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Dec. 23, 2019 - The Ben Shapiro Show

55:58

The End of Christmas? | Ep. 922

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	With our social fabric gone, can we come back together?
	Plus, we examine the fallout from the Democratic debate and talk about the continuing attacks on J.K.
	Rowling.
	I'm Ben Shapiro.
	This is The Ben Shapiro Show.
	The Ben Shapiro Show is brought to you by ExpressVPN.
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	Okay, well, you know what happened?
	I thought that Friday was going to be my last podcast before the vacation.
	It turns out, nope!
	I'm back.
	We're here.
	It's Monday.
	And we got a lot to talk about, because some stuff happened over the weekend.
	The biggest thing that happened over the weekend for the President of the United States was not the impeachment stuff, because that stuff basically concluded last week.
	The Democrats finished their impeachment move, and then they were like, you know what?
	Not gonna send it to the Senate.
	Not gonna worry about it anymore.
	We're just gonna hold it back over here, you know, while McConnell and Schumer negotiate this thing out.
	So, this is not going to affect Trump until next year, presumably, when they pick up negotiations again, anew, in the new year.
	Senator McConnell has already said, you know, don't really care.
	Or, in his way, don't really care.
	Right?
	In a turtley-turtle way.
	But, the big news over the weekend for President Trump, of course, is that a magazine called Christianity Today, the editor, came out and said that Trump should be removed from office.
	For the media, this was a massive story, a huge, unparalleled story, because Christianity Today is a very popular magazine, particularly with evangelical Christians.
	It was founded by Billy Graham, and therefore it has a pretty good pedigree.
	Well, Franklin Graham, Billy's son, Billy passed away last year.
	Franklin came out and he said, well, you know, no.
	He said, my father was a supporter of President Trump's I had no editorial input on this thing.
	And historically speaking, it is true that Mark Galley, who is the editor-in-chief of Christianity Today, has been extremely critical of the president in the past.
	In fact, just back in 2017, he wrote an entire piece about how President Trump's soul was in danger.
	So he has been very much on board with the President Trump is a very, very bad man, and therefore, because he's a bad, immoral man, he shouldn't be president-trained for quite a while.
	Nonetheless, the media jumped on this as though it was something new.
	And this is indicative about how the media cover these things.
	The media doesn't know anything about the evangelical world.
	The media don't know anything about Christianity.
	They don't know anything about religious human beings.
	In fact, they are constantly surprised to learn things about religious human beings they didn't think were possible.
	Like that religious human beings sometimes have doubts about their own spirituality.
	Like that religious human beings disagree with one another.
	That religious human beings look at the Bible and interpret it sometimes.
	These are all shocks to members of the media because none of them actually know anything about religion.
	Well if they knew anything about Christianity today, they would have actually done like a Google search of Mark Galley and they could have found out that Mark Galley has for years been ripping the president up and down and that Galley himself has been quite anti-Trump for quite some time.
	So that's not actually new.
	The fact that he came out and he suggested that Trump should be removed from office, that is not a new thing.
	They're treating this like a man-bites-dog story to dog-bites-man story to Mark Galley-bites-Trump story, realistically speaking.
	Now, in one second, I want to get into Mark Galley's perspective, because Mark Galley's perspective is sort of interesting, it's sort of fascinating.
	And it does speak to a deeper conflict that is happening within the religious community over the nature of the United States right now.
	I'm gonna get to it in just one second.
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	Okay, so here is the editorial that is making all the rounds.
	It's from Mark Galley and it says Trump should be removed from office.
	Quote.
	In our founding documents, Billy Graham explains that Christianity today will help evangelical Christians interpret the news in a manner that reflects their faith.
	The impeachment of Donald Trump is a significant event in the story of our Republic.
	It requires comment.
	The typical CT approach is to stay above the fray, and allow Christians with different political convictions to make their arguments in the public square, to encourage all to pursue justice according to their convictions, and treat their political opposition as charitably as possible.
	That seems like a smart way to do it, right?
	They're talking about eternal values and their perspective.
	everyone that politics is not the end and purpose of our being.
	We take pride in the fact, for instance, that politics does not dominate our homepage.
	That seems like a smart way to do it, right?
	They're talking about eternal values and their perspective.
	So why exactly would you then cram down a perspective on something as hotly fraught as impeachment?
	That said, says Mark Galley, we do feel it necessary from time to time to make our opinions on political matters clear.
	Always, as Graham encouraged us, doing so with both conviction and love.
	We love and pray for our president, as we love and pray for leaders, as well as ordinary citizens, on both sides of the political aisle.
	Let's grant this to the president.
	The Democrats have had it out for him from day one, and therefore nearly everything they do is under a cloud of partisan suspicion.
	Again, this is Christianity Today's much-ballyhooed editorial.
	This has led many to suspect not only motives, but facts in these recent impeachment hearings.
	And no, Mr. Trump did not have a serious opportunity to offer his side of the story in the House hearings on impeachment.
	But the facts in this instance are unambiguous.
	The President of the United States attempted to use his political power to coerce a foreign leader to harass and discredit one of the President's political opponents.
	That is not only a violation of the Constitution, more importantly, it is profoundly immoral.
	First of all, whether that is true or not is actually at issue.
	The question that I've been asking for a long time is was this about 2020 or was this about 2016?
	Was this about harassing Joe Biden with an eye toward 2020 or was this President Trump looking back at 2016 being irritated that he's been accused of Of cheating in the election by working with the Russians, being whispered in his ear by Rudy Giuliani that Ukraine was really behind some of the election manipulation, looking at stories in Politico and the New York Times about how the Ukrainian embassy was coordinating with members of the DNC to dig up dirt on Paul Manafort.
	Hearing other rumors from Rudy Giuliani about other corruption going on in Ukraine.
	And so Trump, irritated by the Mueller report, being told by Rudy Giuliani that the 2016 election cycle was really about Ukraine, not about Russia, he decides that he's going to go forward with this quid pro quo attempt.
	It's not about 2020, in other words, it's about 2016.
	So the question was always, what is Trump's intent here?
	Trump's intent was never proved, because only one witness who actually had an actual human conversation with Donald Trump, Gordon Sondland, testified, and he didn't bring the goods.
	This is the problem for the Democrats' case, it's why not a single Republican has peeled off.
	But according to Mark Galley, the facts are not in dispute.
	Okay, but that's really not the crux of this piece.
	The crux of this piece is that he thinks that President Trump is an immoral man.
	And this is where we're going to get to a deeper question in America right now.
	And that is, do we have a social fabric such that it is possible for us to cast someone out of office for immorality alone?
	Do we have a social fabric where it's possible to even evaluate our candidates on a character level anymore?
	Well, I'll ask that question in just one second.
	The editorial continues, it says, Okay, all of that stuff is prior to his presidency, obviously.
	And this mirrors a lot of the things I believe about the president.
	He has hired and fired a number of people who are now convicted criminals.
	He himself has admitted to immoral actions in business and his relationship with women about which he remains proud.
	Okay, all of that stuff is prior to his presidency, obviously.
	And this mirrors a lot of the things I believe about the president.
	I don't think the president is of sterling character when it comes to his business or his women.
	You'd have to be, I think, blinding yourself to reality to think that.
	His Twitter feed alone, says Mark Galley with his habitual string of mischaracterizations, lies, and slanders, is a near-perfect example of a human being who is morally lost and confused.
	Trump's evangelical supporters have pointed to his Supreme Court nominees, his defense of religious liberty, and his stewardship of the economy, among other things, as achievements that justify their support of the president.
	We believe the impeachment hearings have made it absolutely clear, in a way the Mueller investigation did not, that President Trump has abused his authority for personal gain and betrayed his constitutional oath.
	The impeachment hearings have illuminated the president's moral deficiencies for all to see.
	This damages the institution of the presidency, damages the reputation of our country, damages the spirit and future of our people.
	And then he equates this with the call for impeachment of President Clinton, He says the president's failure to tell the truth, even when cornered, rips at the fabric of the nation.
	This is not a private affair, for above all, social intercourse is built on a presumption of trust.
	Trust that the milk your grocer sells you is wholesome and pure.
	This is what they wrote about Clinton.
	Trust that the money you put in the bank can be taken out of the bank.
	Trust that your babysitter, firefighters, clergy, and ambulance drivers will all do their best.
	And while politicians are notorious for breaking campaign promises, while in office, they have a fundamental obligation to uphold our trust in them and to live by the law.
	See, unfortunately, the words that we applied to Mr. Clinton 20 years ago apply almost perfectly to our current president.
	Whether Mr. Trump should be removed from office by the Senate or by popular vote next election, that is a matter of prudential judgment.
	That he should be removed, we believe, is not a matter of partisan loyalties, but loyalty to the creator of the Ten Commandments.
	To the many evangelicals who continue to support Trump in spite of his blackened moral record, we might say, remember who you are and whom you serve.
	Consider how your justification of Mr. Trump influences your witness to your Lord and Savior.
	Consider what an unbelieving world will say if you continue to brush off Mr. Trump's immoral words and behavior in the cause of political expediency.
	If we don't reverse course now, says Mark Galley, will anyone take anything we say about justice and righteousness with any seriousness for decades to come?
	Can we say with a straight face that abortion is a great evil that cannot be tolerated and, with the same straight face, say that the bent and broken character of our nation's leader doesn't really matter in the end?
	We have reserved judgment on Trump for years now, some have criticized us for our reserve, but when it comes to condemning the behavior of another, patient charity must come first, so we have done our best to give evangelical Trump supporters their due, to try and understand their point of view, to see the prudential nature of so many political decisions they have made regarding Mr. Trump.
	To use an old cliche, it's time to call a spade a spade, to say that no matter how many hands we win in this political poker game, we are playing with a stacked deck of gross immorality and ethical incompetence, and just when we think it's time to pull all our chips to the center of the table, That's when the whole game will come crashing down.
	It will crash down on the reputation of evangelical religion and on the world's understanding of the gospel.
	It will come crashing down on a nation of men and women whose welfare is also our concern.
	Okay, so that's the that's the much-ballyhooed editorial.
	As I say, it's not new, so it's weird for the media to treat it as news, but it's an argument that ought to be Confronted by evangelicals and also it should be confronted by religious people of every stripe and by Republicans who look at Trump's character and say, yeah, Trump is a man who has always had serious real and abiding character problems.
	And now that really doesn't have to do with impeachment.
	And here's sort of the point.
	If you are going to link impeachment, and Mark Galley basically says this, right, says whether it's impeachment or whether it's the next election, we got to get Trump out.
	But that now becomes a political question, not just a moral question.
	And this is what I'm going to explain in a second.
	In order for it to be true that the chief question in election is the moral character of our leaders, we have to have a broad social fabric agreement on values across the board.
	I'll explain that in just one second.
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	Okay, so a lot of the logic in this piece is logic that, honestly, I felt back in 2016.
	Really, I felt that President Trump back in 2016 was not of moral character to be president of the United States.
	And so I didn't vote for him and I didn't vote for Hillary Clinton.
	It is also true.
	It is also true that when it comes to the allegation that everyone who voted for Trump was somehow selling themselves out morally, That was something I just didn't agree with.
	I didn't believe that was true.
	I thought that the prudential consideration that was being made by many Republicans was short-sighted.
	And in some ways, I was wrong.
	And in some ways, I'm not sure if I was wrong.
	Right?
	We'll have to see 10 years from now.
	History will be the judge.
	I mean, we'll find out 10 years from now how this plays out.
	He's been much more conservative than I thought he would be.
	He has justified his statements on religious freedom, on abortion, on a wide variety of issues that I care deeply about as not only a religious human being, but as just a conservative generally.
	But, when it comes to the implication that is being drawn by this editorial, that's something I never did in the 2016 election.
	I never said to people, if you vote for Trump, it makes you a bad human being, or a bad Christian.
	The implication of this editorial is that if you vote for Trump, or if you think he shouldn't be impeached, it's because you have decided to make Trump into an idol.
	And if you watch Mark Galley's Twitter feed after this, that's basically all the things he's been tweeting out.
	He's been tweeting out a variety of emails from people who have fallen into a sort of idolatry for Trump.
	There was one thing he tweeted out.
	Somebody texted him or emailed him and said, Jesus isn't coming back anytime soon.
	We need Trump as our protector.
	And he was like, well, now you're substituting Trump for Jesus.
	That's not cool.
	Well, if I were a Christian, I'd feel the same way.
	Obviously, as a Jew, I feel the same way.
	Trump cannot become God to you.
	Trump is a human being with all of his attendant flaws and with all of his attendant qualities.
	You know, there's good, there's bad.
	That's who Trump is.
	But to substitute Trump for your faith is, of course, a large mistake.
	However, in order to make the claim, That you are undermining your own faith.
	You're undermining your own morality by opposing Trump's impeachment.
	Even assume, let's assume for a second, Galley's case, which has yet to be proved, that Trump did something super terrible here and that it's worthy of impeachment.
	Even assuming that is the case, on a pragmatic level, Can a moral human being say, you know what, we don't live in an America anymore where I trust the other side to abide by rules?
	Because I think that that is really what's going on here.
	I think that in the best of all possible worlds, most evangelical Christians and most Americans and most religious people across America would say to themselves that when a president sins, we would rather that person not be president.
	But we also recognize we don't live in that ideal world.
	We live in a very flawed real world where political priorities are connected to candidates and where the Solid ground that we thought we were standing on the aftermath of Richard Nixon leaving office.
	The solid ground where there are some lines you just don't cross.
	And if you cross those lines, then we're gonna stand up and say, no way.
	That died during the Clinton impeachment.
	It did, it died.
	Because it turned out that half the country was willing to say, yes, he committed open perjury.
	Yes, the man was a derelict.
	Yes, the man lied under oath.
	Yes, he committed obstruction of justice.
	But we don't care because he's gonna give us abortion.
	And so a bunch of people on the right said, okay, well, then we don't share the social fabric anymore.
	See, in order for you to believe that moral people are betraying the social fabric by not throwing a president out of office for immorality, you have to believe that there is a social fabric that is there in the first place.
	In other words, we all have to be living in the same sphere.
	We all have to be living on the same moral plane.
	We have to at least have a certain level of baseline.
	If the baseline is not there, then there's no net, right?
	I mean, then you are operating without a net.
	And then it just becomes, okay, well, the Democrats are going to take over.
	They're never going to impeach the president, no matter what he does.
	That president is going to come in and mandate abortion, basically.
	He's going to come in and is going to suggest that you have to pay for other people's abortions.
	And as a religious human being, you're an evangelical Christian, you say to yourself, okay, so here is the balance now.
	The balance is not between a more moral United States And a less moral United States, the balance now is between policies that are going to preserve the lives of the unborn and policies that are not, because the moral United States is gone.
	Okay, and this is the great tragedy of what's happened in the United States over the last 30-40 years.
	There's a mainstream belief, right, left, and center, that the moral basis of the United States is not here anymore.
	There's no social fabric we share where we think that certain activity is off-limits and certain activity is still within limits.
	We don't think that anymore.
	And evangelical Christians are coming along now, with Trump, and they're saying, okay, he's a recognition of something we didn't want to recognize.
	He's a recognition that, I mean, even, listen, I know tons of evangelicals.
	They were very, very split of mind, even though they voted overwhelmingly for Trump.
	They were very split of mind about Trump himself.
	And now, here's where Galley's observation makes sense.
	Okay, if Galley's observation is that people who fall into idolatry are betraying religion, that of course is true.
	And if his observation is that it's very bad for religious people to make excuses for Trump's bad behavior, that's true too.
	I've been saying that all along.
	Every time Trump does something that's bad, does something that's immoral, does something that's wrong, it is up to moral people to say that is bad, that is wrong, that is no good.
	But when it comes to the prudential consideration of who ought to be leading policymaking, we can no longer operate under the assumption that we all agree that immoral people should not be president.
	We don't all agree on that.
	Bill Clinton was president.
	Okay, we don't agree on that.
	And we haven't agreed on that for quite some time.
	And the right acknowledging that and saying, okay, well, I guess if the choice is between playing by Marcus of Queensberry rules while they crotch punch us on the moral issue and then implement policy that actually harms our religious freedom, then I guess we'll have to acknowledge a reality that we wish we didn't have to acknowledge.
	Which is that we don't live in a country of shared morality anymore.
	And here's how you know this is true.
	If there were an evangelical pastor in a community, and that evangelical pastor committed adultery, that evangelical pastor presumably would be out of a job tomorrow.
	Why?
	Why?
	Doesn't matter how much charity he raises.
	Doesn't matter how much he has done to build the church.
	Doesn't matter how many people he has converted.
	If an evangelical pastor commits adultery, and that comes out in the church, he's out.
	The reason is because the constituents all share the same moral fabric.
	It's certainly true in my religious community, right?
	That if the rabbi does something wrong, the rabbi's out.
	Why?
	Because we all share the same moral fabric.
	And this is true in our local community, right?
	If you're in a local community with a lot of people who share your same moral sentiments, if somebody does something morally wrong, even if you like their politics, you say, okay, well, we all share enough that the risk of us getting rid of this guy isn't the complete demise of all of our priorities, and also, we at least get to uphold a certain moral level.
	But when we don't share anything, when we don't share politics, when we don't share morality, then every political battle becomes a life or death battle where morality of the politician takes a back seat.
	Now again, your own morality is still on the line when it comes to how you characterize that politician.
	This is where the editorial is right.
	It does not behoove any evangelical, any religious person, any religious Jew, anybody in the United States to cover for bad acts by a politician.
	Be upfront about the fact that you're going to vote for Trump even though you think that the guy is horrible with women.
	That's true.
	He is horrible with women.
	I'm not going to lie about that.
	I'm also going to recommend that if we're going to elect somebody that the top priority be that that person implements policies that are not going to continue to undercut not only the social fabric but things that are endemic to our rights.
	Things like religious freedom.
	Things like freedom of speech.
	All the pillars of our civilization are crumbling away right now.
	And some of those central pillars are the rights that are protected by the Bill of Rights.
	If somebody is a moral person, and the left proclaims them moral, but we know the left doesn't care about morality because the left was fine with Bill Clinton, right?
	If the left says, well, here's our moral candidate who's going to chip away at all the foundations, they haven't restored any moral fabric.
	There's a lack of basic trust.
	And the lack of basic trust continues on a day-to-day level.
	And you can see how the editor of Christianity Today is actually running right past Trump.
	It's really, it's quite fascinating.
	It's an interesting intellectual exercise.
	So here is Mark Galley, the editor of Christianity Today, saying that when Christians support an immoral cause, it does damage to my cause.
	Well, that's true, but you have to define immoral cause.
	Is the immoral cause you're supporting Trump being an adulterous lech with Stormy Daniels?
	If that's the moral cause, then I agree.
	If the immoral cause is, I'm going to vote for a politician who is going to preserve the right to religious freedom and the right to life, and I'm going to freely acknowledge that the man is horrible on a variety of character scores, but also that I don't trust a Democrat to uphold those basic rights, and so I'm not going to do this thing.
	Hey, that's not immoral.
	So here's the Christianity Today editor who's conflating the two.
	And again, I think the reason he's conflating the two is because there are so many people who do make the mistake of conflating the president's character with his accomplishments.
	There are a lot of people out there who do this routine where it's like, I love these judges.
	I love what he's doing.
	I love the man.
	The man's great.
	Hey, you can love the man.
	You can love what he's doing.
	You can love all these things, but you got to acknowledge the man's sins.
	If you're a religious person and you hope to obtain any solid objective sense of morality, here's Mark Galley.
	As a Christian, I like to think of myself as a person who has given my ultimate loyalty to Jesus Christ and the gospel he's called us to proclaim.
	So when Christians of any stripe support a cause that strikes me as manifestly immoral, it does damage to the cause that I've given my life to.
	So I think that's one part of the equation that all Christians, especially my brothers and sisters in the evangelical world, need to think about more seriously and more deeply.
	Okay, and then President Trump immediately fires back on Twitter, and you can see they're talking right past one another.
	Right past one, it's fascinating.
	Trump fires back and he says, I guess the magazine Christianity Today is looking for Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders, or those of socialist communist bent to guard their religion.
	How about Sleepy Joe?
	The fact is no president has ever done what I have done for evangelicals or religion itself.
	So you can see in Trump's tweet how he's missing Galley and you can see from Trump's tweet why Galley is saying what he's saying, right?
	From Trump's tweet, you see he's missing Galley because he's not saying, listen, I'm going to try to be a better moral person.
	I am a moral person.
	I'm trying to do my best.
	I'm struggling with it.
	Instead it's, look how much I've done.
	And this is how a lot of evangelical voters are looking at Trump, right?
	He is a vessel for policy priorities because there is no social fabric anymore and you just need a guy on the wall.
	And if that guy is Trump, that's the guy who's on the wall.
	Okay, and then the very end is why Galley can't stand Trump, right?
	The very end where he says, no president has ever done what I have done for religion itself.
	Right?
	Galley's like, well, hold up a second now.
	Now you're getting into my territory because the fact is that the president, when it comes to upholding religion and the cultural value of religion, Having a president who actively stands for moral values is actually a pretty important thing.
	So you can see Trump is talking right past Galley.
	Galley is talking right past Trump.
	And all of that is because of the tragic occurrence that our social fabric is worn.
	We don't trust each other with morality.
	We don't have a shared social institution like a church.
	We don't have... That's not... I'm a Jew.
	It's not a recommendation of top-down religion.
	We do not have shared social institutions where we share values anymore.
	And in the absence of values, politics becomes everything.
	Politics becomes absolutely everything.
	That's what's going on.
	And that's why you're seeing this divide.
	You can have sympathy for Gali and what he's saying morally, and at the same time recognize that what he's saying about other Christians is actually wrong on the merits.
	In just a second, I'm going to talk about why it is that we feel like there is no social fabric, because it's pretty obvious we feel like there is no social fabric first.
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	Okay, so you can see why people are coming apart at the seams.
	Why are evangelical Christians supporting Trump?
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	Okay, so you can see why people are coming apart at the seams.
	Why are evangelical Christians supporting Trump?
	Because they look at the culture and they see people who are being featured in the culture, like Robert De Niro, for example.
	They're not going to be a part of the Prominent people in the culture.
	And they say to themselves, these are the people I'm supposed to trust with morality?
	I'm gonna be lectured by Robert De Niro on the moral compass of our leader?
	I'm gonna be lectured by people who are for abortion on demand all the way up till birth?
	On the morality of the leader of the free world?
	Because it seems to me that I can criticize Trump's morality, being a moral human being in my own right, but people in Hollywood, they don't have any right to do this.
	De Niro says, there's not been one thing about this person that has been redeeming as far as I can see.
	He said, he said, shame on them.
	And then he said that he would like to see a bag, quote, I'd like to see a bag of bleep right in his face.
	Bleep being feces.
	Hit him right in the face like that and let the picture all go all over the world.
	He needs to be humiliated.
	He needs to be confronted and humiliated by whoever his opponent is.
	They have to stand up to him.
	They don't have to do it in an obvious physical way, but they have to have the formidability to confront him and put him in his place because the people have to see that to see him be humiliated.
	Okay, religious people understand that Robert De Niro isn't talking just about Trump there.
	Robert De Niro is talking about any religious Christian, anybody who disagrees with him on politics, anybody who disagrees with him on abortion.
	Robert De Niro is not just talking about his personal dislike for Trump.
	In fact, were it not for the fact that Trump is a Republican, Robert De Niro would be having dinner with Donald Trump.
	Donald Trump was featured on the Emmy Awards.
	Donald Trump had a huge show on national TV.
	He was hanging out with all these people.
	Hillary and Bill Clinton were at his wedding.
	The same people who want to hit him with a bag of bleep right in the face today are the same people who five seconds ago were hobnobbing with him.
	Why?
	Not because they're so upset over his moral qualities.
	It's been obvious for 50 years of Donald Trump's life what his moral qualities are.
	It's specifically because they're upset with his politics.
	This is the lie.
	This is where the untruth is obvious.
	When Mark Galley says that people are looking at evangelical Christians, and they're saying, look at those hypocrites, because they support Donald Trump.
	Do you think any of those people had great love for evangelical Christians when they were supporting Mitt Romney?
	Great love for evangelical Christians when they were supporting George W. Bush?
	I don't.
	I mean, I'm a religious person.
	I don't remember secular people loving me anymore when I was supporting George W. Bush or John McCain or Mitt Romney.
	I don't remember that at all.
	Neither does anybody else religious in America.
	We were getting crapped on, day in and day out for years.
	When Trump says, they're attacking me because they're attacking you, that's true.
	They're not attacking him for all the reasons they say they're attacking him.
	You think anyone in Hollywood gives two dams about Donald Trump's sex life?
	These people will schtup anything that walks.
	Four legs, two legs, a centipede, it does not matter.
	These are people who live the most dissolute lifestyles that you could possibly imagine.
	And then you really believe that they're sitting there?
	Like prudish Calvinists being like, oh, well, you know, Donald Trump and his personal moral standards, this is where I draw the line!
	No, the reason they hate Trump is because Trump represents a bunch of people they hate even more than they hate Trump.
	By the way, if Donald Trump were a deeply moral person, they'd hate him even more than they do.
	They would.
	If Donald Trump were a... You know how I can tell you this?
	Mike Pence.
	Right, Mike Pence!
	End of story.
	They're castigating—they crapped all over Mike Pence for saying that he won't go to dinner with a woman, not his wife.
	So don't give me that it's all about Donald Trump's moral character.
	Or that they're gonna look at evangelicals like they are hypocrites.
	Okay, the only reason they would look at evangelicals like they're hypocrites if evangelicals look the other way on Trump doing this stuff, right?
	That's legit, right?
	If a religious person says, Trump's adultery, bad for you, good for him.
	No, bad for everybody.
	Okay, but if you're gonna pretend that you're appealing to people by ripping on Trump's moral character, Okay, you're not appealing to these people.
	Like, I promise you that the only time Christianity Today has ever received a kind word in the press, ever, the only time Billy Graham has received a kind word in the press, ever, is when they came out against Trump.
	It's the only time, ever.
	I promise you.
	You will not find a single New York Times article going back as long as this magazine has been around praising Christianity Today for their moral stance.
	Ever.
	So what is this really about?
	It's about they don't like Trump.
	And they don't want Trump in office.
	That's why he's receiving the strange new respect.
	They don't respect you.
	They only respect you when they think they can make hay out of you.
	That is all that is happening here, and religious people understand that, and that is why religious people are fighting back against all of this.
	This is why.
	There's an article in the New York Times over the weekend called Fear and Loyalty, how Donald Trump took over the Republican Party.
	The president demands complete fealty, and as the impeachment hearings showed, he has largely attained it.
	To cross him is to risk a future in GOP politics.
	Okay, that's true.
	I think there's a lot of truth to that.
	I think that if you're a politician and you criticize Trump, I think that that could be a serious problem for you.
	But I think it's also in how you criticize Trump.
	Meaning, if you criticize Trump and you say, look, dude's terrible with women.
	One of the problems here is that Trump, because he is so vindictive, he can't just let stuff like that go.
	He has to try and defend himself from stuff that's obviously true.
	And so he says things to target members of his own party, which is foolishness.
	But beyond that, I think that people see attacks, because people rightly see attacks on Trump very often as attacks on them, they've started to see any attacks on Trump as attacks on them.
	And that's a mistake.
	That is a mistake.
	If you start to see any attack on Trump as an attack on you, you gotta consider the source, you gotta consider the nature of the attack.
	Is it coming from a place of love, or is it coming from a place of you wanna see him fall because you hate his priorities?
	You gotta actually analyze all of that.
	But again, the divisions in the country are so deep right now and so abiding that people don't trust each other.
	Look, we know we're not gonna get credit.
	Let's be real about this.
	If the Republicans got rid of Donald Trump tomorrow, let's say the Republicans in the Senate turned around and tomorrow they're like, you know what?
	You're right.
	Impeached.
	But then they got rid of Trump, and Mike Pence were president.
	Do you think the Democrats would turn around and say, look at those moral, decent, beautifully ethical Republicans, and now they're running this beautifully ethical man, Mike Pence, and they've really turned a corner.
	You know what?
	I'm voting Republican tomorrow.
	Anyone think that?
	Anyone?
	Because if you do, you hit your head on a rock.
	That's not the way this works anymore.
	We are past that.
	Maybe back in 1973, people thought that.
	And maybe that was more accurate back in 1973 when Richard Nixon was resigning.
	It ain't accurate now.
	It hasn't been accurate for 30 years in this country.
	Been quite a while.
	Okay, in just a second, we're gonna get to one instance of this sort of divide and why it matters.
	But first, let's talk about the number of gifts you are gonna be receiving this holiday season.
	People love you.
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	They're gonna be sending you all sorts of gifts.
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	What if FedEx guy is not FedEx guy?
	What if he rings the doorbell, you're not home, and he's doing that just to hop your fence so he can rob your house?
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	Okay, speaking of stories that demonstrate our massive political divide, The army has now investigated those cadets.
	You remember there were these cadets?
	They were on ESPN's game day.
	And they were giving the OK sign.
	You remember?
	This was like a week ago.
	They were giving the OK sign.
	And all of these morons in the media were like, that's white power.
	White power, sons.
	Those white supremacists secretly infiltrating West Point.
	Secretly infiltrating the army and navy, taking over the halls of power.
	And everybody else is like, um, they're playing the circle game.
	Circle game is where you hold this okay symbol below your waist.
	If somebody looks, you punch them in the shoulder.
	So the army did a full investigation of this.
	A full investigation.
	Here is what they found.
	No evidence at all.
	So all you morons in the media ran with this.
	This is covered by the New York Times, by CNN.
	No evidence at all.
	So all you morons in the media ran with this.
	This is covered by the New York Times, by CNN.
	Malcolm Nance on MSNBC was like, this is a serious issue requiring full investigation.
	Or alternatively, you're suspicious of your fellow Americans for rationales that do not exist.
	The social fabric is frayed beyond recognition at this point.
	Seriously, seriously frayed.
	So what can bring people back together?
	This is a real question.
	What can bring people back together?
	Well...
	A mutual agreement on morality would be a good start, but it has to be mutual, and it has to be open.
	It can't be just a generalized sense.
	You have to feel like the other side isn't cheating.
	And so that means we need to see some evidence on the part of the left.
	I think we've seen some evidence on the part of the right from time to time.
	I think Roy Moore not winning in Alabama is pretty good evidence that there are a bunch of people in Alabama who are not willing to vote for somebody if their crime is so significant that it even overwhelms the politics of the situation, and if Democrats run somebody who purports to be moderate and moral.
	That's what happened with the Doug Jones election in Alabama.
	Have you seen anything remotely like that on the Democratic side of the aisle?
	When was the last time the Democrats said, you know what, this person is too immoral to be in office.
	When was the last time they said that?
	Now you could say maybe Katie Hill, that Congresswoman from California.
	Maybe.
	So maybe that's the start of something.
	You know, it could be hopeful at the end of the year.
	Maybe that's the start of something.
	Somehow I think that it had more to do with the political inconvenience of Katie Hill being in office for Nancy Pelosi than it had to do with morality.
	Let's see them do that in an electoral situation, not in a situation where that gap is going to get filled by a Democrat automatically, when there's actual risk attached.
	Then let's see them do that.
	But we're going to need a consistent pattern of behavior from both sides of the aisle where they say repeatedly that immoral behavior on their own side is wrong.
	Even if it doesn't mean that they vote against the person or get rid of them.
	Like I'd love to see Democrats actually suggest that Ilhan Omar is an anti-Semite.
	Because she is.
	Or Rashida Tlaib.
	I would love to see Democrats come out in real time when a Democrat does something that is wrong or immoral, and say that that's wrong or immoral, as opposed to circling the wagons.
	Because it's going to need both sides letting down their guard just a little bit to re-establish this level of trust.
	And it's going to need less online interaction.
	Because online interaction, social media interaction, is inevitably the worst sort of interaction.
	The people you see at church, you agree with them because you see them at church.
	The people you see in your bowling league or the PTA meeting, they're people you can deal with on a personal level because you see them on a personal level.
	We need to rebuild trust away from social media.
	Social media actually exacerbates the problem.
	It does not make the problem better.
	It's a better way of separating people than connecting them.
	Atomizing people as opposed to showing them what exactly they have in common.
	It's the reason why we just had a great year economically and people are still at each other's throats.
	It's a pretty good demonstration of the Lack of truth to the Marxist nostrum, by the way.
	The material circumstance dictates the health of a body politic.
	That obviously is not true.
	We had a great year economically, and politically we're about as fragmented as it is possible to be.
	Okay, in just a second, we're going to get to the Democratic debate and the fallout from the Democratic debate.
	Kind of a surprise winner here.
	We'll get to that in one second first.
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	Okay, so, fallout from that big Democratic debate.
	So, FiveThirtyEight has done a little bit of polling.
	They did a 538 Ipsos poll.
	It was conducted using Ipsos' knowledge panel and it interviewed the same group of voters twice, once on either side of the debate to capture both the before and the after picture.
	And it's kind of fascinating to see who went up and who went down and who didn't do great.
	So everybody apparently went up, which is not surprising because it's a showcase for everybody.
	It's a showcase for everybody.
	In just one second, by the way.
	We are going to continue with all of this.
	We are going to explain exactly what happened with this entire debate fallout.
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	Okay, so now let's get to that 538 poll.
	So, this 538 poll shows some movement.
	The movement, the biggest move, is in favor of Amy Klobuchar, which makes perfect sense.
	She's the one who face-planted Pete Buttigieg.
	Buttigieg had himself a pretty terrible night.
	What this poll showed is that before and after the debate, there's a share of respondents who are considering voting for each candidate.
	Before the debate, 52% for Biden.
	After the debate, 54% for Biden.
	So an increase of a little bit under two points.
	Bernie Sanders, an increase of about 1.5 points.
	Elizabeth Warren saw an increase of 0.8.
	So bad debate for Elizabeth Warren, as I suggested.
	Pete Buttigieg saw an increase of just 0.8.
	Again, a bad debate for Pete Buttigieg, as I suggested.
	Amy Klobuchar saw an increase of 5.2 points in the number of people who are interested in her.
	So that's a big jump for her.
	Andrew Yang saw an increase of 0.9, so not much for him.
	And Tom Steyer saw an increase of about 1.4 points.
	According to the FiveThirtyEight Project, The biggest winner in terms of attracting potential voters was clearly Klobuchar, who gained a little over four points in the share of respondents who said they were considering voting for her.
	Biden and Sanders also gained nearly two points each in potential support.
	No one seems to have lost any potential supporters, although candidates like Yang, Warren, and Buttigieg made only small gains of less than one point each.
	Candidates' favorable and unfavorable ratings among likely voters?
	Basically unchanged, except for Buttigieg.
	Buttigieg saw a significant move in the direction of unfavorability.
	He saw a little bit of movement in favorability, too.
	So people have stronger opinions of Buttigieg than they did before the debate.
	So 21% of voters see Buttigieg unfavorably.
	Before the debate, it was about 17%.
	So about a four-point move for Buttigieg in the wrong direction.
	Elizabeth Warren is exactly where she was.
	Bernie Sanders is basically exactly where he was.
	Tom Steyer is a little bit more unfavorable, but also a lot more favorable, so people will have stronger opinions on him.
	Klobuchar had a big move in terms of favorability, a seven-point move in terms of favorability.
	Yang had a big move in terms of favorability.
	So it's exactly what you would think it is.
	So bottom line is that Yang and Klobuchar saw the largest jumps in net favorability, 6.3 points for Yang, 6.1 for Klobuchar.
	Most of the other candidates made modest gains of two or three points.
	Buttigieg, his net favorability actually fell by about two points.
	Before the debate, by the way, about 36% of Democrats said that sharing a stance on the issue is the most important thing, as opposed to 64% who said ability to beat Trump was the big thing.
	And that is why you saw Buttigieg take the hit, because Klobuchar was the first person to point out that Buttigieg has no credentials to actually win this thing.
	Here is Amy Klobuchar explaining, yeah, I was waiting.
	I was waiting to hit Buttigieg over all of this.
	This is a debate and I think it was done in an appropriate way.
	I actually had been waiting to do that since the MSNBC debate the month before where we went back and forth some about that issue and then he had made that statement.
	Now, that doesn't mean that Buttigieg doesn't have his defenders.
	As I suggested, Buttigieg's response to the wine cave stuff was basically correct.
	it then went to Tulsi and I never had a chance to reply.
	Well, this time I did.
	Now, that doesn't mean that Buttigieg doesn't have his defenders.
	As I suggested, Buttigieg's response to the wine cave stuff was basically correct.
	He said that Elizabeth Warren was putting forth a purity test that she herself could not hold by.
	But Klobuchar's smack of Buttigieg definitely resonated.
	Because it's true.
	The guy won like 8,000 votes in South Bend, Indiana.
	And when he ran statewide, he got his butt kicked.
	I mean, he just got destroyed.
	But there's some of the... I do love watching all of the populists in the Democratic Party who yell and scream about rich people.
	Talk about how they love wine caves.
	They love wine caves now.
	Gavin Newsom, the governor of California, he defended Pete Buttigieg's wine cave event.
	He says he shouldn't apologize for success.
	That cave's been used by Democrats all across the country for fundraising.
	Who else?
	Probably a hundred congressional representatives have benefited from the use of that.
	Have you?
	Are you kidding?
	I'm in the business, so I know that place well.
	What's the class?
	I don't know if this is healthy.
	What is it about it?
	Democrats are good at begrudging people.
	I don't know what it is.
	I just don't think it's healthy.
	Okay, but here's the thing.
	That's what Democrats do.
	They do apologize for success.
	That's their thing.
	It is hilarious to watch Democrats proclaim that their poverty is actually a great qualifier for office.
	In no other area of life would you ever believe this, right?
	If somebody came to marry one of your children and they were like, I'm poor, you'd be like, that's not a great qualifier.
	It may not be disqualifying, but it's not the best qualifier.
	If somebody showed up And they ran a business.
	And they showed up to do your business.
	And I said, by the way, I have like no clients.
	They're like, why would I use you, right?
	I want at least somebody with some Yelp reviews.
	You got Buttigieg who has no Yelp reviews.
	The Yelp reviews he does have are mediocre.
	And also, like, he is not a person who has proved himself in the business world at all.
	So being not wealthy from South Bend, Indiana, winning 8,000 votes is not a strong pitch.
	So that is hilarious.
	By the way, Michael Bloomberg, this is worth noting.
	So people have been saying that Pete Buttigieg is moving the party back to the center and Klobuchar is moving the party back to the center.
	Well, if you really thought that the party was moving back to the center, the Democratic Party, they wouldn't be saying things like this.
	Michael Bloomberg, who's a supposed centrist, he came out and he said he'd vote for Elizabeth Warren over Donald Trump, which is patently insane.
	This is a candidate who's just saying she wants to put rules on capitalism.
	If this man is that dangerous, why would people sooner vote for him than vote for her?
	I can only tell you if I were faced with Elizabeth Warren or Donald Trump, I would vote for Elizabeth Warren, even though I don't agree with her on a lot of things.
	She is honest and smart and hardworking.
	So there you are, the Democratic Party, still in search of a candidate.
	Biden continues to be the most durable guy out there.
	In all likelihood, at this point, you gotta say he's the odds-on favorite to take the nomination.
	But, man, those debates.
	Wow.
	Wow.
	Gonna be a lot of malarkey.
	A lot of talk about age.
	I think it'll be sponsored by Metamucil.
	It's gonna be an entertaining year, guys, a really entertaining year.
	Okay, quick update.
	So, the media continued to go nuts on J.K.
	Rowling.
	J.K.
	Rowling, of course, committed the grave and unforgivable sin of defending a woman who had suggested that men cannot become women, that men cannot change into women.
	I know, it's unbelievable that somebody would even contend that a man cannot magically become a woman.
	But, J.K.
	Rowling said it.
	And she is getting ripped up and down.
	Charlotte Clymer, who's a transgender woman and U.S.
	Army veteran, which is to say a man who believes that he is a woman, is press secretary at the Human Rights Campaign, which tweets out idiotic things like, trans women are women, trans men are men, non-gender binary people are non-gender binary.
	You know, nonsensical crap that used to land you in the cuckoo house.
	Because anybody claiming that a man is a woman or a woman is a man, like, ten years ago, you'd be like, uh, what now?
	Say, hmm?
	Okay, but now this is not only established belief.
	You can rip down one of the most popular authors of all time based on her saying that women exist.
	According to Charlotte Clymer, in the magical world of Harry Potter, the justice-minded and rebellious adolescent characters drink something called Polyjuice Potion to temporarily take on the general appearance of other people, even those of entirely different anatomies and gender expressions.
	As a teenager, I remember reading this and thinking, oh god, I wish it were that easy.
	Right, but that because that like one is like fiction in like a magical world where wizards happen.
	Just to note that that's not reality.
	At the time, I was very much in the closet as a transgender girl with scarcely any vocabulary, not even the familiar medicalizing term gender dysphoria, to explain to the adults in my life how I was in pain, and the world JK Rowling offered created escape.
	It wasn't the genre elements that appealed to me, but the central message of courage in the face of evil, and authenticity in the midst of urged conformity.
	Woven throughout the narrative is an insistence on love and community, and integrity and inclusion, which is why it has broken my heart.
	In recent years, to see Rowling's inexplicable replacement of justice-minded imagination with bigotry-driven rejection of science and reality.
	Okay, you're not delusional, you have to believe, to be to believe, that it is bigotry-driven rejection of science and reality to say that women exist.
	It's bigotry-driven rejection of science and reality to say women don't exist.
	I mean, that is like, that is the hyper-essence of sexism, to suggest that I, a man, can be a woman.
	is patently sexist.
	But to then suggest that it is rejection of science and reality to say that a man cannot become a woman.
	Okay, we are living in cloud cuckoo land now.
	On Thursday, Rowling tweeted in defense of the British researcher Maya Forstater, whose employer declined to renew her contract in light of Forstater's own tweet, which included statements such as, men cannot change into women.
	Forstater took her former employer to court, where the judge sided with the employer.
	In her tweet, Rowling effectively dismisses the judge, suggesting that Forstater was being fired for stating that sex is real, a common transphobic assertion that has been dismissed by medical experts and other scientists.
	That sex is real has been dismissed by medical experts and other scientists?
	Really?
	Oh, really?
	I'm gonna ask you for like a biology textbook that says that sex doesn't exist.
	So it used to be.
	The argument was that gender is completely distinct from sex, right?
	Sex exists, but gender is distinct from it.
	And gender is a social construct.
	So all of the things that make women seem female, like femininity, that stuff is actually just a social construct.
	But female anatomy is female anatomy and there are women, but those women don't have to be feminine because gender is a social construct.
	That was the old feminist crap, okay?
	And it was not true in the first place because gender is innately connected with biology in a wide variety of ways, but then it becomes gender is a social construct, but sex is real.
	Now it's, gender is real, and sex is a social construct.
	You see the reversal there?
	Gender, these gendered characteristics for transgender people, they're the real reality, but your sex is fake, it doesn't exist.
	Okay, I'm gonna have to, I'm gonna need an explanation from Charlotte Clymer how people create other people through sexual reproduction.
	I'm gonna need an explanation.
	Without sexual dimorphism, I'm gonna need some explanation on this one.
	You know, without like the small gamete side of species, with the big gamete side of species, I'm gonna need some biological explanation on this one.
	But apparently J.K.
	Rowling is very, very bad and very, very transphobic for being anti-scientific for saying women exist.
	As a man says it, right?
	A biological man says that.
	So, he would know.
	But he is a she, because he believes that he is a she.
	Obviously.
	And that trumps science.
	Actually, that is science.
	Exciting, exciting stuff happening.
	Okay, time for a quick thing that I like, and then a quick thing that I hate.
	So, quick things that I like.
	Britain has finally advanced its Brexit bill in a lopsided vote.
	According to the New York Times, after more than three years of anguished national debate, multiple cliffhanging votes, and two general elections, Britain's parliament voted by a wide margin on Friday to advance Prime Minister Boris Johnson's Brexit plan, paving the way for a country to leave the EU next month.
	For all the drama of the moment, the vote, 354 to 234, was a foregone conclusion.
	After the landslide victory of Mr. Johnson and his Conservative Party last week, the outcome was never in doubt.
	With Parliament now firmly under the grip of conservatives, the days of fierce debate over Britain's future, which had thwarted Johnson and his predecessor, Theresa May, are gone, the House of Commons has become an efficient vehicle to enact Brexit.
	I love the New York Times' coverage.
	Listen to the sentence.
	The House of Commons, so recently a grand arena for democratic defiance, has become an efficient vehicle to enact Brexit.
	So in other words, when people that the Times like are obstructing Brexit, that's just democratic defiance, man.
	But, When people who run the government, right, because they were elected, do what they were elected to do, then that is an efficient vehicle.
	Brutality!
	By the way, if labor were in charge and they were ramming through anything, the New York Times would be like, look at the efficiency there.
	That's efficiency.
	Before it was just obstruction from the conservatives.
	That's how all of this nonsense works.
	The House of Lords has to give its imprimatur.
	It is unlikely to obstruct the bill that was enshrined in the manifesto of the conservative party.
	So Brexit is finally going to happen, as it should.
	The people of the UK voted for it in the most populous referendum in the history of the UK.
	So good.
	That's about time.
	And it is a blow against the international institution that is the EU, which had overstepped its boundaries with regard to regulations in a way that the British people did not like.
	So good for the people of Great Britain.
	Okay, time for a quick thing that I hate.
	So I'll admit that I have not yet seen Rise of Skywalker.
	I look forward to seeing Rise of Skywalker.
	I've heard mixed reviews, but people I trust actually say it's kind of good.
	So I'm looking forward to giving you my review of it.
	Twitter has a moment.
	Twitter moments.
	Twitter's such a dumb place.
	Filled with dumb things.
	Here is a dumb thing from Twitter to end your year.
	They have a Twitter moment looking at Rise of Skywalker's depiction of gender, race, and sexuality.
	It's a science fiction movie about aliens who fight in space with people, but the people are not from Earth, so it's a galaxy far, far away, and we're gonna have a conversation about lesbians in space.
	Thanks, Twitter!
	I'm glad we could do this.
	I'm also old enough to remember when Star Wars was considered a movie for all ages, including children, as opposed to a social justice warrior vehicle for various political identity groups.
	What absolute silliness.
	Some had an issue with Rey's relationship with conflicted villain Kylo Ren.
	And they quote an article from some random website called SW Shadow Council, Star Wars Shadow Council, saying that the rise of Skywalker glorifies abuse and assault against women.
	I haven't seen it yet.
	I'm gonna go no on that.
	Okay, just gonna go out on a limb and say I don't think that that's what the movie does.
	I'm fairly certain that's not what the movie does.
	And then, they continue, they say, the movie's treatment of its non-white characters has had both praise and criticism.
	How about, did you like it?
	Some are seeing the minor role given to Asian-American actor Kelly Marie Tran as part of the problem.
	No, that, no.
	It's because Rose is a crap character.
	I'm sorry, she was a terrible character.
	It's not because she was Asian.
	What the hell are you talking about?
	Like, don't make a crappy character Asian and then we're fine with, like, the person who's in the movie.
	Like, what?
	Okay, like, a lot of people had a problem with Finn.
	They think that Finn's a boring character.
	You know who wasn't a boring character?
	Lando.
	Lando's awesome.
	You know what they have in common?
	They're both black.
	This is so stupid.
	Everybody's like, oh, well, you know, and I love when people are like, Star Wars, what a sexist, what a sexist film.
	Princess Leia is the driving force behind the original Star Wars films.
	Padme is a major force in the second wave of the Star Wars films.
	So ridiculous.
	The fact that we have to do this every time a big name movie comes out.
	The franchise's first on-screen kiss between a same-sex couple has also sparked both positive and negative reactions.
	Apparently, there's like a very, very brief kiss between two women in the background of a celebration of some sort.
	And it's a historic first, because if the movie doesn't at least throw some sort of sop to GLAAD, then the movie has not fulfilled its basic mandate that homosexuality exists in galaxies far, far away.
	Like, okay, fine.
	Whatever.
	It's all so boring.
	It's all so irritating.
	It's all so stupid.
	It's these sorts of culture wars where people are like, you know what?
	Bag it.
	We got nothing in common, Trump.
	Right?
	I mean, really, that's what's going on.
	Okay, so, I hope that you have a wonderful Christmas.
	This time for real.
	This is like our actual last podcast of the year.
	So, I hope you have a wonderful Christmas.
	I hope you have a happy Hanukkah, if that's what you celebrate.
	I hope that you have a wonderful New Year, and we'll see you back here.
	Next year for 2020.
	It's an election year.
	We'll see you then.
	I'm Ben Shapiro.
	This is The Ben Shapiro Show.
	The Ben Shapiro Show is produced by Rebecca Dobkowitz.
	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 Wydowski.
	Edited by Adam Sijewicz.
	Audio is mixed by Mike Koromina.
	Hair and Makeup is by Jessua Olvera.
	Production Assistant Nick Sheehan.
	The Ben Shapiro Show is a Daily Wire production.
	Copyright Daily Wire 2019.
	Hey everybody, it's Andrew Klavan, host of The Andrew Klavan Show.
	You know, some people are depressed because the American Republic is collapsing, the end of days is approaching, and the moon has turned to blood.
	But on The Andrew Klavan Show, that's where the fun just gets started.

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