.
	That's never a great sign when you're already downplaying the effect of a particular district as the president.
	With that said, he's correct.
	It's not a complete bellwether, but it does say something.
	Now, in a second, we're going to get to the other half of Trump's message.
	Part of his message is, here's all the good stuff I've done.
	And then the more damaging part of his message for Democrats is, here's what they want.
	And again, if he focuses like a laser beam in on this message, then he's more likely to see success come 2020.
	We'll get into that in just one second.
	First, let's talk about the Second Amendment.
	Democrats have basically said at this point, they're coming for your guns.
	Beto O'Rourke says that he wants to come for all of your weapons.
	He would like a gun buyback program for all quote-unquote assault weapons.
	You know that that is only the first step for him going after semi-automatic weapons as well handguns.
	Well, the founders knew that there were going to be a lot of people at the top of our government who are interested in removing our ability to protect ourselves.
	And that's why when the founders crafted the Constitution, the first thing they did was to ensure freedom of speech.
	And the second thing they did was ensure that that right remained free by preventing the government from encroaching on that right and other rights with the Second Amendment.
	I'm a gun owner because I care about that.
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	Okay, so President Trump's other message on the campaign stump is that Democrats would like to sink the economy, right?
	His economy is really good.
	Democrats are pushing policies that will sink the economy.
	Again, this happens to be true.
	For all of these crazy people, but they're not so crazy.
	They know what they're doing.
	They talk about Russia, Russia, Russia.
	Russia is not too happy about that.
	Their primary source of income is oil and gas.
	And now we're bigger than Russia, bigger than Saudi Arabia.
	We're bigger than everybody.
	Yet every leading Democrat running for president pledges to ban the energy that drives our economy and wage and under.
	If you look at what's going on, Your way of life is under assault by these people.
	Okay, this is all true.
	It's all true.
	And this is why the Democrats are doing a seven-hour town hall on climate change in which they pledge to ban everything up to and including the type of underwear you wear.
	That turns out not to have been a great pitch.
	The Democrats are giving Trump plenty of material to work with.
	He has to not give them material to work with.
	Trump says Democrats want to destroy the American dream.
	Again, this is all part of his pitch.
	Now, the way the media pitched this, it's amazing.
	I love the media coverage.
	The media pitched this.
	The AP has a story about Trump delivering a dark speech.
	They've been trying this routine since 2015.
	He keeps talking about a dark vision of America.
	No, that's called politics.
	Barack Obama suggested that if Republicans were to win control of the White House in 2012, they would return America back to the 1950s.
	So yes, the way you do politics is by pointing out what you think America will look like if your opponents win.
	Here is Trump doing just that last night in Fayetteville, North Carolina.
	For years you watched as your politicians apologized for America.
	Now you have a president who is standing up for America and we are standing up for the people of North Carolina.
	A vote for any Democrat in 2020.
	And a vote for any Democrat tomorrow in North Carolina is a vote for the rise of radical socialism and the destruction of the American dream.
	Okay, that pitch becomes easier, by the way, if Elizabeth Warren is the nominee, as opposed to somebody like Joe Biden.
	Trump also is appealing to the forces of anti-globalism.
	When I say globalism, I don't mean any sort of coded language.
	I mean the idea of transnational governance.
	President Trump is very much opposed to the idea that the Europeans and their public sentiment should decide the future of the United States.
	He's pointing out that Democrats keep saying he's unpopular in Europe.
	He's like, right, that's kind of my pitch.
	We were defending many countries that treat us very badly on trade and very unfairly.
	We were defending them.
	And now it's changing around.
	100 billion dollars.
	They're not happy.
	And then I read where Obama is more popular in Germany than Trump.
	He's gotta be!
	I'm making people pay their bills.
	He's gotta be.
	You know, the day that I'm more popular than him, I'm not doing my job.
	OK, I think a lot of Americans agree with this.
	A lot of Americans do agree with this.
	President Trump also talking about immigration.
	So this is his pitch, right?
	His pitch is that Democrats have policies that are outside the mainstream, that he is much more inside the mainstream, that we're not going to have our policies decided by the Europeans.
	Again, I think all of this is good stuff.
	Trump was more disciplined last night than I have seen him in a very long time.
	Here's President Trump talking about erecting a wall along the southern border, a wall Democrats have opposed.
	You look at what's happening with human trafficking, and it's mostly women.
	They traffic in women, and they pour through our borders.
	Well, every inch of wall that we put up is vital, and we're putting up miles and miles, and we intend by next year, at the end of the year, To have anywhere between 400 and 500 miles of wall built.
	And this is serious wall.
	This is the real deal.
	OK, and he does have the funding to make that happen.
	So again, this is Trump's 2020 pitch.
	Now, the question is going to be in the congressional district where he is doing this.
	Does this benefit the candidate or does it not benefit the candidate, Bishop?
	So the candidate himself got up and spoke.
	The problem is that Trump is Trump and nobody else is Trump.
	Having Trump come in and do basically a presidential rally in your hometown... The rally is going to be about Trump.
	It is not going to be about you.
	It's not going to be about transferring the power of the presidency over to Bishop.
	Instead, it's going to be Bishop trying to imitate Trump and puff Trump up.
	So it'll be... Really, I have no idea.
	I don't think anybody has any idea.
	The polls are too close right now.
	What exactly is going to happen in this particular district?
	But here, there is a problem for Republicans.
	And the problem is that, again, Trump is very polarizing.
	And the bigger problem is when you try to be Trump, you fail.
	No one can be Trump.
	Only Trump can be Trump.
	There's this sort of let Manny be Manny.
	You know, it's a baseball reference about Manny Ramirez, this baseball player for the Cleveland Indians and the Boston Red Sox and the Los Angeles Dodgers.
	Manny Ramirez was an incredibly talented hitter.
	He was also a kook.
	And the rule about Manny Ramirez was if he hits 330, he gets to be a kook.
	OK, but if he starts hitting 270, then the kookiness ain't quite so charming.
	Well, the problem for Republicans is that let Trump be Trump only works when you're Trump.
	When you go from nowhere presidency of the United States, you get to be as kooky as you want to be.
	But when you are running for Congress, in a local district, and you try to be Trump, it isn't gonna work.
	I mean, I don't know, like, if I were doing optics for the candidate, having the candidate get up there in the same tie-suit combo as the president, it's just not, it's not particularly smart.
	I mean, again, that is like, you're in the movie with Brad Pitt, and you're an extra, and now you've got a line, and you're dressed exactly the same as Brad Pitt.
	Like, how exactly is that particularly smart?
	Here is Dan Bishop, the candidate in North Carolina, now basically stumping for Trump.
	So this turned into a rally about Trump and Trump's ego, as opposed to a rally about Bishop and the necessity for Bishop to be elected to Congress.
	We've all watched as the Democratic Party, the Socialist Democrat Party, seeks the president's destruction every day.
	We've seen a dishonest media serve as their handmaidens and their allies in that mission.
	OK, so going full Trump in the presence of Trump, it's a bold move, Cotton.
	We'll see how it works out for him.
	Again, with all the caveats, it's not a full bellwether, but it's at least a part bellwether.
	You lose it.
	You lose a district in an open seat where Trump won by 12 just a few years ago.
	The sirens should be sounding and there should be a bit of alarm.
	Now, the way that Democrats are attempting to run the 2020 election is they are directing, just as Trump is directing his fire at the Democrats and their radical agenda, they are directing their fire at supposed scandals.
	But the problem is that Trump is a candidate who is vulnerable because of who he is.
	Instead, Democrats seem to be directing their fire at some of the silliest aspects of the Trump administration and then missing.
	They're the gang who can't shoot straight.
	We'll get to that in just one second.
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	The Democrats' case when it comes to President Trump is that he is scandal ridden.
	Now, this is a very bizarre angle that they've been using on Trump.
	Instead of focusing in on the fact that Trump is kooky and says kooky things and is alienating, instead of that, they're focusing in on minor scandals and attempting to blow them up.
	Now, Trump can play into their hands by doubling down on the silliness.
	But Democrats are focusing in on minor things in a way that is that is pretty astonishing.
	I know this because Republicans tried to focus in on minor things in 2011 in the run up to 2012, and it didn't work out well.
	See, Americans have a generalized perception of a candidate, and that generalized perception is what they carry into the voting booth.
	The best way to undermine a candidate is to undermine the general perception of the candidate if that perception is positive.
	If, however, the perception is negative, then you emphasize that.
	You emphasize it each and every day.
	The way you do that is not by focusing in on minutia where most Americans don't care.
	Because then you seem petty.
	And right now the Democrats are seeming pretty petty.
	And, by the way, they're blowing some of their hits as well.
	I have to point out.
	So, in a second, we'll get to the discussion of Sharpiegate, which continues apace, but there was an attempted hit yesterday on President Trump that was just botched completely.
	There's a report from CNN, and the report from CNN was basically that the CIA had to extract an asset in Russia, a high-ranking asset in Russia, who was passing intelligence on to the American government, and they had to do it because Trump was loose-lipped with the Russians.
	That's what CNN was attempting to report.
	But as it turns out, that's not the whole story.
	The New York Times reports, quote, decades ago, the CIA recruited and carefully cultivated a mid-level Russian official who began rapidly advancing through the government ranks.
	Eventually, American spies struck gold.
	The longtime source landed an influential position that came with access to the highest level of the Kremlin.
	As American officials began to realize that Russia was trying to sabotage the 2016 presidential election, the informant became one of the CIA's most important and highly protected assets.
	But when intelligence officials revealed the severity of Russia's election interference with unusual detail later that year, the news media picked up on details about the CIA's Kremlin sources.
	CIA officials, worried about safety, made the arduous decision in late 2016 to offer to extract the source from Russia.
	So the original CNN story suggested that it was President Trump in a meeting with the Russians who spilled the presence of the CIA asset, requiring the asset to be withdrawn.
	So it's all about Trump.
	But then the New York Times has a follow on story.
	It turns out it wasn't about Trump at all.
	In 2016, the CIA was already attempting to remove this source from Russia.
	Why?
	Because of the news media.
	Because the news media was already reporting on this guy.
	The situation, according to the New York Times, grew more tense when the informant at first refused, citing family concerns, prompting consternation at CIA headquarters, and sowing doubts among some American counterintelligence officials about the informant's trustworthiness.
	But the CIA pressed again months later after more media inquiries, this time the informant agreed.
	The move brought to an end the career of one of the CIA's most important sources.
	It also effectively blinded American intelligence officials to the view from inside Russia as they sought clues about Kremlin interference in the 2018 midterm elections and next year's presidential contest.
	CNN first reported the 2017 extraction on Monday.
	Other details, including the source's history with the agency, the initial 2016 exfiltration offer, the cascade of doubts set off by the informant's subsequent refusal, have not been previously reported.
	Okay, so again, as I say, the original report was that the U.S.
	extracted a top spy from inside Russia in 2017.
	The report was from Jim Sciutto over at CNN, and it featured a picture of Donald Trump standing next to Vladimir Putin.
	Can CNN originally reported, quote, a person directly involved in the discussions said that the removal of the Russian was driven in part by concerns that Donald Trump and his administration repeatedly mishandled classified intelligence and could contribute to exposing the covert source as a spy.
	And the media jumped all over this yesterday.
	The big media story on CNN and elsewhere yesterday was that Trump was indeed basically a Putin plant and that the United States and its intelligence resources had to remove a high ranking asset in Russia because Trump couldn't keep his mouth shut with the Russians.
	But within hours, the New York Times had basically debunked all of that.
	The New York Times had run a full story about the real reason this guy was withdrawn, and it was because of news coverage of the actual informant.
	And then, just to prove the point, NBC News decided that they were going to demonstrate full-scale how the media take care of our national security secrets.
	They ran a piece, NBC News did, called, Possible Russian Spy for CIA Now Living in Washington Area.
	Which is always a great idea.
	As a media outlet in the United States, what you really want to do is out spies against the Russians.
	Because if we know one thing about Vladimir Putin, it's that he's a very forgiving and kind man who never goes after people who are his enemies and then has them poisoned with polonium or anything.
	According to Ken Delaney and Tatyana Chistykova, a former senior Russian official is living in the Washington area under U.S.
	government protection, current and former government officials tell NBC News.
	NBC News is withholding the man's name and other key details at the request of U.S.
	officials.
	who say reporting the information could endanger his life.
	Yet the former Russian official, who had a job with access to secrets, was living openly under his true name.
	An NBC News correspondent went to the man's house in the Washington area and rang the doorbell.
	Five minutes later, two young men in an SUV came racing up the street and parked immediately adjacent to the correspondent's car.
	Yeah, I'm going to go with the New York Times story here, that maybe it was the media treatment of this particular spy that had the guy withdrawn from Russia, not Trump.
	Didn't matter, the media ran with it yesterday.
	And that was not the only overblown story yesterday.
	In a second, we are going to get to the continuing saga of the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration inside the Trump administration.
	Was idiocy pursued?
	Yes.
	Is the overblown nature of the response overblown?
	Yeah, just a little bit.
	We'll get to that in just one second.
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	Okay, so meanwhile, as I say, the Democrats, members of the media, They're going after, they're grasping at straws with regard to President Trump.
	But one of the things that obviously harms President Trump is when he doubles down on foolishness and silliness.
	And this has been the case apparently with the NOAA.
	Now, is this going to break Trump?
	Does anybody really care that President Trump took a sharpie and marked up a map?
	Is that is that going to be a thing that they deeply care about?
	Wow.
	Like people going to the ballot box, you know, I was going to vote for that.
	I was going to vote for Trump.
	And then that dude, you know what he did?
	He took a sharpie and he marked up a map.
	And now I'm not voting for him anymore.
	Look, Trump is Trump.
	Everybody knows that he's Trump.
	Does that mean it's helpful to Trump to emphasize the Trumpiness?
	Now, there's something that I say to young people who are looking to date, and that is you should be yourself gradually, right?
	When you're first dating, you don't want to let out all your crazy at once, right?
	Everybody's crazy, and everybody's got their foibles, and everybody's got their weirdnesses.
	On the first date is not when you explain to somebody about your Star Wars obsession.
	Wait until like the third date for that, until the person realizes that you're not just some nutjob.
	Then he can start talking about all the weird stuff about you.
	Well, in politics, it's not that you're hiding who you are.
	Everybody knows who President Trump is.
	But bringing yourself front of mind with kooky behavior is not exactly what you are looking for.
	That's why the NOAA story is not good for Trump.
	Now, as we'll see, people are still overplaying it and turning it into the biggest deal in the world.
	But is it a great story for Trump?
	No, of course it is not.
	So according to the Washington Post, the head of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said in an email to colleagues on Sunday he is investigating whether the agency's response to President Trump's Hurricane Dorian tweets constituted a violation of NOAA policies and ethics.
	Also on Monday, the director of the National Weather Service broke with NOAA leadership over its handling of Trump's Dorian tweets and statements.
	Late August, there were forecasts from the NOAA that Hurricane Dorian was going to strike parts of Alabama or that it could affect parts of Alabama.
	A few days later, President Trump started talking about that.
	And then on September 4th, like a full week after that report, when it had basically been debunked at that point, he then went out and did a full press conference where he drew With a sharpie on a map showing exactly where he thought the hurricane was going to hit.
	And the NOAA, the National Weather Service first issued a tweet saying that that wasn't true.
	That the hurricane was not going to actually hit Alabama, it was instead going to turn north.
	And then the NOAA basically backed off that assessment.
	And then the NOAA said, well, you know, it's true that originally it was going to hit Alabama and all of this.
	Well, now there's an internal investigation going on at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
	In an email to NOAA staff obtained by the Washington Post, NOAA's Craig McLean called the agency's response political and a danger to public health and safety.
	Trump's incorrect assertion on September 1st that Alabama would, quote, most likely be hit much harder than anticipated, set off a chain of confusion and outrage among the public and within NOAA.
	At the time, the NWS's forecast guidance showed only a very small risk, about 5%, of tropical storm force winds for a small portion of Alabama.
	However, Alabama was not in the storm forecast track or cone of uncertainty from the National Hurricane Center.
	That showed Hurricane Dorian skirting the East Coast far away from Alabama.
	The NWS's Birmingham office set the record straight.
	They said Alabama would not see any impacts from the storm.
	NOAA officials then caused an internal uproar on September 6th when the agency issued an unsigned statement that defended Trump's false claim about Alabama and admonished the Weather Service's Birmingham division for speaking in absolute terms.
	Acting NOAA Administrator Neil Jacobs and NOAA Communications Director Julie K. Roberts were involved in drafting Friday's statement.
	NOAA and NWS had also appeared to try to correct the record without angering the president.
	According to emails obtained by the Post before the statement on Friday, NOAA staff were instructed to, quote, only stick with official National Hurricane Center forecasts if questions arise from some national-level social media posts, which hit the news this afternoon, and not to provide any opinion in response to President Trump's initial Alabama tweet.
	Then there was a report from the New York Times overnight that suggested that Wilbur Ross, the head of the Commerce Department, the Secretary of Commerce, that he threatened to fire top employees at the federal scientific agency responsible for weather forecasts last Friday after the agency's Birmingham office contradicted Trump.
	So none of that is a particularly good look for Trump.
	Now, does that mean that Democrats are responding to this relatively minor scandal with the appropriate amount of caution or with the appropriate amount of ire?
	No, not so much.
	Not so much.
	Here's Representative Steve Cohen from Tennessee suggesting that President Trump is like OJ Simpson.
	You know, the Sharpie thing is amazing, Steve.
	When they asked him at his press conference about who did it, and he gave the same look that he had when he was on the airplane and said he didn't know anything about paying off Stormy Daniels or anything about checks, it was that same doe-in-the-headlights look of, I have no idea who did it.
	He never did say, but I'm gonna find out who did it.
	He's done about as much to find out who did that Sharpie thing as O.J.
	Simpson's done to find out the murderers.
	Yeah, it's just like, it's like, yeah, sure.
	You're not overblowing this at all, guys.
	It was a sharpie.
	He took a sharpie and he drew on a map.
	Like, I get it.
	It's bad.
	It is.
	It's bad.
	OK, the president of the United States should not be altering scientific forecasts to meet his weird perception of where a hurricane was going to travel.
	And members of the administration should stop going out of their way to protect President Trump's apparently fragile ego.
	It's stupid, it's a waste of time, and it undercuts Trump's pitch, which is that he is the strongest man in the room.
	If Trump's really the strongest man in the room, then he can take the critique of, by the way, you're not correct about that hurricane.
	We've seen this before.
	And very often, members of the Trump administration seem to get out in front of his ire.
	They don't wait for him to react.
	We saw this when Trump visited South Korea, and there was talk about members of his administration trying to shield the USS John McCain from view.
	And it turns out Trump knew nothing about it.
	It was just members of his administration trying to avoid a bad photo op.
	But with all of that said, is this like a presidential-ending Level ending scandal?
	No, that's silly.
	All the talk about impeachment over this sort of thing?
	Sure, yeah, and Barack Obama's IRS targeted all of his political opponents, and he wasn't impeached over that, so there's that.
	Okay, in just a second, we are going to get to the Democratic side of the aisle.
	Where Democrats are increasingly saying extraordinarily radical things.
	I feel like a broken record on this, but if the Democrats stop being radical, then I can stop commenting on their radicalism.
	We'll get to that in just one second.
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	You know, you do have to wonder at this point when you look at both parties, whether any of them are going to have a really strong affirmative agenda to push come 2020.
	It is like President Trump's basic pitch is border and economy, and that's a pitch, and it's a pretty good pitch, as long as the economy doesn't downturn.
	But what exactly are the Democrats going to pitch in terms of policy?
	The answer is nothing.
	You can see why they're focusing in on the most picayune scandals.
	In the Trump administration and blowing them up to magnificent proportions, because if they're forced to talk about policy, it's really ugly.
	And for the Republicans, you can see why they're focused in on the socialism of the Democrats, because honestly, except for a generic tax cut that any Republicans probably would have passed, and except for enshrining judges, which is good, but pretty much any Republican Congress would have done that, I would assume, neither party is, like, I see why so many Americans are disenchanted with politics.
	It's become sort of this rooting war, but you look at both parties and you're like, what exactly is the vision they're presenting?
	I understand why the other guy sucks.
	I just don't understand why you're so wonderful, is I think the pitch at this point.
	This is why more and more people, young people particularly, are identifying as independent.
	You would imagine that if Democrats had an ounce of vision, that they should be cleaning up in this environment.
	And if President Trump were able to contain himself, he should be cleaning up in this environment.
	The man has 3.7% unemployment rate.
	But it seems like neither side can clean up in this environment because Trump is too focused in on his own egotistical sillinesses about the NOAA or whatever is the latest tweet storm of the day.
	And Democrats, meanwhile, are too focused in on their socialistic vision for the United States and running down the United States is a terrible, awful, no good, very bad place.
	Example.
	So Bernie Sanders and Kamala Harris both said incredibly radical things over the last 24 hours about the United States criminal justice system.
	So here's Bernie Sanders at a rally talking about the American criminal justice system.
	I hope that all of you know that the criminal justice system in this country is completely broken and is racist.
	Really?
	The entire system is racist?
	Is that where we're going with this?
	Okay, so it's broken and it's racist.
	What is his evidence that it's broken and that it's racist?
	Well, presumably a disproportionate number of people of minority descent are in prison.
	But we don't arrest people based on their ethnicity.
	We arrest them based on the crime they committed.
	So if Bernie Sanders wants to identify the people he wants let out of jail, anytime now, Bernie, anytime you want to point to the people who are wrongly in prison and are innocent, then I'm waiting on it.
	But if the idea is that the entire system is inherently corrupt and endemically corrupt, You're going to need to prove that to me by pointing out who are the innocent people who are being rounded up on the streets and then thrown in prison.
	This has become, unfortunately, a talking point among Democrats.
	This is why people are disenchanted with politics.
	Politics Right now is not about solutions.
	It's not about helping people.
	It's about just yelling at the wind.
	And Democrats right now are yelling at the wind louder than Trump.
	I objected in 2016 when President Trump yelled at the wind and suggested that job loss in a lot of dying Rust Belt towns was the responsibility of free trade and government policy and all the rest of it.
	I thought that that was economically foolhardy.
	I didn't think that it was correct.
	I don't like blaming vague forces in the universe for specific problems that are generally the result of free market forces.
	So I didn't like when Trump did that.
	But on the Democratic side, you know what I really hate?
	The counterproductive nature of their treatment of law enforcement.
	So Kamala Harris, who's desperately running for president.
	She's the most desperate candidate.
	There are three desperate candidates in this race right now.
	Beto O'Rourke is desperate.
	Kamala Harris is desperate.
	And Cory Booker is desperate.
	Cory Booker is always desperate for attention.
	Beto O'Rourke is desperate because he thought he was going to be the frontrunner at this point.
	And Kamala Harris is desperate because for a brief glimpse of time, she had popped up into that top rank and now she has receded.
	She did an interview over the last 24 hours with the editor of Salon on police.
	And listen to her greenlight this take on police, which is such a hot take.
	I mean, this is a scorching white hot take.
	It's insane.
	We shouldn't have to acknowledge their trauma because, like, they're paid to be there.
	We live in these places.
	Like, police officers have historically not been held accountable because they protect and serve the rich, and then they just harass and take up space in poor communities.
	I don't see any type of big shift happening within one term because it's like a cultural thing.
	Right.
	Okay, so why doesn't she push back there?
	She's a former prosecutor.
	She knows the police in California.
	Why isn't she pushing back?
	When that person says that the police just harass and take up space in poor communities, the reality is that if you actually wish to improve the lives of people in poor communities, black or white, you need more police presence, not less police presence.
	Why?
	Because who's going to invest in a community where the crime rates are high?
	Where your property is not secure?
	Who's going to invest in a community where there is no tax base?
	Okay, and the tax base doesn't exist because if you can get your kids out of that community, then you move to the suburbs.
	Who's going to do that?
	The single greatest factor that indicates upper income mobility in an area is the safety in that area.
	Protection of property rights, protection of human rights in a particular area.
	That is what is going to provide the preconditions for growth in a particular area.
	And you have Bernie Sanders and Kamala Harris railing against the very forces you need to ensure law and order in poor, low-income, and disproportionately minority areas.
	The fact is that these high-crime areas require more police, but Democrats aren't interested in solving the problem.
	They're interested in pandering.
	We have a politics of pandering right now, and it is completely ugly, and it is completely terrible.
	And I don't care whether we're talking about pandering to the president's ego, or whether we're talking about pandering to particular radicals in politics, by ripping on the very people who are putting their own bodies and lives in harm's way, for not wonderful pay, in order to protect communities.
	Like, if you think the police officers are generally signing up because the benefits are fantastic, I would suggest you don't know many police officers.
	This constant rip by Democrats on the solution to problems is supremely irritating.
	Supremely irritating.
	The Democrat radicalism is the reason why they haven't run away with this thing already.
	And President Trump's ego problem is the reason why he hasn't run away with this thing already.
	Speaking of Democratic radicalism, long piece in the New York Times today about Bernie Sanders.
	It's called, Bernie Sanders went to Canada and a dream of Medicare for all flourished.
	There's nothing I love better than a sophomoric Sick-o-phantic, ridiculous piece from the New York Times about how Bernie Sanders learned from the Canadians about universal health care.
	Decades before Medicare for All would propel his presidential campaigns, Mr. Sanders' expedition to Ottawa helped forge his determination to transform the American health care system.
	His views burst onto the national political scene during his 2016 presidential run when he championed a single-payer program alongside many other liberal policy ideas.
	Now, as he seeks the Democratic presidential nomination a second time, he has made Medicare for All the most important issue of his campaign and set the agenda for the ideological discussion in the primary.
	Apparently, the pull of Canada remains strong for Mr. Sanders.
	Sanders described how seeing the Canadian system up close significantly shaped his own views on healthcare.
	He says it was kind of mind-blowing to realize that the country 50 miles away from where I live, that people could go to a doctor whenever they wanted and not have to take out their wallet.
	That was a profound lesson that I learned.
	And then he called the American system barbaric.
	Apparently, he learned all of this from Canada, but the truth is that his original beliefs in healthcare actually sound more Soviet than Canadian.
	In October 1976, when he was the Liberty Union candidate for governor, he told the Burlington Free Press that the delivery of medical care was, quote, basically a national problem, and that he supported public ownership of the drug companies and placing doctors on government salaries.
	He said, I believe in socialized medicine.
	And this is being praised by the New York Times as, oh, look what he learned from Canada.
	Isn't that nice what he learned from Canada?
	By the way, you make drug companies owned by the federal government, and you can kiss innovation goodbye.
	And that's the one area where America really does thrive.
	We may lag behind other countries in terms of cost per capita, but we are way ahead of other countries when it comes to medical innovation and medical patents.
	Over half of medical patents happen in the United States.
	Innovation lives here.
	And by the way, if you're in Canada and you need an immediate surgery, you know what you do?
	You get on a plane, you come south of the border.
	Again, the radicalism of the Democrats is continuous and terrible.
	Now, in an environment where you feel like you can't trust anybody, really, where you feel like you can't trust the right because the right is busily defending whatever crazy is happening at the White House today, and in an environment where you feel like you can't trust the left because the left is insanely radical and wants to destroy the basic vision of the country, who can you trust?
	Well, theoretically, you would say the media, but the answer is certainly not there.
	The media continuing to shower themselves in glory day in and day out.
	Yesterday, the New York Times tweeted out a link about Mao Zedong on the anniversary of his death.
	The tweet said this, Mao Zedong died on this day in 1976.
	The Times said he began as an obscure peasant and died one of history's great revolutionary figures.
	I'm sure the Times did say that.
	He also was responsible for the Great Leap Forward, ending in the deaths of 40 million people.
	The New York Times then had to delete the tweet.
	They said, we deleted a previous tweet about Mao Zedong that lacked critical historical context.
	Oh, you mean you tweeted out that he was a great revolutionary figure?
	You know who else is a great revolutionary figure, by your standard, The New York Times?
	Hitler.
	Stalin, great revolutionary figures, also murdered tens of millions of people.
	So there's that.
	But don't worry, guys.
	I trust our media.
	Our media are just doing incredible, incredible work on a daily basis.
	And that our media, who really are out there defending your interests daily, I see that they are also doing this in the Hollywood media.
	If you're ever worried that Hollywood may be biased, I have some evidence for you.
	Variety, which is a trade newspaper here in Los Angeles.
	The only people who subscribe to it are the agents who have it on their glossy glass tables for you to read while you wait for your agent ever to see you.
	Variety has a cover today called Climate in Crisis.
	The clock is ticking.
	Can Hollywood muster its storytelling power and influence to sound the alarm on global warming?
	Because this is Hollywood's job, guys.
	Hollywood's job is to cram down their vision of what should happen on global warming on you.
	Isn't that exciting?
	So basically, bottom line, there's nobody, I would suggest in politics, that you can trust except you.
	Which means that you're going to have to assess all of these issues on your own.
	And that's tough.
	That's tough, but it's good.
	Because the more independent you are in assessing all of this, the better off you are going to be.
	And the fact right now is that everybody is too invested in the partisan tribal warfare To be honest about where things stand as they stand right now.
	And I think we'll get an indicator of that tonight in North Carolina, frankly.
	I think there are a lot of people who are sort of tenuously engaged in politics who will show up to vote, and we'll see how they feel about things.
	Because in the end, that's going to decide where we go in 2020.
	Not the contrasting vision of the parties, not even the talking points, the general feel of the thing.
	And people, I think, are generally frustrated.
	I know this is all a little bit vague.
	I feel like it's vague, too.
	But it's hard not to feel frustration-setting, and even for me, and I watch this stuff on a daily basis when we're fighting over whether the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration should redraw maps on the one hand, and whether we should fully socialize the American healthcare system on the other.
	It's deeply frustrating stuff.
	Okay, meanwhile, The other big news of the day is that nearly every state is now investigating Google over antitrust.
	And this to me is just another example, really another example of politicians who are looking for something to do and don't actually have the evidence to support it.
	A group of 50 attorney generals from 48 states, the District of Columbia, and Puerto Rico unveiled a major antitrust investigation of Google on Monday, sharply escalating the regulatory scrutiny facing the tech giant, is according to CNN.
	The probe will focus on whether Google has harmed competition and consumers, looking at least initially into the company's conduct in its search, advertising, and other businesses, although it may expand from there.
	Now, what exactly are they investigating?
	They're being extraordinarily Noncommittal about that.
	Very, very opaque.
	Speaking to reporters in front of the U.S.
	Supreme Court on Monday, a group of 13 attorneys general struck a bipartisan tone.
	Carl Racine is AG of the District of Columbia.
	He said it was an unusual setting for a group that typically disagrees on issues ranging from gun control to reproductive rights.
	He says, but we are acting as one today.
	Texas AG Ken Paxton said the investigation will begin by looking at Google's advertising and search dominance, but hinted that the scope of the probe could widen significantly.
	He said the facts will lead where the facts will lead.
	Well, normally you have to sort of identify the prospective crime before you launch an investigation.
	The police can't just go to your house and then be like, you know what?
	We're investigating you today.
	And like, what are you investigating?
	You.
	Based on what?
	Well, you seem kind of suspicious.
	If the police did that, you would rightly call them out for selective prosecution.
	We have yet to hear from any of these AGs what exactly Google did wrong that leads them to suspect that they're in violation of antitrust law.
	Normally, and frankly, I really don't think that AGs should be talking about who's under investigation at all.
	If you're gonna conduct an investigation, shouldn't you have to come up with actual evidence of how the investigation turned out before you go public with this sort of stuff?
	We're living in a dangerous time where big government actors have an interest in attacking big business or working with them alternatively, and it's all politically driven.
	It's not consistent in any way.
	It's not that government actors are opposed to big business.
	It depends.
	Is big business shoveling money in their pockets or not?
	Case in point, Elizabeth Warren.
	So it turns out that Elizabeth Warren, who's been spending a lot of time lately talking about how she will never take big money, it turns out she took a lot of big money and then just dumped it into her presidential campaign.
	According to the New York Times, On the highest floor of the tallest building in Boston, Senator Elizabeth Warren was busy collecting big checks from some of the city's politically connected insiders.
	It was April 2018.
	Ms.
	Warren, up for re-election, was at a breakfast fundraiser hosted for her by John Connors, one of the old guard power brokers of Massachusetts.
	Soon after, Warren was in Manhattan doing the same.
	There would be trips to Hollywood and Silicon Valley, Martha's Vineyard in Philadelphia, all with fundraisers on the agenda.
	She collected campaign funds at the private home of at least one California megadonor and was hosted by another in Florida.
	She held finance events until two weeks before her all-but-assured re-election last November.
	Then, early this year, Warren made a bold bet that would delight the left.
	She announced she was quitting the big money circuit in the 2020 presidential primary.
	The open secret, however, is that it was the big money fundraising through 2018 that made her prominent.
	She transferred 10.4 million bucks in leftover funds from that 2018 Senate campaign to underwrite her 2020 run.
	In other words, she took a bunch of big donor money, put it in her Senate race, transferred it over to her presidential race, and then said, you know what?
	I'm anti-big money now.
	Man, is our political class broken in deep and abiding ways.
	Holy moly.
	Okay, time for some things I like and then some things that I hate.
	So, things that I like today.
	Mary Lane is a reporter on European issues with the Wall Street Journal.
	She has an excellent book called Hitler's Last Hostages that is out today.
	It is all about the treatment of art under the Nazi regime, all about how art dealers basically did Hitler's bidding, but made sure Hitler had this whole take on art, that modern art was truly terrible and deviant and degrading and he wanted it destroyed.
	So the art dealers basically did his bidding, except they stocked up all the modern art in their back room and confiscated it from people at the behest of the Nazis, and then they hid it out until later.
	And Mary traces the history of art in Hitler's Germany and beyond, and how art dealers never gave the art back.
	It really is a fascinating story of how history plays into modern politics.
	Well worth the read.
	Hitler's Last Hostages.
	Mary's a terrific reporter.
	Hitler's Last Hostages.
	Go check it out over at Amazon today.
	Okay, time for a quick thing that I hate.
	So I've noticed that the left is gleeful over the impending divorce of Todd Palin from Sarah Palin.
	And this I find somewhat astonishing.
	I'm looking up the articles on this divorce, this prospective divorce right now.
	It's been reported by CBS News, by People.com, by CNN, by Salon, by the Boston Globe.
	Basically every major outlet has now reported on the prospective divorce of Sarah Palin and Todd Palin.
	According to CBS News, former Alaska governor's husband apparently files for divorce Sighting impossible to live together.
	Documents filed in Anchorage Superior Court last week do not include the full names of Palin or her husband, Todd Mitchell Palin.
	Instead, the filing only uses the initials for their full names, SLP and TMP.
	According to the Anchorage Daily News, the filing reportedly includes the date that the couple got married and the birth of their 11-year-old son, Trig.
	It asks for joint custody of the boy.
	The other Palin children, there are four of them, are all adults by now, so they have five children together.
	Anytime you see a couple with children divorce, that's a tragic situation.
	I will just point out that the media's coverage of Sarah and Todd Palin, it is absolutely not comparable to Ilhan Omar's prospective divorce.
	OK, so Ilhan Omar is a sitting congressperson who's extraordinarily, extraordinarily public right now.
	And the amount of media coverage and the media reaction to Ilhan Omar, who, by the way, may have engaged in campaign malfeasance with regard to her funding of her alleged lover, And that media coverage is nowhere near the level of media coverage that you're seeing for Sarah and Todd Palin.
	Sarah Palin has not been politically relevant since 2008-2009.
	Just to show you once again the level of ire that the left has for the right, and particularly in the media.
	By the way, if you never search Twitter, Twitter is a garbage site filled with garbage people.
	And if you ever go to Twitter and check out things like Sarah Palin and divorce, you will see how vile the left is, how excited they are about something like this.
	Now, I'm not excited that Ilhan Omar and her husband appear to be getting divorced.
	They have three young children.
	That is a very bad thing.
	Nor should anybody on the left be excited when something bad happens to a couple just because they happen not to like the politics of the couple.
	Alrighty, we'll be back here later today with two additional hours of content, or we'll see you here tomorrow.
	I'm Ben Shapiro, this is The Ben Shapiro Show.
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	Joe Biden's lead in early primary states collapses overnight.
	What will happen to the electability argument on the Democratic frontrunner?
	Then speaking of Democratic presidential candidates, Tulsi Gabbard goes woke on a couple of issues.
	And thanks to the New York Times, the dumbest article on the internet today.

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