All Episodes
Previous Next
Feb. 7, 2020 - The Ben Shapiro Show
01:00:09
Mr. Trump’s Wild Ride | Ep. 949
| Copy link to current segment

Time Text
Trump celebrates his own personal festivus with a ceremonial airing of grievances after his acquittal, Bernie gains momentum as Biden panics, and China shows that communism isn't all that great at problem solving.
I'm Ben Shapiro.
This is The Ben Shapiro Show.
The Ben Shapiro Show is sponsored by ExpressVPN.
Your data is your business protected at ExpressVPN.com slash Ben.
Alrighty, so yesterday was President Trump's big triumphant moment.
As we said earlier this week, he gave the State of the Union address, excellent State of the Union address, theatrics, Brilliantly constructed, well-delivered.
And I said at the time, you know, if President Trump were like this all the time, he'd win 55% of the vote.
And pretty much everybody said that, right?
His advisors were saying that, people around Trump were saying that, people in the media who are longtime allies of President Trump were saying that.
They were saying, if you could just be contained, Mr. President, if you could just be the guy who focuses in on what it is the American people care about, Mr. President, then you would be near dominant in elections.
It would be almost impossible to stop you in elections.
And then yesterday, President Trump was celebrating his acquittal, which happened the day before.
And he decided that he was just going to down eight Red Bulls, bust through a wall like the Kool-Aid man and just take a giant dump on the Democrats.
And all the Republicans were cheering.
And on the one hand, of course, on the one hand, of course, because come on.
I mean, President Trump is President Trump.
And this was hilarious.
It was entertaining.
It was Trump doing peak Trump, right?
In one way, the State of the Union was peak Trump because it's the best Trump can be, right?
It is the best version of Trump and the best version of the best version of Trump.
But this was the best version of sort of normal Trump, which is Trump being Trump riffing, doing comedy.
And that has its upsides and it has its downsides.
The upside is wildly entertaining.
The downside is, well, Is this going to win him any additional votes?
The downside is do people feel like he's the adult in the room?
See, the beauty after the State of the Union is that Nancy Pelosi looked like a child and Trump looked like an adult.
Now everybody just looks like children.
It's just that Trump is a much more entertaining child.
So in any case, President Trump He gave this big presser yesterday and he went off on his opponents.
And again, I understand the emotional drive to do so.
I understand it.
I understand why he'd be angry at Adam Schiff and Nancy Pelosi.
I understand why he'd want to browbeat them.
I'd understand why he'd want to go out there and hold up the newspaper and never stop holding up the newspaper that says Trump acquitted.
This is a guy who's been put under the gun by the Mueller investigation in Russia for two years.
It turns up nothing.
And then immediately he gets hit with this Ukraine stuff and then that is not sufficient to oust him.
And so he feels like a survivor and he gets to have himself a little party.
So he brings out the pinata and he starts beating it up.
So President Trump, yesterday, he comes out swinging.
He says, the witch hunt started the day I came down the elevator.
He was in the East Room of the White House and man, he was letting it rip.
all hang out.
It was a word salad.
I mean, if you had to make a word cloud for this thing, it is cloudy with a chance of meatballs because weird things just flying out of the sky.
References to Bobby Richardson, the former New York Yankees second baseman, full on descriptions of Steve Scalise getting shot.
I mean, everything that you could possibly want and not want in a Trump presser was here.
Here is President Trump, though, beginning by explaining the witch hunt started the day I came down the escalator.
But a tremendous thing was done over the last number of months.
but really if you go back to it over the last number of years, we had the witch hunt in It started from the day we came down the elevator, myself and our future first lady, who's with us right now.
And of course, he's right about this.
And this led him into just bashing his opposition.
So again, it was really funny.
It was really hilarious.
Is it a winning strategy for the president of the United States?
No, it doesn't have much to do with that.
It doesn't have.
And in the end, this is why the State of the Union isn't going to mean a lot.
And this isn't going to mean a lot.
It all washes out.
And in the end, what's really going to matter are the underlying facts, which we'll get to in a minute and which do, in fact, favor President Trump.
As we'll see, Trump wasn't the only one who decided to air his grievances on Festivus yesterday.
Here is President Trump holding up The Washington Post and acknowledging full well that The Washington Post never runs good headlines about him, which, of course, is true.
You can take that home, honey.
Maybe we'll frame it.
It's the only good headline I've ever had in the Washington Post.
And of course, as I say, this is Trump freewheeling, unbound, Trump unchained.
And that was the upside.
So the upside was that Trump was in a good mood.
The downside is that when Trump is in a good mood, he sometimes decides to really go for it.
So here he was going after the Russia stuff and suggesting that the Russia stuff was bleep.
And people are getting upset about this.
Again, I'm not going to bother getting upset about this.
This is our politics.
Get over it.
We live in idiocracy.
Here's President Trump.
And there's nothing, from a legal standpoint, this is a political thing.
And every time I say, this is unfair, let's go to court, they say, sir, you can't go to court.
This is politics.
And we were treated unbelievably unfairly.
And you have to understand, we first went through Russia, Russia, Russia.
It was all bullshit.
We then went through the Mueller report.
I've always said they're lousy politicians, but they do two things.
They're vicious and mean.
Vicious.
These people are vicious.
Adam Schiff is a vicious, horrible person.
horrible people, horrible people.
So things are getting better in Washington, D.C., not worse, obviously.
I've always said they're lousy politicians, but they do two things.
They're vicious and mean, vicious.
These people are vicious.
Adam Schiff is a vicious, horrible person.
Nancy Pelosi is a horrible person.
And she wanted to impeach a long time ago when she said, I pray for the president.
I pray for the president.
She doesn't pray.
She may pray, but she prays for the opposite.
But I doubt she prays at all.
OK, so President Trump was doing the full Trump and the media lost it over this.
This is the thing.
Well, it is true that President Trump is acting rather unpresidential here.
Is that fair?
That he's acting unpresidential?
I think it's fair, right?
I don't feel like Lincoln, Washington, Reagan, like this was really in the wheelhouse.
It is the reaction of the left that justifies everything that Trump does, at least in the minds of, I think, most Americans.
These most Americans go, okay, yeah, so he's acting childish.
But guess what?
Everybody's acting childish.
And he's just in the middle of a mud fight.
As I've said before, the perception on the left is that President Trump ruined American politics.
The reality is that President Trump was the coroner who declared American politics dead.
The people who actually ruined American politics pre-existed Trump.
It turns out that politics existed before Donald Trump became a politician.
He only became a politician in 2015.
It turns out that politics had been on a really, really sharp downslope for quite a while before that.
We're going to get to one of the suspects in the murder of American politics in just a moment.
Actually, a couple suspects in the murder of American politics.
We'll get to that in just one moment.
First, Let's talk about the reality.
There are a lot of people out there and they are looking to steal money from you.
One of the ways, new ways, that they are looking to steal money from you is that they will actually steal ownership of your home.
I don't mean they're gonna like break into your house and squat there and then just not let you in.
I mean that they will steal the title to your home.
So let me tell you about Debra.
Her home was literally stolen.
I don't mean that thieves actually stole stuff.
Online scammers stole ownership to her home, which is one of the reasons you should consider home title lock.
Debra said, and I quote, criminals found the title to our home online and filed forged documents claiming they owned it.
She says I was evicted from my own home and $85,000 in equity stolen.
Nobody believes you can get your home stolen this easily, but as we know, hackers have gotten really sophisticated, online criminals have gotten really sophisticated, and there's just too much information online.
Home titles are kept online, and thieves will hunt for them.
They'll forge documents to make it look like you sold your home, and then they can borrow against your home until you're broke.
No insurance or bank will protect you from this type of crime because it's just too new.
HomeTitleLock does.
So, go to HomeTitleLock.com right now.
Register your address to see if your home's title has been tampered with already.
If so, call the cops.
If not, register your home for 60 risk-free days of protection at HomeTitleLock.com.
That is HomeTitleLock.com.
Go check them out right now.
HomeTitleLock.com and protect what may be your main source of wealth and equity, your home, with HomeTitleLock.com.
Okay, so as I say, President Trump gives this fairly ridiculous presser.
And it was.
I mean, let's just be real about this.
It was hilarious, but can also be ridiculous.
Many things can be true at once.
That things can be entertaining and also ridiculous.
See every Michael Bay movie, like, ever.
Or John Woo's face-off, right?
Many things are ridiculous and also wildly entertaining.
Okay, but the...
The tut-tutting is what made Trump president and maybe the tut-tutting that keeps Trump president.
What I mean by that is that the wildness perception that American politics in the absence of Trump is a perfectly healthy organism, that American politics without Trump is perfectly great, and that it's just Trump who ruined everything is such myopic bullcrap.
It really is.
It's not true at all.
If you want to talk about the institutions and the people who ruined American politics long before Trump ever came on the scene, You're going to have to look across the aisle to Nancy Pelosi.
So Nancy Pelosi really let the cat out of the bag the other night when she ripped up Trump's State of the Union address because she'd been trying to do this whole, I'm above all of this.
I'm so I'm above all of this.
I am a I'm the adult in the room.
And then at the end of the State of the Union in pre Pre-ordered fashion, right?
I mean, she had planned this.
She tore up President Trump's State of the Union address.
We know she planned this because there's actual video of her pre-ripping the paper.
Because she wanted to make sure that her hands could actually get through the paper.
It's why she knew that she wasn't going to try to rip up the entire speech at once.
She separated it into several parts.
I mean, she practiced this thing.
Right, so it was pre-ordained childishness.
It was pre-planned childishness.
And this has been the nature of American politics for a long time.
Trump is not pre-planned, right?
Trump is just, I'm gonna go out there and spew childishness.
But, the Democrats, it's been pre-planned, it's been organized, and it's been backed by the media.
So the media were going nuts yesterday over President Trump.
Let me show you the media before I get to Pelosi, because there are really two suspects, in my view, in the death of American politics.
As I say, I think Trump's the coroner, not the murderer.
So, who are the actual suspects?
There are two real suspects in my view.
Suspect number one is the media, and suspect number two are the Democrats who work hand in glove with the media.
And the media are suspects because the media have been acting childish since day one.
It was the media who were promoting the Bush is Hitler, Bush is awful, Bush is lying about the war in Iraq.
Bush is a danger to the community.
He's a chimp.
He's an idiot.
They did the same thing with Ronald Reagan.
They've been doing it for decades.
And then it turns out that the American people bridled against that, and they went to other sources of information, and the media just doubled down on all of this.
The media lost all of their legitimacy long before Trump came on the scene.
Again, it's so funny.
The media declared Trump the murderer of the media because he says things like fake news all the time.
They say fake news, and they go, oh my God, oh my God, attacks on the press.
Guys, we all knew that you were fake news.
Trump just said it.
Okay, Newt Gingrich said it in 2012 and got a bump in the Republican primaries.
This has been a long-going narrative on the right, and it is not untrue.
And when we say you're fake news, it doesn't mean everything that you report is fake.
It means that all of you who portray yourselves as the journalistic explainers of the world, all of you who portray yourselves as the objective journalists who are attempting to just bring fact and separate it from opinion, Nearly all of you are Democrats, and you filter everything through that Democrat lens.
That's what makes you fake news.
If you say you're opinion news, you're not fake.
Then you're exactly what you say you are, but you don't.
And so this is why every time Trump does something, and the media reveal their own bias, and reveal their own predilections, All they are doing is underscoring why Trump is the coroner and not the murderer.
So, here is what CNN was doing during Trump's speech yesterday.
I mean, this was their chyron, right?
This is their chyron.
Their chyron is supposed to be the objective description of what is going on.
No editorialization.
Instead of, Trump speaks from East Room in acquittal celebration.
Their chyron yesterday said, Trump vindictive and vulgar in impeachment acquittal celebration.
Okay, that's editorializing.
It's clear editorializing.
So I'm supposed to think that President Trump ripping on CNN is somehow inappropriate when CNN is ripping on Trump?
Now, you may think that it was vindictive and vulgar.
I mean, it was pretty vindictive.
I think it was far less vulgar.
But regardless, that is editorializing.
That is not an objective description of reality.
At least not in a... Again, you want to give your opinion, that's fine.
But don't pretend that that is an objective description of reality.
And then you had Gloria Borger and Breonna Keillor going off on Trump on CNN yesterday and really just clutching at their pearls.
Not just saying, not just rolling their eyes and saying, okay, that's Trump being Trump and that's what Trump does.
Instead, it was just, how could anyone do this kind of thing in American politics?
American politics, the home of dignity.
How could we do all this?
Come on.
You have been watching the president of the United States with an unscripted, vindictive, at times profane, angry, rambling response to his impeachment acquittal.
This started out with the president coming out into the East Room to ruffles and flourishes.
And then immediately turned into an avalanche of grievance against everybody.
It was vindictive, as you pointed out.
It was full of revenge.
It was mean-spirited.
It was poisonous.
It was spiteful.
Wow, can you clutch those pearls in your heart?
If you clutch those pearls in your heart, are they gonna turn into diamonds?
I mean, seriously, it's pretty astonishing.
And again, then when Trump says, you guys hate me, it's like, well, yeah, they do.
And they preexisted him.
Okay, CNN was around and criticized long before this.
I mean, I was on CNN in like 2014, before Donald Trump was running for president, talking explicitly about the fact that during the Gaza war that was happening between Hamas and Israel, that Hamas could not have had better spokespeople than CNN.
I mean, CNN has been biased for an extraordinarily long time.
So again, the media wished to make it that President Trump's childishness and vindictiveness and thin-skinnedness, that all of that is the death of American politics.
And it's like, no, Trump is just the symptom and also the coroner of everything that is going on.
CNN's John Harwood doing the same routine.
So John Harwood comes out, he says, well, this guy is in psychological distress.
Weird, I don't remember them psychoanalyzing Barack Obama when he was literally crying during some press conferences about mass shootings.
I don't remember them doing like a deep dive into his psychology.
I just remember them celebrating his emotion.
I don't remember when Barack Obama was saying things about bringing guns to knife fights politically, them talking about Barack Obama's vindictive nature.
Or in 2009, during the financial meltdown, when he suggested that he would let the pitchforks have the bankers.
I don't remember people in the media suggesting, well isn't that a bit vindictive and spiteful?
No, then they were busy celebrating Barack Obama.
But when Donald Trump is Donald Trump, then all of a sudden we're going to go into full psychological analyses by John Harwood, who last I checked is not either a psychologist or a psychiatrist, but in any case, here is Harwood.
This was a very disturbing tableau for the country.
It was dark because he's made clear that his mind is dark.
This is somebody in deep psychological distress right now.
Self-pitying, insecure, angry.
He said almost plaintively at the end, when he was reading a text from Strzok to Page, where he said, I'm not a bad person.
He was sort of imploring people to accept that view of him.
I mean, the more that you get from the media on this score, the more Trump dumping all over the media.
You're like, OK, fine.
OK, fine.
I mean, at least Chris Matthews says who he is.
But Chris Matthews, you know, lays it out what the media actually thinks.
This is where I like Chris Matthews.
Chris Matthews didn't hide in the ball, right?
I mean, Chris Matthews is of the left.
He knows he's of the left.
He says he's of the left.
It's the people like Andrew Mitchell who are claiming they're not of the left who are the problem.
But Chris Matthews yesterday said, he's a cult leader!
He's a cult leader!
Like Jim Jones, he's gonna feed everybody the Kool-Aid!
Everybody's gonna die!
Even though Jim Jones was supported by half the Democrats in Congress.
He's a cult leader!
He's calling for a fight to the death!
Which, by the way, would be, like, amazing politics.
In any case, Chris Matthews, go, go, go!
Call me out with a shoe!
Get him in here rumpled!
And then I talk, I say things!
Banishing, banishing Mitt Romney from the party.
That's the language of a cult, banishment.
It's not a language of the Constitution or of our American tradition.
Banishment for the one guy who dared in the United States Senate to vote to convict.
I think it's also an attempt by the president to basically tell his troops, here's the fighting line right now.
We're going after everybody who went after us.
We're going to fight to the death.
We're going to get them.
So, suspect number one in the death of the American political scene, the media.
Okay, the media have a lot of blame to carry around.
Now, I know there are a bunch of people on the left, and they say, well, yeah, polarization of the media is the problem.
No, polarization of the media is not the problem.
Dishonesty in the media is the problem.
There are people out there on the left that are like, well, you have a leftist tears tumbler on your table.
Aren't you contributing to the death of American politics?
No, I'm honest about who we are over here, right?
We don't really like the political left very much, by which I mean not liberals, but people who wish to shut down debate, people who believe that people should be platformed for having a finally, an absolutely mainstream point of view.
I'd rather that everybody be honest like Chris Matthews is than dishonest like the folks over at CNN.
Okay, so suspect number one, members of the media.
We'll get to suspect number two in just one second.
First, let us talk about something that will make you comfortable.
I'm talking about Tommy John underwear.
Dudes, Valentine's Day is just around the corner.
Sometimes you're loving significant Other means treating yourself well, too.
Tommy John makes men's and women's products that really are fantastic.
I mean, like, truly, truly comfortable.
out there.
They have limited edition Valentine's Day gift sets, whether for you or for your partner.
Show you care by replacing your old-fashioned tattered underwear with something you can be proud of.
I'm talking about Tommy John.
Tommy John makes men's and women's products that really are fantastic.
I mean, like, truly, truly comfortable.
When you're in Tommy John underwear, the legs never ride up, the waistband never rolls down, it's impossible to get a wedgie, which would have helped me so much in high school.
For the lady in your life, Tommy John has officially ended visible panty lines, plus, they have the most comfortable bras on the planet to complete her look.
So, if you're still looking for the perfect gift, Tommy John has limited edition Valentine's underwear and loungewear gift sets for him and her, plus, all sets are up to 15% off.
Tommy John is so sure that you and your partner are gonna love their fit and feel, it's all backed by their best pair you'll ever wear, or it's free, guaranteed.
Which means, if you don't love that first pair, you will get a full refund.
Tommy John, no adjustment needed.
Shop limited edition Valentine's Day gift sets and get 20% off your first order when you go to TommyJohn.com slash Ben.
My wife has Tommy John products.
I have Tommy John products.
We both love Tommy John products.
I promise you, your significant other will love Tommy John products too for Valentine's Day.
That's TommyJohn.com slash Ben for 20% off the most basic, basically comfortable Okay, so who is the other suspect in the murder of American politics?
Again, everybody in the media proclaims that it's Trump, but that's a red herring.
And the Democrats proclaim that it's Trump, but that's a red herring too.
Nancy Pelosi has been around on the scene for quite a while, and Nancy Pelosi has been a deeply polarizing figure for also quite a while.
I'm old enough to remember when, just last year, she refused to pass a resolution condemning open anti-Semites like Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib inside her own caucus.
I'm old enough to remember when Nancy Pelosi declared that boycott-divestment sanctions of Israel were anti-Semitic, and then half of her caucus supported them, and then she was like, oh, okay, I guess it's not anti-Semitic anymore.
Nancy Pelosi is one of the murderers.
Okay, Nancy Pelosi at least is one of the suspects.
She pretends to be the detective, right?
I'm going to track down Donald Trump and I'm going to pin him to the wall as the adult in the room.
In reality, the lady's got some... the blood of American politics, that blood spatter from the corpse of American politics, it's all over her shoes.
Okay, just as it is the shoes of the media.
This is Murder on the Orient Express.
Okay, there are many suspects here.
So Nancy Pelosi, here's the proof.
Nancy Pelosi yesterday, she does her own press conference.
And she is also childish and wild.
So yes, Donald Trump's presser.
Not gonna say it wasn't childish and wild.
It was childish, wild, and hilarious.
Nancy Pelosi gave her own presser.
It was childish and wild.
Was there any blowback whatsoever?
Of course not.
Nancy Pelosi yesterday suggested in her press conference that Donald Trump looked sedated.
Now imagine if Donald Trump had said that Nancy Pelosi looked sedated.
Or like she was sucking on lemons, which she did.
Imagine if he had said that.
Oh, look, again, he's coming to kill American politics.
There he is, the axe murderer of American politics.
Nancy Pelosi suggests the president is drugged and nobody says a word.
I mean, it's unbelievable.
I extended a hand of friendship to him, to welcome him as the President of the United States to the People's House.
It was also an act of kindness because he looked to me like he was a little sedated.
He looked that way last year, too.
But he didn't want to shake hands.
That meant nothing to me.
It had nothing to do with my tearing up.
That came much later.
Again, it's so childish and so petty and so stupid, but she's been around a long time, right?
She was the House Majority Leader in 2006.
So she's been around a lot longer than Donald Trump.
Pretending that the world started spinning in 2016 is the way for Democrats to avoid their culpability for the fact that Trump got elected in the first place.
Pretending that Trump came along and he shattered all of the norms of American politics and broke everything?
That's the way to avoid the inevitable conclusion, which is that the Democrats and the media broke American politics and then Trump came and he said, look, American politics is dead.
And everybody went, oh, that's true.
And then they voted for him.
Okay, so all of this is going to, as much as I don't like the violation of norms by President Trump, as much as I criticize President Trump for being ridiculous and petty and vindictive and thin-skinned, as much as I think that he pursues dumb strategies and going after Mitt Romney after Mitt Romney makes his vote and Trump gets acquitted.
As much as I think all of that is foolish and counterproductive, I also recognize that foolishness and counterproductive action did not begin, nor will they end with President Trump.
Which means that in the end, I think the American people are going instead to turn to underlying facts when it comes to the 2020 election.
Underlying facts, like the fact that January was a big month for jobs.
According to CNBC, an unseasonably mild January helped power the U.S.
jobs market to more gains, with non-farm payrolls rising $225,000 for the month, well above Wall Street estimates.
The unemployment rate ticked higher to 3.6%, but that's only because the labor force participation rate increased 0.2 percentage points up to 63.4%, which actually matched its highest level since June 2013.
So people who have been out of the workforce for years are reentering the workforce looking for jobs.
Economists surveyed by Dow Jones We're thinking that the payroll growth would be 158,000.
Instead, payroll growth was 225,000.
A more encompassing labor market indicator that includes discouraged workers and those holding part-time positions for economic reasons also moved higher, rising 0.2 percentage points to 6.9%.
Again, that's because more people are re-entering the workforce.
The employment-to-population ratio in the Household Survey rose to 61.2%, that's the highest since November 2008, and 0.5 percentage points higher than a year ago.
So basically we are now, only now, starting to reach pre-recession levels of employment in the United States relative to the general American population, because Barack Obama did preside over the slowest job growth in American history in terms of recovery from a recession.
So that is very good news for President Trump.
Other very good news for President Trump is that wages are again accelerating.
So again, this is very good news for President Trump.
He's been pointing out the difference between himself and Barack Obama, that as wages accelerate, that was not happening really under President Obama.
Payroll gains were broad-based.
They topped the median estimate for $165,000.
The unexpected job strength also reflects robust gains in weather-sensitive sectors, including construction, which climbed by $44,000 for the strongest growth in a year in an unseasonably warm month.
Weekly hours worked held at 34.3 hours for the third month, matching the lowest level for most of the past decade.
Economists look to hours worked for early signs of labor market softening, as companies often cut hours before laying off workers.
However, by the way, that should give the lie to the idea that people are working nine jobs to keep ends meeting.
They're working 60 hours a week because they're working two jobs.
The average is 34.3, which is not even like a full-time job, right?
A full-time job would be eight hours a day, five days a week.
That'd be 40 hours a week.
So, very good news for President Trump.
The labor force grew by 574,000.
This is all very good news for President Trump going into the election cycle.
And all of this is leading Democrats to the point of panic.
And it shouldn't just be that that leads Democrats to the point of panic.
It should be the fact that Bernie Sanders is likely to be their nominee at this point.
We'll get to that in just one second.
First, let's talk about a phenomenal Valentine's Day gift.
Perhaps the best Valentine's Day gift that you can buy.
I'm talking about jewelry, of course.
But where can you get fabulous, fantastic jewelry?
From my friends over at the Pearl Source.
So first of all, I know the people at the Pearl Source.
They are fantastic.
I mean, I know them.
They're family-run business.
They're really, really honest.
And their jewelry is just beautiful.
My wife has a necklace from the Pearl Source.
She has earrings from the Pearl Source.
Beautiful, beautiful stuff.
At the Pearl Source, you get the highest quality pearl jewelry at up to 70% off retail prices.
Why?
Well, because Pearl Source Cuts out the middleman by eliminating markups traditionally five times the original price and selling directly to you.
At the Pearl Source, you'll find the largest selection of pearls available anywhere.
Each jewelry piece is custom made just for you.
You can customize your jewelry based on pearl size, quality, gold type length, many other choices.
If you need it quickly for Valentine's Day, no problem.
The Pearl Source offers free two-day shipping on every single order.
Everything comes beautifully packaged in an elegant jewelry box ready to be presented as soon as it arrives.
And here's the best part.
If you're not sure that your taste is her taste, well, no worries.
The Pearl Source comes with a no-hassle 60-day money-back guarantee, so it's risk-free.
For a limited time, listeners to my show can take 14% off your entire order for Valentine's Day, which when you're talking about jewelry, 14% is a lot.
Go to thepearlsource.com slash ben and enter promo code BEN at checkout for 14% off your entire order.
Again, I know the people at the Pearl Source, super honest.
Also, Beautiful, beautiful jewelry.
Go to ThePearlSource.com slash Ben.
Enter promo code Ben at checkout for 14% off.
Go straight to the source, ThePearlSource.
That is ThePearlSource.com backslash Ben.
Enter promo code Ben at checkout for 14% off for Valentine's Day.
I promise you, she absolutely will love it.
It's the finest pearl jewelry at the best prices online.
Go straight to the source, ThePearlSource.com slash Ben.
Use that promo code Ben for 14% off.
Okay.
We're going to get back to the 2020 race, which again is a mess for Democrats, increasingly a mess for Democrats.
First, quick message about the show.
As you know, we rely in part on our advertisers to help keep this mic hot and the lights on.
One thing that's really important for us is that we know who's listening.
It's how we make sure that we're featuring advertisers that you folks actually want to do business with.
So, if you have just a few minutes to spare, I'd really appreciate it if you visited thepodsurvey.com and fill out a short survey about yourself.
Again, that's thepodsurvey.com.
Fill out that short survey about yourself.
Okay, so the Democratic 2020 primaries are a mess for the Democrats.
advertisers who actually want to hear from you.
So visit the podsurvey.com.
It'll take just a few minutes, like five minutes, and complete the survey.
Help my team bring you advertisers who you want to hear from.
It helps us out.
It helps our advertisers out.
The podsurvey.com.
That's us asking you to do it.
Please really appreciate it.
Okay, so the Democratic 2020 primaries are a mess for the Democrats.
According to FiveThirtyEight, Bernie Sanders is now a one in two odds-on favorite to be the nominee for president of the United States for the Democratic Party and win a majority of the delegates.
They are forecasting that he will win above a majority of delegates, about 1,700 delegates.
They are forecasting that Joe Biden will come in second and Pete Buttigieg will come in third.
They're really forecasting that because they're thinking that Biden is going to win a bunch of delegates in the South, particularly among black voters.
See, here's the problem.
Pete Buttigieg is indeed surging.
There's no question that Pete Buttigieg is surging.
The latest polls in New Hampshire show Pete Buttigieg actually challenging Bernie Sanders for primacy.
The best news here, by the way, would be for Pete Buttigieg to win New Hampshire outright for Biden.
That would be the best news for Biden.
Because if Pete Buttigieg wins New Hampshire outright, I know that the conventional wisdom is that then he will go on, he will become the moderate-lane Democrat.
I don't think that's correct.
I think that if Pete Buttigieg wins New Hampshire, the person that hurts most is Bernie, because Bernie is widely expected to win New Hampshire.
If Buttigieg wins Iowa, and he wins New Hampshire, then you will get the candidate of sort of the white upper class versus the candidate who's more popular with minorities.
So people are assuming that Buttigieg is cutting into Biden, and there's truth to that in places like Iowa and New Hampshire.
But if Buttigieg starts to actually overcome Bernie in state after state, then what you're going to see is people move away from some of these other candidates to counter Buttigieg.
And that's why you're going to see Biden go after Buttigieg tonight.
In New Hampshire, the latest poll statistics Show that Sanders is only very narrowly leading Buttigieg.
The newest Boston Globe-Suffolk poll has them in a dead heat.
It has Buttigieg at 23 and Sanders at 24.
The Emerson poll that came out the same day, it has Sanders further ahead at 32 with Buttigieg at 23.
And Monmouth, which came out the day before, had Sanders within spitting distance of Buttigieg.
Sanders at 24 and Buttigieg at 20.
Bottom line is that that lead has shrunk dramatically for Bernie Sanders.
Buttigieg is getting a big bump from Iowa.
Part of that is due to the media coverage.
Bernie did win the most votes in Iowa, but He's unlikely to win the most delegates.
It's basically a dead heat.
And Bernie was expected to do really well in Iowa, while Buttigieg was kind of left for dead a few weeks ago.
Well, Buttigieg obviously did really well in Iowa, and now he's doing really well in New Hampshire.
Now, these are very, very white states, and neither Bernie nor Buttigieg has a lot of black support, which is why I suggest that if Buttigieg actually overcomes Bernie, Then that's going to leave a pathway for Joe Biden in places like South Carolina, because Buttigieg does not have the national organization that Bernie has.
Bernie has been starting to make some inroads into minority communities in ways that Buttigieg simply has not, although Buttigieg is a far more innately talented politician than Bernie Sanders is.
Buttigieg has also been able to work this magic where he pretends that he's moderate when he is absolutely not moderate.
I mean, super not moderate.
By the way, Biden is completely collapsing in New Hampshire as well.
Biden is falling apart.
Elizabeth Warren is stagnant.
I think she is toast.
Biden at least can make the case to his people that if he holds on to South Carolina, maybe he'll do okay there.
But again, the polls in South Carolina have been tightening fairly a lot as well.
Biden is now running at like 11% in the last two polls in New Hampshire, just disastrous stuff for Joe Biden.
And he's gonna have to show some signs of life to his supporters or he is going to be toast forthwith Now, with all of that said, the latest East Carolina YouPoll still shows Biden blowing everybody out in South Carolina, right?
It shows Biden at 37.
This is taken pre-Iowa, though.
Biden at 37.
Tom Steyer at 19.
And that actually is a sign of possibility for Michael Bloomberg, right?
Because Michael Bloomberg is just like Tom Steyer, except more so.
Tom Steyer has spent like $75 million.
Bloomberg has spent $200 million on this race.
Particularly in Super Tuesday States.
So this race is a complete mess.
The person with the easiest path, by far at this point, is Bernie.
Because Bernie is the most well known, he's got a machine, he's got a movement behind him, and he has a lot of small dollar donors that are just throwing off money.
All of that shows benefit for him, but the fragmentary nature of the field and the possibility that you could see, let's say that Bernie Well, let's say that Biden falls apart so badly in South Carolina he gets out.
Well, that opens the door to either Buttigieg or Bloomberg or somebody else.
So...
It's a mess out there.
Biden, for his part, is panicking.
He's prepping for the debate.
But what exactly is he going to do that he hasn't done before?
Presumably, he's going to have to get aggressive with Bernie.
Presumably, he's going to have to get aggressive mostly with Buttigieg and attack Buttigieg.
Buttigieg has been fairly smooth on defense.
Buttigieg has been able to sort of push off all of the attacks on him.
And also, I'm not sure that the experience attack really matters much to Democrats since they elected to the presidency twice a guy who had had five minutes in the United States Senate.
If they really wanted somebody who had done anything in his life, they wouldn't be looking at Bernie, who's been a useless piece of crap for the last six decades.
The bottom line is that they're looking for somebody who sort of mirrors vision, makes them feel good about themselves, and Buttigieg is doing that far more so than Biden.
This is the problem for Joe Biden.
According to the Washington Post, outside the castle-themed Radisson Hotel where Joe Biden has been staying, his campaign bus was parked and ready for events.
But on Thursday, just five days before the crucial primary here, the candidate was nowhere to be found.
Biden spent Thursday gathered with his top advisors at his home in Wilmington, Delaware, seeking a reset and perhaps a last-ditch effort to save his candidacy, beginning with a debate on Friday night.
He held no public events.
He's set to appear on all the Sunday shows on Sunday, because he needs the publicity.
Following dismal results in the Iowa caucuses that have rattled many in his orbit, his campaign is now simultaneously trying to lower expectations here, some suggesting they'd consider a finish as low as third place victory, while bracing for a second straight difficult election day.
In one troublesome sign for the financially strapped campaign, it canceled nearly $150,000 in TV ads in South Carolina, which votes February 29th, and moved the spending to Nevada, whose February 22nd contest follows New Hampshire's.
The move seemed to acknowledge that Biden's campaign cannot sustain a continued run of bad news, which of course is true.
He needs to win Nevada outright.
Dick Harputtley, a South Carolina state senator, said from a Biden perspective, there's going to be a course correction in all three states before Super Tuesday.
He's got to have sharper elbows.
He suggested those inside the campaign realize the gravity of the moment and that Biden had to better explain the differences with his opponents.
The problem is that his campaign is not exactly built for comeback kid Bill Clinton, New Hampshire type moments, right?
It's an old campaign.
It's a doddering campaign.
He hasn't bothered to do any of the groundwork.
He just assumed he was going to sail to the nomination, that he was owed the nomination.
And people didn't feel that way about him in the same way that they felt about Hillary Clinton.
Our bootlion says history may write the best thing that ever happened to Joe Biden was getting gut punched in Iowa.
It woke him up.
It woke his campaign up, his supporters up.
They were complacent.
You've got to talk about the other guy.
But at least on Thursday, it was the other guy talking about Biden.
Pete Buttigieg was going after Biden.
He said, if your focus is on electability, it ain't Biden who's the most electable.
It's me.
Now, in a second, We're gonna get to Bernie versus Buttigieg because now this is a three candidate race and really one of those candidates is in serious trouble, right?
That candidate who's in serious trouble the most, obviously, is Biden.
And we'll talk about the radicalism of Pete Buttigieg, which has been completely ignored, right?
He's been able to pretend that he's actually a member of the moderate coterie simply because Bernie is an out-and-out socialist and Buttigieg isn't.
But Buttigieg is no moderate.
We'll get to that in just one second.
First, The Second Amendment is incredibly important.
The reason that I am a gun owner is for ideological and self-defense reasons.
The Second Amendment was designed to protect your rights.
The whole purpose of the Second Amendment is to protect you from a government that would violate the Second Amendment.
You know I feel really strongly about this.
Our Founding Fathers also felt strongly about this, and you know who else feels strongly about this?
The people over at Bravo Company Manufacturing.
Bravo Company started in the garage of a Marine veteran In Hartland, Wisconsin, the people at Bravo Company MFG support the right of responsible private individuals to have the access and ability to employ the same tools as civilian law enforcement as a means of defending ourselves, our loved ones, our communities, our freedoms should a threatening situation ever arise.
And the purpose of, again, owning these guns is that a threatening situation never will arise.
They're an inherent deterrent.
Bravo Company is not a sporting arms company.
They design, engineer, manufacture life-saving equipment.
BCM assumes that when a rifle leaves their shop, it will be used in a life-or-death situation by a responsible citizen, law enforcement officer, or soldier overseas, so quality is of utmost value to them.
Every single component of a BCM rifle is hand-assembled and tested by Americans in Heartland, Wisconsin to a life-saving standard.
You can check them out, by the way.
Over at Bravo Company MFG, their products are just astoundingly good.
They've got everything from M4 carbines, to marksman rifles, to stocks, to grips.
I mean, they've got everything that you're possibly going to need, and it's all top quality.
I mean, I've really checked it out.
To learn more about Bravo Company Manufacturing, head on over to BravoCompanyMFG.com, where you can discover more about their products, special offers, and upcoming news.
That is BravoCompanyMFG.com.
Again, BravoCompanyMFG.com.
Go check them out.
Really great folks.
Also, one more note.
In July last year, I told you about this awesome podcast, Apollo 11, What We Saw, hosted by my friend, Bill Whittle.
Well, the show took you back in time to experience living the space age.
Now, Bill has a new season of the show.
This time, Bill takes you back to the Cold War.
The series is fantastic.
The story is well told.
The setting is brilliantly descriptive.
You get a sense of what it was like to live through major events like the Berlin Airlift, the Korean War, the Cuban Missile Crisis, the Space Race.
These milestones are tied together to give you a sense of the big picture, the apocalypse that never happened.
As the host, Bill does pull you in.
He makes the story engaging and entertaining and fascinating and riveting.
We're having him on the radio show a little bit later today.
Whether you remember living through the events or whether you do not.
We've already released two episodes of the 12-part series, so you already have some to catch up on.
You should go listen now, because it has never been more relevant than this year, where the left is going full-blown communist in many of their policies and their language.
The podcast emphasizes the battle not only for capitalism, but also for civilization.
All you have to do, just go over to dailywire.com slash coldwar and start listening to this incredibly important story that is really superbly told.
If you wonder why communism was evil, why Reagan labeled it the evil empire, Go check out dailywire.com slash cold war.
It's really solid stuff.
Also, it is that glorious time of the week when I give a shout out to a Daily Wire subscriber.
Today, it's Matt on Twitter.
He understands how to enjoy life's simple pleasures.
In this picture, Matt's elite beverage vessel is sitting outside in front of his transportation from the future.
The caption reads, Real Daily Wire, riding my one wheel, listening to Ben Shapiro, sipping my hot leftist tears on a cold winter day.
What could be more wonderful?
Wonderful.
Hashtag leftist tears tumbler.
The answer, Matt, Nothing.
Zero things.
We are so glad we could bring a little joy to your humdrum life.
Now, don't go living out your Matt Splatt Twitter handle, literally.
Stay safe on your future mobile, my friend.
Thank you for the picture.
Now, gang, final note.
If you haven't noticed already, this is a crazy year.
You're gonna need updates.
You're gonna need everything.
You're gonna need our app.
You're gonna need to subscribe over at Daily Wire so that you can get all the things.
We're giving you 20% off all new memberships.
So what exactly are you waiting for?
Again, all you have to use is promo code DW2020.
What do members get?
Well, they get our articles ad-free, access to all of our live broadcasts, and our show library, the full three hours of The Ben Shapiro Show, select bonus content, Access to the mailbag, and now, my election insight op-eds.
Plus, our new all-access tier gets you into live online Q&A discussions with me, Andrew Klavan, Matt Walsh, Michael Moles, plus our site's writers and special guests.
Let us answer your questions and help you stay one step ahead of the left.
If you haven't already, download the Daily Wire app so you can get push notifications for breaking news and special coverage.
All of this is awesome.
Again, use promo code DW2020 for 20% off.
By the way, you're seeing clips here of the Ben Shapiro Sunday special.
That is coming back in short order.
Join today, stay informed on all things 2020.
Again, that's promo code DW2020.
20.
We are the largest, fastest growing conservative podcast and radio show in the nation.
So here's the problem for Democrats.
They are not moderates.
Like, nobody who's running is a moderate with maybe the exception of Biden.
Even he is not particularly moderate.
Even the ones who are sort of moderate, like Michael Bloomberg, are trying to pretend they're not moderate because if they acknowledge that they are moderate, then they have a problem, which is that the base doesn't like them very much.
So instead what you get is one candidate, basically the difference between Buttigieg and Sanders is that Buttigieg pretends he's a moderate and Sanders is not.
So Sanders just says the quiet part out loud.
Sort of.
Sort of.
Even he lies a little bit, right?
He says he's a socialist, but only like Finland and Denmark.
Only like Finland and Denmark, right?
This is his routine all the time.
Here's Bernie yesterday.
He was asked, how would you convince Americans concerned about the socialist label to vote for you?
And here's Bernie lying about what he actually thinks.
My definition of socialism, needless to say, is a little bit different.
And I think if you look at countries around the world, look at countries in Scandinavia, Finland, Sweden, Denmark, what do they have?
Everybody in those countries has healthcare as a human right.
They vary a little bit, but by and large, it is a right.
You don't have to take out your wallet.
It is available to all people.
Okay, again, nationalized healthcare does not mean that you live in a socialist country.
It means you want to socialize medicine, which, by the way, is wildly unpopular in the United States because his version of socializing medicine is not the version that you see in Switzerland or that you see in Singapore, where there's an individual mandate and then you buy into a private but not heavily regulated health insurance sector.
Instead, Bernie's vision is that you are just taxed and then the government borrows a lot of money and then the government provides you directly healthcare and doctors and nurses and hospitals work directly for the government, which is the worst form of socialized medicine.
When Bernie says his brand of socialism is Finland and Denmark, I'm just wondering when it shifted from Cuba and the USSR and Venezuela, which he's praised fulsomely, all of them.
Like, what is his... Why?
Why?
If you actually ask the politicians of Denmark whether they are a socialist country, they will tell you straight up no.
In fact, the Prime Minister of Denmark recently spoke at Harvard Kennedy School of Government, and somebody asked him about the socialism in Denmark.
He said, what socialism?
We're a capitalist country.
So Bernie's just lying here.
Even Bernie lies about how radical he is, but at least Bernie is a little more honest than the other people in his caucus.
Bernie says, yeah, sure, my economic plans, yes, I want climate change, and yes, there will be some job loss.
I will acknowledge to you, there will be some job loss.
Well, yeah, people are not going to be, I mean, he's cutting ads against himself at this point.
Trump does not believe in climate change.
And in not believing in the reality of climate change, what he is doing is threatening the very well-being of kids and future generations.
And that is unacceptable.
But from an economic point of view, he's also wrong.
We can create, yes, there will be some job loss.
I acknowledge that.
But what we can do is create a heck of a lot more jobs As we retrofit our older buildings, as we move to wind, solar, geothermal, and other sustainable energies.
What he's talking about is nuts.
I mean, it's fully nuts.
The amount of wind power that is present in the United States powering the electrical grid is de minimis, effectively.
Okay, so when he's talking about there will be job loss, welcome to the ads against Bernie Sanders.
And here's the inherent problem for the Democrats.
Bernie may be the most viable candidate in the primaries because, again, he has the lowest, he has the highest base, right?
The floor for him is the highest.
It's kind of like Trump in 2016.
The floor for him is very high.
It's 20, 25%.
That may be enough to get him through the primaries because that 20, 25 starts to look like 30 or 35 as the field consolidates.
But if Bernie's actually in a general election, The worries about his electability aren't going to go away.
They're not.
I mean, Bernie himself acknowledged that the voter turnout in Iowa where he's declared massive victory.
The voter turnout in Iowa was abysmal.
It was like 170,000 people showed up to vote in Iowa.
That's the same number that showed up to vote in 2016.
And it is about 40,000, 50,000 lower than showed up to vote in 2008.
They were hoping it would be 240,000.
It was way lower than that.
Bernie acknowledges that.
He keeps, he was asked about his electability too.
I mean, he has literally last night, he was asked about his electability.
And his answer was, well, a lot of young people showed up to vote.
So we're going to turn out audiences that have never historically voted.
That was exactly what Jeremy Corbyn said in Britain.
And then nobody showed up to vote.
Here's Bernie acknowledging that nobody showed up in Iowa either.
Senator, a key part of your argument for the general election, your electability, is that you're going to boost turnout by bringing all these people into the process that haven't been voting.
Iowa turnout doesn't look like it was higher than last time.
Does that concern you?
It does.
And I would have liked to have seen a higher turnout.
I think I can probably speak for every other candidate.
Yeah, except that if you win, then your case has to be, yeah, the turnout was great because people are enthused.
Except what if people aren't that enthused?
Herein lies the problem.
Bernie can't even acknowledge how he's going to get his healthcare plans enacted because he's not going to get them enacted.
Nobody's going to vote for this crap.
Earlier this week, Vice President Biden said, and I quote, the Speaker of the House isn't for it.
Most Democrats in Congress are not for it.
So how is it going to pass?
Talking about your plan, how is it going to move?
How does it get done?
Well, actually, most members of Congress, I believe, are I think the majority are on board for Medicare for all in the House, not the Senate.
This is how you do it.
And this is the answer I'm going to give tonight time and time again.
That what our campaign is about, and I admit it, it is a different type of campaign.
Because I'm not here to tell you, vote for me and I'm going to do all these great things.
Ain't going to happen that way.
It never happens that way.
Instead, I'm here to tell you that I'm going to say that we should do it.
And then magically, a unicorn will arrive and I will be riding on its back, eating a cup of pudding.
And that will just happen.
Hillary Clinton was criticizing Bernie correctly.
She says, listen, he keeps promising the moon he can't deliver.
She was on Ellen doing her non-presidential tour.
And she gets this right.
Now, here's the problem for the Democrats.
Democratic party members, the base, they don't really care.
They just want to hear the promises.
They don't want to hear how they actually get implemented.
But here was Hillary making the point that Bernie can't effectuate any of this stuff.
You've got to be responsible for what you say and what you say you're going to do.
We need to rebuild trust in our fellow Americans and in our institutions.
And if you promise the moon and you can't deliver the moon, then that's going to be one more indicator of how, you know, we just can't trust each other.
So, it's not good theater, it's not maybe good politics anymore, but I think you should tell people what you mean, mean what you say, and have some sense of responsibility for how you would get anything done that you talk about.
I can't believe I'm about to say this, but Hillary Clinton is being more honest than Bernie Sanders.
That is a reality, what she is saying right there.
Meanwhile, speaking of dishonest people, Pete Buttigieg has been masquerading as the moderate alternative to Bernie Sanders, and he's been able to get away with it because Bernie is so off-the-wall loony left, and because Joe Biden has been collapsing, and he's been almost physically collapsing.
But Buttigieg is no moderate either.
There is no moderation inside this Democratic Party.
Pete Buttigieg was on The View yesterday, and he was asked by Meghan McCain about late-term abortion, like partial birth abortion, and Pete Buttigieg refused to even disassociate from late-term abortion, which is madness.
Very few Democrats are into the idea of being able to abort a baby at 8 months in the womb.
I don't know who's for this, but it's an evil position that once you hit 35 weeks of pregnancy, you should be looking at the possibility of killing the child?
Are you out of your damned mind?
But Pete Buttigieg thinks that should be perfectly legal.
Here's Meghan McCain incredulously asking him the question.
Does anybody seriously think that's what these cases are about?
I think that there are people pushing for that, yes.
Think about the situation.
If this is a late-term situation, then by definition, it's one where a woman was expecting to carry the pregnancy to term.
Then she gets the most perhaps devastating news of her life.
We're talking about families that may have picked out a name, may be assembling a crib, and they learn something excruciating, and are faced with this terrible choice.
And I don't know what to tell them.
morally about what they should do.
I just know that I trust her and her decision medically or morally and isn't going to be any better because the government is commanding her to do it.
It's absolutely madness.
I mean, what he's talking about is eugenics there, right?
When somebody gets horrible news that a baby is going to have some sort of terrible disease right before birth, they decide to kill the baby.
What about that?
That doesn't why should the limiting point be birth at that point?
Also, it is simply untrue when he says that all late term abortions by their very nature are people who get bad news.
That's just not true.
Late-term abortions, as it very often turns out, are done for the same reason that the vast majority of abortions are done out of choice and convenience.
So the fact that Pete Buttigieg is overtly defending late-term abortion on a moral level is pretty astonishing stuff.
Pete Buttigieg is no moderate.
He's not even close to a moderate.
And even things that he says that sound moderate are not actually moderate.
So let me give you an example.
Yesterday, Pete Buttigieg Did the CNN Town Hall, and he was talking about how teachers are paid.
And his suggestion is that America would be better if we paid teachers like doctors.
Now, this is ridiculous on a couple of scores.
One, teachers do not go to school for as long as doctors, nor do they have as particular a skill set, nor is there a supply and demand problem with teachers.
The fact is that if you're a first grade teacher, you are incredibly valuable to first graders.
You're not as valuable to first graders as a doctor is to somebody who just had a heart attack.
Nor have you had the training.
There's a serious supply and demand issue here.
It is fairly easy to get trained to be a first grade teacher.
It is very, very difficult to be trained as a doctor.
I know this because, once again, my wife is a doctor, which only gives me credibility insofar as I accompanied her on that decade-long journey of crap in order so that she become a doctor.
To suggest that she should be paid the same as a third-grade teacher.
See, in order for this to make sense, what he's saying is teachers should be paid like doctors.
What he really means is doctors should be paid like teachers.
Because he's not suggesting that teachers get paid $300,000 a year.
If he were suggesting that teachers be paid $300,000 a year, he'd be very much in favor of private education and open competition.
He'd be anti-teachers unions, which are the reason the teachers don't get paid more.
The reason that teachers do not get paid more on an individual level, not on an average level, on an individual level, is because no matter how good a teacher you are, you may be booted out of your job because of seniority rules established by unions in order to protect older teachers who may not be as good and have been in the job longer.
But here's Pete Buttigieg saying silly things.
I mean, this is, again, Bernie pie in the sky kind of stuff.
America would be better if we paid teachers like doctors?
Yeah, America would be better if we paid line cooks like doctors.
But the problem is, it's much easier to nationalize systems and have doctors paid like teachers than to do the hard thing that Pete Buttigieg would never want to do, and that is actually pay teachers like doctors based on skill set, based on the performance of their students, and based on the need for the skill level of a particular teacher.
He's not willing to do that.
I'd love to hear him explain to Randy Weingarten over at the American Federation of Teachers why he is now in favor of a merit-based pay system for teachers, because he clearly is not.
You should have a little more support.
In fact, a lot more support.
I would argue that if we could honor our teachers a little more like we do our soldiers, and pay our teachers a little more like we do our doctors, this entire country would be a better place.
And again, being married to a teacher, I have seen just how much teachers put in and invest in not just having to pick up supplies for your classroom, but emotionally invest in the well-being of kids.
Conversations with parents long after hours, late nights, grading papers, and yet look at what you're up against.
Yeah, what you're up against is a system that is stacked against you in terms of a government that pays you not all that much based on your merit, but instead pays you based on union contracts that you have signed with the state.
You're also stacked up against a governmental system that demands things from you that really ought to be put on the back of parents.
I mean, the fact is that if you want to look at school performance, the first thing that you ought to look at is not the teachers.
The first thing that you ought to look at is the family structures of the students, because that is what is correlative.
I mean, that is not a racial point.
That is a simple demographic point across races.
That parents who have more time and more energy and more focus on their kids with regard to their schooling are going to do better no matter what school they go to.
But again, this is all pie-in-the-sky nonsense.
Buttigieg is just as radical as Bernie.
He just hides it better.
That's all.
I mean, listen, this is ridiculous.
Buttigieg says he's going to pay for his health care plan, which of course is Medicaid for all who want it.
And he acknowledges that this is basically the first step toward Medicare for all, because once you establish a public option paid for by taxpayers, then employers are now going to have an incentive to not give their employees health care, at which point they can toss people onto the public roles.
You're going to have to increase the expenditure on taxpayer dollars.
The public plan will be funded by Congress.
What is popular for Congress to do is to continue to fund that at exorbitant rates, undercutting insurance companies, and eventually you run the insurance companies out of business and you end up with Medicare for all.
That is what the public option is designed to do.
Here's Pete Buttigieg saying the way he's going to pay for that is by repealing Trump's tax cuts.
Ain't enough money there, my friend.
If you think that simply by repealing the Trump tax cuts, which, by the way, disproportionately benefited people in the middle class, then good luck to you.
All we've got to do to pay for it is take two steps.
Part of that 1.5 comes from rolling back a Trump corporate tax cut that went to the wealthiest and the biggest corporations, didn't do us any good, and has created a huge deficit.
We roll that back, that does most of the work.
No, it doesn't do most of the work, and when you do corporate tax increases, corporations lay people off.
What do you think they are doing with their money?
They're not just paying it out to people, and if they do pay it out to people, you know what those people do?
They then pay income tax.
The economic either illiteracy or dishonesty here is astonishing.
But again, as Biden collapses, Buttigieg is picking up the pieces, which opens the way for Michael Bloomberg, who is writing full-on op-eds in the New York Times about fixing income inequality as the ninth richest person on Earth.
So good luck to him in all of this.
The Democratic Party may be irrevocably broken at this point, which is why it is vital that President Trump not blow it on the shoals of his own emotionality.
Because seriously, seriously, do you want these people running the country?
Is that what you would like?
Okay, time for a quick thing I like, and then a quick thing that I hate.
Things that I like.
I talked about things that are both stupid and entertaining, silly and entertaining, and I mentioned Michael Bay movies.
Well, one of the great Michael Bay movies of all time is, of course, The Rock.
First, Sean Connery.
Nicolas Cage.
Nicolas Cage being full Nicolas Cage.
Sean Connery being the best thing ever, because Sean Connery is tremendous.
Ed Harris, who I love, in this movie also.
Great action movie, The Rock.
Here's a little bit of the preview.
There's a hostage situation on Alcatraz.
Hostage?
Eighty-one tourists.
The Rock has become a tourist attraction.
It's just spectacularly wonderful and dumb and entertaining.
And it's great.
And Sean Connery makes everything better.
Sean Connery is just the best.
So, if you've never seen The Rock, you're missing out.
It's great.
It is... Nicolas Cage made a series of really cheesy and wonderful action flicks in the 90s, ranging from Face Off, which I've recommended on the show, to Con Air, which I'm sure at some point I will recommend on the show.
And The Rock may be the best of them.
It really is a great movie.
Okay, time for a quick thing that I hate.
So it turns out that, you know, it's a not great place to live, a communist country.
Which is weird, because every time you hear from people like Bernie Sanders, he's talking about the wonderful things that are accomplishable if you have a one-party system run by people who truly care about equality.
But here's the reality.
China is a horrible place to live.
The latest evidence that China is a horrible place to live, courtesy of the New York Times, the Chinese authorities resorted to increasingly extreme measures in Wuhan on Thursday to try to halt the spread of the deadly coronavirus.
Ordering house-to-house searches, rounding up the sick, and warehousing them in enormous quarantine centers.
The urgent, seemingly improvised steps come amid a worsening humanitarian crisis in Wuhan, one exacerbated by tactics that have left the city of 11 million with a death rate from the coronavirus of 4.1% as of Thursday.
Staggeringly higher than the rest of the country's rate of 0.17%.
With the sick being herded into makeshift quarantine camps with minimal medical care, a growing sense of abandonment and fear has taken hold in Wuhan, fueling the sense that the city and the surrounding province of Hubei are being sacrificed for the greater good of China.
They're literally herding people into quarantine centers where they have basically no medical care and assuming that a lot of those people are just going to die because they don't have basic medical care.
Well done, communism.
Everybody was paying homage in the media to the fact that they built a hospital in 10 days.
Look what they can do when they put their minds to it.
Yes, and when you activate capitalism in that direction, you can do this stuff much faster and much better.
But basically, this entire city has now been turned into a quarantine center because communists Did not pass the information up the chain, because they did not make public the information, because they did not call for help for outside resources, and because they knew that in a pinch, they could always do something like this.
The harsh new moves in Wuhan, the epicenter of the outbreak, clearly signaled the ruling Communist Party's alarm that it had failed to gain control of the coronavirus epidemic, which has overwhelmed the country's healthcare system.
And threatened to paralyze China, the world's most populous country and second largest economy.
The steps were announced by the top official leading the country's response to the virus, Vice Premier Sun Chunlin, as she visited Wuhan on Thursday.
They evoked images of the emergency measures taken to combat the 1918 Spanish flu pandemic that killed tens of millions of people worldwide.
Despite the severity of the new measures, however, they offered no guarantee of success.
Apparently, this looked like a military campaign as Sun ordered medical workers to mobilize into round-the-clock shifts to visit each home in Wuhan, check the temperature of all residents, and interview close contacts of any infected patients.
Word of the new restrictions arrived as the people of Wuhan received an emotional gut punch from the news that a doctor who had warned of the outbreak in December and was silenced by police for it had died from coronavirus infection.
This is the other story that tells you how garbage communism is.
His name is Dr. Li Wenliang.
He issued a warning about the strange new virus back in December.
He was called up by the cops.
He was arrested.
He was silenced.
Again, according to the New York Times, he was the doctor who tried to sound a warning that a troubled cluster of viral infections in a Chinese province could grow out of control and was then summoned for a middle-of-the-night reprimand over his candor.
Because in China, first rule, protect the party.
Never make the party look bad.
Disease doesn't exist in China, just as poverty didn't exist in the Soviet Union.
Just as everything's working fine in the Soviet Union, bread lines are good.
Everybody gets bread.
Because the first priority is the protection of the party, and because the government can never be wrong, because the solution to all problems is the government, that means that if you point out a problem, and you make it public, and you make it public that the government isn't doing anything about the problem, you are the problem.
On Friday, this doctor, Li Wenliang, died after contracting the very illness he had told medical school classmates about in an online chatroom, the coronavirus.
He joined the more than 600 other Chinese who have died in an outbreak that has now spread across the globe.
According to Wuhan Central City Hospital, Dr. Li had the misfortune to be infected during the fight against the novel coronavirus pneumonia epidemic, and all-out efforts to save him failed.
We express our deep regret and condolences.
In early January, he was called in by both medical officials and the cops, and forced to sign a statement denouncing his warning as an unfounded and illegal rumor.
Top-down systems of government control.
Aren't they wonderful?
He points out that there's a problem, and the first reaction is, call him in and have the medical authorities shut him down.
But they're scientists, guys.
They're bureaucrats.
Scientific bureaucrats.
And we should always trust them, rather than people who are attempting to alert us to real danger.
One commenter posted in reply to the hospital's announcement.
We'll not forget the doctor who spoke up about an illness that was called Rumor.
What else can we do?
The only thing is not to forget.
Dr. Li was 34.
He was expecting a second child with his wife.
He had been a relatively obscure ophthalmologist in Wuhan, the capital of Hubei province and the epicenter of the coronavirus.
But in recent weeks, he became a potent icon for Chinese people, angry that a viral outbreak had swelled unchecked.
into a full-blown crisis and that the doctor who had spoken out was initially punished.
His death poses a singularly delicate issue for the Chinese government.
Even as officials have battled the epidemic, they've also tried to stifle widespread criticism that they mismanaged their response to the initial outbreak in Wuhan, a city of 11 million.
And in recent days, they've stepped up censorship again, which is always good news because lack of information for the general public when a pandemic is in the offing is always good for the world.
After a rush of online criticism and investigative reports by emboldened Chinese journalists exposed to missteps by officials who underestimated and underplayed the threat of the coronavirus.
Dr. Lee's death has also exposed a troubling aspect of the epidemic that goes unmentioned in official statistics, the number of doctors and nurses and medical workers infected by the virus.
Some unverified pictures of what appear to be government data have indicated that hundreds of hospital workers may have been infected in Wuhan.
And this would be a particularly grave example of the government failing these doctors and nurses if they knew that this coronavirus was particularly virulent.
And if they knew how to protect their doctors and nurses in the first place and they didn't tell anybody, well, then those deaths are on their hands.
Earlier in the outbreak, a prominent infectious disease expert said a single patient had infected 14 medical workers at one hospital.
The median of patients is between 49 and 56, but Dr. Li was unusually young to be infected by this.
He said on December 30th in a chat room that this resembled SARS, not long after his reprimand he was vindicated as thousands of Wuhan residents fell ill with fever and pneumonia symptoms.
When the announcement came that he had died, many comments accused the authorities of having sought to prolong Dr. Lee's life until deep into the night to hide the news of his death.
Again, China is a horrible country to live in.
We try to pretend that they are not a horrible country because presumably we don't want to acknowledge that they are a nascent Soviet Union, just in a different part of the world.
But as much as we try to pretend they will be what they will be, and that country is a one-party dictatorship, The communism, always a failure, always a giant fail.
Alrighty, we'll be back here later today with two additional hours of content.
Also, questions in the mailbag, so make sure you send your questions in by subscribing at dailyware.com, use code DW2020, and we'll see you here in a little bit for two additional hours of content.
Otherwise, take the weekend off, you know, knock off tonight, and take a couple days off, and we'll see you here back on Monday.
I'm Ben Shapiro, this is The Ben Shapiro Show.
The Ben Shapiro Show is produced by Colton Haas.
Directed by Mike Joyner.
Executive producer Jeremy Boring.
Senior producer Jonathan Hay.
Supervising producer Mathis Glover and Robert Sterling.
Assistant director Pavel Lydowsky.
Technical producer Austin Stevens.
Playback and media operated by Nick Sheehan.
Associate producer Katie Swinnerton.
Edited by Adam Siovitz.
Audio is mixed by Mike Koromina.
Hair and makeup is by Nika Geneva.
The Ben Shapiro Show is a Daily Wire production.
Copyright Daily Wire 2020.
On The Matt Walsh Show, we're not just discussing politics.
We're talking culture, faith, family, all of the things that are really important to you.
▲
Export Selection