Colin Kaepernick continues to trash the NFL. Democrats wait for some actual first-hand testimony in their impeachment inquiry, and Pete Buttigieg jumps into the lead in Iowa. I'm Ben Shapiro. This is The Ben Shapiro Show.

Today's show is sponsored by ExpressVPN. It's how my listeners secure their internet. It's how I secure my internet. Join them at ExpressVPN.com slash Ben. Okay, tons to get to today. We'll talk impeachment inquiry in just one second, but here is the thing. I think that as this impeachment inquiry continues, it's pretty obvious to everybody that this thing is breaking down into simple partisan lines, right, tribalist lines. People aren't worried about asking questions if they

are on the right. People aren't really worried about asking questions if they are on the left. If you are a Democrat, you believe that Trump should be impeached. Of course, you believe that Trump should be impeached. Literally the day the man was elected. If you are a Republican, you believe that pretty much no matter what Trump did, it would be very difficult to get you to agree that he ought to be impeach, which is why when you talk to a lot of Republicans and you say, okay,

what is the standard by which Trump did, it would be very difficult to get you to agree that he ought to be impeach, which is why when you talk to a lot of Republicans and you say, okay, what is the standard by which Trump's behavior is impeachable? Nobody will actually give you a standard. It's a sort of moving target. On the left, the target is moving too, meaning what do he do today? Well, that thing's impeachable. One of the reasons that this is happening is because the presidency has basically

become a surrogate for our broader feelings about each other in this country. How you feel about

Trump is a war-shock test. If you are on the left, you see President Trump as a departure from

American norms. He's violating everything, right? Everything that he does is something different

and out-of-the the box and terrible and new.

And President Trump at the same time is a retrograde throwback to segregation in Jim Crow.

President Trump is the worst of all possible world and thus he must be ousted.

And if you're on the right, you look at Trump and what you see mostly is somebody who is a dam holding back the raging waters of resentment that are so evident on the left,

a left that wants to fundamentally change the definition of Americanism,

wants to make it so that fundamental constitutional freedoms are under assault,

wants to rewrite the bargain of what it means to be American,

rewrite our basic freedoms, freedom of speech, into hate speech laws,

freedom of religion, into cram downs by government on your religious institutions. And so Trump is the avatar of we're not going to do that. So if you're on the left, you see Trump is a symbol of everything wrong with the retrograde America. And if you're on the right, you see Trump as a bulwark against the left that seeks to rewrite the bargain of Americanism and destroy everything. And sure, he ain't the greatest tool. Sure, he may do things you don't like. But in the end, he's the guy, he's on the wall, you need him on the wall, and that's why the wall has to stand. And that's what impeachment comes down to. And every day we have a dumb cultural controversy. Every day we have another idiotic culture war. It reinstates these lines. It reinforces these lines. Because the more the left pushes on something stupid, the more of the right says, I don't care who's on the wall, but I need somebody on that wall. And at the same time, the more the left picks issues where the right opposes, the left says, oh, well, you know, it's because these people are terrible and awful. And that's why Trump should be impeached. And that's why we need somebody who is waiting. We need to rewrite the entire American bargain. We need to tear this thing out by its roots. So to understand people's views of Trump. You actually have to understand people's views of where America is more generally. Okay. So that's why these culture wars matter. People tend to think the culture wars don't matter. And they tend to boil down Trump's performance in 2016 or in 2020. They tend to boil

that down to economic factors. And so the going theory has been that Trump won in 2016 because

there were a lot of economically depressed areas, particularly in the heartland of America that

were disproportionately white, dying manufacturing towns that have been left behind by Barack Obama and free trade. And therefore, they turn to Trump in a moment of

panic and they still like Trump. And this is what the theory says. The theory says that because of

economics, a bunch of high school educated white men who can't get jobs in the big city are

tending toward

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