Knowledge Fight Interactive Search Tool

All Episodes

Previous Next

Feb. 19, 2020 - The Ben Shapiro Show

01:04:17

Pardon Me | Ep. 956

Large

Audio Only |

Scroll

Time	Text
	President Trump's conflict with Attorney General William Barr appears to escalate.
	Bernie continues to skate on his radicalism.
	And Pete Buttigieg takes off the moderate mask.
	I'm Ben Shapiro.
	This is the Ben Shapiro Show.
	This show is sponsored by ExpressVPN.
	Don't like the government spying on you?
	Well, visit expressvpn.com slash ben to stay safely anonymous.
	In just a second, we're going to get to all the news of the day.
	But first, let me remind you, everything is chaotic and insane.
	There's a serious possibility the Democrats are about to nominate somebody who would basically destroy the American economy and has pledged to do so with every fiber of his being.
	That might have an impact on your stock holdings.
	Now might be a smart time to diversify into something like precious metals and beat the rush.
	This is one of the reasons why I have recommended that people check out my friends over at Birch Gold.
	If you haven't yet taken the first step of requesting a free information kit on gold, go ahead and do it.
	If you haven't converted a portion of your eligible IRA or 401k to an IRA in precious metals, At least have the conversation.
	Birchgold will go to work and make things super simple for you.
	There is no obligation, so you have nothing to lose to take that first step.
	Birchgold Group has thousands of satisfied customers, countless five-star reviews, and A-plus rating with the Better Business Bureau.
	As I say, everybody should have at least some precious metals in their portfolio as a hedge against government manipulation, against inflation, against economic downturns.
	Text Ben, that's my name, Ben.
	to 474747 during the month of February.
	And when you open an IRA in Precious Metals, you get a signed copy of my book, The Right Side of History, for free.
	This deal was extended from January.
	Don't know how long it's going to last.
	Text my name, Ben, to 474747.
	In February, open an IRA in Precious Metals and get a signed copy of my book, The Right Side of History.
	Ask all your questions, get all the information.
	And then when you're ready to invest in Precious Metals, talk to the people I trust over at Birchgold.com.
	Text Ben to 474747.
	That's my name, Ben, to 474747.
	Alrighty, so the big story of the day is that the President appears to be at odds once again with his own Attorney General.
	And again, this comes from the fact that Trump simply does not understand the value of tact.
	He does not understand what it means to just be quiet every so often.
	And this has led to an open conflict between Trump, who continues to sound off like a talk radio caller on virtually everything that he sees around him, as though he's an observer of the political scene and not, you know, the most powerful person on the face of the Yesterday, the Washington Post reported that during President Trump's Senate impeachment trial, Democrats repeatedly asserted he is not above the law.
	Since his acquittal two weeks ago, the president has taken a series of steps aimed at showing essentially that he is the law.
	Now, that, of course, is not seriously true.
	The president has every authority to take people who he believes are militating against him in the White House and move them out of the White House.
	The executive branch is a unitary branch of government.
	That means the president is in charge of that branch and he has hiring and firing power inside that branch except for the specified offices that have to be approved by the Senate of the United States.
	It is also true that the presidency carries along with it the pardon power and the commutation power, which we're going to get to in just one second.
	I, for one, have long suggested, Republican or Democrat, that pardon and commutation power is stupid and should not be given to the President of the United States.
	That the reason it was originally granted was specifically to attempt to foreclose political prosecutions because you never know that the next president might come in and then immediately pardon or commute the sentences of people who are politically prosecuted.
	With that said, And the idea that the president of the United States, or the governor of a state for that matter, should have the ability to overrule a jury after a long trial simply because that governor knew the person or had feelings about the person?
	That seems to me to be a large-scale stupidity that should be rectified immediately.
	Again, I've been consistent about this since the Clinton administration, so this is nothing new for me, but that is indeed a power of the presidency.
	And President Trump found it yesterday.
	He found that pardon and commutation button.
	He just started hitting it.
	Like baby Groot in Guardians of the Galaxy 2.
	He just started hitting that pardon and commutation button over and over like he was gonna bring him a Diet Coke.
	It was fun times for the president yesterday.
	He decided that he was going to pardon or commute the sentences of a bunch of people.
	So, for example, yesterday he pardoned seven people, including the so-called junk bond king, Michael Milken.
	There's actually a fairly solid case for why Michael Milken never should have been prosecuted back in the 1980s, that that actually was an overzealous prosecution.
	But Bernie Kerik, the former New York City police commissioner with whom Trump is friends, that guy was fairly clearly engaged in bribery and corruption.
	He also commuted the sentence of Rod Blagojevich, the former governor of Illinois, who is as corrupt as anybody who has been in modern American politics.
	Blagojevich, of course, he knew from his days on Celebrity Apprentice.
	There were 11 people who benefited from executive grants of clemency that president issued on Tuesday.
	Blagojevich, of course, was sentenced to 14 years in prison in 2011 for trying to sell or trade to the highest bidder of the Senate seat.
	Barack Obama vacated after he was elected president.
	Apparently, he literally was caught on tape saying to people that he was not going to give up that effing seat for nothing.
	Amazing.
	And the president decided that it was time for him to have his sentence commuted, which is kind of ridiculous.
	He also pardoned Eddie DiBartolo Jr.
	Former owner of the San Francisco 49ers who pled guilty in 1998 to concealing an extortion plot by a former governor of Louisiana.
	He was prosecuted after he agreed to pay 400 grand to the former governor Edwin Edwards to secure a riverboat gambling license for his gambling consortium.
	Now again, that one maybe looks a little bit different in the sense that he was actually solicited for a bribe.
	He wasn't the one who was actually pushing for the bribe apparently.
	He also pardoned Ariel Friedler, who is a technology entrepreneur who pled guilty in 2014 to conspiracy to access a protected computer without authorization and served two months in prison.
	He commuted the sentence of Chinese Nicole Hall, who was sentenced in 2006 after being convicted on various drug charges, so that one is more along the lines of his criminal justice reform or his pardon or commutation of sentence for Alice Johnson.
	He pardoned Bernie Kerrick.
	Which is pretty controversial.
	He pardoned Michael Milken, which is pretty controversial, but again, there were a bunch of people, including the prosecutors in his original case, Milken, who suggested that he probably shouldn't have been prosecuted.
	He commuted the sentence of Crystal Munoz, who was found guilty in 2008 of conspiring to possess with intent to distribute marijuana, and she was sentenced to, apparently, two decades in prison.
	Again, that one is more along the lines of criminal justice reform.
	Apparently he commuted the sentence of one Judith Negron, who was sentenced to 35 years in prison in 2011 for her role in orchestrating a Medicare fraud scheme.
	Again, this is more criminal justice reform type stuff.
	He apparently pardoned Paul Pogue, the founder and former chief executive of a large construction company in Texas, and David Safavian, a top federal procurement official under President Bush, who was sentenced to a year in prison in 2009 for covering up his ties to Jack Abramoff.
	So there's a lot of accusation that the president had engaged in Some form of corruption by issuing these pardons, or at the very least, he was misusing the pardon power.
	That was clearest when it came to Rod Blagojevich, who was guilty as the day is long and really should not have been let out of prison early.
	With that said, it's the president's sort of inconsistent use of this.
	I mean, the entire House GOP delegation in Illinois blasted the pardon for Rod Blagojevich.
	My guess is that President Trump probably thought he was doing something bipartisan because Blagojevich was a Democrat.
	But the Illinois House GOP delegation, which includes Adam Kinzinger, Darren LaHood, John Shimkus, Mike Boss, and Rodney Davis, issued a statement saying a commutation of Blagojevich's sentence would set a dangerous precedent.
	President Trump went ahead with it anyway.
	All of this comes amidst the president fulminating, being very angry at a lot of the Justice Department activities surrounding, for example, Roger Stone.
	There's a report from the Washington Post yesterday that William Barr has now said that if President Trump continues to tweet about ongoing cases, it's gonna force him to step down.
	According to the Washington Post, Barr told people close to Trump, inside and outside the White House, he is considering quitting over Trump's tweets about the Justice Department investigations.
	Foreshadowing a possible confrontation between the president and his AG over the independence of the Justice Department.
	Yesterday, the president declared that he was the chief law enforcement officer in the country.
	Of course, that title is officially the AG's, but it is also true that the AG works at the pleasure of the president.
	And so the president does, in fact, have the constitutional authority to intervene in particular cases.
	The proper remedy for a president misusing that wouldn't, in fact, be either impeachment or the president losing an election.
	Suffice it to say that the conflict between Barr and Trump, again, comes down to Trump not acting in his own best interest and people around him giving him good advice and President Trump ignoring it.
	This is one of the big problems for President Trump is that the president is constantly doing whatever comes into his head and then people around him tell him this is a bad idea and if he is smart he stops and if he is not smart he goes ahead and he does it anyway.
	It is simply a fact of the matter that the smart move here would be for the president to stop doing these silly things.
	I mean Trump himself is admitting that he's making life more difficult for Attorney General Barr.
	Like, Barr is trying to do his job.
	The idea that Barr is some sort of political hack for the president does not help the president, and it doesn't help Barr, and it also happens not to be particularly true.
	Trump sounding off about cases in which Barr has a role is really dumb.
	It's dumb politics.
	I mean, it's dumb law, it's dumb politics, it's dumb on every level.
	Trump, as Barr says, and again, the president's own allies are saying this, he needs to keep his piehole shut on this kind of stuff.
	Here's Trump admitting he's making Barr's life more difficult.
	I do make his job harder.
	I do agree with that.
	I think that's true.
	He's a very straight shooter.
	We have a great attorney general, and he's working very hard.
	And he's working against a lot of people that don't want to see good things happen, in my opinion.
	That's my opinion, not his opinion.
	That's my opinion.
	You'll have to ask what his opinion is.
	But I will say this.
	Social media, for me, has been very important.
	Because it gives me a voice.
	Because I don't get that voice in the press, in the media.
	I don't get that voice.
	So I'm allowed to have a voice.
	Like, he's clearly acknowledging that what he is saying is not helpful to him.
	And he's like, right, but I like tweeting.
	And it's useful to me.
	You're the president.
	You have a voice.
	I promise.
	That podium is incredibly powerful.
	The president of the United States.
	Was Barack Obama a not-powerful president because he didn't use social media in the same way as Donald Trump?
	Now, I know there are a bunch of people on the right who are screaming at their speakers and at their radios right now saying, right, but Obama had the media behind him.
	Yes, but Donald Trump is the single greatest magnet for cameras in the history of mankind.
	If Donald Trump were to publicly do anything, if Donald Trump were to publicly go out and blow on a pinwheel, the media would come and they would cover that for three hours.
	So don't tell me the president doesn't have a way to funnel his message to the public without using the dumbest possible tactics on Twitter.
	Okay, with all of that said, the reason all of that is important, of course, is because the President is in the middle of a re-election campaign.
	Trump is in the middle of a re-election campaign.
	A re-election campaign in which he is running against possibly the most dangerous Democrat in the history of the Republic to get the nomination.
	I say that without reservation, actually.
	I'm not going to say possibly.
	I think almost certainly.
	In terms of the modern Democratic Party, let's say post-Woodrow Wilson.
	Because Woodrow Wilson was actually a dangerous individual, brutally racist and all of that.
	Bernie Sanders in the modern era is the most dangerous Democratic nominee ever.
	Ever.
	And I say he's the nominee because right now, there ain't nobody stopping him.
	New poll out of South Carolina today has him tied with Joe Biden for the lead in South Carolina, which means he wins.
	Joe Biden has to show strong second to Nevada or this race is over for Joe Biden.
	And people are relying on Michael Bloomberg to step into that gap?
	There's only one problem.
	Everybody on the Democratic side of the aisle hates Bloomberg more than they hate Sanders.
	Because they wish to reward a lifelong ward of the taxpayers as opposed to somebody who's actually built a thing.
	Believe me, I am no Bloomberg defender.
	I think that Bloomberg is a paternalistic jerk.
	I think he spends his entire life Not only bossing people around in politics, but also using his money to shush people up.
	We'll get to that in just a second.
	But Bloomberg is not dangerous to the heart and soul of the country in the same way that Bernie Sanders is dangerous to the heart and soul of the country, which suggests, of course, that Trump needs to run a good race.
	It is incumbent on Trump, for the sake of the country, that he not start declaring himself, quote-unquote, the chief law enforcement officer of the country and then acting with all of the constitutional prerogatives available to him in whichever way he sees fit.
	Like, use just a little bit of common sense.
	Just, like, this much.
	I'm not saying water it down from an 11 to a 2.
	I'm saying water it down from, like, an 11 to an 8.
	That's it.
	Okay, but if the president doesn't do that, then he puts the country in serious danger of having a communist as president of the United States.
	We can get to Bernie in just a second.
	I will say one thing that is hilarious to me is the fact that Democrats can't understand how President Trump has such a good economy.
	There's a piece by Jared Bernstein, the chief economist to former VP Joe Biden and senior fellow at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, lamenting that we have such a good economy with such a terrible leader.
	And he can't figure it out.
	And the answer, of course, is that we have a good economy because Trump doesn't bother business.
	Because Trump is not in the business of stopping business.
	Trump is not in the business of punishing success.
	And this is exactly the point.
	Bernie Sanders is in that business.
	So if Trump wishes to have a strong America, if he wishes to retain the presidency, he needs to run a smart race, not just a gut-level race.
	Because the fact is, whoever is the Democratic nominee has at least a 40% shot of being President of the United States.
	Okay, in a second, we're gonna get to Bernie Sanders, who is indeed the clear frontrunner in the Democratic Party at this point.
	It scares the living hell out of me.
	It should scare the living hell out of you.
	Not because I think Bernie Sanders is likely to beat Trump.
	I do not think he is likely to beat Trump.
	But because the mere possibility of this ideologically garbage candidate being president of the United States should terrify everyone.
	Everyone of any semblance of sound mind should look at Bernie Sanders and say to themselves, forget about all of Trump's character flaws, okay?
	Forget about Trump.
	The possibility of Bernie Sanders, an 80-year-old, Socialist, who has never produced a thing, who stumps for the destruction of America's foreign policy, military, and American domestic economic power.
	That that person could be President of the United States should terrify anyone who has two brain cells to rub together.
	I mean, I find that terrifying.
	The big rap on Trump in 2016 was not that he was ideologically terrifying.
	The big rap on Trump in 2016 is that he was personally terrifying.
	As it turns out, we have a constitution built to stop personally terrifying.
	What we don't have is a constitution built to stop ideological extremists with a solid party base behind them.
	Because parties have now overcome a lot of the gaps in the American constitutional order.
	We're going to get to Bernie Sanders in just a second, who is not, in fact, a typical social democrat.
	Bernie Sanders is a communist.
	We're going to get to this in just one second.
	First, let us talk about our inability to predict the future.
	So if I could predict the future, I'd put money on this election, and presumably I would win a lot of money on this election.
	But I can't predict the future, and neither can you.
	The thing you can't predict most is what's going to happen next in life.
	Is my wife going to go into labor today?
	I have no idea.
	No one knows what's going to happen next in life.
	And this is why, when it comes to the darkest part of life, namely death, you should have life insurance.
	And sure, against the future, a lot of people Predict what they think is going to happen in the future, but they don't bother to insure for it.
	That is an irresponsible thing to do.
	Go get insured right now at PolicyGenius.com.
	Once you apply, the PolicyGenius team will handle all the paperwork and the red tape.
	And PolicyGenius doesn't just make life insurance easy, they can also help you find the right home in auto insurance or disability insurance.
	If you are concerned about the future, you should go get the insurance that you need.
	Make sure that your family is taken care of.
	Not just life insurance, home insurance, auto insurance.
	They can even find bundles for you.
	They can competitively shop all of these things out.
	Policygenius.com.
	Everyone gets the future wrong.
	You should get your insurance right, particularly life insurance.
	Don't leave your family missing, not only you, but your stream of income.
	Go check out policygenius.com right now.
	That's policygenius.com.
	Okay, so Bernie is clearly the front runner.
	And Democrats, instead of realizing that this is crisis point, That we have now reached crisis point that Bernie Sanders, who, as I say, is a lifelong ward of the state.
	I mean, the man has never held an actual job in his entire life, and he is as old as my grandparents would be.
	Really, it's amazing.
	He is a welfare queen, Bernie Sanders.
	Bernie Sanders has been living off the taxpayer dime.
	By the way, every job his wife has ever held is adjacent to his government service.
	And as we will see, that has some pretty ugly ramifications.
	That guy is leading the race right now.
	He has a clear lead in all of the national polling, all of it.
	There's another poll today showing him up past 30%, so he is picking up support.
	As Biden fails, and as it becomes clear to Democrats that Bernie is the most likely nominee, they are convincing themselves that he has the capacity to win.
	Over 70% of Democrats believe that Bernie Sanders can beat President Trump.
	He now has in the RealClearPolitics polling average an 11-point lead on the rest of the Democratic field.
	The polling in Nevada is solidly behind Sanders.
	In South Carolina, the latest poll has Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders tied, which is a disaster area for Joe Biden because if he loses South Carolina, he is toast at that point.
	There is a poll in California that shows Bernie Sanders up heavy in California as well.
	A lot of the polls where Biden is the placeholder, Biden is likely to flail out.
	There are two late-breaking polls from California.
	One shows Bernie all the way up at 32%, with the next closest competitor, Biden, all the way down at 14%.
	Another poll shows Bernie at 25% and Bloomberg at 21%.
	We'll get to Bloomberg, as I say, in just a second.
	But Bernie is the frontrunner.
	Okay, and Bernie is He should.
	Again, he scares me, not because I think that he is a tremendously capable politician.
	I don't.
	But because what's going on right now is such frustration inside the Democratic Party at the reality that Donald Trump is president, that they will vote for a communist to stop Donald Trump.
	This is where we are.
	I mean, Sanders, for his part, is going after Bloomberg.
	But here's the thing about Bernie.
	Bernie is supremely dishonest.
	In many ways, Bernie is supremely dishonest.
	He's honest when he says that he's a socialist who doesn't know how to pay for his plans.
	That part's real.
	But he is dishonest when he says that he is clean as the driven snow and pure as the driven snow.
	I'll give you an example.
	So I mentioned his wife a moment ago.
	So there is an ad that is now cropping up about Bernie Sanders from in 501c4 that is led by somebody who was once a staffer for Senator Joe Manchin in West Virginia.
	And that ad points out that Senator Bernie Sanders supported a compact between Maine, Vermont, and Texas that originally proposed dumping low-level radioactive waste in a small minority community in far West Texas.
	The waste never made it to a community called Sierra Blanca, which is a low-income, largely Hispanic town in Huntsmouth County.
	But Sanders's efforts attracted renewed attention online.
	In 2016, they are cropping up again, those efforts to dump toxic waste.
	This would be nuclear waste.
	In this small area of Texas that is heavily Hispanic, the buried lead in all of that is that Sanders' wife, Jane, now serves as an alternative commissioner for the Texas Low-Level Radioactive Waste Disposal Compact Commission.
	Question, what exactly does Jane Sanders know about the disposal of radioactive waste?
	I missed the part where Jane Sanders is an expert in radioactive waste management.
	The answer is, of course, she does not have any expertise in that area, but again, she got that job because she happens to be married to Bernie Sanders.
	Also, it is worthwhile noting that Jane Sanders got her job as the Dean of Burlington College in all likelihood, not in all likelihood, certainly, because her husband is Bernie Sanders and is a ward of the state.
	As has been widely reported, Jane Sanders, as president of Burlington College, not only cleared a rather large salary for herself, she got a 72% salary increase over six years at Burlington College, she took out a loan, which may have been taken out, there were investigations ongoing, into how she took out a loan to buy a large chunk of land that ended up bankrupting the college entirely.
	I mean, the college literally had to declare bankruptcy.
	But she apparently was also funneling hundreds of thousands of dollars to her daughter's and trustee's son's businesses.
	Privately held businesses.
	Jane Sanders.
	Don't worry.
	Socialism, guys, is all about honest people doing honest things to help the people.
	How do we know that Bernie is dishonest in this way?
	I'll give you an example.
	So yesterday, Bernie does this town hall on CNN.
	CNN's been doing this series of town halls where everybody gets up there and they are asked very easy questions by a series of increasingly sycophantic CNN reporters.
	And Bernie has asked about Bloomberg, and he says, I'm offended that Michael Bloomberg is trying to buy the presidency.
	Before we get to the clip, I just want to point something out.
	Every Democrat who says that they are offended that Michael Bloomberg, by pouring his own dollars that he earned himself into presidential ads, that that is buying the presidency.
	Let me just point out that Bernie Sanders has promised voters free college tuition, free healthcare, free housing, free childcare, and a free unicorn.
	So he's trying to buy voters with my money.
	At least Bloomberg is trying to appeal to voters with his own money.
	At least Bloomberg is spending his own cash on why he's such a great guy.
	Bernie Sanders is pledging to spend my cash to prove to you what a wonderful guy he is.
	I have far less tolerance for this whole Stop trying to buy elections from people who literally try to buy elections by promising you free crap.
	Anyway, here is Bernie Sanders ripping on Michael Bloomberg for, quote unquote, trying to buy the presidency, as opposed to Bernie Sanders, who is apparently spending $50 million a month at this point on advertising.
	I do think it's a bit obscene that we have somebody who, by the way, chose not to contest in Iowa, in Nevada, in South Carolina, in New Hampshire, where all of the candidates.
	We did town meetings.
	We're talking to thousands and thousands of people working on it.
	He said, I don't have to do that.
	I'm worth $60 billion.
	I have more wealth than the bottom 125 million Americans.
	I'll buy the presidency.
	That offends me very much.
	Okay, so he's very upset.
	He's trying to buy the presidency.
	And we keep hearing this from people.
	He's trying to buy the presidency.
	Advertising is not buying the presidency any more than advertising for Nike is forcing people to buy Nike shoes.
	If you don't like Bloomberg, you are free not to buy his routine.
	Again, you may not like that he's buying the ads.
	Believe me, the amount of publicity he's getting for buying the ads is nearly even with the amount of publicity that he gets from the actual ad buys.
	But this is not a Bloomberg defense, right?
	I think that Bloomberg, again, is paternalistic.
	I think that he thinks he should be president on the basis of virtually nothing.
	But here's the point.
	Sanders says he's very offended that Bloomberg is trying to buy the presidency and then he immediately refuses to answer whether he will take Michael Bloomberg's money in the general election.
	Of course.
	Of course he does.
	Of course he does.
	Because it's all fun and games ripping on billionaires until you need to seize their wealth and use it to control the means of production if you're a commie.
	If Michael Bloomberg doesn't get it, you get the nomination, would you accept it?
	If he says, look, I got $500 million left over that I'm going to give to you, would you accept that?
	Well, we're going to, what I did say is that if Mr. Bloomberg wins, and I certainly hope he does not, I will support the Democratic nominee.
	As of now, we have not taken, we don't have a super PAC.
	We're not asking for a super PAC.
	That is my position right now.
	So you're not sure if he would take the money or not?
	Okay, I'll leave it there.
	So what that is right there is Bernie being a damn liar, right?
	He knows what the answer is.
	The answer is, of course, I'll take the money.
	Of course, I'll take the money.
	Bernie Sanders is very much against billionaires until he needs their money to fund his garbage schemes or his crap campaign.
	So spare me that he's trying to buy the election.
	I don't like Michael Bloomberg.
	He's very rich.
	He's trying to buy the election.
	Also, if you could hand me that checkbook, I would really appreciate if you could hand me a checkbook.
	What a piece of scuz Bernie Sanders is.
	We're going to get to more of Bernie Sanders and the media's unwillingness, by the way, to answer basic, to ask him basic questions.
	It's insane.
	It's insane.
	How has this lifelong communist been able to escape the media's actual hard questioning for decades?
	I mean, seriously, the only person I've seen ask him a hard question about nationalization of resources, which he was stumping for when he was my age, OK, he was in his mid 30s and into his 40s and he was still doing this routine.
	He was standing up for Nicaragua.
	Like the dictatorship in Nicaragua when he was in his mid-40s, he was 10 years older than I am now.
	He was standing up for Venezuela last year.
	He was 77.
	Okay, nobody will ask him a tough question about this.
	He just says, well, I've said a lot of things over the course of my career.
	And everybody goes, ah, ha, ha, ha.
	Well, it's unbelievable.
	It's unbelievable.
	We'll get to more of this in just one second.
	First, let us talk about what you would do.
	Let's say that you had an employee, or let's say, in fact, that you were an employee, Who had a duty to show up to work on time.
	And let's say that you just didn't do it.
	Like routinely, you just didn't do it.
	And then you just cast aspersions at everybody around you.
	Let's say that you actually, you know, you just went around bad-mouthing people.
	You just talked about like how everyone around you was just, they weren't doing their jobs.
	And you said it publicly, right?
	You just humiliated people publicly.
	Let's say you were that person.
	And then let's say, you know, you thought, you know, maybe I'm not the best at this.
	Maybe I need to replace me.
	You'd check out ZipRecruiter.com.
	I'm not saying that I do all of these things, that I show up late to work like every single day, and that I then blame all of the employees around me, or that I publicly rip on them for the purposes of advertising.
	I don't say that I do this, but if I were to do this and then I were going to replace me, I would go check out ZipRecruiter.com to find a suitable replacement for me over at ZipRecruiter.com.
	When you post on ZipRecruiter, it helps you sort out the candidates, bring the best candidates to you.
	It's no wonder that four out of five employers who post on ZipRecruiter get a quality candidate within the very first day.
	If I were going to replace me on this show, I would be checking out ZipRecruiter.com.
	You can check out ZipRecruiter for free at our web address, ZipRecruiter.com slash DailyWire.
	That is ZipRecruiter.com slash D-A-I-L-Y-W-I-R-E.
	ZipRecruiter is indeed the smartest way to hire.
	So again, if I were just going to replace A person who showed up late every day to work and just ripped on his employees like a jackass and did all of that and then cleared the check.
	If I were going to replace somebody who did that, I would look to replace me over at ZipRecruiter.com slash DailyWire.
	ZipRecruiter.com slash DailyWire.
	It'll work for your business as well.
	ZipRecruiter.com slash DailyWire.
	Okay, back to Bernie Sanders.
	Again, it is just a source of endless Endless insanity to me that the Democratic Party is preparing to nominate this human being.
	It's insane.
	The man is a walking co-exist bumper sticker, as Noah Rothman over at Commentary put it.
	The man is George McGovern, except more communist.
	Let me give you a couple of examples.
	So Bernie Sanders, let's check out his Twitter account.
	So his Twitter account is basically AOC without the sparkling wit.
	It really is.
	Here's something that he tweeted out today.
	It's incredible.
	It's incredible that this human being is taken seriously by people.
	It's unbelievable.
	So he tweets out, our military is larger than these countries combined.
	China, 181 billion dollars.
	He has a bunch of flags.
	We'll see how many of these flags I can actually identify.
	China, $181 billion.
	Saudi Arabia, $78 billion.
	France, $61 billion.
	Which one is the vertical versus the horizontal?
	France is $52 billion, I believe.
	France is vertical.
	Japan is $48 billion.
	Great Britain, $54 billion.
	Germany, $48 billion.
	South Korea, $39 billion.
	Brazil, $27 billion.
	Germany, $48 billion.
	South Korea, $39 billion.
	Brazil, $27 billion.
	And that would be Italy, $27 billion.
	Russia is $61 billion.
	Thank you.
	I'm missing the Russian flag.
	See?
	I'm not working for Putin.
	What if we invested in human needs to care for one another instead?
	What if we invested in human needs to care for one another instead?
	Okay, first of all, on a historical level, I think it's a fairly good thing that the United States military is larger than Germany, Japan, and Italy combined.
	That seems like that's probably a good idea, like just looking at some history.
	Like, I'm very happy that the United States military is hegemonic.
	Like, that's a very good thing.
	But Bernie is such a flaming communist that he's like, what if we took our entire military budget and we used it to pay for free childcare?
	And we just, but do we really need a military so large?
	Do we really need a military?
	And the answer is yes, to stop people from killing us and attacking us and wrecking our interests.
	The man is using the song Imagine as a campaign platform Imagine there's no countries.
	It's not hard if you try.
	Nothing to live or die for.
	Above us only sky.
	How are you taking him seriously?
	What the hell is wrong with you people?
	And then he tweets this out.
	This is also yesterday.
	Together we are going to end the greed of the billionaire class.
	I have just a question about this.
	Just one question.
	Which is more greedy?
	The quote-unquote billionaire class?
	You know, people who created a business and then sold lots of products and did lots of voluntary transactions and employed tens of thousands of people and provided products to presumably millions of people and made millions of people's lives easier.
	Or the octogenarian communist who has done zero useful things his entire life except suck off the teat of the state and the billionaire taxpayer.
	And sponsor his wife for positions for which she is utterly unqualified?
	Who is greedier?
	I'm so sick of these people suggesting that true altruism lies in sucking off the teats of people who actually earn.
	It's insanity.
	And this has nothing to do with my income level.
	I've been saying the same thing since I was making like 50 grand a year, okay?
	I totally get it.
	This is, this is absolute, it's absolute nonsense.
	And people who buy into this, it turns out that Envy should not be a political platform.
	That's all this is.
	The greed of the billionaire.
	So when do you become greedy?
	Just a serious question, like Bernie's a millionaire.
	Did he become more greedy when his net wealth went to a million and one?
	When that ticker just flipped up, suddenly he became greedy?
	Or is it the truth?
	That as the founders understood, all human beings have the capacity for greed.
	And all human beings have the capacity for altruism.
	And all human beings have the capacity for sin.
	And all human beings have the capacity for decency.
	But according to Bernie, because he's a materialist Marxist, he believes that as you get richer, you get more greedy.
	And therefore...
	Actual saintliness lies in being a sponge.
	Right?
	If you're Bernie and you've never done a useful thing in your life, you're actually good!
	You're good because you've never been greedy!
	Don't you understand?
	You're taking other people's money for doing nothing, but you're not greedy!
	Because the only way we measure greed is by your material circumstance.
	The richer you are, the more greedy you are.
	Therefore, the poorer you are, the less greedy you are.
	And your personal activity doesn't come into this at all.
	Okay, this is the person that you guys want to nominate for president.
	Alright.
	Sure.
	Okay, so Bernie yesterday, while he was on CNN, he also decided to sound off on national rent control.
	So not only does he want to sink the US economy, he'd also like to destroy the national real estate economy, which is one of the great sources of wealth in America and has been for generations.
	Let's just be clear about what rent control does.
	Rent control says that you cannot rent this thing that you built at the price that you wish to rent it at, at the market price.
	Instead, Bernie Sanders is going to decide what you should be able to rent your apartments for.
	Rent control has failed every single place it has tried.
	Why?
	Because it turns out that you cannot have some sort of politburo sitting above developers and deciding what they ought to charge, because eventually developers will be like, guess what, I'm not making enough money from that, I'm not going to build.
	I'm not going to build.
	And Bernie knows that, which is why we're going to end up with a bunch of federally subsidized housing projects, presumably designed by Bernie in classic East German style.
	Here is Bernie Sanders talking about national rent control, as though the great solution to a shortage of housing is to create more shortage of housing by disincentivizing development.
	I spent my entire childhood in a rent-controlled apartment in Brooklyn, New York.
	And that meant that my family, at least, we didn't have a lot of money, but we didn't have to worry about rents, you know, going up by 10-15%, which many Americans do.
	We believe that rent control is an appropriate tool nationally to tell landlords that they cannot simply jack up their rents to any rate that they want.
	Okay, you know what else tells people they can't jack up their rents to any rate that they want?
	You know what tells them that?
	The market!
	Because if I jacked up the rates on my apartment building to rates that people were not willing to pay, you know what happened?
	It's called vacancy.
	But he doesn't understand how markets work.
	He thinks that basically a developer just sits there and then goes, I'd like to rent this place for a million dollars a month and I'll force you to take it.
	Because Bernie doesn't understand consent.
	It's amazing.
	Socialists don't understand consent.
	One of the things they don't understand.
	Other idiocies Bernie spouted last night.
	You know, I'm going to save this one for just a moment because this one I'm really going to go off on.
	So Bernie's foreign policy is just madness.
	Absolute sheer madness.
	We're going to get to that in one second.
	Let us talk about getting good legal advice.
	So you don't actually have to go to law school to do a lot of stuff legally without going to a law firm.
	I was using LegalZoom as a resource for me well before I was even a lawyer and certainly before they were a sponsor on this program.
	Over the past 19 years, LegalZoom has helped more than 2 million Americans start their businesses by incorporating, forming an LLC, and more.
	But even after your business is set up, LegalZoom can still help you out with a lot more.
	Things like lease agreements, changing tax laws, reviewing contracts, all play a part in running your own business.
	These are precisely the kinds of costly hurdles that can take time away from growing your business.
	Don't let it happen.
	Instead, check out LegalZoom.
	LegalZoom has a network of independent attorneys and tax professionals who can provide you advice to address these things and more.
	And you'll never get charged by the hour because LegalZoom isn't a law firm.
	Go to LegalZoom.com today.
	Enter promo code Ben in the box at checkout for special savings.
	Now, there are certain times when you probably will need a law firm, but for a lot of legal stuff, you really don't.
	And why would you spend 500 bucks an hour on a law partner when you could spend A fraction of that over LegalZoom and just do your will and trust yourself for example.
	It's LegalZoom.com code Ben.
	LegalZoom, where life meets legal.
	Go check them out right now.
	LegalZoom.com and use promo code Ben in the box at checkout for special savings.
	All right, in just a second, we're gonna get to more on Bernie Sanders and the unwillingness of the media to ask follow-up questions.
	Plus, we'll get to Michael Bloomberg and the fact that there really are no moderates in this Democratic race.
	Like, really none.
	You know, there are gradations.
	It's Trotsky versus Lenin at this point.
	We'll get to that in just one second.
	First, it is 2020.
	We've only just begun what is bound to be the most insane year for news we've had since, well, probably the last presidential election.
	More insane, okay?
	Because we're gonna get an oxygenarian socialist.
	We are.
	We are.
	The Democrats aren't gonna stop this train.
	They're not gonna stop this gulag train here.
	Now more than ever is the time you need to be a Daily Wire subscriber.
	Right now, you can receive 10% off any plan when you use promo code Shapiro.
	What makes our membership so great?
	Let me tell you.
	You asked.
	Members get our articles ad-free, access to all of our live broadcast and show library, the full three hours of the Ben Shapiro Show, select bonus content, access to the mailbag, and more.
	Plus, Our new all-access tier gets you into exclusive live online Q&A discussions with me, Andrew Klavan, Matt Walsh, and Michael Molls, plus Daily Wire writers and special guests.
	Don't forget, you'll also get the greatest of all beverage vessels.
	This is the one that I'm about to sip from right here.
	As I left this here somewhere, just delicious.
	Again, that is 10% off all those goodies when you use promo code Shapiro.
	Head on over to dailywire.com, come join the fun.
	You're listening to the largest, fastest growing conservative radio show and podcast in the nation.
	All righty.
	So Bernie Sanders, as I say, the fact that he's never asked a serious follow up question like and when he is, he has no answers ever.
	He'll say things like, I want Medicare for all!
	And people say, how much does that cost?
	I don't know!
	I'll say, Michael Bloomberg is a bad man, spending a lot of money.
	So will you take his money?
	I don't know!
	So Bernie, you said that you were going to release all your medical records.
	Bernie, you said you were going to release all your medical records.
	Are you going to release all your medical records?
	Here's Bernie.
	We received, uh, released two rather detailed letters, uh, from cardiologists, and we received, uh, we released a letter that came from the, uh, head of the U.S.
	Congress, uh, medical group, the physicians there.
	So I think we have released a detailed report, and I'm comfortable with what we have done.
	Just to be clear, you don't plan to release any more records?
	I don't.
	I don't think we will, no.
	Okay, I've decided we're not releasing any more medical records.
	Yes, I had a heart attack in the middle of this campaign, but I'm not releasing any more medical records, even though before I said I would.
	By the way, his own campaign secretary is now suggesting that if you ask for his medical records for a near 80-year-old man who had a heart attack in the middle of the campaign, that if you ask for those medical records, this is the equivalent of birtherism, of asking for Barack Obama's birth certificate.
	Don't worry, these people are totally sane.
	I think that the American people deserve to know exactly as much as every other candidate has released in this race currently and historically.
	And what you're seeing right now is really reminiscent of some of the kind of smear, kind of skepticism campaigns that have been run against a lot of different candidates in the past, questioning where they're from, aspects of their lineage, etc, etc.
	This is, really?
	Like birtherism?
	Like birtherism?
	Lineage?
	Who's?
	What?
	What?
	Okay, so.
	Finally, Bernie Sanders sounded off last night on CNN, on foreign policy, and suggested, as always, that the Israeli government is racist.
	So Bernie, Who suggests that he is proud to be a Jew, yet is supremely happy to campaign with actual overt anti-Semites, genocidal anti-Semites.
	I mean, I talked about this on the show yesterday.
	People who have overtly called for the destruction of the state of Israel, which implicitly means pushing the Jews into the sea, the murder and expulsion of millions of Jews.
	That's Bernie Sanders.
	Yesterday, he found time to call the Israeli government racist.
	Quick note, the Israeli government represents a population that is 20% Arab.
	Arabic is an official language in the state of Israel.
	The only place that is racially discriminatory in Israel, seriously racially discriminatory in Israel, are the areas governed by the Palestinian Authority.
	There are large red signs off the road Producer Colton can testify to this because he saw them.
	There are large red signs off the road in Israel for the areas governed by the Palestinian Authority.
	Those large red signs say, if you are an Israeli citizen and you drive off this road and you drive into this Palestinian-governed area, we cannot protect you and you are taking your life into your hands.
	They mean if you are a Jew.
	Because if you're an Arab and you make that mistake, you're fine.
	You're a Jew?
	The great irony is that Bernie Sanders, who spends his days defending Hamas and the Palestinian Authority, If Bernie were not overtly anti-Israel and famous, if you're just an elderly Jewish man from Brooklyn who made the mistake of taking a wrong turn off the road in the West Bank and he ended up in the middle of Ramallah, Or if he ended up in the middle of Nablus, Bernie would be a dead man.
	Because that's what happens to elderly Jews who end up making a wrong turn off that road.
	But here he is suggesting the Israeli government is racist while maintaining, by the way, he has maintained this, that we should send hundreds of millions if not billions of dollars in foreign aid to the Gaza Strip, which means literally handing money to the dictatorship, the terrorist dictatorship, Hamas.
	Here's Bernie Sanders being a good Jew, guys.
	It just means, like, he's such a proud Jew, don't you understand?
	He's never had a good word to say about religious Judaism.
	Every policy he's ever pushed, including the dissemination of policies that would crack down on churches and synagogues, is directly against religious Americans.
	He stands against the State of Israel.
	And when I say against the State of Israel, I mean against it.
	He's campaigning with people who have overtly called for its destruction.
	His campaign with Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib and Linda Sarsour, all of whom have implicitly called for the destruction of the State of Israel, in some cases explicitly called for that.
	But Bernie's a proud Jew, guys.
	Super proud Jew.
	And you know how we know he's a Jew?
	Because he has relatives who died in the Holocaust.
	Welcome to being a Jew.
	Okay, every single Jew that I know, with the exception of some Sephardic Jews who come from, like, Morocco, every Ashkenazic Jew who has lineage in Ashkenazic Jewry has relatives who died in the Holocaust.
	I mean, just as a statistical matter, there were only like 13.5 million Jews on planet Earth during the Holocaust and six million of them died.
	Six million of them were murdered.
	So pretty much everybody has a relative who died in the Holocaust.
	That is not a bona fide.
	A bona fide on being a proud Jew would not be hobnobbing with people who want to murder Jews or stand in favor of people who want to murder Jews.
	This is just purely disgusting.
	Here's Bernie Sanders being a disgusting piece of crap.
	I should tell you that I spent some six months of my life as a young man in Israel.
	I've got a cousin who lives in Israel.
	And I will do everything I can to protect the independence and the security of the people of Israel.
	Israelis have the right to live in a safe and secure nation.
	But I must tell you this also.
	That to be for the Israeli people and to be for peace in the Middle East does not mean that we have to support right-wing racist governments that currently exist in Israel.
	Okay, I just want to point a quick thing out here.
	By the way, he says that the current... So apparently it's about Bibi Netanyahu.
	Weird, because Benny Gantz, you know who else embraced the Trump peace plan?
	Benny Gantz, who's his chief rival.
	You know how many Israelis actually believe that foreign aid should be given to Hamas?
	Zero.
	Bernie can get away with this crap where he says, I stand for the security of Israel, but also, I will do everything in my power to campaign with people who overtly call for Israel's destruction.
	Call for yourself, dude.
	Seriously.
	Now, it's not just me saying that Bernie never gets asked tough questions.
	Chris Matthews and I are on the same page.
	Chris Matthews over at MSNBC says it's unbelievable.
	Nobody ever tells Bernie he's just full of it.
	He is completely full of it.
	I come in here, I come with a shoe, looking all rumpled.
	Every so often I hit a nail directly on the head.
	Here's me hitting a nail directly on the head, Chris Matthews.
	Go!
	Everybody knows half the U.S.
	Senate is run by Republicans.
	It'll be half run by Republicans next time.
	And it takes 60 votes to get any of this stuff through.
	And yet nobody just says the obvious.
	Bernie, you're full of it.
	None of this is going to get passed.
	You're going to be a miserable president, frustrated for the first day, because you're not going to get Medicare for all.
	You're not going to get free college tuition for public universities.
	You're not going to get payoffs of all student loans.
	None of this is going to happen.
	And you're just going to sit there and just doing it.
	So why don't they bring that up?
	I do not understand why they don't bring that up.
	So here's what's happening inside the Democrat.
	And Matthew's completely right about this.
	Completely.
	Here's what's happening inside the Democratic Party.
	All the same people who are suggesting that if you supported Trump to stop Hillary last time, that meant that you bought into all of his, that you bought into all of his worst excesses.
	You know, all of those people.
	Now those people are going to back An anti-American communist as their candidate because they don't like Trump.
	Nicole Wallace, who you'll recall at one point, I believe, was a Bush staffer.
	She says, no, I will definitely vote for Sanders in order to stop Donald Trump.
	I'll just overlook all the fact that I won't even ask him a tough question.
	Welcome to our world.
	Partisanship is a hell of a drug.
	Here's Nicole Wallace.
	I'm on the record, I will vote for whomever, I will gladly and easily and handily vote for Bernie Sanders if he's the nominee.
	This is not personal, but my political strategist is like, it's a four alarm fire in my political soul.
	I mean, how do you as a democratic party tell everyone to get behind someone who is, and I don't know, I have no freaking clue what democratic socialist means, but everyone thinks that's what he is, and it sounds scary.
	It sounds scary, but I don't have a clue what it means.
	Let me tell you what it means.
	Everything he says it means.
	Everything he says it means.
	Okay, that's what a democratic socialist means.
	So, go for it, guys.
	Go for it.
	I mean, we're turning ourselves into Europe so quickly, it's scary.
	It truly is.
	We've turned a Republican Party that used to be in favor of small governments, limited government, in order to protect individual rights, into a big government party.
	The Republican Party is a big government party.
	I mean, this is an unfortunate truth of life.
	This is what has happened.
	The Republican Party is moving swiftly in the direction of the British Conservative Party.
	And meanwhile, the Democratic Party is moving swiftly in the direction of Jeremy Corbyn's Labour Party.
	America is different because America understood basic fundamental precepts about America's goodness in the world that Bernie certainly does not accept.
	About the necessity for individual rights that Bernie certainly does not accept.
	And the Democratic Party centralizing around this guy is scary.
	It's the reason why I've been saying, like, forget Trump versus Sanders.
	Forget about the outcome of the election.
	It is a horrible thing for the Democratic Party to be centralizing around a radical wing that is overtly anti-American on foreign policy, like truly believes that America is a force for evil in the world, that read Howard Zinn and didn't see it as a counterweight to the rosy history of the United States or as a balanced or as a balancing perspective, but instead read it as the only thing you need to read and then use that as their handbook.
	The Democratic Party has centralized around a candidate who rejects the basic notions of individual rights that undergirded the country, that rewrites American history to be an unending series of abuses and excesses.
	It's bad for America.
	It's bad for America.
	I want a Democratic Party that disagrees with me on key issues like gun control and abortion.
	Fine, disagree with me.
	It's a free country.
	But I think it's horrible for the country to have a Democratic Party That does not even agree on the basic principles that undergird a free society.
	That scares the living hell out of me.
	It truly does.
	And meanwhile, Michael Bloomberg is now becoming the moderate Democrat's last best hope.
	President Trump is going at it with Bloomberg on Twitter, and it's basically just two New York billionaires yelling at each other.
	So President Trump tweeted out, What Mini Mike is doing is nothing less than a large-scale illegal campaign contribution.
	He is spreading money all over the place, only to have recipients of his cash payments, many former opponents, happily joining or supporting his campaign.
	Isn't that called the payoff?
	Mini is illegally buying the Democrat nomination.
	They are taking it away from Bernie again.
	Mini Mike, major party nominations are not for sale.
	Good luck in the debate tomorrow night, and remember, no standing on boxes.
	Trump, obviously, is very much bothered by Michael Bloomberg.
	It is also true, by the way, I just want to point this out, that in terms of, what he's saying about Michael Bloomberg spreading around donations to silence people, that's been true for years.
	I mean, he did this in New York City.
	He would use his foundations to pay off like Al Sharpton and Al Sharpton would go away.
	And then he just wouldn't protest against Michael Bloomberg.
	And he would pay off various different sort of groups that were angry at him to go away.
	And then they would go away.
	And he's done this in the Democratic Party, too.
	He seeded his sort of he seeded his run with his cash.
	That part is true.
	As far as that being illegal, I'm old enough to remember when Donald Trump campaigned in 2016 about how he'd bought the Republican Party.
	He literally said that.
	He said, I would bring candidates in here, they'd solicit my money, I'd give them my money, and then they would do anything I wanted.
	And he said that sort of stuff.
	Anyway, Michael Bloomberg responds, why do you want to run against Bernie so badly?
	Fair question.
	I mean, it's pretty obvious that the president would like Bernie as his counter.
	And then President Trump shot back, meaning like, no, I would rather run against you.
	Okay, all right, whatever.
	And then Bloomberg responded, can't trust a word you say, and now you want us to believe you?
	See you in November.
	Okay, sure.
	Anyway, the media have decided that Bloomberg must be cast out.
	It's amazing.
	The Democratic Party is centralizing around Bernie.
	They are.
	They've decided that they want Bernie.
	It doesn't matter that Bernie is a radical.
	It doesn't matter that he is not just a European Social Democrat, that he is in fact a socialist.
	It doesn't matter.
	The media have decided that they will not do this thing.
	They will not acquiesce.
	Ryan Cooper has a piece over at The Week called, Mike Bloomberg is not the lesser of two evils, suggesting that if Bloomberg is the nominee, he will not show up to vote for Bloomberg against Trump.
	But presumably he will for Bernie Sanders.
	He says, as I've written on many occasions, I think Bernie Sanders is the best candidate.
	But given the abominable Trump presidency, I've also said I'll vote for whoever wins the Democratic nomination.
	But that was before Michael Bloomberg became a serious presidential contender.
	Then you have the New York Times.
	New York Times has a piece today called, Michael Bloomberg has to debate without a net.
	The former mayor will have to set a stand on his own because he won't be able to just throw out ads.
	I'm, again, highly amused by the same media that have protected Bernie Sanders from his own explicit anti-Americanism on a variety of issues.
	I mean, explicit.
	They've protected Bloomberg for years, I mean, Bernie, for years on this stuff, now being like, well, Michael Bloomberg's gonna have to answer some serious questions.
	When does Bernie have to answer a serious question?
	When?
	Like, Bloomberg should have to answer serious questions.
	He absolutely should.
	About his treatment of women in the 1990s, there are lots and lots of allegations about him saying horrific, abusive things to women in his office that are disgusting and disreputable.
	He should have to answer questions about paying people off for their silence, which apparently was a widespread thing that Bloomberg did.
	The Huffington Post reports that when Bloomberg's plans for New York City failed to gain popular support, his vast philanthropic network helped to gin up the illusion.
	He would just sort of pay people to say things.
	So, you know, all of that should come up for debate.
	All of that should come up for debate.
	But the fact that Bernie's not been asked any of these questions is truly astonishing.
	Meanwhile, there is no other sort of moderate contender here.
	Now, Pete Buttigieg has gained no sort of national credibility.
	Amy Klobuchar has gained no sort of actual credibility.
	The other moderates in the field do not exist.
	Which means Bernie's cruising here.
	Bernie's gonna cruise right to the nomination.
	And the Democrats are gonna have paved their way.
	And we will find out.
	Now, the Republicans apparently want him.
	Everyone except me.
	I don't want Bernie.
	I don't want Bernie not because I think he's gonna win, but because I think it's incredibly dangerous even to have him as the nominee.
	But apparently the Republicans want him, apparently the Democrats want him, and we're gonna get... We're gonna rock him, stock him, robots 2020, man.
	Trump versus Sanders.
	My... It's hard to think of something that would be worse for the country than Trump versus Sanders, but...
	We have earned all the, we bought the ticket, we take the ride, man.
	This is the world that we have created for ourselves.
	Alrighty, time for a quick thing I like and then some things that I hate.
	So things that I like, there's a good book by Ruth Weiss, who is a professor over at Harvard University called Jews and Power.
	And the book is all about the relationship between Jews and power.
	There's sort of this weird notion that Jews were not anywhere close to the centers of power for a long period of history, basically between the destruction of the Second Temple.
	And the creation of the state of Israel.
	But Ruth Weiss talks about sort of the survival of Jewish communities and the way that Jewish communities existed in tension with the ruling powers of the time, how they would go out of their way to demonstrate their patriotism and then were crapped on anyway by the ruling powers of the time.
	Because whenever you are an outsider group living inside a state, you become the quick Subject of animosity and we are seeing this happen again today in Europe you're seeing it happen inside the Democratic Party in the United States where Jews are constantly accused of dual loyalty if they believe in the existence of the state of Israel even though nobody ever asks Italians in the United States if they say we believe in Italy nobody ever says okay well that's because you have dual loyalty to Italy right that's just not a thing that comes up ever in any case the book is is good it's sophisticated it contains a good history of sort of the Jews from
	Basically, second biblical, second temple era to modern politics.
	Jews in Power by Ruth Weiss.
	She has a new foreword about modern politics and antisemitism.
	You can go check that out right now.
	now.
	Okay, time for a quick thing that I hate.
	So, Orrin Cass, who I've had on the program, right?
	I think Orrin's a really smart guy.
	He has some interesting solutions to what he sees as systemic problems with trade and manufacturing in the United States.
	He's announced the formation of American Compass, which is a new organization dedicated to helping American conservatism, what he says, recover from its chronic case of market fundamentalism.
	Market fundamentalism is the belief that limited government, free enterprise, and individual liberty, or free markets and limited effective government, or free enterprise, limited government, individual freedom, or individual liberty, limited government, free markets, that these are the sort of nostrums of a past age.
	And he says, without question, these principles are vital, but an emphasis so monotonal is neither supportive of effective deliberation nor genuinely conservative.
	Why don't we just look at a policy and ask, does it expand economic freedom?
	Suggests Heritage Foundation VP Jack Spencer.
	Because, says Oren Kass, there's more to life than economic freedom.
	This is where we get into real dicey territory.
	He says there's more to economic freedom than economic freedom.
	He's gonna have to explain that one.
	He says a society that attempts to maximize everyone's freedom at every moment will fail miserably in preserving individual liberty and limiting government over time.
	What is missing from our public debates is a distinctively conservative approach to economics.
	The modern right-of-center coalition is the product of the fusionism that joined economic libertarians with social conservatives and Cold War hawks in an era when the defeat of communism was of preeminent importance to all three.
	Having for decades outsourced their economic thinking to libertarians, conservatives now watch from the sidelines as classical liberals, i.e.
	libertarians, and modern liberals, i.e.
	progressives, debate how best to pursue their shared and unquestioned priorities of personal consumption and aggregate economic growth.
	Okay, first of all, I'm wondering where he is getting the notion that modern progressives are interested in aggregate economic growth.
	Bernie Sanders is not interested in aggregate economic growth.
	He's not.
	He's interested in the forced institution of financial equality, even at the cost of economic growth.
	Barack Obama made this perfectly clear in 2008.
	He was asked if you raise the marginal tax rates, and that results In lower tax income because the economy contracts.
	Is that worthwhile?
	And Obama said, yes, for purposes of fairness.
	So I don't know where Orrin Cass is getting this idea that progressives are in favor of aggregate economic growth.
	They're not.
	Orrin Cass says, See, this is the part where I don't get it.
	government programs and less regulation, the other advocates more.
	Both claim the mantle of buzzwords such as dynamism, opportunity, and mobility.
	Neither prioritizes the traditional structures of family and community that provide the foundations of a flourishing society or the capacities that a nation must nurture and sustain to remain strong.
	See, this is the part where I don't get it, because now Oren Kass seems to be conflating government programs with traditional structures like family and community.
	Like those are not part of government. - Yeah.
	I've talked consistently throughout my career on the necessity for a social fabric.
	A social fabric outside of government.
	And conflating government and social fabric is precisely what the left does.
	The left says that government and social fabric are one and the same.
	And now what you are seeing on the so-called common good conservative right is exactly the same sort of conflation.
	Okay, well we can use government to prop up the social fabric.
	As opposed to substitute for the social fabric.
	But which policy exactly has the government instituted that has propped up the social fabric in a serious way?
	As opposed to that same government then being captured by the left and being used to destroy that social fabric.
	See, these common good conservatives who wish to maximize the power of government in order to use it for their own pursuits, pursuits with which I may agree, by the way, seem to be forgetting the lesson of Lord of the Rings, which is that no one can wield this ring.
	And that the power of the ring not only corrupts, but also can be wielded by your worst enemy one moment from now against you.
	But, says Oren Kass, consensus views across the political, business, and academic elite have enormous blind spots from the dangers of globalization to the cost of college for all education system to the value of belonging to a particular place.
	At home, the data on collapsing families, shuttering communities, stagnating wages, and declining life expectancy are well known.
	Abroad, America's capacity to protect and advance its national interests is likewise waning.
	The problems animating America's resurgent populism are very real.
	They'll be solved neither by the ideological alignments that governed us into the crisis, nor by that populism itself.
	Look carefully though, and green shoots are emerging." And then he quotes Josh Hawley saying that liberty is not about choosing your own ends.
	He says that we actually want to have, we need to use government basically.
	And then he quotes Marco Rubio saying, we have neglected the rights of workers to share in the benefits they create for their employer, which is a complete misread of how economics works.
	And here's Orrin Cass' conclusion.
	He says, Okay, now we're in Burny Land.
	Right?
	Okay, now we're in Bernie land.
	If the idea is that economic inequality in and of itself is an inherent bad, because some people are richer and some people are poorer, regardless of absolute material living standards, I don't think that that understands the purpose of an economy.
	Which is to allow people the ability to trade in goods and services they see fit.
	Thank you.
	By the way, that's a moral problem in and of itself.
	I mean, there's an actual commandment in the 10, it's one of the big 10, that you are not allowed to cover thy neighbor's property.
	If your living standard is going up and your neighbor's living standard is going up more, and you're jealous of your neighbor, and this creates a social problem, that's not a social problem, that's a problem with you being a jerk.
	It is, we used to just call this envy.
	It's one of the seven deadly sins, last time I checked, in Christianity.
	And in Judaism, again, that violates the Ten Commandments.
	But, says Oren Kass, we have to take that seriously.
	He says, that a new conservative economics will give weight to the value of diffuse and widespread investment, not just the value of agglomeration.
	It will consider the benefits that locally owned establishments bring to their communities alongside the benefits that hyper-efficient conglomerates can deliver.
	So, in other words, you'll punish Walmart for entering your community because you want to keep the small mom and pop business alive, even if it means that people don't have the option of shopping more cheaply and then using the extra money for their families.
	He says it will insist on recognizing the importance of non-market labor performed within the household and community, rather than assuming that higher monetary incomes in a society of two-earner families must indicate progress.
	Well, again, I think that there's a lot of importance to non-market labor performed within the household.
	I think that that labor is indeed, in many cases, more important than the labor done outside the household.
	But that does not mean that it is compensated in terms of money.
	I mean, the fact is that it does have some sort of economic benefit to keep somebody at home taking care of the kids.
	I mean, otherwise you got to pay a nanny for the first thing.
	But the idea that the government has an involvement in that is sort of bizarre.
	And then he gets into pure Marxism.
	He says conservative economics will also accord equal respect to the concerns of capital and labor.
	As I've discussed on the program many times, the false division between capital and labor is a really interesting one.
	Because if you are a worker at a company and you also own a 401k, are you capital or are you labor?
	Because you own stock in some other company, so you're a capitalist when it comes to your 401k, but you're a laborer in terms of your salary.
	Also, the reason why you are earning a salary, and presumably you're not invested in the company in terms of stock, is because you are interested in short-term gain, which is the salary.
	You're earning more from the company than most stockholders will earn from the company in that year, because most people don't just get a dividend.
	And even if they do get a dividend, it probably isn't 50 or 60 or 100 grand, which is the salary that you're earning from the corporation.
	As a laborer, you are being compensated.
	As an employee, you are being compensated.
	This division between capital and labor, as though capital is just there to harm employees, and as though labor is only there without reference to the future of the corporation, that isn't true either.
	Because if you're a laborer, you do have a stock in the future of the corporation.
	Because you want your job to be there tomorrow, presumably.
	He says, conservative economics will accord equal respect to the concerns of capital and labor, rather than claiming that whatever is best for shareholders in the short run will eventually prove best for workers as well.
	Well, nobody suggests that if you have a management that only looks at the short term, that that management is doing its best for the workers or for the shareholders, by the way.
	Like how many shareholders are very much in favor of owning stock that they believe will not be there 10 years from now?
	Nobody buys stock thinking that.
	Or at least very few.
	You short sell stock thinking that, but you don't buy the stock thinking that.
	Says it will favor collective worker representation that affords real influence in terms of setting terms and conditions of employment over the fiction that individual employees enjoy the freedom to each negotiate their own terms.
	So now he is stumping in favor of a Bernie Sanders plan, it sounds like, in which half the board is made up of worker representation, which means lower rates of investment, lower rates of capital, lower rates of economic Movement inside businesses.
	You can't be quite as entrepreneurial if you have to consult with people who wish to raise their own salaries, which is what presumably the labor bargaining would do.
	We did try this in the 1950s and 60s, by the way.
	It completely destroyed the auto industry in the United States.
	And the notion we've never tried this before is just not true.
	Unions were incredibly strong in the auto industry in the 50s, 60s, and 70s.
	By the 80s, virtually all of our major car manufacturers were bankrupt, specifically because of those deals.
	Well, I mean, not necessarily.
	It depends on the nature of the supply chain.
	We have supply chains for t-shirts.
	Is the idea that we need to make t-shirts in the United States, we can't make them in Vietnam anymore?
	Because the price of t-shirts is going to go up.
	I mean, we are both consumers and producers.
	Bottom line, he says, our goal for American Compass, this is the new movement, is to reassert ideas like these for a conservative coalition that once understood them intuitively because they are natural outgrowths of conservative principles.
	Well, no, now you're misdefining conservatism.
	Conservatism was based on the idea that we are creatures created by God with individual rights that preexist government and a limited government is created in order to preserve those rights.
	I don't know what conservatism he's talking about.
	Presumably that conservatism is one that suggests that the be all end all is institutions like family preserved and forwarded by government.
	But that is kind of different from American.
	That's more European conservatism than American conservatism.
	That doesn't mean American conservatism is anti-family, it just sees a different role for the government, and particularly between the state and the local and the federal government.
	I think that if local governments want to shore up families with social programs, that's their prerogative, and I don't really object to that if you want to live in one of those communities.
	America must reorient its political focus from growth for its own sake to widely shared economic development that sustains vital social institutions.
	First of all, I don't understand growth for its own sake.
	Growth for its own sake has resulted in the greatest prosperity in the history of humanity.
	Seriously, like that's kind of a good thing.
	That's not growth for its own sake.
	That's growth for the sake of the 7 billion people who live on planet Earth.
	And yes, the 330 million Americans who live in material excess in the United States.
	He says, we must set a course for a country in which families can achieve self-sufficiency, contribute productively to their communities, and prepare the next generation for the same.
	That all sounds great, but it has no limiting principle, meaning that this could easily support an Elizabeth Warren or Bernie Sanders agenda.
	He says, all this requires an economic consensus that emphasizes the importance of family, community, and industry to the nation's liberty and prosperity.
	Again, that's incredibly vague.
	And if what we are calling for, in the end, is a movement that puts government at the heart of American conservatism, then that means the destruction of the village in order to save it.
	Alrighty, we'll be back here a little bit later today with much more content.
	And stay tuned because tonight, Michael Bloomberg is on stage.
	He will be the center of attention because every Democrat is determined, apparently, to make Bernie Sanders the nominee.
	Look, by the way, final comment on the debate tonight?
	Look for the murder-suicide from Elizabeth Warren directed at Michael Bloomberg.
	The patented Chris Christie, Marco Rubio presidential debate murder-suicide in which a candidate who will not win the nomination takes out a candidate who could win the nomination and then ends up destroying their own career in the process.
	Watch for Elizabeth Warren to do this to Michael Bloomberg tonight while Bernie just sits there going, Hey look, I have stupid ideas, but nobody's gonna stop me.
	No one's gonna stop me.
	Are you?
	Oh man.
	All right.
	Well, we'll be back here tomorrow to recap all of it.
	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.
	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 Sajovic.
	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.
	The left has long blamed President Trump for just about every political problem under the sun.
	They've blamed him for the sun itself and how much it's heating our planet.
	That's par for the course.
	But Trump derangement syndrome has now progressed to so advanced a stage that the American left is blaming President Trump for schoolyard bullying.
	We will examine who the real bullies are and how they get away with it.
	Then postmodern Pete Buttigieg declares words have no meaning, everyone comes out as queer, and President Trump pardons a couple of jailbirds.

▲