Ben Shapiro: What Should Trump Read?

Adam Rubenstein: So, what do you think the president should read?

Ben Shapiro: Well, I mean, let’s start: To be frank with you I think there’s stuff the president should watch. I think that asking him to read books might be a stretch, realistically speaking. So we can talk movies or we can talk books, If you want to talk about the books he should read I think we’re living in the realm of slight fantasy. He’s not a guy who reads a lot by all available accounts.

AR: Let’s do both, books and movies. So you think it’s unlikely he’d read what you’d want him to; but still, what should he read?

BS: There’s stuff that everyone should read. And then there’s stuff I think he’s most likely to read. The president is probably most likely to read biographies or short-form non-fiction. So, in terms of biographies, I’d like him to read a good biography of George Washington, of which there are many, to learn about statesmanship and what it takes to bring a country together and how a certain silence from the top is often useful.

I think that it would be worthwhile for him to read the Federalist Papers if he hasn’t. I think everyone should read the Federalist Papers and learn the basis for checks and balances and avoiding faction. I’d like for him to read Thomas Sowell on economics. I think his take on economics is closer to corporatism than it is to mainstream capitalism.

I think it might be useful for him to read Roger Ailes, who wrote a very good book called You Are the Message back in the 1980s, I believe, in which he talked about the art of politicking and how you really have to craft your message—it can’t just be stuff you blurt out. It has to be authentic, it has to be crafted.

He’s much too comfortable with the idea of government and business working hand-in-glove with one another. It would be worth it for him to read some Ayn Rand.

As far as movies: I think that if he would watch a movie that I grew up with—I don’t know if he can abide musicals—1776 is not only a very good take on what makes America, America, but it also looks in pretty stark terms at the evils of America’s racial past. I think that’s worthwhile.

I think he should, as every one-time Claremont Institute fellow suggests, watch The Man who Shot Liberty Valance, and learn the difference between the people who bring civilization and the people who are necessary to maintain civilization. Because they’re not always the same folks.

I think that he does understand the threat of communism. So recommending something to him like the film, The Lives of Others would not be supremely useful because I think he actually gets that. Notice that I’m also not suggesting he read books on the evils of the left, mostly because I don’t think that’s stuff he needs to learn. I think he understands why the left is targeting him and is nasty.

I’d recommend stuff to read or watch that would go towards how to curb your character so that you can be a better representative of your values. I think he has a gut patriotism that obviously animates him. I’d like to see that filled out with a more detailed understanding of what separates patriotism from nationalism.

AR: Perhaps, Steve Hayward’s Patriotism is Not Enough?

BS: Yeah, I mean, that is a very good book. I enjoyed that book actually. But I think that the abstruse battle between Straussians might be a little bit beyond the president.

AR: Fair enough.

BS: I did like Hayward’s book. But I mean, listen, I would be happy if the president would read Natural Right and History. But I don’t think that’s in his wheelhouse.

AR: So to you, this is very much a question with an ancient and modern distinction. At its basic level, what should the president read, greatly differs from what he might, or, is going to read.

BS: Definitely. I’d love for him to read the ancients, for him to read Plato and Aristotle—I think him reading the stoics might be a useful thing actually. I think the idea that he’s going to sit down and read any of that, or sit down and read Aquinas or John Locke . . . I don’t think that’s a thing that’s going to happen.

So, if you try and pinpoint books where he might get stuff out of them in a bite sized manner I’d recommend he read Jonathan Haidt’s The Righteous Mind. I’d recommend he read Bowling Alone by Robert Putnam—because I think that one thing I’d like the president to understand a little bit better is that the treatment of the social fabric is really important. I think that he’s very ensconced in these battles and that’s useful because these battles do exist, but exacerbating the fraying of the social fabric is going to make all of that worse, not better.

And it’s going to make things worse for him, not better for him.

AR: So books like Robert Putnam’s Bowling Alone, maybe Charles Murray’s Coming Apart get at this concern for the social fabric.

BS: Yes, exactly. Charles Murray’s book would be great. J.D. Vance’s book Hillbilly Elegy is more narrative in nature, so I think that Trump might be more likely read it. It might help him get beyond some of the nonsense when he talks about everyone from lower-class white neighborhoods that must have been victimized by the Chinese or the Mexicans as opposed to maybe some pathologies of poverty, and the cultures of poverty, in those areas that exist and need to be fixed from the inside.

AR: So you might say there’s an intersectionality here, of sorts, that Trump sees these lower-class white neighborhoods, has this deeply-held feeling that America is being beaten in the free market and associates them. To him, it’s “invisible but pervasive;” it’s not as deep as the dynamics Murray writes about in Coming Apart.

BS: Coming Apart is a great book for him to read because he can get these points without getting enmeshed in issues of race. Like, whatever you do, don’t let the president read The Bell Curve. Just don’t.

AR: How do you think the president has fared in his first year?

BS: So, I’ve told this to members of the administration: When it comes to executive policy, I’d give him an “A.” When it comes to congressional dealings I’d give him a “C.” That’s only a “C,” not a “D,” because of the tax bill. When it comes to rhetoric, I’d give him an “F.” He’s been brutally awful on rhetoric, and it’s one of the reasons why what I’ve recommended has been aimed towards “here’s how you need to fix your rhetoric and your image, here’s what you need to understand to unify the country around a set of common principles,” rather than fighting this battle against the left.

I mean, he won the election and now it’s time to build on that and here’s how to come together, Elections have been about driving people apart for the sake of getting elected. Post-election is about bringing those people together for the sake of governing. There’s only so much he can do because the left hates him so much, but it doesn’t help that every five minutes he’s blowing up the internet with some ill-advised tweet, or that he has made some statement that can be charitably described as controversial.

AR: Do you think his rhetoric has hurt you personally? The Anti Defamation League’s report on anti-Semitism said that you’re the most targeted victim of anti-Semitic tweets, 7,400 tweets in just seven months.

BS: I think that he has enabled a lot of bad people. I think the president has a tendency to ally with whomever he thinks is supporting him and he doesn’t do any sort of background check on those people.

And, he’s very reticent to condemn people he thinks support him in any way—and that has manifested in some pretty terrible ways. During the election cycle it manifested in his comments to Jake Tapper pretending he didn’t know who David Duke was. It manifested post-election in his comments on Charlottesville, which was the low point in the Trump presidency.

I know that everybody is worried about “BleepholeGate” and all of that, and I’m not a fan of what the president allegedly said behind closed doors. The difference is: (1) He said it behind closed doors; and (2) There is an interpretation by which he was arguing against a diversity visa lottery and that he was suggesting that if you are going to prioritize countries, maybe the countries you prioritize ought to be more westernized—and that it had nothing to do with race. You could make a case that the “Bleephole country” comment was not about bigotry against specific races or countries, it was against the idea that every person from every country is equally likely, in a merit based system, to assimilate.

The Charlottesville comments were a bit different in tone and in kind. I hope he moves away from all of this sort of stuff because it’s not helping the agenda that I like.

This has been one of the hilarious things to a certain extent: During the election cycle he did not run as a conservative. He ran openly against many conservative values. And so, I said at the time, I don’t know if this guy is going to govern any different than a moderate democrat would. And he hasn’t. He’s governed like a very conservative Republican, at least in executive policy. That doesn’t mean he necessarily understands everything that he’s doing. We’ve seen three times in the past three weeks when he has casually undermined his own policy, but what is actually coming out of the administration is often stuff that I really like. So I’m interested in him not toxifying that agenda.

Winning to does not equal statesmanship. The question is can you be a statesman after that and if Trump were to make that switch, it would be one of the great switches in American history, and even world history. So, for a guy who likes surprise endings, that would the greatest surprise ending of all.

AR: Do you think Trump’s rhetoric will improve without Bannon by his side? Less emphasis on populism, more focus on governance?

BS: I think that in terms of governance, yes, I think that Bannon’s agenda, which was really not even Bannon’s agenda, per se, it was really more Bannon trying to boil down what he thought Trump’s agenda was into some sort of pseudo-philosophy and then preach it to the world as his own.

I know Bannon well-enough to know that he never talked about free trade on a routine basis, he never talked about big-spending infrastructure projects. These are all new things in Bannon’s thought process. One thing that he did do: He was in Trump’s ear all of the time.

On that score, I think it’s good that it’s no longer happening. I think that policy has gotten better. As far as the rhetoric, I think Trump is Trump. I don’t think Bannon was defining Trump’s rhetoric. I think that he was a devil in his ear. I think he wasn’t helping. I don’t think it was great that Bannon was telling Trump that everything Trump did that wasn’t great was actually wonderful. Again, Trump is Trump and the guy obviously is not going to be told by anyone what to do—if that were the case he would have stopped tweeting months ago and his approval rating would be higher by about 5 to 7 points, probably.