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Dec. 6, 2019 - The Ben Shapiro Show
01:02:50
Look, Fat | Ep. 911
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Jobs growth soars, Joe Biden goes off on a town hall questioner, and the Democrats long slog toward impeachment continues.
I'm Ben Shapiro.
This is the Ben Shapiro Show.
Today's show is sponsored by ExpressVPN.
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Okay, well, lots of news to get to today.
A lot of it in the 2020 presidential race.
Most of it just demonstrative of the fact that our politics, come on guys, it's fun.
It's fun.
We've got presidential candidates who are out there on the campaign trail, yelling at people in the crowd about how fat and stupid.
We have presidential candidates whose followers are trying to hit other people with canes.
I mean, this is good stuff.
This is America.
America was already great.
Speaking of America already being great, the economy continues to be extremely strong under President Trump.
There is a new jobs report out today.
According to CNBC.com, the jobs market turned in a stellar performance in November, with non-farm payroll surging by 266,000.
The unemployment rate fell again to 3.5%, which is effectively full employment, according to the Labor Department numbers released this Friday, by the way.
The number of people who are in the jobs market is now back to pre-recession levels in terms of percentages, which is a great thing.
These totals easily beat the Wall Street consensus.
Economists surveyed by Dow Jones had been looking for solid job growth of about 187,000.
They saw the unemployment rate holding steady from October's 3.6%.
The decline in November's jobless rate came amid a corresponding 0.1 percentage point drop in the labor force participation rates to 63.2%.
Stocks opened sharply higher in reaction to the better-than-expected report, and bond yields also surged.
Larry Summers, director of the National Economic Council, said, bottom line, America is working.
These are very strong numbers.
These are happy numbers.
These are sunny Friday numbers.
This was the best job growth since January's 312,000.
By the way, we are in year 11 of the recovery.
Year 11 of the recovery.
Which, you know, it does suggest usually America hits a recession every decade or so.
We had one in 2000, 2001.
We had one in 2007, 2008.
We had one in 1992.
So this has been an extremely long recovery.
Part of the reason for that is because it was a very slow recovery at the beginning under Barack Obama, who obviously constricted the ability of that recovery to grow.
So you've had this long, slow climb as opposed to the explosive growth that you've sometimes seen in the aftermath of other recessions.
With that said, These are very, very good numbers.
The jobs growth, again, was the best since January.
While hopes were already up, much of that was based on the return of GM workers following a lengthy strike.
That dynamic did indeed boost employment in motor vehicles and parts by 41,300, part of an overall 54,000 gain in manufacturing.
So manufacturing is doing quite well right now.
And people are in a good mood, right?
People are out and they're buying and they're getting ready for Christmas.
The job gains were spread among a multitude of sectors.
Healthcare added 45,000 positions after contributing just 12,000 in October.
It's always funny how whenever we discuss the government takeover of healthcare, very few people actually discuss what happens to the millions of healthcare workers who are in the healthcare sector that is much derided and put upon.
Like what happens to all those health insurance workers?
Do they just magically pick up jobs at the government?
The answer, of course, is no.
Leisure and hospitality increased by 45,000.
Professional and business services rose by 31,000.
The two sectors, respectively, are up 219,000 and 278,000 over the past 12 months, which Wage gains were also a touch better than expectations.
Average hourly earnings rose by 3.1% from a year ago, which is a very solid statistic.
The average work week held steady at 34.4 hours.
So all this talk that you hear from Democrats about people are having to work two jobs to make ends meet.
Well, if they were, then the average work week would not be 34.4 hours.
And the fact is, Americans are working less for more.
They're working less for more pay than they were 30, 40 years ago.
Economists have been looking for wage gains of 3%, a separate gauge of unemployment that includes discouraged workers and the underemployed declined as well, falling to 6.9%, one-tenth of a percentage point below October.
Also, There are retroactive revisions on the economy.
September's estimate went up 13,000 to 193,000 jobs gained.
The initial October account increased by 28,000 to 156,000 jobs gained.
jobs gained.
The initial October count increased by 28,000 to 156,000 jobs gained.
Those changes added 41,000 to the previous tallies and brought the 2019 monthly average to 180,000 compared with 223,000 in 2018.
Tony Bedickian is head of global markets for Citizens Bank.
He said this is a blowout number.
The U.S. economy continues to be all about the jobs.
The unemployment rate is at a 50-year low and wages are increasing.
Business owners may be getting more cautious due to trade and political uncertainty.
Growth may be slow, but consumers keep spending.
The punch bowl still seems full.
This is the lowest jobless rate in the United States since 1969.
Thank you.
The U.S.
US economy only needs to create about 107,000 jobs a month to keep that unemployment rate steady, according to the Atlanta Federal Reserve.
Today's job report, more than any other report in recent months, squashed any lingering concerns about an imminent recession in the United States economy, said Gad Levinon, head of the conference board's Labor Market Institute.
Employment growth also shows no signs of slowing further, despite the historically low unemployment rate.
Now, there are sort of shadows of some bad news here.
So, for example, retail companies only added a couple thousand net hires as gains in general merchandise of $22,000 and motor and vehicle parts dealers of $8,000 were offset by an $18,000 loss in clothing and clothing accessories.
In other words, online businesses are really having a serious impact on the retail sector.
The recession fears that have been surging seem to be waning just a little bit.
Now, how much of this is due to the Fed loosening rates?
It's hard to tell.
I mean, the Fed continues to loosen rates in the midst of a very solid economy.
But this is obviously very good news for the President of the United States.
Almost 160 million people employed in the United States.
This is the 24th record breaker for President Trump, according to CNS News.
The unemployment rate, as I say, is now at a 50-year low.
The civilian non-institutional population in the United States is 260 million.
That includes all people 16 and older who don't live in an institution like prison, nursing home, long-term care facility.
164 million of those people are participating in the labor force, meaning that they either had a job Or actively seeking one during the last month.
So we've got a labor force participation rate of 63.2%.
The labor force participation rate has never been higher than 67.3%, which was a level last achieved in 2000.
The Trump era high was set last month at 63.3%.
Economists say that a lot of retiring baby boomers are accounting for some of the decline since the turn of the century.
I mean, the numbers are just astonishing.
The November unemployment rates among adult men are 3.2%.
3.2% among adult women.
Teenagers, only 12% unemployment rate.
A 3.2% unemployment rate among whites.
A 5.5% unemployment rate among blacks.
A 2.6% unemployment rate among Asians.
Demonstrating once again that Asian privilege is not a myth.
And Hispanics are at 4.2%.
It's showing little or no change in November.
Very, very big numbers for President Trump.
Now, what this should say to you is that Trump should be absolutely crushing his opposition in the polls.
With an economy that is this strong, Trump should be running away with this.
The fact is that he is an incumbent president with incredible economic numbers to brag about.
Also, he stacked the federal judiciary.
Also, on foreign policy, he strengthened the United States military.
Trump should be running away with this thing.
He is not, according to the polling numbers, which forces you to ask the question, just why?
And does that put the Democrats in good position?
Or are they a little bit weaker than the media seems to assume?
We'll get to all of that in just one second.
First, let me talk to you about something.
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Okay, so, as I say, President Trump should be running away with this thing.
But according to the RealClearPolitics polling average, he is not.
If you look at the national numbers, the fact is that Trump's national numbers are not particularly good.
The general election polls show him trailing pretty much everyone and by fairly significant numbers.
The last polls that I've seen were from last, maybe about two weeks ago, week and a half ago from SurveyUSA.
That poll showed Biden leading Trump by 13 points, Sanders leading Trump by 12, Warren leading him by 7, Buttigieg by 7, even Kamala Harris was leading him by 5.
She's not even in the race anymore.
And if you look at the general national polls, Then what you tend to see is exactly this.
Trump is competitive in some of them.
He is utterly uncompetitive in others of them.
But overall, overall, the Democrats seem to have a bit of an advantage, at least in sort of the national polling numbers.
Now, Trump can lose the national polls and still win the election.
He can do that fairly easily.
He could lose by three, four million popular votes if all those votes are stacked in California and New York.
And that's what happened last time.
Right now he's running extremely competitive in exactly those battleground states that he was extremely competitive in last time.
And not a single battleground state in the United States is worse off economically than when Trump took office, which is a hell of a strong pitch.
What does that mean?
It means that if the election becomes a referendum on Trump's personality, he's in trouble.
But if the referendum is on anything else, if it's on the economy, and if it's on the Democrats, the Democrats are in serious, serious trouble.
It is why virtually every election's sort of statistical analysis shows that if Trump were generic Republican, he would be up 10 points right now.
He'd be in the mid-50s with these economic numbers.
He's not.
He's in the low 40s in terms of approval rating.
And even in the best national polls for him, when he defeats Democrats, it's very narrowly.
It's like 48-47.
In the battleground states, he's never winning 52% of the vote.
He's always winning like 49-48% of the vote.
A lot of that is due to personality.
But, here is the thing.
All of that is also predicated on him having no opponent.
And the Democrats, they've got some personality flaws.
They've got some personality problems.
And never were those on better display than yesterday.
Now, as I've been saying for a long time, the best option for the Democrats, and I don't mean to strategize in favor of people who I hope lose, but Joe Biden is the best option for the Democrats.
He's the best option for the Democrats for a simple reason.
He's not alive.
Being not alive is a real advantage in this election, because inanimate object versus Trump means it's a referendum on Trump.
Because hell, what do you think about this cup?
It's great.
It's a cup.
Inanimate objects, dead bodies, they're just there.
They're objects, they're things.
And so people don't have strong opinions about them.
That's sort of how people feel about Joe Biden generally.
It's all baked into the cake in the same way that it's baked into the cake for Trump.
Also, he doesn't seem as scary as the other candidates.
Trump, his re-election is going to be based largely on him pointing at people like Sanders and Warren and saying, listen, we have the best economy in American history going right now.
You want to turn that over to these kooks?
You want, like, I don't care what you think of me.
You really want Elizabeth Warren in charge of this economy?
You want to take this economy and you want to just trash it?
Turn it over to her.
And you can say the same thing about Sanders.
Buttigieg is not as scary, but Buttigieg, his ideas are eventually going to come out, and it turns out that he is fairly radical as well.
Biden, by contrast, doesn't seem as scary.
He's old.
He's kind of doddering.
He doesn't seem to have these same sort of radical ideas.
He doesn't seem like he's going to be particularly effective as president.
I mean, the man's a near octogenarian.
And so the fact that he is unscary is exactly what cuts in his favor.
There's only one problem for Joe Biden, which is that he happens to be Joe Biden.
His best option would be to play dead right now.
Really, I mean, I understand he has to win primaries and all of that, but the fact is that the Democratic population sort of feels the same way about this that my analysis suggests that most Americans feel about this, which is why Joe Biden continues to lead in the race, even though he can no longer speak English.
Between Nancy Pelosi, Donald Trump, and Joe Biden, I am not sure.
I mean, we definitely have to establish English as a national language, I think, just so our politicians speak it.
Because as we will see, none of these people speak English, and I'll be honest with you, I'm very much looking forward to a debate between Donald Trump and Joe Biden.
Mainly because it's going to be a debate between the Swedish chef from the Muppets and Chewbacca.
And nobody's going to know what's being said, but it's going to be really amusing.
It's just going to be Donald Trump going, and Joe Biden going, It'll be great.
I'm looking forward to it.
I'll explain in just one moment.
First, let's talk about a movie that you should go see this weekend.
So, you're always lamenting.
I'm always lamenting the fact that there is no conservative content coming out of Hollywood.
Nothing even remotely approaching reasonable content usually coming out of Hollywood.
And that means that when there is good content coming out of Hollywood, you should go see it.
No Safe Spaces.
You should go see it this weekend.
It's starring Adam Carolla and Dennis Prager.
It's in theaters nationwide Friday, December 6th, as in today.
Adam and Dennis take you on a wild ride to show you the effects of political correctness, identity politics, and cancel culture.
No Safe Spaces.
Shows why free speech is important in a free society, how it's being threatened, and what we can do to fight back.
It also takes you behind the scenes on a couple of my speeches.
Takes you behind the scenes of my 2017 Berkeley speech where the university had to spend $600,000 on security because Antifa decided to show up and make trouble outside.
It's not your typical documentary.
It's got animation and reenactments and recreations.
You can see young Dennis Prager.
It's pretty funny.
It also features a bunch of other voices that you love.
People like Jordan Peterson and Brett Weinstein.
Even Cornel West and Obama and Van Jones show up.
It's a film you should take your liberal friends to go see because if we can't agree that free speech is important, we can't agree on anything.
Check them out this weekend.
No Safe Spaces rated PG-13.
It's in theaters Friday, December 6th.
Go to nosafespaces.com slash ben for ticket information and theater locations.
Okay, so.
As I say, Joe Biden is the safest pick for the Democrats.
And, you know, even his sort of shortcomings, I don't think actually cut against him.
I will say that, I mean, he's old and he's slow, but he's angry and militant.
Yesterday, it's the perfect encapsulation of what our elections have become.
A bunch of silent generation people yelling at each other and challenging each other to feats of manhood.
So Joe Biden, gets into it with this portly gentleman who apparently is an Elizabeth Warren supporter shows up at one of his events in Iowa and this portly Elizabeth Warren supporter questions Joe Biden about his son Hunter Biden and suggests that Joe Biden is corrupt because Joe Biden didn't do anything to stop Hunter Biden from taking jobs using his father's name even though Hunter Biden it turns out is a is a useless ne'er-do-well who simply cashes in on the fact that his daddy is very famous.
So Joe Biden got very angry about this and proceeds to call the man a fat old and stupid Which is no way to go through life.
Here's Joe Biden being Joe Biden, man.
You're selling access to the president just like he is.
You're a damn liar, man.
That's not true.
And you want to check my shape, huh?
Let's do push-ups together, man.
Let's run.
Let's do whatever you want to do.
Let's take an R.T.
test.
OK, I'm not going to get in an argument with you, man.
Well, I don't want to.
Well, yeah, you do.
But look, I'm not old for you.
Well, I knew you weren't, man.
You think I thought you said I was old for you?
he called the man fat right in the middle of the thing look fat look fat by the way he was this close saying fat so is he not right he was this far away he was gonna give him a peloton bike look fat It's so good.
Come on.
Come on.
If you can't enjoy this, it's because you have no sense of humor.
Look fat.
And then he calls him old.
Okay, this guy's probably 10 years Joe Biden's junior.
He's like, call it look fat.
So his campaign spokesperson, Simone Sanders, she comes out and she says, no, what he meant to say is look fat.
Oh, that's what he meant to say!
Not like how he had challenged him to a push-up contest earlier.
By the way, if this old dude had gotten in a push-up contest with Joe Biden and defeated him, it would have ended Joe Biden's campaign on the spot.
It would have been unbelievably great.
So, tip, if you are a Trump fan who wants to make Joe Biden's candidacy obsolete, somehow tempt Joe Biden into a push-up contest and then do it with him.
It would be great.
By the way, Joe Biden also challenged this guy to an IQ contest.
Donald Trump has also challenged people to IQ contests.
I am perfectly happy and sanguine to have an IQ contest between Donald Trump and Joe Biden.
I'm rooting for entertainment value at this point.
I really am.
Because, listen, I gotta cover this stuff every day.
I'm a human being too.
And I love to laugh.
So, this is pretty fantastic, right?
He calls the guy, look fat, look fat.
Now, will this launch a thousand think pieces about how Joe Biden is calling Elizabeth Warren?
He's fat shaming, fat shaming this Elizabeth Warren supporter.
Horrible, horrible old Joe Biden.
The typical take on Twitter is that this was somehow going to hurt Joe Biden.
And the answer is no, this is not only going to not hurt Joe Biden, it probably is going to give him a boost.
Because, even while I say it's good to be a corpse, every so often you should show a sign of life.
Sort of like galvanizing a frog, every so often.
You should have electricity shot through you just so you can appear animate.
And there he looks a little bit animate, right?
He looks like he's alive.
And, again, Donald Trump is President of the United States.
I'm looking forward to Donald Trump, who has no sense of self-awareness, saying to Joe Biden, how dare you fat shame people?
Donald Trump does that on a regular basis.
I want them on stage yelling at each other.
That's all I want.
Speaking of the Muppets, what is it, Statler and Hofstadter, who are in the wings at the theater just yelling at each other?
That's what I'm very much looking forward to.
And then, the portly Elizabeth Warren supporter decided to double down on everything he was saying.
He should be running for president, too.
I just need a lot of elderly Americans clubbing each other and calling each other names.
If we're going to go through this for a year, we need some comic relief.
Good news.
We are about to receive it.
We'll get to that in just one second.
First, let's talk about how you stay healthy this holiday season.
So, this is the time of year when you are going to put on some weight between Thanksgiving and Christmas.
Between the fact that it is getting dark early, which means you go home and you just want to eat dinner, and then you want to have a second dinner.
Okay, the fact is, if you want to stay healthy, you need to change your mental habits.
How do you do that?
Well, you use an app called Noom.
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OK, so Iowa man, the guy who is confronting Joe Biden and was called fat and old for his trouble, fat, old and stupid.
That's what Joe Biden called him, because that's where we are.
He is then sitting there being interviewed by the media afterward.
And another Joe Biden supporter comes up to him.
Who also is probably a boomer or a member of the silent generation and confronts him and this turns into an episode of Jerry Springer.
It's just spectacular.
This is where we are in our politics.
Drop out of the, out of the, the raise and put your support.
Why don't you just get out of here?
Stick it up your ass, though.
Yeah.
You want to throw me out?
The guy just creeps up behind him.
Why don't you get it?
This, this, this portly, older gentleman who supports Elizabeth Warren turns around and goes, stick it up your ass.
Yep.
Yep.
That's American miracle.
Yeah.
And then he was asked this Iowa voter about Biden.
He goes, well, at least I'm not senile.
Sure, I'm old, but at least I'm not senile like Joe Biden.
Spectacular stuff from this guy.
By the way, I love that this guy has a sense of humor about Joe Biden saying like, OK, well, yeah, Joe Biden got militant, but at least he's alive.
At least he's alive.
That's that's actually going to I'm telling you, this is going to benefit Joe Biden.
If Joe Biden had just said, listen you fat ass, if he had really gone after him like Donald Trump style, right?
Because if that's Trump, Trump just goes right after him, right?
Trump doesn't even hold back.
Like you can see Joe Biden using at least what is left of his prefrontal cortex to stop himself.
Trump just goes right at the guy and eviscerates him.
Democrats are looking for that.
They are looking for that.
It's actually a good moment for Joe Biden.
I'll tell you what is not as good for Joe Biden.
This episode is completely anti-conventional wisdom.
So conventional wisdom is that Joe Biden put out an ad against President Trump.
And the ad is good, but that moment in Iowa was very bad.
It did not show that he was stayed and solid.
I think precisely the opposite.
Yesterday, the best thing Joe Biden did was call that dude a fatso.
And the worst thing he did was release this stupid ad suggesting that voters give a damn what Emmanuel Macron thinks of Donald Trump.
So Biden releases this ad because Trump was at NATO and some of the other leaders were talking bleep about Trump behind his back.
And Biden releases this ad talking about how Donald Trump is not respected by world leaders because that's exactly what a voter in Ohio cares about, right?
In Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, like, oh my God, if Justin Trudeau doesn't like President Trump, what are we going to do?
Here was that stupid ad.
World leaders caught on camera laughing about President Trump.
Several world leaders mocking President Trump.
They're laughing at him.
My administration has accomplished more than almost any administration in the history of our country.
Didn't expect that reaction, but that's okay.
If we give Donald Trump four more years, we'll have a great deal of difficulty if ever being able to recover America's standing in the world and our capacity to bring nations together.
Okay, so then he says, we need a leader.
So the Pod Save America bros were loving this, right?
The Pod Save America bros were like, oh, what a great ad from Joe Biden.
No one cares.
No one cares.
Okay, if you believe that voters care, what, oh my God, what did Boris Johnson have to say about our president?
No one cares about that.
Nobody.
By the way, I'm very much looking forward to all of the fact checkers suggesting that that ad needs to be fact checked and pulled down.
Why?
Because guess what Joe Biden did in that ad?
So there's a clip of Donald Trump talking about how we've accomplished more than any other president has at this point.
And then there's this sort of rich laughter that comes from the audience.
They cut that.
Yeah, they actually cut it.
They manipulated the video.
Because originally, there were like a couple of people who laughed, and then Trump said, I wasn't expecting that, and then there was a big laugh at what Trump said.
Okay, but they actually cut the big laugh in front of Trump's laugh line.
Before Trump's laugh line.
So, fake news, right?
Fake news.
But I don't think there's gonna be an overwhelming call to ban Joe Biden's ad on that basis, do you?
Okay, meanwhile, speaking of things that were bad for Joe Biden, so again, I think that ad's not great for Joe Biden.
I think that him calling a dude a fatso at an event is actually kind of good for Joe Biden because this is our modern politics.
It shows authenticity.
It shows that Joe Biden ain't going to be knuckling under to anybody.
The other bad thing for Joe Biden is that John Kerry endorsed him yesterday.
We'll get to that in just one second.
First, let's talk about cryptocurrency for just a second.
Now, listen, if you've never heard anything about cryptocurrency, it sounds kind of scary, right?
I mean, you hear it's crypto or it's secret.
Okay, but what exactly is cryptocurrency?
Effectively speaking, it is just a currency that cannot be manipulated by central governments.
The idea is that if you are living in the United States and you have savings in the U.S.
dollar, and the U.S.
dollar starts to inflate, well then your savings have been reduced in the amount that they actually hold.
This is true for countries all around the world.
Cryptocurrency, kind of like gold, It can't be multiplied.
So cryptocurrency is protected by blockchain.
And the idea is if a lot of people invest in cryptocurrency, then this is what lends it its value.
And because of blockchain, you can't have people who are duplicating it or creating more of it.
It is an asset that has a solid value base specifically because it is exclusive in the market.
That's what crypto is designed to do.
George Gilder writes about this at length.
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OK, so things that are bad for Biden.
That international ad, no one cares about it.
Also, John Kerry endorsed him yesterday.
That's not a shock, because John Kerry and Joe Biden's sons work together.
They're very close.
They had started a venture capital firm together that was doing business in places like China and Ukraine.
And so John Kerry endorsed Joe Biden.
I'm mainly excited about that because I do a fairly good John Kerry impersonation, and now I get to break it out again.
But two elderly, non- I believe Joe Biden is the president our country desperately needs right now.
that you want to tout.
Was everybody vying for the vaunted John Kerry endorsement here?
So John Kerry puts out a statement.
He says, "I believe Joe Biden is the president our country desperately needs right now.
Not because I've known Joe so long, but because I know Joe so well.
Through it all, I've seen Joe tested in public service and tested in life itself.
I know his character.
I know the measure of a person who never stopped fighting for millions of Americans.
Come on out here, Joe!
Show him you're alive!
Hi, everybody.
John, I am so ex- Yeah.
Yep.
So, in any case, is any of this a true threat to Trump?
I think the problem for the Democrats is Not as much as they would like.
I mean, like, I think Joe Biden has a shot against Trump.
You look at the polls and it's hard to say he doesn't have a shot against Trump.
But by the same token, is he exciting?
Like, the good news for him is he's boring and he's non-threatening.
The bad news for him is that he excites nobody.
So you're just going to have to hope that the Democratic base hates Trump so much that they show up to vote for Biden.
Democrats kind of counted on that in 2016.
It didn't work out terrifically well for them.
It may not work out that well for them in the aftermath of impeachment if impeachment ends up just kind of dying a quiet death.
Then you could see some pretty, some pretty disillusioned Democratic supporters.
And if all of these woke candidates, these progressive candidates drop out, you could see exactly the Bernie effect in 2016.
There were a lot of Bernie Sanders voters who did not show up to the polls to vote for Hillary Clinton last time around.
Now I will note that again, this race is becoming fun because everybody is going wild and crazy.
There's a Buttigieg event in the last couple of days.
A couple of black folks in South Bend, Indiana decided to put together an event in favor of Pete Buttigieg, and a white, probably a boomer, decides to get up and lecture the Black Lives Matter protesters.
Well, he's a Black Lives Matter protester.
He decides to get up and lecture the black supporters of Pete Buttigieg.
That's not the part that I'm pointing to here.
If we're talking about fun in American politics, I'm talking about the lady in the front row, who you will see or hear here, getting up and waving her cane at this guy, trying to smack him with the cane.
That's American politics.
Presidential candidates who call other fat old people fat and old.
Fat old people who tell other fat old people to stick it up their ass.
Well, elderly people trying to smack each other with their canes?
Does it feel like we're in the last days here?
Maybe a little bit.
Here's a little bit of this video of a lady trying to smack a dude with her cane because she's mad at him.
Where are these black leaders?
Who chose these people as black leaders?
These black leaders are here to talk about Pete Buttigieg.
When there is a black leader, people are having a crisis because of police violence.
Here comes Kate, lady.
There she is.
Yes, and people are grabbing her coat from behind.
Yeah, America, everything's going great over here.
Most powerful free country in world history.
She's laughing.
She's like, this is funny.
We're going to smack this guy down with the cane.
Yeah, America, everything's going great over here.
Most powerful free country in world history.
Smacking each other with their canes, calling each other fat and old.
Good times.
But we can always count on the youth of our country to save us, right?
Because it's not like we would use children as props or anything.
Speaking of using children as props and Pete Buttigieg, so last night Pete Buttigieg held an event and a seven-year-old girl got up and asked Pete Buttigieg about My Body, My Choice.
Really, because that's not, now this puts out this video of course, because nothing is more charming than small children You believe in a woman's right to choose about her own body?
I agree with that.
in the womb.
Very exciting stuff. - You believe in a woman's right to choose about her own body?
I agree with that. - You sound pretty sophisticated for a child.
Do you mind if I ask how old you are? - I don't mind.
- Well, how old are you? - Seven.
Really?
Well, you're ahead of your time.
What I hope everybody, or at least most of us, can agree on is who gets to draw the line.
And that's the person making the decision.
That's the woman in question.
And little girl, if your mommy had decided that you just weren't worth it, well, that would have been it for you.
Pete Buttigieg talking abortion with seven-year-olds.
Just delightful.
By the way, the media is starting to turn on Pete Buttigieg here, because the media are very angry.
They thought Elizabeth Warren had a clear path to the nomination.
It turns out that nobody likes her plans, and the more they see of Elizabeth Warren, the less they like her.
And so Pete Buttigieg has surged in the polls.
Well, now the media are going after Pete Buttigieg and going after Pete Buttigieg hard.
They're going after him from the left.
They're suggesting that Pete Buttigieg is a corrupt capitalist crony.
I'll get to that in just one second.
First, let's talk about the fact that the Second Amendment is deeply necessary.
Why?
Well, not only do you want to protect yourself and your family, you also want to protect your freedoms.
This is why the Second Amendment was created in the first place.
Now, folks on the left get very angry when you say things like this.
You mean that the American people should be able to arm themselves in case of violation of their most profound rights?
Yes, that's what the American Revolution was about.
That's what the Constitution explicitly is about.
That's what it is about.
That doesn't mean that anyone is calling for violence right now.
That doesn't mean that violence would be justified.
It does mean that one of the things that keeps America a rights-based country is an armed population.
Everyone who studies the Second Amendment knows this.
You know who else knows this?
The people over at Bravo Company Manufacturing.
They know that owning a rifle is an awesome responsibility.
Building rifles is no different.
Started in a garage by a Marine veteran more than two decades ago, Bravo Company Manufacturing, BCM for short, builds a professional-grade product built to combat standards.
Bravo Company Manufacturing is not a sporting arms company.
They design, engineer, manufacture life-saving equipment.
The people at BCM assume that when a rifle leaves their shop, it will be used in a life or death situation by a responsible citizen, law enforcement officer, or a soldier overseas.
To learn more about Bravo Company Manufacturing, head on over to BravoCompanyMFG.com, where you can discover more about their products, special offers, and upcoming news.
That's BravoCompanyMFG.com.
If you need more convincing, find out even more about BCM and the awesome people.
They really are great.
Okay, it is that glorious time of the week when I give a shout out to a Daily Wire subscriber.
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Is it you?
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The caption reads, Thanks for my new Leftist Tears Tumbler and thanks for all you do.
You guys give me the strength to hold my head up high every day at Kremlin on the Charles.
I know.
I've been there.
I've been there.
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Always glad to know there are more of us lurking around Harvard who aren't zombified into the leftist Rudimentaries.
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So this field is desperately thin and the media are turning on people to judge.
They don't like Pete Buttigieg.
They're very upset that Kamala Harris is out.
They're upset that all of the woke candidates have been falling off the side of the road.
And now they're very angry at Buttigieg.
So the New York Times editorial board has a full piece today called Buttigieg's untenable vow of silence.
They're very angry at him because Buttigieg worked for nearly three years for the consulting firm McKinsey and Company.
Okay, let's face this.
I know a lot of folks who are just like Pete Buttigieg.
When I was at Harvard Law School, there were 20, I would say 50% of the class was like Pete Buttigieg, meaning highly intelligent people who went into consulting, sort of down the line liberals in terms of government spending, but not overtly and deeply anti-capitalism, not explicitly anti the American system.
They weren't people trying to tear down free markets from the inside out.
They just sort of wanted to curb the reach of free markets.
That's sort of where Pete Buttigieg used to be.
And it's where, in his better moments, he sort of lives.
But this is where the New York Times hates him, because the left has moved left.
Pete Buttigieg, as of 2011, was not this.
And when he was working at McKinsey, which again is a very, very famous consulting company, McKinsey does business management, and they do it for a lot of clients that sort of toe-tag liberals don't necessarily like.
So the New York Times is angry at him.
They say Pete Buttigieg worked nearly three years for the consulting firm McKinsey & Company.
He has presented that experience as a kind of capitalist credential, distinguishing him from some rivals for the Democratic presidential nomination.
They'll try the socialist thing, Buttigieg told an Iowa audience in September.
He said, but the thing is, I got started in the private sector.
The thing is, says the New York Times, Buttigieg has said precious little about his time at McKinsey.
He's not named the clients for whom he worked, nor said much about what he did.
He says his lips are sealed by an NDA he signed when he left the firm in 2010, and that he has asked the company to release him from the agreement, and has not yet agreed to do so.
This is not a tenable situation.
Buttigieg owes voters a more complete account of his time at the company.
Voters seeking an alternative to Trump should demand that candidates not only reject Trump's positions, but also his behavior, including his refusal to share information about his health and his business dealings.
This standard requires Buttigieg to talk about his time at McKinsey.
It similarly requires Biden and Bernie Sanders to stop dragging their feet and release their health records to the public.
The obligation to provide more information ultimately falls on Buttigieg.
He must find a way to give voters more complete accounting of his time at the company.
This is a coordinated hit, by the way.
The Huffington Post has a similarly large article about Buttigieg and Buttigieg's unwillingness to turn over all the information about McKinsey.
Buttigieg, for his part, says, I didn't do anything when I was at McKinsey.
Nothing.
I worked on spreadsheets and PowerPoints.
Okay, well, sure.
Sure you did.
Sure you did.
For whom?
For which clients?
Would they be clients that Elizabeth Warren would be happy with?
By the way, Elizabeth Warren is leading this charge.
She's basically using the editors over at the New York Times and the Huffington Post as meat puppets at this point.
She criticizes Buttigieg for not being transparent enough about McKinsey, and then they immediately start parroting that message.
Here's Buttigieg saying, nothing to see here, nothing to see here, just move along, move along, these are not the droids you're looking for.
This is my first job out of school.
It mostly consisted of preparing spreadsheets and PowerPoints, but I would be happy to be able to share more about the consulting work that I did.
Can I ask, is there anybody that you regret representing?
No.
Did you ever represent a foreign government?
No.
A pharmaceutical company?
No, and again, I'm hoping that we'll get a chance to just be able to push all this out.
Okay, so I'm sure he's waiting and hoping for that.
Or alternatively, he's not waiting and hoping for that at all.
But the media are coming after Buttigieg and his little surge lit here.
I think that it's going to come to an end sometime in the near future.
Meanwhile, Elizabeth Warren continues to trot out her insanely radical plans.
This is why Joe Biden is the frontrunner.
Joe Biden may be old.
He may have the endorsement of John Kerry.
He may put out weird ads about how Emmanuel Macron doesn't like Trump.
But at least he ain't this.
Elizabeth Warren is putting out economic plans predicated on the notion that tax increases themselves will help the economy.
There is no evidence that this is true.
None.
That tax increases, not even how you spend the money, not even how you spend the money, just the taking of the money from the top tier.
If you just take it from the top tier, this creates extra income equality, and this prompts economic growth.
This exact philosophy was not exactly a boon for the USSR, Cuba, or Venezuela.
And how you spend the money is the question.
Money is merely a means of exchange.
If you exchange it for nothing, you have destroyed capital value.
But according to Elizabeth Warren and the New York Times, maybe that's all hackneyed nonsense.
Maybe we have a brand new vision of economics.
If Trump runs against this, he will wipe the floor with this perspective.
The New York Times has a piece called, Could Tax Increases Speed Up the Economy?
Democrats Say Yes.
Led by Elizabeth Warren, presidential candidates and liberal economists are pushing an unorthodox pro-growth argument for raising taxes on the rich.
Now, if you're making the Keynesian argument that if you take money from rich people, give it to poor people, and the poor people are more likely to spend, and that spending creates a multiplier effect in the economy, and this is going to lead to bottom-up growth, that's an argument that's been tried.
It's not true.
It doesn't work.
Okay, we tried it during the Great Depression.
It lengthened the Great Depression by full-on eight years.
But, at least that is an argument that has data to back it up.
At least you can make an argument, sort of.
Maybe, it's not a good argument, but you can make it.
The argument that you can just take money from rich people and then burn it?
And that that's going to somehow help the economy?
That's a purely insane argument.
I mean, that's crazy.
No Democratic before Ms.
Warren has ever proposed so many new taxes and spending programs and leaned so heavily into the argument that they would be, in economist parlance, pro-growth.
According to the New York Times, that argument tries to reframe a classic debate about the economic pie in the United States by suggesting there is no trade-off between increasing the size of the pie and dividing the slices more equitably among all Americans.
And this article actually suggests, on the basis of no evidence, none, that if you just take money away from rich people and you give it to other people, it does not matter how they spend the money, the mere taking away of the money is what is going to actually create the growth.
That's full-on nuts.
That's full-on crazy towns.
As I say, the other argument, the sort of redistributionist argument, the bottom-up demand side argument, which is a bad economic argument.
There's a supply side and demand side argument about economics.
The supply side says that what creates economic growth is entrepreneurs creating new products you didn't even know that you wanted.
And then, you want that product, and so you have to trade your labor for that product.
That creates new jobs.
That is the supply side economic argument.
The demand side economic argument is if people who are lower down have more money, they spend more money on hamburgers and McDonald's has more jobs.
It's not a particularly good argument.
It tends to stagnate the economy rather than creating exactly the sort of new products and services and competition that you want.
But now there's a new argument being made that Democrats are making that it does not matter how you spend the money at all.
It does not matter.
I mean, which is, again, a wild contention.
Completely crazy.
Based on absolutely nothing.
Based on absolutely nothing.
Noah Roffman has a great piece at Commentary Magazine talking about how confiscating wealth is the point.
For the Democrats, it is not about how the wealth is spent or creating the wealth.
It is the attempt to steal the wealth that is the point.
Noah Rothman quotes the New York Times.
Generations of economists across much of the ideological spectrum have long held that higher taxes reduce investment, slowing economic growth.
Ms.
Warren and other leading Democrats say the opposite.
Rothman points out it doesn't take long before it becomes clear that progressives have not come to overturn the accumulated wisdom of many lifetimes of study and application.
The financial ramifications associated with expropriating private property are a secondary concern.
The confiscation of wealth alone is the point of the progressive enterprise.
The Times observes, some liberal economists go further and say that simply taxing the rich would help growth no matter what the government did with the money.
Okay, that's, again, based on nothing.
Trump would run against this and win 100 times out of 100 times.
Which is, again, why Joe Biden continues to lead in this race.
Meanwhile, I do love the fact that Cory Booker is still standing in the wings shouting at the... Remember me?
I'm the black guy!
I'm the only black person in the race, guys!
I'm so black!
Remember, look at me!
Here are my angry eyes!
I'm very upset that there are no other black people in there.
If you like black people, I know one.
It's me, says Cory Booker.
Here he is.
It is a problem that we now have a overall campaign for the 2020 presidency that has more billionaires in it than black people.
I've seen folk here in Iowa belie what all the predictions are.
It was this state that set a trajectory for the first black man in American history to become president.
Oh, well, okay, so his pitch is that Kamala Harris is out, and if you want somebody black, I'm your man.
That's a pitch.
Julian Castro doing the same thing.
He's Hispanic, so that means that you should vote for him.
Not a great pitch.
And meanwhile, you can see why Democrats are so reliant on impeachment.
You can see why they're trying to move forward with this impeachment, even though they don't actually have the evidence for it.
So Nancy Pelosi is already saying that the House is gonna draft up impeachment charges, and that this thing is going to happen maybe before Christmas.
There could be a vote before Christmas to charge him with high crimes and misdemeanors, then it goes to the Senate.
Okay, so Nancy Pelosi yesterday went nuts.
You can see that she feels like she's, the grip is slipping here, right?
Pelosi, as she walks off stage, has this crazed moment, and it really is a crazed moment.
And don't give me the, it's sexist to call it crazed, that's absolute bullcrap.
Okay, Howard Dean had a yell, it ended his presidential campaign.
So if the idea is that acting crazy is bad for you politically, then that should apply to Nancy Pelosi also.
This is a crazy moment.
And somebody says to her, isn't the real reason that you Democrats are going after- Like, there are people who suggest, including actual Republicans in Congress, that the reason Democrats are going after Trump is because they hate him.
Which, I mean, fairly good evidence.
Fairly good ev- Isn't- Is that why this is happening?
And Pelosi turns around and says to James Rosen, who works for Sinclair Broadcasting, she turns around and she says to him, I'm a Catholic.
Catholics don't hate people.
Do you hate the President, Madam Speaker?
I don't hate anybody.
That's the reason I asked.
Here's Nancy Pelosi being very upset as a Catholic that someone used the word hate to describe her.
Do you hate the president, Madam Speaker?
I don't hate anybody.
Representative Collins is the reason I ask.
I don't hate anybody, not anybody in the world.
You don't accuse me.
I did not accuse you.
I asked a question.
This is about the Constitution of the United States and the facts that lead to the president's violation of his oath of office.
And as a Catholic, I resent your using the word hate in a sentence that addresses me.
I don't hate anyone.
I was raised in a way that is full, a heart full of love and always prayed for the president.
Oh, she prays for Trump.
Yeah, and if you believe that one, I got a bridge I can sell you in Brooklyn.
It's really nice.
Comes cheap.
Trump then tweeted out, Nancy Pelosi just had a nervous fit.
She hates that we will soon have 182 great new judges and so much more.
Stock market and unemployment records.
She says she prays for the president.
I don't believe her.
Not even close.
Help the homeless in your district, Nancy.
USMCA.
And that is the trade deal that Trump is trying to push through.
Pelosi doubled down on this.
She said it was disgusting, disgusting to be asked if she hates Trump.
Because as a good Catholic who supports the idea that men can become women and women men, as a good Catholic who believes that same-sex marriage should be federally mandated, as a good Catholic who believes that abortion should be legal up till point of birth, and maybe beyond, Nancy Pelosi is very offended that you would use the word hate to describe her feelings about President Trump.
I was raised a Catholic.
My college roommate, Rita Meyer, and my college classmate, Mary Bader, are here with me.
We were raised, and my dear husband, Paul, and Demi, our friend, Susan, we were raised in a Catholic faith.
And the word hate, a person, was just, that just doesn't happen, you know.
The word hate is a terrible word, but you might reserve it for Vanilla ice cream or something like that.
But not... I'm a chocoholic.
But not for a person.
And it is... So for him to say that was really disgusting to me.
Disgusting!
It's so, it's really, it's wild.
And there's an opinion piece by Karen Tumulty over at the Washington Post defending Nancy Pelosi on this, saying she's such a good Catholic.
One of the things every Catholic child is taught is that the word hate should never be used in connection with another human being.
This admonition flows from the expansive Catholic interpretation of the Fifth Commandment.
In a general audience last year in St.
Peter's Square, Pope Francis declared that to hate is to murder in your heart.
And then it talks about Nancy Pelosi's response.
Pelosi told the New York Times in 2015.
She has a question, her sincerity, and points out she is broken with Catholic teaching on big issues of doctrine, chief among them abortion.
The church has their position, we have ours, which is that a woman has free will given to her by God, Pelosi told the New York Times in 2015.
Pope Pelosi explained.
But those who know her well insist religious belief is at the core of everything Pelosi does.
There are two pillars in her life in terms of her beliefs.
Her Catholicism, a very deep faith, and her family.
Her friend and fellow California Congresswoman, Anna Eshoo, told colleague Paul Kane on Thursday, this is the authentic Nancy.
No small part of that was the influence of her mother, a daily communicant who at her funeral was referred to as being molded by Regina Cayley, the Easter prayer to Mary.
My favorite part of this piece, by the way, That is the admission by Karen Tumulty that she actually understands what religious people believe.
She'll only apply it to Nancy Pelosi, however.
She says, Disgust to a Catholic is not the same as hatred.
As Pelosi noted, political differences should be resolved in the 2020 election.
So the case that is being made here is that Pelosi doesn't hate the president.
She just has disdain for his activity.
In other words, she hates the sinner, but not the sin.
Weird that Karen Tumulty and the rest of the folks in the left-wing press will believe Nancy Pelosi when it comes to President Trump, but they will never believe a religious person when they talk about any amount of sin that a religious person discusses.
There, it is motivated by animus and hatred and brutality.
Eric Swalwell, when he's not advocating the nuclear annihilation of gun owners in the United States, is not farting on national TV.
Eric Swalwell was on MSNBC and he said it's sexist to criticize Nancy Pelosi this way.
Sexist!
God, I'm so tired of this crap.
Seriously.
Everybody in the United States in the political sphere takes their share of crap.
Nancy Pelosi, Speaker of the House.
Woman up!
Here's Eric Swalwell complaining that if you thought that that was a wild response by Nancy Pelosi, it's because you hate women or something.
That's how they talk about women.
You know, if it was a man talking to a reporter that way, and the president does that often, they would never characterize it that way.
She was asked an unfair question, and she gave a serious response.
Everybody nodding along on MSNBC very solemnly.
Oh, the nodding, the nodding.
By the way, are the Democrats doing this because they hate Trump?
Here's Representative Al Green explaining, there's literally no limits to the number of times they would try to impeach Trump.
Al Green has called for Trump to be impeached pretty much every day since he was elected. - A president can be impeached more than once.
So we can do this.
We can move forward with what we have on the table currently.
We can take this before the Senate.
And we can still investigate other issues.
And when the president He has committed additional offenses, and my suspicion is that he will.
We can take those before the Senate.
There is no limit on the number of times the Senate can vote to convict or not a president.
No limit to the number of times a House can vote to impeach or not.
No limit!
None!
Yes, I'm sure this is all motivated by concern over the Constitution, and not at all motivated by any level of animus in the hearts of Democrats at all.
They love Trump, they just hate his sin.
I totally believe them.
And also, I believe that men can become women, women can be men, and unicorn crap can provide all the energy that the earth needs.
Okay, time for some things I like and then some things that I hate.
Okay, things that I like today.
This is just a wonderful, wonderful story.
So remember that time that Colin Kaepernick had a tryout and then he decided to be like a complete jerk and not have the NFL tryout, have his own tryout and then release videos about how tough his life was and how people are very mean to him?
Well, and wear a Kunta Kinte shirt while doing his tryout because he's a victim just like Kunta Kinte, the character of the slave in Roots.
Remember that?
Well, now it turns out that one of the wide receivers who was actually at his tryout has now signed with the Washington Redskins, which is pretty fantastic.
So Colin Kaepernick still does not have a job, but the receiver that he used in the tryout does.
His name is Jordan Vesey.
He's now signed on with the Washington Redskins.
According to Fox News, the Washington Redskins signed Vesey to their practice squad.
He worked out with Kaepernick last month in Atlanta High School.
He caught a 50-yard pass from the former San Francisco 49ers star.
It was described as one of the quarterback's best throws.
Vesey had generated some buzz with the Cleveland Browns.
The wide receiver largely credited the session with his professional success.
He says it helped.
That's one of the reasons I wanted to be part of it.
Just being a part of history of it, I knew it was going to help me.
I was going to be in Gadsden running routes anyway.
Might as well run them in front of some scouts.
So the great irony, the people who did not sign Colin Kaepernick signed the receiver who caught one of his passes because that person is not an obnoxious jerk.
So good news for Jordan Veazey and congratulations.
Okay, time for a quick thing that I hate.
Okay, thing that I hate today.
So, everybody is praising the Irishman.
Everybody loves this movie.
I don't know how.
Now listen, I have said before, my biases are on the table.
I think that Martin Scorsese is a dramatically overrated filmmaker.
In fact, the only film that I actually really like of his is the one that everybody else hates, Silence, which is about religious faith.
I think that one is actually really interesting.
But, His new film, The Irishman, is just interminable.
It is one million hours long.
It took me three days to watch it.
And I understand that it's his sort of elegiac goodbye to the industry and to this sort of genre, but that doesn't mean it's good, because it's not.
It's not.
First of all, its portrayal of Jimmy Hoffa is kind of ridiculous, but beyond that, The actual plot doesn't make any sense.
It is extremely overlong.
It's slow, as all get-out.
People are praising the fact that it's basically Goodfellas for the silent generation, right?
It's Goodfellas, just you move it forward 40 years in time, and instead of Ray Liotta's character going into witness protection, he dies of old age.
That's pretty much the entirety of it, except without the fun.
So, here's a little bit of the Irishman, which is receiving all the Critics' Awards, by the way.
I don't get it.
I don't get it, except that I understand.
It's Martin Scorsese.
We're all gonna pretend that we like the film, even though nobody has actually made it through the film without falling asleep for at least 45 minutes.
Hiya, Frank.
Would you like to be a part of history?
Yes, I would.
Big business and the government are working together, trying to pull us apart.
Something's gotta be done.
What else you say?
Now's not the time to not say.
We're going to war with these people.
Okay, so this trailer makes it look a lot more exciting than it actually is.
The performances by De Niro and Pesci are good.
Al Pacino has been doing Sensible Woman since Sensible Woman, so that's annoying.
But it'll be on everybody's top ten of the year list.
It's take on American history, by the way, is kind of ridiculous and cynical and just not a fan.
Not a fan.
It does not justify your Netflix subscription.
Okay, time for, you know what?
It's the end of the week, so I'm gonna do what I've been doing most weeks now, do a little bit of Bible talk, so the Jews read a portion from the Bible every week.
This week's portion comes from the book of Genesis, and it contains one of the great controversies in all of Bible history, the question of whether Jacob stole Esau's birthright and his blessing.
So, these are, you know, controversial events, even now.
So, Jacob's controversy begins with the birthright.
Very simple scenario.
Esau is his brother, the hunter, and he comes back from the field, and he's hungry, and he demands of Jacob, pour into me now some of that very red stuff, for I'm exhausted.
And Jacob says, sell me, as of this day, your birthright to me.
And Esau, without hesitating, says, look, I'm gonna die, so of what use to me is a birthright?
So, people have said for a while, is this Jacob cheating Esau?
So, people have said for a while, is this Jacob cheating Esau?
Or is this actually just a fair and square deal?
Well, the answer is really, you know, we mentioned Keynesian philosophy before.
John Maynard Keynes famously suggested at one point that in the long run, everybody is dead.
That you shouldn't think too much about the future because in the long run, everybody is dead.
So instead, you should deal with the problems that are on the table right now.
Keynesianism essentially argues that money is better used by poor people than by rich people, which is not particularly good economic sense.
But he ignores the fact that long-run concerns matter.
He says, in the long run, we're all dead, which is a deeply immoral principle.
The progress of mankind is dependent on you making sacrifices on behalf of your children, who make sacrifices on behalf of their children, and thus, for generations, you have a chain of sacrifice.
Well, in the Bible, Esau is the epitome of a short-term thinker.
When he says, look, I'm going to die, so what used to be is a birthright, he's not really saying that he's literally going to die of starvation unless he gets some lentil soup.
He's articulating a basic leftist principle, which is that what matters is my material well-being today.
It's not about me sacrificing today on behalf of tomorrow.
And Jacob sees this and he says, okay, well, the birthright matters to me because the birthright is not about what happens to me.
It's about what happens to my kids and what happens to my kids' kids.
This is the major difference in the Torah between Esau and Jacob.
Esau is described as a hunter, and Jacob is described as a wholesome man abiding in tents.
In other words, Esau lives day-to-day.
He's about going out and providing the food on the table for today.
And Jacob is the one who cultivates.
And domestication and cultivation is the essence of civilization, which is why the birthright should descend on the person who is thinking toward the future.
This is why it was kind of amazing.
Joe Biden was asked about his balanced budget amendment back in 1995, which he signed on to.
And he said, no, we don't need a balanced budget amendment anymore.
The situation is far too immediate and far too grave.
Whenever people tell you that the immediate situation is far too grave for you to think about things that are going to happen 10 years down the line, that's a mistake.
It's a mistake.
This still doesn't answer Jacob's trickery with regard to his father, right?
So Jacob then tricks his dad about all of this.
So Jacob has basically a normal market exchange with Esau.
For Esau, his birthright is literally not worth a bowl of soup.
And Jacob knows this, and so he takes the birthright.
But then, why does Jacob have to somehow trick his father?
Because when he comes to Isaac's bedside, Jacob once again engages in deceit.
Isaac has gone blind by this point.
point he tells Esau, I've aged.
I don't know the day of my death.
Sharpen your gear, your sword, and your bow.
Go out into the field and hunt game for me and then make me delicacies such as I love.
Bring it to me and I'll eat so that my soul may bless you before I die.
And then obviously Rebecca believes that Esau is a bad guy and Jacob's a good guy.
So she covers Jacob up with kind of rough "Skins to imitate Esau." She cooks up the gourmet meal for Isaac, just as Isaac had told Esau to do, and then she sends Jacob in to see Isaac, and Isaac immediately recognizes something's up.
He says, who are you, my son?
And Jacob says that he's Esau, but Isaac still doesn't...
Really believe that.
He says, how is it that you were so quick to find my son?
Meaning, how did you make this food so fast?
And Jacob gives an answer that's pretty clear that he isn't Esau.
He says, because your God arranged it for me.
It's very out of character for Esau to credit God.
And so Isaac gets even more suspicious.
He says, come close if you please, so I can feel you, my son.
Are you indeed my son Esau or not?
And when Jacob draws close, Isaac says, the voice is Jacob's voice, but the hands are Esau's hands.
And he blesses him anyway.
So in other words, Isaac knows something's up.
And then a few minutes later, Esau shows up, and Isaac doesn't know who he is, but when Esau identifies himself, Isaac suddenly realizes that he's given his blessing to the wrong son.
He says, So why?
First, why did Isaac actually require Esau to go hunting and then cook him a meal?
all when you had not yet come and i blessed him indeed he shall remain blessed right so he doesn't take back the blessing so why first why did isa isaac actually require esau to go hunting and then cook him a meal it's a weird sort of condition second why didn't jacob just go to his dad and say i deserve the better blessing because i'm a long-term thinker and esau's a short-term thinker The oddest part is that Isaac doesn't reverse the blessing.
After he's deceived, he doesn't go, oh, I guess that your brother stole the blessing, I'm gonna reverse this thing now.
Because a blessing given under false pretenses is not effective.
In the Torah, if you say the blessing for wine over a piece of bread, you haven't actually covered your bases, halachically speaking.
According to Jewish law, blessings are specific, and they require specific intent.
So, if Isaac didn't intend to give the blessing to Jacob, then why was the blessing still effective?
So let's go back to the story for a second.
Isaac orders Esau to go hunting to cook a meal and prepare it for him.
That request isn't actually about a meal, right?
Because Rebecca can cook a meal for him.
What Isaac is actually doing is asking Esau to prepare the meal because he wants Esau to show him that he can be more than a hunter.
That he can actually think about the future.
Cooking a meal at least shows some forethought, right?
You actually have to cook it, you have to figure out what ingredients you need, you have to prepare it, and then you have to give it away.
All Esau needs to do is add the element of forward thinking because he's aggressive, right?
Isaac is thinking about the future of his family and of the Jewish people by extension.
And so Isaac says to Esau, listen, I know that you're a fighter.
I know you can protect yourself and defend yourself, but can you think ahead?
And that's what he's saying to Esau.
In Isaac's eyes, by contrast, Jacob has a long way to go, right?
Because Isaac sees Jacob as a forward thinker, but Jacob is always, in the Bible, seen as sort of a weaker character in terms of defending himself, right?
He's much more submissive.
He's certainly less brusque.
He is certainly less aggressive.
He thinks in advance, but he's not tough enough.
So when Jacob shows up wearing Esau's skin, Isaac doesn't know what to think.
He doesn't know who this is.
Is this Esau?
Who's finally coming around and thinking ahead?
Or, is this Jacob doing the unthinkable?
Actually braving the possibility of his dad getting mad at him?
Using whatever means are necessary in order to protect himself and his future?
In the end, here's the point, Isaac doesn't actually care.
Whoever this is, whether it's Esau or Jacob, gets the blessing.
Why?
Because this person has demonstrated both an attention to self-defense, an attention to the immediate, and also an attention to the future.
You have to do both.
If you sacrifice the present completely in favor of the future, that's no good.
But if you sacrifice the future in favor of the present, that's no good either.
And that's the theme here.
That's the theme.
Jacob is supposed to be the model for human beings in the Bible, in Torah.
Jacob is the model for the Jewish man.
He's considered Ishtam, meaning sort of a whole man.
Why?
Because he thinks of the present and he also thinks of the future.
And that's what that story is all about.
Esau, by contrast, only thinks of the present and never thinks of the future.
And that has some political ramifications for today.
Okay, well, that ends our week here on the podcast.
But good news for you, there are two additional hours of this show coming up a little bit later on.
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Otherwise, we'll see you here on Monday.
Have a wonderful weekend.
I'm Ben Shapiro.
This is The Ben Shapiro Show.
The Ben Shapiro Show is produced by Rebecca Dobkowitz.
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