All Episodes
Dec. 17, 2019 - The Ben Shapiro Show
01:01:04
The Poop Hits The Sidewalk | Ep. 918
| Copy link to current segment

Time Text
The Supreme Court gives the go-ahead to sleeping on the streets, Democrats have the votes for impeachment, and Rudy claims he's got the goods on Joe and Hunter Biden.
I'm Ben Shapiro.
This is The Ben Shapiro Show.
The Ben Shapiro Show is sponsored by ExpressVPN's Stand up for your digital rights.
Visit expressvpn.com slash Ben.
We're going to get to everything impeachment related momentarily.
As I've been saying now for weeks, this is all a foregone conclusion.
Nothing really new is happening.
This is all just a dog and pony show at this point.
But there are some wrinkles to the dog and pony show.
We'll bring those to you momentarily in a much bigger issue that will have more long lasting ramifications for Americans than this impeachment debacle.
Because the impeachment A far bigger issue is the fact that America's major cities are now collapsing in on themselves like dying stars.
move forward to 2020 and whoever wins will win and whoever loses will lose.
That's the way this is going to work.
A far bigger issue is the fact that America's major cities are now collapsing in on themselves like dying stars.
America's major cities are becoming worse and worse in terms of living standards for the people who live there.
And that's not true for every city, but it's certainly true for cities like Los Angeles I'm old enough to remember one Los Angeles where I've lived nearly my entire life, with the exception of three years in Massachusetts when I was in law school.
Every w- It has gone from a very livable, nice city, particularly in the suburbs, to an incredibly dirty city where there are insane amounts of litter, trash on the streets, open needles in suburban areas and near schools.
We've got homeless people on nearly every corner.
There is not an embankment in Los Angeles that is not occupied by homeless people all over the city.
And that is because major cities around the United States have refused to do what is necessary in arresting people and ensuring that they actually have a place to go with regard to not just housing, but in terms of mental illness, in terms of drug abuse.
One of the obvious facts about homelessness in major cities is that it is largely driven by mental illness, severe mental illness, and drug abuse and alcohol abuse.
And that means that you have to approach this thing with both a carrot and a stick.
So what the left would like to do is approach this thing with just the carrot.
Say, okay, well here's some housing.
Here's some housing that we've built for you.
And we've seen this in Los Angeles where it's costing like half a million dollars to build a unit of housing thanks to building regulations because the government is insane.
And that means that it'll cost you more to house somebody for a year than to do pretty much anything else with them in the state of California and in the city of Los Angeles.
You've seen this approach taken also in Seattle, where they've set up what they literally have started, it's called drunk dorms, where there are no restrictions on who can live in these areas.
And as it turns out, a lot of homeless people don't actually want to live under the same roof with a bunch of other homeless people who may in fact be violent alcoholics.
So that's been a serious problem.
You have to combine this with a stick approach.
Yes, you have to have the carrot of a place for people to go, but you also have to have the stick approach, which is if you violate the law, we will send you to jail.
And if you keep violating the law, we will keep sending you to jail.
And also, if we want paranoid schizophrenics off the streets, they will require some mandatory treatment.
And that does not mean that you get to simply walk out of the treatment facility when you feel like you are cured, and then go right back to the streets where you are not taking your proper medication.
This comes as somebody From somebody who has, my grandfather was a schizophrenic.
His life was saved by the fact that he was taking medication at a mental facility.
He was actually put away in a mental facility for like a year, and, or eight months, a year, and it saved his life.
You have to have the legal ability to take people who cannot care for themselves and put them in a position where they receive the care that they need.
And the whole point of severe mental illness is that you are unable to control yourself.
The same thing is true of severe drug addiction.
If you cannot arrest people for living on the street and then put them in mandatory drug rehab, it's going to be very difficult to ever move them off the street.
And the housing-only approach has failed pretty much everywhere that it's tried.
The only place where it supposedly succeeded was Salt Lake City, and that turned into such a money pit That Salt Lake City had to cut its own expenditures on housing.
Also, it happens that Salt Lake City is supported in huge amounts by the social fabric of the Mormon Church, which is there to provide all sorts of social support for people who are homeless, provides all sorts of services there.
Those sorts of services don't exist in major cities around the country, and when government does provide those sorts of social services, it actually acts as a magnet for homelessness.
And in fact, even in Salt Lake City, after a 91% decrease in homelessness over a decade, they saw, for two straight years, each year, a doubling of the homeless population after it became widely publicized that they were giving away all sorts of goodies to homeless people because, as it turns out, that is an incentive structure.
Well, part of the issue here has to be part of the solution has to be the threat of law enforcement taking your stuff, arresting you, putting you in into mandatory drug rehabilitation, placing you into a mental facility, a mental health facility where you receive mandatory drugs that will that will help care for your severe mental illness.
All of these things need to be on the table.
None of them are on the table.
And now the Supreme Court Really, this is what the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals found.
Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruling that suggests that it is a violation of the Eighth Amendment of the United States Constitution to fine people for living out in public on the streets.
Really, this is what the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals found.
The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals a few months ago found that it was a violation of the cruel and unusual punishment clause of the Constitution of the United States to give people a $25 ticket for living on a sidewalk, which is pure By the way, you want to destroy a city, this is the way you do it.
Not just because the living conditions go down, but also because you destroy the ability of businesses to do business.
In the city of Los Angeles, I have many, many friends who are police officers in the city of Los Angeles, and one of their big problems is that a business owner will call them up and say, I've got a homeless person who is sitting on my stoop and peeing.
Right in front of the business.
And my customers can't get in.
And the police officers will say, well, is the person trying to break in?
And I'll say, no.
They'll say, well, we can't do anything about that.
They're just living right there.
There's nothing they can do about that.
Because the city of Los Angeles has decided to go along with all of this nonsense.
This has some predictable effects in terms of how cities are run and how dirty they are.
We'll get to that in just one second.
First, let's talk about the fact That rights in America are the basis of our Constitution.
And protection of rights is the basis of our Constitution.
And yes, we relied on a limited government to protect our rights.
But the final repository of your rights is in you.
It's in the people.
And that is particularly true for the right to self-defense.
This is why I'm a big believer in the Second Amendment.
And so are the folks over at USCCA.
Listen up, because this is your last chance to win $1,000 from my friends at the USCCA.
After this, this offer is gone.
Right now, the USCCA is giving away $1,000 to 19 lucky winners this holiday season just for texting in.
You text the word WIN, that's W-I-N, to 87222, and you can claim your free chances to get $1,000.
It's really that simple, but you need to hurry because this is the last giveaway the USCCA is offering this year.
It ends this Friday, December 20th.
Don't miss your chance to get a thousand bucks from the U.S.C.C.A.
Text WIN to 87222.
It's important that Second Amendment supporters practice their support of the Second Amendment by being responsible gun owners.
The U.S.C.C.A.
believes that.
They provide you all sorts of educational and legal resources.
The U.S.C.C.A.
is proud to provide life-saving education, training, and legal protection to over 300,000 law-abiding Americans every year.
You should join up to text WIN to 87222.
For your final chance to win $1,000, 100% secure, it takes only seconds, text WIN, the word WIN, W-I-N, to 87222.
WIN to 87222.
So now the Supreme Court has ruled, again, that you have a right to sleep on the streets.
They did so, not by ruling that out right, but by refusing to overrule this Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruling.
Now, this has some predictable effects.
So, for example, in San Francisco, this picture was going around yesterday.
It is a picture of a homeless man who was being described by other people in the... This was taken by a journalist.
The journalist said that this person was clearly a drug addict.
This person literally went into a supermarket in San Francisco and proceeded to defecate on the floor.
The good news is that they found the toilet paper aisle, so at least they have the toilet paper to deal with it.
The bad news is there was an open bathroom with no one occupying it in the same store, and this person just decided to go poop right on the floor of the supermarket.
And this has become San Francisco.
We had a colleague, Cassie Dillon, she went over to San Francisco and took tape on, uh, took videotape of all of the street corners in San Francisco, and San Francisco has become a feces fest.
The entire city has turned into a trash heap.
It's one of the most beautiful cities in America.
The same thing has happened in Seattle, where a gem of a city... I used to do a local show up in Seattle.
A gem of a city has been turned into a homeless encampment, and the past several mayors have refused to do anything about it, citing the right to live on the streets.
Well, I shouldn't say they're doing nothing about it.
Over in Seattle, Seattle's homeless agency actually hired a transgender performer named Beyonce Black St.
James to their all-home conference in South Seattle for a group of homeless advocates.
This person is a transgender stripper.
Which is a look.
And, um, they spent money on this to fight homelessness.
Homelessness cured, guys!
They fixed homelessness.
All it took was finding a transge- a man who believes that he is a woman who's had some surgeries to prove it.
All it takes is a transgender female stripper parading around and twerking at a homeless conference on taxpayer dime to fix this thing.
Oh, oh god.
No.
We cut this tape so that you didn't actually have to... Oh, no.
Okay, we're gonna not do that, guys.
Okay, let's just stop it and let's get that off the screen, because no one... Oh, no!
Stop it!
Stop it!
Stop!
Enough!
No!
You don't want... Do not subject the American people to that.
Well, the good news is the American people paid for that.
The Seattle taxpayers paid for that.
According to our friend Jason Rantover at KTTH, Seattle's homelessness crisis shows no signs of subsiding.
Meanwhile, an agency tasked with tackling the issue spent taxpayer dollars on a strip show.
Transgender performer, Beyonce Black St.
James, stripped at the All Home Conference in South Seattle for a group of homeless advocates.
All Home is the King County agency that coordinates the services for the homeless.
The conference theme was, Decolonizing Our Collective Work.
What does that mean?
Decolonizing our collective work?
Is your collective work colonized?
By what?
Like, strep?
Like, what?
It wasn't clear to attendees that the organization had planned a strip show for the conference.
According to the Seattle Times, the agenda simply explained participants would attend a lunch with cultural presentation.
That is one cultural presentation.
It was a transgender woman lip-syncing and stripping, revealing silver nipple coverings and a bodysuit.
Some participants handed her dollar bills.
Others looked clearly uncomfortable.
At one point, St.
James appeared to place His breasts on a participant's head.
At another, he rubbed his backside up against a woman in a chair and then caressed the leg and chest of a man.
St.
James would later use his mouth to take a dollar bill out of this other person's mouth.
And then, of course, some twerking.
The transgender stripper, by the way, is not the person to blame, as Jason Ranz points out.
This person's name is Kira Zylstra, the administrator, who was earning $123,000 a year to fight homelessness.
$23,000 a year to fight homelessness.
Yes, public service pays well.
The person ended up resigning.
How much do governments waste on nonsense like this?
The answer is not a little money.
So the Supreme Court has declared, by refusing to rule on this Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruling, that there is now a right to sleep on the streets.
A right to sleep on the streets.
The ruling by the 9th Circuit is insane.
It said that a city ordinance violates the 8th Amendment.
Cruel and unusual punishment.
Right?
It's like using the rack on somebody to write them a $25 ticket if they don't move their crap from out in front of a business.
It violates the 8th Amendment insofar as it imposes criminal sanctions against homeless individuals for sleeping outdoors on public property when no alternative shelter is available to them.
So you've seen these kinds of court rulings.
I mean, this is judicial supremacy at its finest.
Judicial supremacy is when the judiciary simply usurps the role of legislatures.
And this is what has been going on in terms of, for example, union states.
You will see the judiciary simply say that the state must sign a contract with the unions that meet the following criteria.
You've seen this with regard to some states on education.
Some states will say, you know, the state constitution suggests that you have to properly fund education.
Properly fund means you have to spend X percentage of the budget on education.
Okay, that is the judiciary now playing the legislature.
Well, this is what the judiciary here is doing.
To say when no alternative shelter is available to them you can't write somebody a ticket means that basically the Ninth Circuit is saying it's your brains or your signature on this piece of paper.
Either you have to let these people sleep on the street and defecate on the street because that is one of the things that goes along with sleeping on the streets as it turns out.
You don't have to let them destroy the safety and security of a city unless you build them the kind of shelter we believe is appropriate.
That is blackmailing the taxpayers from the judicial branch.
That's not electoral politics.
That's not even democracy.
That's the judiciary deciding what it thinks is best policy without having any responsibility for implementing that policy.
Even Los Angeles County was like, what is this stuff?
Los Angeles County Supervisor Mark Ridley-Thomas, who is no right-winger, he said that they had joined the lawsuit against these homeless advocacy organizations.
He said that they were looking For a clear framework, a legal framework in comparison to the status quo that is ambiguous and confusing.
He said, letting the current law stand handicapped cities and counties from acting nimbly to aid those perishing on the streets, exacerbating unsafe and unhealthy conditions that negatively affect our most vulnerable residents.
LA Mayor Eric Garcetti, who is just awful, he said in a statement that quote, Homelessness won't be solved by moving people from one street to another.
Our focus will remain on providing services to save lives, keeping our neighborhoods clean and healthy, opening shelters to help get people indoors more quickly, and building permanent units to keep them under a roof for good.
None of those things have happened in LA.
I live here.
I can testify.
None of those things have happened in LA.
LA is one giant homeless encampment.
There are over 60,000 homeless people living in the county of Los Angeles.
And now the Supreme Court has allowed the Ninth Circuit to cram down its own vision of how to fight homelessness on every other major city, and that does not include the ability to even rouse people, move their stuff.
What this means is mass homelessness is going to continue to be the rule, not the exception, when it comes to America's major cities, thanks to the judiciary.
Well done, everybody.
Just excellent, excellent job making America's jewels unlivable.
Okay, in just a second, we're going to get to the latest on impeachment case 2019.
First, let's talk about a fantastic, fantastic gift for the holidays.
How do I know this is a fantastic gift?
Because let me tell you, my wife is basically a saint.
I mean, she's married to me.
Why would she stay married to you?
You ask.
Well, the answer?
I get her really nice jewelry from The Pearl Source.
The Pearl Source!
Okay, Christmas and Hanukkah are next week, but here is the thing.
It is not too late.
The Pearl Source offers free two-day shipping on every order.
Everything comes beautifully packaged in an elegant jewelry box, so it's ready to be given as a gift.
You'll receive those beautiful pearls in time for the holidays.
My wife has a beautiful pearl necklace from ThePearlSource.com.
Slash Ben.
She also has a pair of earrings that are just gorgeous.
They're these kind of diamond dripping earrings into a giant pearl.
It's just beautiful, beautiful stuff.
All their jewelry is beautiful.
And here's the thing.
It's up to 70% off retail prices because they are skipping the traditional five times markup by skipping the middleman.
And if you're not sure if she'll love the gift, don't worry.
The Pearl Source comes with a no hassle 60 day money back guarantee.
So that's risk free.
So you buy her a piece of jewelry, which I promise you she'll love.
And she's like, no, I don't like that one.
I like this other one.
You can just go to the Pearl Source and you're good.
Plus, with more than 20 years in the parole business, over 5,000 five-star reviews, you can be sure you're shopping from a trusted retailer.
By the way, you can also ensure you're shopping from a trusted retailer, because I know these people.
I'm very, very good friends with the people who run The Parole Source, and I can tell you they are extraordinarily honest, great family folks.
You're helping out a family business.
It really is a spectacular business, and their product is beautiful.
And it is going to last forever because it's beautiful, beautiful jewelry.
For a limited time, listeners to my show, take an additional 20% off your entire order.
Go to ThePearlSource.com slash Ben.
Enter promo code Ben at checkout for 20% off your entire order.
If you want fine jewelry at the best prices online, go straight to the source, ThePearlSource.
Again, that's ThePearlSource.com slash Ben.
Enter promo code Ben at checkout.
Okay, so meanwhile, on impeachment, this is the week.
This is the week because Democrats are going to lay out the case for a Wednesday Trump impeachment vote according to the Associated Press.
So tomorrow, the historic day, when Democrats declare impeachment, yeah!
The reason, by the way, they're doing it on Wednesday is because Thursday is the next big Democratic presidential debate, and so they don't want to detract from attention on debate day.
So they're gonna do impeachment on Wednesday, and then the Democrats can spend the first half of the debate on Thursday talking about how much they hate President Trump.
But don't worry, this isn't political at all.
It's not political, it's just they love the Constitution so, so, so much.
That's all.
According to the AP, House Democrats laid out their impeachment case against President Trump on Monday, a sweeping report accusing him of betraying the nation and deserving to be ousted as key lawmakers began to signal Where they stand ahead of this week's landmark votes.
What Democrats once hoped would be a bipartisan act, only the third time in U.S.
history the House will be voting to impeach a president, is now on track to be a starkly partisan roll call on Wednesday.
No Republicans are breaking with the president.
Almost all Democrats are expected to approve the charges against him.
A raucous town hall Monday in the Detroit suburbs put on display the nation's wrenching debate over the unconventional president and the prospect of removing him from office.
Freshman Democratic Representative Elisa Slotkin was both heckled and celebrated as she announced her support for impeachment.
She said, there's certainly a lot of controversy about this, but there just has to be a moment where you use the letter of the law for what it's intended.
Because what was intended was definitely charging a president with no crimes and giving him very, very vague charges of abuse of power and one that makes no sense, obstruction of Congress.
Because again, there is no obstruction of Congress.
Okay?
Obstruction of Congress has to be connected with obstruction of justice.
It is not obstruction of Congress for the executive branch to refuse to comply with subpoenas and then appeal to the judicial branch to back them up.
According to the 650 page report from the House Judiciary Committee, which I've read some of it, I gotta tell you, it feels like that.
That report feels like back when you were in middle school and your teacher was like, I need a five paragraph essay.
And so one of your paragraphs, and it needs to be 450 words.
And so your essay said things like, it was a very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very good time.
Boom, 25 words, right?
That report, there ain't enough there to support 650 pages of reading.
Trump has been tweeting, and he insisted he has done nothing wrong.
He's also promoting Rudy Giuliani's investigation of Joe and Hunter Biden.
and corrupting democratic elections, says the 650 page report from the House Judiciary Committee.
Trump has been tweeting and he insisted he has done nothing wrong.
He's also promoting Rudy Giuliani's investigation of Joe and Hunter Biden.
He said of Rudy Giuliani, he knows what he is doing.
Rudy Giuliani, for his part, is going around in media saying that he has uncovered money laundering in Ukraine.
And if he's got the goods, now would be an excellent time to spill them.
I mean, Rudy, like, any time now, dude.
The people that he's quoting, by the way, in most of his reports are prosecutors who have been widely derided for their possible corruption and who appear to have conflicting motivations.
So I don't take everything that Rudy Giuliani is saying at face value.
I think there is reason to be suspicious of how Hunter Biden ended up in a position being paid $50,000 a month when he was competent to not hold a job.
That is quite suspicious, and there's no question he was using daddy's name.
The question is whether Joe knew about it or what Joe was doing about it.
There's certainly the appearance of impropriety, but that doesn't mean that Joe Biden was actually facilitating this or getting people fired in order to back up his son or anything like that.
With that said, if Rudy's got some hard evidence, and the hard evidence goes beyond, here are a couple of Ukrainian prosecutors ousted for corruption talking about it.
I'm willing to hear it.
Here was Rudy on Laura Ingraham's show last night talking about it.
What I uncovered there are two major schemes, one for $7.5 billion, the other for $5 billion, in money laundering that went on all through the Obama administration.
Part of it involves Joe Biden, the bribery part.
It's a disgrace that he's not under investigation for it in America, maybe because our law enforcement is too afraid.
But the reality is it's a complete defense for the president.
OK, so the idea here is that if there was corruption in Ukraine and Trump was interested in it, then that is a complete defense for the president.
The fact is that Trump was suspicious of corruption in Ukraine.
And he was asking about it.
That's an offense of the president.
Because so long as this is about corruption in Ukraine or corruption in 2016 and not about going after Joe Biden for 2020, then he has an offense to the charges.
And Democrats have not been able to establish the requisite level of intent for bribery, which of course is why it is not included in any of the impeachment charges.
Does that mean that Rudy Giuliani has to prove his case in order for Trump to get off on impeachment?
No, it doesn't actually.
So the Democrats are going to move this thing forward on Wednesday.
Their on-the-fence members are now backing impeachment because party loyalty is extraordinarily solid at this point in time for both Republicans and Democrats.
You're not seeing any crossover votes at this point.
It's going to hurt those Democrats in the swing districts far more than it hurts the Republicans.
There are very few Republicans who are existing in blue districts at this point.
Those blue districts, purple districts, have basically been wiped out for Republicans, unfortunately.
That means there are a lot of Democrats that are sitting in Trump districts.
A lot of them are going to lose their seats over this.
According to the Wall Street Journal, more Democrats from competitive House districts said they will back the impeachment of President Trump, putting the effort on track to pass this week, despite some fears their position could put their seats at risk.
Representative Joe Cunningham of South Carolina said he would support impeachment.
He said, if I wanted to do what was easy politically, I would just vote no and move on.
Well, actually, no.
There is no easy answer for some of these Democrats existing in purple districts.
Two Democrats have said they are opposed, including one, Representative Jeff Van Drew of New Jersey, who said he's actually going to switch parties.
Representative Colin Peterson of Minnesota said he will vote against impeachment as well.
Bottom line is, this thing in the end is not really going to go anywhere, and everybody knows it.
Now, there was this sort of funny tête-à-tête between Chuck Schumer and a reporter yesterday.
So Chuck Schumer appeared in front of the press and he was explaining that he's very angry that the Senate procedures aren't going to be fulsome and allow the Democrats to explain their case.
Well, they do control the House.
Schumer's saying Republicans should call all these witnesses from the executive branch.
Why won't Republicans do this?
And a reporter says to him, um, your House colleagues were supposed to call those witnesses, so why didn't they?
They could have just waited for the judiciary to sound off on the subpoenas, and they could have called all these people, and Schumer has no good answer, because there is no good answer.
Some of the Republicans have suggested that it's not the Senate's job to get these witnesses.
That was work being done by the House Democrats, and the House Democrats decided not to go to court to get these witnesses.
Should the Democrats in the House Well, look, I'm not going to second-guess the House.
There is virtually no argument, no good argument, if you're interested in the facts and not having these witnesses come forward now.
And remember, the standard at a trial is different than the standard when a prosecutor, in this case the House Impeachment Authority, puts together a case.
A trial is a place for witnesses.
Oh, a trial is a place for witnesses, as opposed to a House Judiciary Committee hearing, which is also a place for witnesses, and the House Intelligence Committee hearing, which was also a place for witnesses.
He's gotten a good answer on this, because the real answer, Democrats know they're not going to get what they want from these witnesses, and now we're all going to pretend, and the media are going to pretend, that because Mitch McConnell won't call Mick Mulvaney, that's the real reason why this impeachment effort isn't moving forward?
Sure.
Sure.
By the way, are these impeachment moves actually hurting Trump?
The national political polls do not suggest such a thing.
There's a New Suffolk University USA Today poll.
It is out today.
Here is what it finds.
And these are general election numbers now.
General election numbers.
I'm going to give you those general election numbers in just one second.
This stuff is not helping the Democrats.
I'll get to it in just a moment.
First, let me tell you how much I love steak.
Steak is spectacular.
Steak is fantastic.
I love this day.
It is wonderful.
And did I not keep kosher?
There is one deal I'd be taking advantage of this holiday season, and that is a deal from Omaha Steaks.
I'm talking about their Favorite Gift Package.
And this thing is so good, it makes me seriously consider kashrut.
The Favorite Gift Package from omahasteaks.com.
You enter the code SHAPIRO in the search bar and you can order it.
It's the gift all your friends and family will love for just $69.99, here's what you get.
Four six-ounce bacon-wrapped filet mignons, four premium pork chops, four Omaha Steaks burgers, four potatoes au gratin, four caramel apple tartlets, an Omaha Steaks signature seasoning packet, plus, just for my listeners, a free six-piece cutlery set and cutting board.
You get all those things for $69.99.
How great would that be to get for Christmas?
Omaha Steaks are the most tender, the most laborful.
Only you can get steaks of this quality from Omaha Steaks, America's original butcher.
Again, you get that favorite gift package.
Here's how you do it.
You go to omahasteaks.com, you type Shapiro in the search bar and get that favorite gift package, plus the free six-piece cutlery set and cutting board.
Just $69.99.
Basically, you're sending a friend Christmas dinner.
Like, the whole thing.
And also, much more than that, because that's a lot of food, plus the knives.
I mean, that's an awesome deal.
OmahaSteaks.com type Shapiro in the search bar.
That is a gift that everybody is going to love.
Okay, so here is what the national polls are now saying.
This is very bad for Democrats.
This is bad news for Democrats.
According to Suffolk University USA Today, President Trump in head-to-head matchups against Democrats now leads Joe Biden 44 to 41, leads Bernie Sanders 44 to 39, leads Elizabeth Warren 45 to 37, leads Michael Bloomberg 43 to 34, and leads Pete Buttigieg 43 to 33. leads Michael Bloomberg 43 to 34, and leads Pete Buttigieg
So unless you believe that all of the outlying votes are going to go to the Democrats, that the 15 or 20 percent that are left over in those polls are all going to swing to the That's real bad news for the Democrats right there.
Now, it is true that Trump is stuck at 43, 44, 45.
He was for the entirety of the 2016 election, too, and he ends it up at 46.
So, the fact is that the President of the United States is not in bad re-election territory despite, or maybe because of, impeachment.
That's not the only poll trending in this direction.
Okay, there's an Investor Business Daily TIPP poll that just came out this morning.
And here's what that one found.
It shows the only Democrat beating Trump right now is Biden.
It's got Biden at 50 and Trump at 45.
The others have Trump up 48-47 over Sanders, 47-46 over Bloomberg, 46-44 over Buttigieg, and 49-44 over Warren.
Sanders, 47-46 over Bloomberg, 46-44 over Buttigieg, and 49-44 over Warren.
Warren not showing strong in these particular polls.
According to that poll, the IBDTIPP poll, that's a five-point shift toward Trump versus Biden in the last month, a 13-point shift towards Trump versus Warren in the last month, and an eight-point shift towards Trump versus Sanders.
These are horrible numbers for the Democrats.
And part of that is everybody's irritation with this impeachment stuff.
Part of this is the fact that the economy is going well.
Part of this is the fact that Trump has made some moves to solidify his re-election here.
He's moving to get the China trade issue off the table.
He is moving to get NAFTA 2.0 off the table.
He is signing huge budget, busting numbered budgets.
But at least he's getting it off the table.
He's doing a lot of the things that would be necessary in order to win re-election.
He looks a lot stronger today than he did even six months ago.
This impeachment effort is not going well for the Democrats, and the Democrats are starting to realize that Shadi Hamid is a senior fellow at Brookings Institution.
He has a piece today called Impeachment Could End Badly.
He says, I don't have the courage of my conviction.
President Donald Trump deserves to be impeached for trying to pressure Ukraine to investigate his political opponents.
With every week he says or does something worse than what he already said or did, but to say Trump deserves impeachment is different from saying that impeachment is good for the country.
In fact, it might turn out quite badly.
Most of the people whom I'd like to trust or believe, or believe rather strongly, that what President Trump has done rises to a crime, for them the analysis of whether Trump should be impeached can't help but be informed by their view that Trump represents an existential threat to the country.
Yet, if you do believe, as I do, that Trump is bad, but also that his badness falls somewhat short of an existential threat, then impeachment, however justified in theory, becomes less straightforward.
The process does not unfold in a political vacuum.
Democrats should not let the certainty of their legal reasoning push them toward impeachment without regard for its real-world consequences, which are uncertain and could prove costly.
Now, even this narrative is suggestive of the idea that Democrats are just pursuing Trump for impeachment because they feel the constitutional necessity to do so, that there was no political calculation that went into it.
No, what happened here is that Nancy Pelosi made a political calculation a few months back.
Her political calculation was quite simple.
It was, what are the costs and what are the benefits of impeaching Trump?
The costs of impeaching Trump would be maybe some blowback, but most people don't like Trump.
The benefits of impeaching Trump, if more evidence came forward, would be that he is made more unpopular, drives him down for 2020, or it ousts him completely, finishing Republican hopes for 2020.
That was her calculation.
But there's one problem with her calculation.
And that is the American people really, really are not into this impeachment charade.
And there has been a backlash to it.
That it appears to be political.
And that Trump has mobilized his forces pretty well here to defend himself.
The fact is that this is backlashing on the Democrats.
It is bad news for the Democrats.
And so they are relegated to relying on their base, which is not where they wanted to be in an impeachment move.
They are relegated to relying on the strong blue sentiments of people like Michelle Goldberg, the opinion columnist for the New York Times, who has a piece today titled, On Tuesday, March for Impeachment.
The anti-Trump majority needs to make itself seen.
Yes, I'm sure a march will do it.
I am sure that a big march, like the Women's March, or maybe the March for Our Lives, like big marches, On hot button political issues have definitely achieved what they sought to achieve in precisely 0% of cases over the last 10, 15 years.
I'm sure that's gonna go really, really well for you.
She says, demonstrations aren't just about pressuring Republicans.
Despite cable and social media, local TV news is still many people's primary news source.
Because there are going to be demonstrations everywhere, there are eight planned for Montana alone, local TV will likely cover them.
And therefore, there's going to be an upsurge in impeachment-heavy opinion.
Yeah, sure, sure.
I'm sure.
In just a second, we'll get to the other PR efforts by the pro-impeachment forces in just one second.
They are not good.
And they're not good because I think everybody understands the underlying animus that so many people hold for Trump and for Trump supporters.
Because that really, not even just Trump supporters, conservatives generally, What the media do not understand is that every poll on Trump is not actually a poll on Trump.
It is a poll on what people think the media think of them.
Every poll about whether you like Trump or not is not a poll of whether you like Trump.
When you ask a conservative or a Republican, do you like Trump?
And you get a call from one of these pollsters, most Republicans are thinking, do I like you?
It's a poll on the pollsters.
They don't trust you.
They don't trust the left to make these decisions.
There is no solid unity that suggests that People you disagree with are acting in the name of the Constitution because nobody actually believes that.
I'll show you in just one second.
First, let's talk about the watch you're wearing.
So, I'm a watch guy, okay?
I love watches.
I'm very into watches.
I've got some really nice, expensive watches.
And then, I've got watches that don't break the bank, but are spectacularly good-looking.
Like, for their price point, they're just unbelievable.
And here, I'm talking about Vincero watches, okay?
This watch right here.
This beautiful watch.
Look at this chronograph.
This is a really nice chronograph.
I would say the mechanism is really great.
It moves beautifully.
Okay, this Vincero watch, which is really nice, is certainly not going to cost you a fortune.
A really luxury watch will cost you thousands and thousands of dollars.
You can get a really nice, great looking watch for hundreds of dollars instead at Vincero.
They make modern watches that look good, last a lifetime, and don't cost a fortune.
Vincero was nice enough to send me and my wife some of their watches.
They're fantastic quality.
Again, these are great watches.
I would not have expected this nice of a watch at this price point.
Please head on over to VinceroWatches.com forward slash Shapiro and see my favorite picks.
My wife loves her Vincero watch.
I also got some for, like I went out and I actually got some for my sister for her birthday.
My mom has a Vincero watch now.
They are just terrific watches.
Don't forget to use code Shapiro at checkout for 15% off your entire order.
Also, you can engrave the back of the watch so you can actually make it a commemorative edition.
Facts don't care about your feelings, Wash.
Or, you know, you're commemorating some date with your family, you can actually just engrave the back of it.
It really is a cool feature.
Vincero believes watches can do more than tell time.
They tell the world what you're all about.
They've got sporty watches, they've got nice looking evening watches, they've got automatics, they've got quartz, they've got all sorts of great stuff.
This deal is fantastic.
Go to vincerowatches.com forward slash Shapiro.
That's V-I-N-C-E-R-O watches.com forward slash Shapiro.
vincerowatches.com forward slash Shapiro.
Use code Shapiro to get 15% off.
vincerowatches.com V-I-N-C-E-R-O watches.com forward slash Shapiro and use that promo code Shapiro 15% off.
Okay.
More on why this thing is not going well for Democrats and why the country is too polarized for any impeachment effort, really, to go particularly well for the Democrats.
But first, exciting news, gang.
We are now hiring as one of the biggest companies in conservative media.
Daily Wire is growing fast, looking for talented people to join our team.
Go check out open positions over at dailywire.com slash careers.
Apply today.
Applicants must be L.A.
based or willing to relocate if you're looking for an awesome company culture full of amazing people to work with.
I'll pretend this is the place to be.
If you'd like to be featured in a ZipRecruiter ad, this is definitely the place to be.
That's dailywire.com slash careers.
Go apply now and join us also.
We have the perfect gift for you to give this holiday season.
It is the gift of a Daily Wire membership.
From now until January 1st, all Insider Plus gift memberships will be 25% off.
That means your loved one will get all the fantastic perks plus the majestic leftist tear stumbler and you will receive the savings.
If you're not already a subscriber, you're really missing out.
Head on over to dailywire.com and subscribe again.
That is 25% off all Insider Plus gift memberships this holiday season.
Give them a gift they will thank you for all year long.
Head on over to dailywire.com slash gift and get that 25% off again.
That's dailywire.com slash gift to get 25% off.
Do not wait.
Stop depriving yourself.
Come join the fun.
We are the largest, fastest growing conservative podcast and radio show in the nation.
Okay, so looking at the PR attempts to mobilize support behind this impeachment effort, the fact is the reason you're not going to get PR support is because the people who are behind the impeachment effort are widely perceived to be partisan hacks the fact is the reason you're not going to get PR support is because Adam Schiff is a partisan hack.
Jerry Nadler is a partisan hack.
And the people in the media who are pushing this thing.
Appear to be partisan hacks.
That's why moments that are seemingly unrelated to impeachment actually do have an impact on how people think about this stuff.
So, for example, on The View yesterday.
Now remember, Barack Obama said just yesterday that if women ran everything in politics, then the world would be a nicer, better place.
The View stands as a ringing endorsement of the opposite idea.
Because, let me tell you, that place, it ain't good for the case that ladies running the world is gonna go fantastic.
That just because of their X chromosomes, things are gonna go really, really great.
So, Meghan McCain, who is not a Trumpster, okay?
Go and look at our Sunday special.
I interviewed Meghan for an hour.
She and I are friends.
She is not a fan of Trump.
At all.
I mean, and honestly, like, I get it.
Trump has spent half his career ripping the crap out of John McCain, even after his death.
So, I totally get it.
Meghan McCain, who is not a Trump defender, is on The View, and she's explaining why impeachment politically is going bad for Democrats, or at least she is trying to.
But it doesn't go well, because Whoopi Goldberg isn't having any of it.
It is moments like this that make people go, you know what?
Trump forever.
Meghan doesn't even support Trump.
Okay, but it makes people go Trump forever.
Why?
As a giant pulsating middle finger to people like Whoopi Goldberg.
Because watch how Whoopi Goldberg treats Meghan McCain here.
Look at the sisterhood.
And we keep hearing about female solidarity.
Yeah, man!
The sisterhood.
And Whoopi Goldberg treats Meghan McCain like trash here.
She really does.
She treats her like garbage.
And she'll get no blowback from management over at ABC because that's not the way this works.
Only people who apparently Make the grave mistake of announcing that ABC has quashed investigations into Jeffrey Epstein.
Get treated like garbage over there.
And the token conservative on The View.
So here's Meghan McCain trying to explain.
She's not even saying, I'm anti-impeachment.
She's just saying impeachment's not going to work out well for Democrats.
And Whoopi Goldberg loses her bleep on her.
She flips her wig over it.
It's crazy.
Here's what's happening now.
We're gonna- We're gonna- Girl, please stop talking.
Please stop talking right now.
Cuz you know what?
What's happening- Thank you.
Thank you.
I won't talk the rest of the show.
No problem.
Okay.
That's- I'm okay with that.
I'm okay with that.
If you're going to behave like this... I'm not behaving like anything.
You are!
You are talking over... I'm trying to show a conservative perspective.
Yes, we understand that.
No, I like when you talk and then... But you are, what you're doing... No, I'm not doing... We're not doing anything.
How about this?
Former FBI, we'll be right back.
And then she goes to break because Whoopi Goldberg, and first of all, putting Whoopi Goldberg in charge of that show is such a joke on its face.
But beyond that, Whoopi Goldberg going after Meghan McCain for simply trying to say that impeachment is a bad political idea.
Shut up, girl, which is basically what she's saying.
First of all, if any dude ever said that to any woman on national television, they lose their job.
If any man said to any woman, stop talking right now, it's the most sexist, patriarchal thing ever.
Whoopi Goldberg, though, is intersectional.
Meghan McCain is not.
Whoopi Goldberg is on the left.
Meghan McCain is not.
Therefore, Whoopi Goldberg can say, girl, stop talking right now.
By the way, if Meghan McCain said that to Whoopi Goldberg, she'd probably be fired the next day.
That's the way this works.
And it's that dynamic that leads people to go, Middle finger man leads them to say Trump all the way.
Because if Trump is just a way to rebut that kind of garbage, if Trump is basically a giant F you to that entire class of people, and I mean the hardcore left that wants to silence debate, then fine, Trump.
Impeachment is more about that than it is about what's in the impeachment report.
Just like elections are more about that than they are about differential ideas on Medicare for all.
Elections are far more in today's day and age about the feeling that people have about one another in the United States, the feeling they have about the media in the United States.
This is Trump knows this, right?
Trump has an innate gut feel for this.
It's why he won the election last time.
It's why he's in good shape this time.
Yes, he's going to have to tout his accomplishments.
Yes, he should let the accomplishments speak for themselves.
And I am the person who's been saying for years that he needs to tone down the tweeting.
But I've never said he should tone down the tweeting when it comes to him ripping the media.
I think he should be accurate about it.
I don't think he should call everything fake news when it's not.
But him going after members of the left and pointing out that this is a culture, this is a cultural battle is not wrong.
People elected him for this and people are, the more you get a whoopee, this is how you got Trump and you're going to get more Trump this way.
You're going to get more Trump when you bring Robert De Niro on The View to explain that Donald Trump is worse than any character he has ever played, including Travis Bickle, who's a person who is planning to murder a politician.
Or I guess then his characters in a wide variety of films who are gangsters who shoot people in the face.
First of all, why Robert De Niro is a political authority on anything is absolutely beyond me.
The man is an actor.
He has no political expertise on anything.
Ronald Reagan spent years talking about politics and economics for GE before he was elected governor of California.
Robert De Niro has spent years playing the same role since Godfather 3.
Sometimes for comedic effect and sometimes for non-comedic effect.
Here's Robert De Niro explaining incoherently that Donald Trump is worse than Travis Bickle, a psychopathic murderer.
You have played some of the most really unredeemable characters.
Travis Bickle was a psychopathic taxi driver.
Jake LaMotta, who used to beat his wife, and he was in the Raging Bull.
Is Trump worse than they are?
To me, he is.
Because he has no understanding that I can see of the outside world other than anything around him.
He has no idea of what his purpose in life as the president should be.
And that is to pull the country together, to be for the people, to heal wounds, not to open them up and pour salt on them.
He's, I always say, he's a lowlife.
Our moral leader, Robert De Niro.
And then, Robert De Niro, in an attempt to really heal the nation and close those wounds, he says that if his family, meaning like Ivanka and Jared and Eric and Donald Trump Jr., if his family were like the Trump family, he would disown them.
This is him healing the wounds of the nation, Robert De Niro.
Perfect example of a man healing the wounds of the nation.
You also talk about his children, and you say that they're like a gangster family too.
I don't want my kids to take this the wrong way, but if my kids did what these kids did, I wouldn't want to be related to them.
I would disown them.
I'd have a serious talk with them.
I'd have a serious talk with them.
First of all, it's an impossibility.
My kids are not like that, of course.
But if I disagreed with them on things of principle, I'd say... And they felt it.
And we do now.
So even without this...
I would just, oh, what a nice guy Robert De Niro is.
What a moral authority.
And this is why, when Donald Trump tweets about Nancy Pelosi, see, they're all like, okay, whatever.
Honestly, whatever.
Whatever.
Nancy Pelosi has said that Donald Trump isn't a real man.
Nancy Pelosi said stuff about Trump, too.
Like, can we all stop with the, everything was civil until Trump got here?
Because it wasn't.
Folks on the left were doing this kind of crap to Mitt Romney.
To Mitt Romney, who has the controversial nature of a piece of cardboard.
Mitt Romney, the wet spaghetti of human beings.
They went after Mitt Romney and characterized him as polarizing and divisive.
They did the same thing to John McCain.
Years of that led to Trump.
And so now you're like, okay, we want to impeach Trump.
Yeah, I definitely believe that it's not motivated by animus.
I'm watching the high dungeon of people like Chris Cuomo.
Why won't Republicans call Trump out over his words about Pelosi's teeth, Chris Cuomo?
Chris Cuomo is one of the worst actors in the media when it comes to using insulting and ridiculous language about people.
Here's not Fredo explaining to Sean Duffy that it's just awful.
It's just awful, awful for the president to insult Nancy Pelosi's teeth.
Everybody who's in the center of the country, let's be real, everybody in the center of the country doesn't care.
I mean, independents, they don't deeply care about Donald Trump insulting Nancy Pelosi's teeth.
In fact, they probably think that it's kind of funny because it is kind of funny because it rips the mask off the political, we're all best friends routine.
Everybody on the right cheers and everybody on the left is mad because it's Trump and Trump could, Trump could drop his hat and everybody would lose their mind on the left.
Here's Chris Cuomo though saying, how can we last as a country if people are making jokes about each other's teeth?
The president is the biggest man in the room.
The biggest man in the room does not behave like the people who are coming at him, right?
You ever hear the expression, the lion is not concerned by the complaints of the sheep.
The second thing is, Sean, you guys will say, well, we don't like everything he says.
No, you never say that you don't like what he says.
None of you will say he should not have said that about Nancy Pelosi.
It was an ugly remark that is beneath the presidency.
None of you have said it.
But Chris, I think what you don't recognize is the fact that many Republicans feel like this is a one-sided conversation and frankly the median Democrats are the lion and they're going after the president non-stop.
He hasn't had one break.
So why don't you say Nancy Pelosi's teeth are falling out?
Well, again, it's not right to say that Nancy Pelosi's teeth are falling out as a politician, but nobody is gonna be like, oh my god, that's the worst thing that anybody ever said.
Should Trump have said it?
I'll say it.
No, of course he shouldn't have said it.
Does that make a huge difference in our political debate?
Is that wor- Chris Cuomo labeled Donald Trump Dirty Donald years ago.
I don't see anybody complaining about that.
Meanwhile, my favorite ridiculous attempt of the day to push impeachment comes courtesy of George Conway, Steve Schmidt, John Weaver, and Rick Wilson.
So they have a piece today titled, We Are Republicans, and We Want Trump Defeated.
Okay, let me just first make a quick point.
Several of these people have openly called for voting for Democrats in elections that do not involve Donald Trump.
John Weaver, there's an article from 2015 about John Weaver, who is this political activist.
He's a political consultant.
Weaver actually advised Democratic candidate John Kerry in 2004.
Now, as far as I'm aware, George W. Bush is not named Donald Trump, nor is he related to Donald Trump, nor does he even like Donald Trump.
That did not stop John Weaver from attempting to reach out to John Kerry.
Also, he worked with John Kasich, but not until after he had actually urged, wait for it, wait for it, Donald Trump to run for President of the United States.
According to this political article from 2015, Weaver reached out to Trump to congratulate him on a Washington Post story announcing he might run.
And then he encouraged Trump to run, beginning what he and another person close to Trump saw as Weaver's backstage courtship.
So Weaver, one of the authors of this piece, has both backed Democrats in the past and also urged Trump to run.
Then, You've got Rick Wilson.
Rick Wilson told Hill TV co-host Crystal Ball back before the 2018 elections that conservatives should think about voting for Democrats.
He says that it might be worth having Democrats in Congress because you don't want the Democratic Party to simply back President Trump.
He said, quote, I think conservatives have to make a case by case choice.
There are actually some Democrat candidates out there who functionally now are to the right on economics of their Republican counterpart.
It's astounding.
I'd like to hear about those Democratic candidates.
And then there is Steve Schmidt, who's one of the other authors on this article.
Steve Schmidt announced that he would start voting for Democrats as of June 2018.
He said, 29 years and nine months ago, I registered to vote and become a member of the Republican Party.
Today, I renounce my membership in the Republican Party.
It is fully the party of Trump.
He says the GOP is corrupt, indecent, and immoral, with the exception of a few governors like Baker, Hogan, and Kasich, which are all the moderate Republican governors.
He doesn't mention DeSantis or Abbott.
It is filled with feckless cowards.
And then he suggested that he was going to vote for Democrats basically from here on out.
He says that the GOP is a danger to our democracy and values.
He says he is calling on people to reject Trump and his quote-unquote vile enablers in the 2018 election by electing Democratic majorities.
Well, now they have a piece today, these people.
And George Conway, of course, who has spent the last several years ripping on his wife's boss.
And insulting his wife, apparently, in public media.
They have a piece today, published by the New York Times, called, We Are Republicans and We Want Trump Defeated.
Well, I noticed that there were no Republicans named Trump on the 2018 ballot.
I noticed that.
I also noticed that some of these people, again, have a history of actually rallying to Democrats when Trump was not on the ballot.
Like before Trump was in office.
But they say, no, it is incumbent on everyone to oppose Trump.
By what?
Supporting Elizabeth Warren?
Or Bernie Sanders?
There's no serious Republican primary threat, nor would there be.
Donald Trump has 90% approval rating inside the Republican Party, in large part because of the media.
In large part because even people who don't particularly like Trump personally feel like he is mostly punching the right targets, and they are mostly punching him.
They feel like referenda on Trump are actually referenda on them.
Trump has done a good job of stapling himself to the conservative movement and to Republicans and saying, listen, what they think of me is what they think of you.
And most conservatives basically agree with that because we understand that what they think of Trump may be more based on the reality of who Trump is, but what they think of us is not.
And what they think of conservatives is the same thing as what they think of Trump.
And then they claim that it's all about Trump.
It isn't all about Trump.
I'm promising you.
Whoopi Goldberg has the same level of disdain for Meghan McCain she has for Trump.
The exact same level of disdain.
And Meghan McCain didn't vote for Trump.
She's not going to vote for Trump.
She'd probably back Biden over Trump.
Whoopi Goldberg has the same amount of disdain for Meghan McCain as she has for Trump.
Most conservatives know this.
Most conservatives know.
Most Republicans know.
That the media have the same level of disdain and hatred for them that they have for Trump.
Which means...
That when they say, oh, it's really just about Trump, and if you guys would just abandon Trump, then we would definitely treat you as nice human beings.
We'd grant you the strange new respect.
Yeah, bullcrap.
Bullcrap.
And so when I hear this group of lobbyists, Rick Wilson, Steve Schmidt, John Weaver, George Conway, talk about the Lincoln Project, an effort to highlight our country's story and values and its people's sacrifices and obligations, An effort to transcend partisanship, dedicated to nothing less than the preservation of our principles.
They say, over the next 11 months, our efforts will be dedicated to defeating President Trump and Trumpism at the ballot box, and to elect those patriots who will hold the line, which I assume means voting for Democrats.
Hey, you're gonna have to explain how making Elizabeth Warren President of the United States heals our national divide.
How making Bernie Sanders President heals our national divide.
Or yes, even how electing Joe Biden President is going to heal our national divide, because I'm missing it.
I'm missing it.
I also love the Washington Post pushing a letter from 700 scholars urging the House to impeach Trump.
Well, since none of them are elected officials, I'd rather have the opinions, as William F. Buckley once said, of 700 people from the LA phone book than I would 700 historians, legal scholars, and others.
Okay, time for a quick thing that I like, and then we'll get to a thing that I hate.
So, things that I like today.
They're entitled to it.
I'm not sure why it has any more legitimacy than anybody else's opinion.
They're just voters like everybody else.
Okay, time for a quick thing that I like, and then we'll get to a thing that I hate.
So, things that I like today.
There is a really interesting piece in The Atlantic called The Miseducation of the American Now, she gets the diagnosis completely wrong. she gets the diagnosis completely wrong.
She suggests that it's because men have been abandoned economically, She suggests that it is because men have reacted to the rise of feminism poorly.
That's not really what happened here.
You want to know what happened to the traditional American male?
What happened to the traditional American male is that there are not enough fathers in the home to actually teach traditional masculinity.
Not just because boys need male role models, but also because in order to be a male role model requires you to be a responsible human being who treats your spouse well, for example.
And that has happened in large part because the government has played the role of father, and it has also happened because of the collapse of religious observance in the United States.
The kind of gentlemanliness that Peggy Orenstein sets out as a model used to be promulgated by church.
It used to be promulgated by synagogues.
It used to be promulgated by social institutions that were vital to American life.
Those have disappeared, and so it's no surprise that boys are filling that gap with Their sort of most root instincts, boys are aggressive.
Boys are mean.
Boys are conflict-driven.
That's just a thing that is true of boys.
Okay, and you're gonna see more of that when boys are not civilized.
The whole point of civilization is to civilize people.
When the main institutions of civilization disappear, and when manhood is boiled down to, I can write a check that fills the role of daddy, you shouldn't be surprised when men revert to their caveman instincts.
Their pre-civilized instincts.
According to Peggy Orenstein, she has a different explanation for what happened to boys.
She says, They considered their female classmates to be smart and competent, entitled to their place on the athletic field and in school leadership, deserving of their admission to college and of professional opportunities.
They all had female friends.
Most had gay male friends as well.
That was a huge shift from what you might have seen 50, 40, or even maybe 20 years ago.
Now, if you just read that part of the paragraph, and you were on the left, you'd say, well, masculinity problem solved.
Boys understand.
Girls can be in the workplace.
Boys understand.
Girls can be leaders of corporation.
But as it turns out, the masculinity problem has not been solved.
It turns out that males, deprived of their role in American society, are reverting to, again, the sort of gang instinct.
Finding other young men, congregating with other young men, and then doing young men things.
Right?
That means aggressive things.
Talking in bad ways about the same girls who, if they were in the presence of, would say that woman could lead a corporation.
According to this writer for the Atlantic, this was a huge shift from what you might have seen 40, 50, maybe even 20 years ago.
They could also easily reel off the excesses of masculinity.
They'd seen the headlines about mass shootings, domestic violence, sexual harassment, campus rape, presidential Twitter tantrums, and Supreme Court confirmation hearings.
A Big Ten football player I interviewed bandied about the term toxic masculinity.
Everyone knows what that is, he said when I seemed surprised.
Yet when asked to describe the attributes of the ideal guy, those same boys appear to be harking back to 1955.
Dominance.
Aggression.
Rugged good looks with an emphasis on height.
Sexual prowess.
Soicism.
Athleticism.
Wealth, at least someday.
Okay, so first of all, let's not pretend here.
The idea that these are values of 1955, some of these values are just eternal.
Yes, men who are strong have been revered in society for as long as society has existed and before society has existed.
Men who are aggressive, have long been revered by society.
Being good-looking and wealthy.
I'm unaware of a time in human history when being good-looking and wealthy was a detriment to you.
But, here's the point.
She says, it's not that all these qualities properly channeled are bad, but while a 2018 national survey of more than 1,000 10- to 19-year-olds, conducted by the polling firm Peri-Undum, found that young women believed there were many ways to be a girl.
They could shine in math, sports, music, leadership, the big caveat being that they still felt valued primarily for their appearance.
That's a large caveat, and also notes something that is true of human evolutionary biology, which is how people look actually matters to people.
Girls want to look good for boys and boys want to look good for girls?
For the vast majority of the population?
Young men, however, described just one narrow route to successful masculinity.
One-third said they felt compelled to suppress their feelings, to suck it up, or be a man when they were sad or scared.
More than 40% said that when they were angry, society expected them to be combative.
First of all, those are both minority statistics.
Second of all, The notion that you feel compelled to suppress your feelings or suck it up or be a man?
What is wrong with the idea that you ought to be a man in trying circumstances?
Being a man in trying circumstances is one of the tests of being a man.
Manhood does mean sucking it up when things get rough.
It doesn't mean you can't express your feelings to immediate family.
It doesn't mean you can't feel those things.
It does mean that being a man means duty and it does mean responsibility.
In another survey, which compared young men from the US, the UK, and Mexico, Americans reported more social pressure to be ever ready for sex, and to get with as many women as possible.
They also acknowledged more stigma against homosexuality, and they received more messages, they should control their female partners, as in, men deserve to know the whereabouts of their girlfriends or wives at all times.
Wait a second, you mean that as religious observance in America declined, that as the left destroyed traditional notions of sexual morality, men reverted to an evolutionary instinct to get with as many women as possible and then brag about it?
Who could have predicted that when you get rid of the institutions of civilization, that might be replaced by simple, individual, aggressive, testosterone-driven instinct?
Who could have predicted such a thing, except for the entire history of human civilization?
Feminism may have provided girls, says this writer Julie Oppenheimer, with a powerful alternative to conventional femininity, and a language with which to express the myriad problems that have no name.
But there have been no credible equivalents for boys, quite the contrary.
The definition of masculinity seems to be in some respects contracting.
When asked what traits society values most in boys, only 2% of male respondents in the periundum survey said honesty and morality, only 8% said leadership skills.
When I asked my subjects as I always did what they liked about being a boy, most of them drew a blank.
Hum used Josh, a college sophomore at Washington State.
That's interesting, I never really thought about that.
You hear a lot more about what is wrong with guys.
Accurate!
So, if you are going to spend several decades telling boys and men that everything that is wrong with society is what's wrong with them, And then you ask them, a woman particularly asks them, what's good about being a boy?
They don't know what to answer, because they're afraid that what they answer will be seen as sexist.
If a boy said, you know what I like about being a boy?
That I'm expected to be in a leadership role.
Be like, women don't have leadership roles too?
Or if they said, you know what I like about being a boy?
Moral responsibility.
Who died and made you king?
Why are your morals better than anybody else?
The left has been...
Overtly undermining, especially these ideas.
Barack Obama said yesterday, the world be better when led by women.
And then you're shocked when boys are like, I don't know.
I don't know.
What do you want me to say?
According to this writer for the Atlantic, it wasn't always thus.
According to Andrew Smiler, a psychologist who has studied the history of Western masculinity, the ideal late 19th century man was compassionate, a caretaker, but such qualities lost favor as paid labor moved from homes to factories during industrialization.
I'd just like to note, if the ideal late 19th century man, so this would be like 1890, was a caretaker and compassionate, that antedates the Industrial Revolution by about half a century.
So it really is not the Industrial Revolution that changed everything, it is the decline of religion in the West.
The Boy Scouts, whose creed urges its members to be loyal, friendly, courteous, and kind, was founded in 1910 in part to counter the dehumanizing trend Smiler attributes further distortions in masculinity to a century-long backlash against women's rights.
Ah, so again, it's what's wrong with men.
It's what's wrong with men.
During World War I, women proved they could keep the economy humming on their own.
Soon afterward, they secured the vote.
Instead of embracing gender equality, says this scholar, the country's leaders doubled down on the inalienable male right to power, emphasizing men's supposedly more logical and less emotional nature as a prerequisite for leadership.
Well, I'm confused as to the evidence for this proposition.
First of all, the notion that men are generally less emotional than women.
There have been some fairly good studies on this that suggest that women do have different emotional traits than men.
That does not mean that women can't be great leaders.
I can name Margaret Thatcher as a great leader.
I mean, there have been a lot of female great... I'm a huge Nikki Haley fan.
That's to suggest there are no differences between men and women in any of these categories, and then be like, but why don't men take a special role?
And when you destroy what men believe to be the traditional role of masculinity, and a special role for masculinity, what are they left with?
Their instinct.
And their instincts ain't good.
According to this article, during the second half of the 20th century, traditional paths to manhood, early marriage, and breadwinning began to close, along with the positive traits associated with them.
Today, many parents are unsure how to raise a boy.
What sort of masculinity to encourage in their sons?
You know who's not unsure?
Any religious parent you know.
They're not unsure, because they understand that it is the job of a male to protect and defend the happiness, health, and innocence of his wife and children.
That's not sexist.
That's what it's called to be a good man.
That doesn't mean that women don't have a role in doing those things too.
But men certainly have a role in doing all these things.
And when the feminist movement robbed men of this role and cast men into this bobbing sea, this weird sea of nothing is expected of you, why would you then expect anything of men?
Either something's expected or it isn't.
This woman says, Yes, the void left by the destruction of exactly the perspective on masculinity that the left destroyed.
That's what happened here.
And then boys don't have any place to go.
And then everybody's like, why are men acting terribly?
Because when you don't expect anything of boys, they don't become men.
When you don't expect anything of boys, they don't become men.
When you refuse to teach them that men have something special to do, they lose a cause, they lose a purpose, and they revert back to, again, that teenage-dominant, aggressive, testosterone-driven instinct.
Okay, we ran out of time for things I hate, so we'll have to save that for something else, but we'll be here later today with two additional hours of content, or we'll see you here tomorrow.
I'm Ben Shapiro.
Shapiro, this is The Ben Shapiro Show.
The Ben Shapiro Show is produced by Rebecca Dobkiewicz.
Directed by Mike Joyner.
Executive Producer Jeremy Boring.
Senior Producer Jonathan Hay.
Supervising Producers Mathis Glover and Robert Sterling.
Technical Producer Austin Stevens.
Associate Producer Colton Haas.
Assistant Director Pavel Lydowsky.
Edited by Adam Sajovic.
Audio is Mixed by Mike Koromina.
Hair and Makeup is by Jeswa Olvera.
Production Assistant Nick Sheehan.
The Ben Shapiro Show is a Daily Wire production.
Copyright Daily Wire 2019.
Barack Obama is convinced that women are better than men.
At an event in Singapore, he declared women are indisputably better than men, and everything would be much better if women were in charge.
Meanwhile, in Washington, Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez complained that she couldn't figure out how to enroll in any of the 66 taxpayer-subsidized health insurance plans that she's eligible for.
We will examine how little Barack Obama understands.
Export Selection