On Wednesday, appearing on Fox News “The Story with Martha MacCallum,” Daily Wire Editor-in-Chief Ben Shapiro discussed the election upset in New York where a 28-year-old socialist defeated a possible successor to Nancy Pelosi, and also discussed the stunning announcement that Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy was going to retire. Shapiro said of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez that she had been elected by the “howling-at-the-moon” wing of the Democratic Party, and asserted that Kennedy’s retirement gave President Trump the chance to remake the Supreme Court into a conservative Constitutionalist court for a full generation.
Then came the fun, as MacCallum slyly wondered if Shapiro was interested in the Supreme Court vacancy himself, prompting a light-hearted exchange in which MacCallum mentioned author Ann Coulter’s nomination of Shapiro for the Court 13 years ago, then looking at her Twitter feed responding to the idea of Shapiro on the Court. She concluded, “My twitter feed is just flowing right now with people who are just jumping on board.”
The exchange began with MacCallum speaking of Ocasio-Cortez’s victory. She asked, “What do you make of this? Is it an anomaly? Or is it just a movement?”
Shapiro replied:
I do think this is a movement. I think the next wave of Democrats are going to be much closer to Bernie Sanders-brand Democrats than even Nancy Pelosi-brand Democrats. What you see here is the howling-at-the-moon branch of the Democratic Party in which they throw out whatever radical proposal they want and then suggest that thus is truly authentic, that moral clarity lies in making proposals that are completely untenable, that will never be paid for.
This person was on MSNBC this morning and she was asked specifically about how she’d pay for all of this, and she proceeded to blab for a solid two minutes without giving an answer to that question because she doesn’t have a way of paying for any of this.
But, of course, the Democratic base has decided that it is much more important to have somebody who is virtue-signaling about why everybody should have a government job, and why housing should be government-provided than to actually have candidates who have policies that can ever be implemented.
MacCallum noted that Ocasio-Cortez had termed President Trump an “authoritarian hyper-capitalist.” She played clips of former president Barack Obama and President Trump to illustrate how radically different they were in their perspectives on capitalism. She commented that it would be difficult to find two views more diametrically opposed than Obama’s and Trump’s.
Shapiro answered, “No question. And I think that’s what the Democrats are picking on, is the fact that the Democrats have always been moving in this direction, or at least they have been significantly in the past eight years. There’s a reason that Bernie Sanders came very close to knocking off Hillary Clinton in primaries, and it is pathetic to say that a near-octogenarian is the wave of the future, but I think that Bernie Sanders has a lot more acolytes among the under-30 crowd than Hillary Clinton ever did and this is pretty good proof of that.”
MacCallum then spoke of the incongruity of Lin-Manuel Miranda, the author of the musical “Hamilton,” a musical that is a love letter to one of the greatest conservatives in American history, celebrating Ocasio-Cortez’s victory, as she is a devoted socialist. She asked, “What do you make of that?”
Shapiro: “She’s as radical as can be, but again, it is very easy to virtue-signal about policies that have no impact when they’re never implemented. Bernie Sanders never did anything in the Senate until he ran for president.”
Shapiro added that he highly doubted whether the policies Ocasio-Cortez espoused were going to result in anything real, because it would be easy to go home and say big government would solve all one’s problems, but when time came for legislation, it would be difficult to pass such legislation. He pointed out that if Democrats thought the Ocasio-Cortez victory was a harbinger of the future, they should remember that it came in a New York Democratic district.
MacCallum turned to the huge news that Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy was going to retire, asking Shapiro what he thought.
Shapiro responded, “It’s just astonishing, actually. I was really not expecting that Justice Kennedy would step down, given that he was the swing vote, and it gives President Trump an enormous opportunity to remake the Court in a conservative Constitutionalist image for a full generation. Again, President Trump has been both lucky and good. He has an opportunity, now that he’s been lucky, to be good again here.”
MacCallum, laughing and referencing Shapiro’s tweet earlier on Wednesday, said, “Maybe you didn’t suggest yourself, but you did suggest—“
Shapiro, laughing: “I’ll take it. If I’m nominated, I’ll take it. C’mon.”
MacCallum: “Why not? Right. You have nothing else to do.”
Shapiro: “The confirmation hearings would be lit.”
MacCallum: “Exactly. They would be! I think it was Ann Coulter who first suggested back when you were 21, when you were a law student at Harvard, that you would actually make an excellent Supreme Court justice, and as you pointed out today, you’d have a pretty good long run at it, most likely.”
Shapiro: “Yeah, exactly. I’d be there for a solid 60 years or so. Mr. President, if you’re looking for somebody who is going to have several decades on the Court longer than anybody else you’re looking at, I’ll throw my hat in the ring. If not, I’ll just cry myself to sleep. It’ll be all right.”
MacCallum, looking at her computer: “My Twitter feed is just flowing right now with people who are just jumping on board. Thank you so much, Ben. It’s always great to see you. Thanks so much.”
Shapiro: “Good to see you.”
Video below: