Gary Cohn is out. Tariffs are in. And Republicans look for a second special counsel, this time to investigate the FBI. We ll get to the bottom of all of it on The Ben Shapiro Show with Ben Shapiro ( )! Subscribe to Ben Shapiro: The Hourglass Is Empty. Learn more about your ad choices. If you like what you hear, please HIT SUBSCRIBE and also, consider leaving us a five star rating on Apple Podcasts! It helps us to keep bringing you high quality, diverse and inspirational episodes every single day. Thanks for listening and share the podcast with your fellow podcasting friends! Also, don t forget to tell your friends about this podcast by using the hashtag on social media and tagging to let us know what you thought of it! Thank you so much for all your support and stay tuned for more episodes in the future! Ben Shapiro Music: Fair Weather Fans by The Baseball Project, recorded live at WFMU and produced by DIVE Studios, Los Angeles, CA. Copyright 2019 by Dee McDonnell and the Vigil Project, LLC. All rights reserved. This episode was produced for Gimlet Media, Inc. and distributed by Sober is Dope by Pondels, Inc., a proud affiliate of VaynerMedia, LLC, and other clients everywhere else. Thank you for all the support and support is due to the grace and support given out by the good people in the good work done by Mr. Ben Shapiro, Jr., etc., and all of his good work, etc., etc. - Thank you to all of the hard work and good thanks out to Mr. Goodness, etc. etc., good thanks really out to good chance, good chance really out here, really out out out truly, good thanks to good support, good out out chance out out really out chance to good luck, good love, good luck out out to all out out away out out, good good chance out truly out out ) etc., really really, truly, really, really good, really appreciate it, really thanks, really really out, really truly, truly out here really out of chance, truly appreciate it really out really, good really out away, good night, really said it out here really really really good out really truly out of luck, really outeeeeeeeedeedeeeeeeeeedeee) <________
00:00:14.000As the hourglass empties, so are the days of our lives.
00:00:17.000As the staffing turnover at the White House continues, apparently the only person who's going to come back, Jared Kushner apparently just went to Mexico.
00:00:25.000By the time he gets back, it's going to be like Donald Glover in that scene from Community.
00:00:28.000He's just going to walk in, everything's on fire, people are hitting each other with baseball bats.
00:00:33.000That's basically what's happening over at the White House.
00:01:47.000It ensures that I don't have to worry about who's at the doorbell even when I'm away on business because it rings through to my phone so I can see who it is at my gate.
00:02:50.000Gary Cohn was Trump's top economic advisor about three weeks ago.
00:02:54.000Three weeks ago, people were suggesting that Gary Cohn was about to take over for John Kelly as Chief of Staff, that Kelly was on the out, and Gary Cohn was about to enter.
00:03:02.000Now, Gary Cohn has been shoved aside in favor of Peter Navarro.
00:03:05.000Gary Cohn is a Democrat, but he's a free-trade Democrat.
00:03:08.000Peter Navarro is also a Democrat, but he is a non-free-trade Democrat.
00:03:11.000So, Peter Navarro has a bunch of kooky theories about why 17th century mercantilism is actually genius economic policy.
00:03:18.000But Trump believes all that stuff because Trump
00:03:20.000has this 1950s-era vision of the United States in which smelters are working full bore, and Pittsburgh is the center of steel production.
00:03:28.000Now, never mind that when Pittsburgh was the center of steel production, the environment was really not nice, and that pretty much every film about blue-collar America in the 1960s and 70s featured people being miserable in steel production in Pittsburgh.
00:03:42.000All of that is irrelevant to President Trump.
00:03:44.000He thinks, as the steel industry goes, so goes the United States economy.
00:04:10.000So, the New York Times reports, White House officials insisted there was no single factor behind the departure of Mr. Cohn, who heads the National Economic Council.
00:04:17.000But his decision to leave came as he seemed poised to lose an internal struggle over Mr. Trump's plan to impose large tariffs on steel and aluminum imports.
00:04:58.000But the problem here is that Trump was having meetings off the books with Wilbur Ross, the Commerce Secretary, as well as with Peter Navarro.
00:05:05.000He wasn't actually letting his National Economic Advisor know.
00:05:08.000And then he went directly around him and announced a tariff without any supporting structure in place.
00:05:14.000There's not a single executive order, not a single piece of legislation, not a single policy paper that's been put out explaining what exactly Trump wants here.
00:05:21.000He just went out there and said, I want tariffs, and tariffs there shall be.
00:05:24.000And suddenly, Gary Cohn was out in the dark.
00:05:26.000So, Gary Cohn has his authority entirely undercut, which is the real reason that he's leaving.
00:05:31.000Trump gave a statement to The New York Times, said, Gary has been my chief economic advisor and did a superb job in driving our agenda, helping to deliver historic tax cuts and reforms, and unleashing the American economy once again.
00:05:41.000He's a rare talent, and I thank him for his dedicated service to the American people.
00:05:45.000He's expected to leave in coming weeks.
00:05:46.000That means that in the past few weeks, Rob Porter is gone.
00:06:08.000If you look at the pictures of the Trump administration in its early iteration, and you see all the people who are standing next to Trump, virtually everyone is gone.
00:06:23.000Everybody is basically gone at this point.
00:06:25.000And not only that, because Trump likes governing through chaos, because he likes that, apparently, according to a number of sources, President Trump was freeing up Anthony Scaramucci to go on cable news and take shot after shot at John Kelly, the White House chief of staff.
00:06:38.000According to CNN, the president has emboldened Scaramucci, the former communications director, another guy who was in the administration and was there for five seconds, he was fired after 10 days, to continue attacking John Kelly during his cable news appearances, a source familiar with the situation told CNN.
00:06:53.000So Trump has basically operated the White House like Joaquin Phoenix in Gladiator.
00:06:58.000He's just sitting there watching people fight each other.
00:07:06.000He's just enjoying watching the carnage as his top advisors savage one another and people outside the White House beat the crap out of one another because Trump likes the reality TV feel.
00:07:18.000It's hard to get good staffers into a chaotic White House.
00:07:20.000Why would you give up a good-paying job somewhere else to enter into an administration where the chances that you're going to be ripped by your boss publicly are 1 in 2, the chances that somebody else in the administration is going to rip you publicly are 2 in 3, and the chances that you will leave in ignominious disgrace are probably 85%.
00:07:38.000Does that sound like a really good bet for you?
00:07:41.000Now, listen, there are a lot of people in the White House who are thinking about leaving and have been thinking about leaving for a long time.
00:07:47.000This is common knowledge in Washington, D.C.
00:07:49.000Because they don't like Trump's chaotic moves here, again, the swiveling is so fast and so problematic that it's hard to imagine how Trump is either hemmed in by anyone with
00:08:02.000How his advisors hem him in from making bad decisions.
00:08:05.000It's also hard to imagine how he's going to get top staffers anymore.
00:08:07.000Remember, Sam Nunberg was fired and Sam Nunberg went on TV the other day and made a fool of himself.
00:08:13.000This administration, the turnover rate is really rapid and not everybody is being replaced by better people.
00:08:18.000So here is Donald Trump praising Gary Cohn two months ago.
00:09:49.000We have pretty good staff retention here at The Daily Wire, and that's because the people who work here know that in the end, I'll take the hit rather than having my employees take the hit.
00:09:57.000I rip on my employees on the air sometimes, but they know that I'm joking, right?
00:10:00.000Mathis knows that I think he does a really good job and that I have a lot of appreciation for his skill.
00:10:04.000That's the nicest thing I'm ever going to say publicly about you, Mathis.
00:10:06.000Everybody else here knows that's the case as well.
00:10:08.000That's why we're able to retain staff and we have good staff loyalty.
00:10:12.000Because we all feel like we're pushing in the same direction.
00:10:13.000We all have the same general principles about American politics.
00:10:16.000And because people know that we're not going to stand for employees stabbing each other in the back.
00:10:20.000But Trump likes that style of management.
00:10:22.000He thinks somehow that this strengthens him.
00:10:24.000He thinks somehow that this makes his administration better and stronger.
00:10:28.000And what's worse, it makes the policy worse, because then he brings in people who are able to bend his ear.
00:10:32.000So if you kiss Trump's ass, there's a very good shot that his policy is going to become your policy.
00:10:39.000I said right after Anthony Scaramucci left that if I wanted to be White House comms director, I probably could do it just by appearing on Fox and Friends every other morning and praising Trump to the skies.
00:10:47.000And I guarantee you that within three weeks, I get a call from Trump or somebody close to the administration asking if I wanted a job in comms.
00:10:54.000That's not how you ought to run an administration, particularly if you're supposed to have things that you want to do.
00:10:59.000The Trump administration ran through large elements of its agenda in the first year.
00:11:03.000And those agenda elements were quite good.
00:11:05.000A lot of those agenda items were things that I agreed with, things that I liked.
00:11:08.000And now Trump is born, and idle hands are the devil's playground.
00:11:13.000The fact is that the president doesn't have a lot to do right now, and so he's sticking his thumb into pies that he has long wanted to stick his thumb into.
00:11:21.000He's always had this bizarre notion that America's trade is thwarting American growth, which is just not true.
00:11:26.000He's always had this very weird idea that trade is a zero-sum game, that when you and I make a voluntary transaction that we've both lost, or that one of us has gained more than the other, or that one of us has gained at the expense of the other,
00:11:39.000And so you're seeing it in the markets today.
00:11:40.000You're seeing that the markets are responding to these indicators from the president with a lot of trepidation.
00:11:46.000The Dow Jones Industrial Average today is down 338 points already.
00:11:51.000A lot of the commodities markets are down significantly because people understand that Trump is now, on principle, going to raise tariffs.
00:11:57.000Now, there are a lot of people who are saying today that when it comes to tariffs, everything will be fine, this is not going to have a major impact on the economy.
00:12:04.000Wilbur Ross was out saying that yesterday.
00:12:06.000He held up a Campbell's Soup can on Sunday and claimed that if your price of Campbell's Soup goes up only three cents, it's not a big deal.
00:12:13.000Wilbur Ross, what would he know about drinking from a Campbell's soup can?
00:12:17.000And he was on national TV holding up Campbell's soup cans.
00:12:20.000He was talking about tariffs a little bit more yesterday and trying to defend Trump's tariff regime, even though there really is no economic basis for it.
00:12:27.000Again, the industries that are supposed to be protected here are already dominant in American life.
00:12:54.000I'm going to explain why this is silly in just a second.
00:12:57.000First, I want to say thank you to our sponsors over at zeal.com.
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00:14:23.000Wilbur Ross, the Commerce Secretary, who is one of the driving forces behind the new tariff regime, he was on CNBC yesterday trying to defend how this is all going to work.
00:14:32.000And his defense is, shall we, how shall we say, lackluster at best.
00:14:36.000He's already indicated a degree of flexibility.
00:14:40.000I think a very sensible, very balanced degree of flexibility.
00:14:45.000And I think that you're going to see, as you understand the details of what actually is going to happen, that we're not trying to blow up the world.
00:14:57.000We want to balance our needs to fix the trade deficit with the needs of the economy and the needs of the global economy itself.
00:15:07.000Oh, well, that thrilling tale right there from Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross, the most charismatic man outside of Mitch McConnell in Washington, D.C.
00:15:16.000He must be just fun at parties, Wilbur Ross.
00:15:18.000And I love that he starts his case by, we're not trying to destroy the world.
00:16:43.000The reason being, if you trade and then somebody, you spend more dollars than they do on your product, those dollars come back in the form of capital surplus investment.
00:16:52.000Can they invest in American businesses?
00:17:56.000These big buildings located in Detroit, where people worked on employment lines, where they worked on manufacturing lines, and they worked there for 50 years, and they got the gold watch, and then they went home.
00:18:06.000And they had enough money, based on that one salary, to support their families.
00:18:10.000Why can't we go back to something like that?
00:18:12.000And the answer is, because America's economy is much more developed.
00:18:17.000The businesses that we work in are better to work in than those businesses.
00:18:20.000If you had a choice between working in a Pittsburgh smelter and working in the Pittsburgh healthcare industry, you would choose to work in the Pittsburgh healthcare industry.
00:18:27.000Pittsburgh, by the way, is doing quite well.
00:18:29.000The Pittsburgh unemployment statistic right now, the Pittsburgh unemployment rate currently is 4.6% as of September 2017.
00:18:37.000That is lower than Pennsylvania as a whole.
00:19:47.000It's about Trump thinking he's going to win politically because he promised a bunch of people in manufacturing industries he's going to bring their jobs back.
00:19:55.000Those jobs left because of technology, they did not leave because of global competition, and they certainly are not going to be protected by killing jobs in other industries.
00:20:02.000Because all a surplus is, I mean, all a tariff is, is a tax that is being placed on everyone else for the benefit of some.
00:20:09.000So if you think that, for example, the ethanol industry needs to be subsidized by the federal government, I don't think so.
00:20:16.000I think that it's nasty to tax me to pay off a bunch of farmers in Iowa.
00:21:27.000He said these tariffs concern me as well they should because they are stupid.
00:21:30.000The tariffs that were announced, did they surprise you?
00:21:33.000They did not surprise me, but they concern me.
00:21:37.000When it comes to trade, I support the president and the administration.
00:21:43.000Okay, well, I'm glad that that's what Ted Cruz says, but the reality is that if Trump—look, if Trump were designing these measures in order to attempt to drive some sort of lowered trade barrier on the other side, that'd be one thing.
00:22:06.000Rand Paul says the same thing, by the way.
00:22:07.000He says the United States will lose a trade war because no one wins in a trade war.
00:22:10.000If you look at steel use in our country, there are 60 people purchasing steel for every person making steel in the country.
00:22:16.000So there's a lot of people who purchase steel that are going to be hurt by this.
00:22:20.000My state alone exports $20 billion worth of products, including a lot of farm agricultural products.
00:22:27.000And if there's a trade war, we stand to lose in a big way.
00:22:30.000And really, the United States will lose in a trade war.
00:22:32.000OK, so let's, in a second, I'm going to explain why it is that I don't trust Congress on this stuff, why they're a bunch of gutless panderers, in one second.
00:22:40.000But first, on that happy note, I want to say thank you to our sponsors over at Tommy John.
00:22:44.000It would be nice if members of our Congress had stones.
00:22:47.000If they did, they would certainly want to use Tommy John's underwear.
00:22:49.000Because Tommy John's underwear are the most comfortable underwear it is possible to have.
00:22:54.000It's time for a little spring cleaning.
00:22:55.000Start with your underwear drawer because you have a bunch of shot underwear where the elastic is just gone and there are holes in them.
00:23:39.000They've also completely reimagined t-shirts with their silky soft second skin tees, and they are wrinkle resistant, and they never shrink either.
00:23:45.000So they have vibrant colors, a modern fit, premium fabrics, and they make these second skin tees.
00:24:36.000I think it's going to hurt the economy.
00:24:37.000I think we just passed some really good tax plans.
00:24:40.000And I think that the economic impact of those tax plans are going to be walked back down.
00:24:44.000The one good thing that may come from this is that so much of the country is anti-Trump that maybe it'll turn into a free trade country again.
00:24:50.000But Republicans are following Trump down the primrose path.
00:24:53.000There was a poll yesterday showing that 65% of Republicans say that it will be easy for America to win a trade war.
00:25:01.000You know, when I've talked about the possible soul suck of the Republican Party and the concerns that I have that Trump would lead Republicans to embrace bad policy just because he said them, this is one example of that.
00:25:12.000That said, I think that a powerful leader on the Republican side who comes forward and says no, if they can outshine Trump, will convince Americans of the opposite.
00:25:21.000But what you're hearing from Congress is that they're very resistant to this.
00:25:23.000So Paul Ryan says he's extremely worried about the consequences of a trade war, and he urged Trump to take a surgical approach rather than imposing penalties on all imported steel and aluminum.
00:25:33.000But this is weird, because it seems to me the Constitution of the United States gives Congress the power under Article 1 to lay and collect taxes and duties.
00:26:14.000Maybe you could challenge it in court by saying there is no real national security need, but the courts are probably going to toss that.
00:26:18.000They're going to say it's a political question.
00:26:20.000There's something called political question doctrine, and the courts have generally held that when there's conflict between the branches, between the legislature and the executive, that this should be hashed out through legislation.
00:26:29.000Not through appealing to the judiciary.
00:26:32.000If the tariffs are imposed, they'll probably be challenged at the WTO, the World Trade Organization.
00:26:37.000But that could take two years to walk back.
00:26:40.000Remember, the last time there were steel tariffs, that was Bush implementing them from 2001 to 2003.
00:26:44.000Something like 200,000 American jobs were lost during that period.
00:26:47.000And the President of the United States then was forced to back down off those steel tariffs.
00:26:51.000What Trump is talking about is a lot harsher.
00:26:52.000So, the question becomes, where are those stones, Congress?
00:27:20.000And they think that their job is to sit there and delegate authority to the executive branch.
00:27:23.000The executive branch has grown in size and scope over the course of time.
00:27:27.000The number of federal employees in the executive branch at the beginning of the 20th century was extraordinarily low.
00:27:33.000And the number of federal employees over time has grown in the executive branch massively.
00:27:38.000So right now, in the executive branch, there are literally 2 million people, apparently, working in some capacity for the executive branch.
00:27:46.000At the beginning of the republic, you could fit the executive branch in a water closet.
00:27:50.000The executive branch was like 15 people, because that's how the government was supposed to operate.
00:29:46.000So the founders thought, if you read the Federalist Papers, which we go through every Monday here, when you read the Federalist Papers, what you see is that the founders were deeply concerned with the idea that there would be ambitious people in every branch.
00:29:56.000There would be ambitious people in the legislature trying to grab power, and there are ambitious people in the executive trying to grab power.
00:30:01.000There are ambitious people in the judiciary trying to grab power.
00:30:04.000And so what we needed were a bunch of checks and balances that would prevent anyone from centralizing too much power.
00:30:08.000And so if the president wanted to usurp power, the legislature would step in and defund him, or not give him the power to do so.
00:30:15.000If the president overrode his constitutional authority, the judiciary would step in.
00:30:18.000If the judiciary overrode its constitutional authority, the legislature would defund the judiciary.
00:30:23.000If the legislature overrode its authority, the president would veto.
00:30:27.000In other words, all of this was predicated on an assumption about human nature, and the nature particularly of people in politics, which is people in politics want power.
00:30:35.000It turns out that what people in politics really want is adoration without responsibility.
00:30:40.000What people in politics truly want is to be loved without actually having to do anything, and without being held responsible for anything.
00:30:46.000They want all of the plaudits with none of the accountability.
00:30:51.000And so the legislative branch has kicked everything over to the president.
00:30:54.000Now, the president typically is somebody who wants power.
00:30:57.000Because if you run for the president of the United States, you're typically not doing so to avoid responsibility, you're typically doing so because you want to be the guy.
00:31:05.000The president is basically like an elected king in the American system at this point because of the federal bureaucracy.
00:31:09.000Bureaucracy didn't exist in the 19th century.
00:31:14.000It was only at the beginning of the 20th century with Woodrow Wilson and the progressives and Teddy Roosevelt that there was this weird idea that happened that experts in the executive branch were better qualified to write the regulations under which we live than the people we elect.
00:31:26.000So unelected bureaucrats will take over all the real regulatory and lawmaking authority and the legislature will just kick everything over there.
00:31:32.000So now we have a system of perverse incentives.
00:31:34.000We have a set of people in the legislature who will bitch and moan about stuff that's happening in the executive branch, but they don't actually want to do anything.
00:31:41.000Because if they do anything, they're going to be held responsible for doing something.
00:31:45.000Let's say that Congress came along and they said to President Trump, we hate your trade program, we're removing the authority for you to do what you're doing.
00:32:12.000The reason they're not is, again, because no one in the legislature has the stones to stand by the decisions they want to make, which is why the executive branch continues to grow.
00:32:20.000They write these vague, omnibus packages that nobody knows how to implement, except the bureaucrats in the executive branch who wrote them.
00:32:27.000The people who write bills are bureaucrats in the executive branch working with bureaucrats in the legislative branch, as well as lobbyists.
00:32:41.000Nancy Pelosi has never written a single bill.
00:32:43.000Okay, Nancy Pelosi's staffers may have written a bill in coordination with lobbyists and people in the executive branch, but she has never written probably a sentence of a bill.
00:32:52.000At least beyond the preamble, which is where you talk about how wonderful you are.
00:33:50.000It's a real problem because President Trump is not ambitious enough to overthrow the constitutional order by just running roughshod over the legislature.
00:33:59.000Plus he has a Republican Congress, so it's not really an issue.
00:34:02.000But there are presidents who have and presidents who would like to.
00:34:05.000President Obama's executive amnesty being the most obvious example.
00:34:10.000Blame Trump, but blame the Congress more, because Congress could do what it should do right now about stopping this, but they don't have the stones to do it, which is really sad.
00:34:18.000OK, so I want to talk a little bit more about some of the scandals that are plaguing the Trump administration, unfortunately, and a scandal that continues to plague the Obama administration.
00:34:27.000First, you're going to have to go over to dailywire.com.
00:34:28.000So for $9.99 a month, you can get a subscription to dailywire.com.
00:34:31.000That means you get the rest of this show live.
00:34:32.000It means you get the rest of the Andrew Klavan show live, the rest of the Michael Knowles show live.
00:34:37.000It also means that you get to ask questions in our mailbag.
00:34:40.000Our next episode of The Conversation is coming up on Tuesday, March 13th.
00:35:30.000The leftist here is hot or cold, mug, tumbler, it's not a mug, it's a tumbler, I've been informed.
00:35:35.000So, it is just, I have to drink from the right side of it though in order for it to work.
00:35:41.000It is spectacular, ah, the refreshing nature of this tumbler.
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00:36:02.000So, a couple of more pieces of news on the Trump front, and then we'll get to some other elements, including social media crackdowns on conservatives.
00:36:09.000So, the Trump administration had—I did a lot of bad Trump there.
00:36:14.000Now it's time for a little bit of good Trump.
00:36:16.000So, Trump was commenting on foreign affairs.
00:36:18.000He had the Swedish prime minister at the White House yesterday, and he said to the Swedish prime minister, by the way, I was right, you have an immigration problem.
00:36:46.000You know, the truth is that this is right.
00:36:48.000You know, I remember back during the campaign, Trump said that Sweden was having severe problems with particularly unvetted Muslim immigration, and that it was raising the crime rates in places like Malmo.
00:37:01.000And they said this on a broad level, right?
00:37:03.000I pointed out at the time that Trump's specific claim was not true, but his broader claim that there was a crime problem in Sweden because of immigration, that was true.
00:37:09.000And the media jumped to, there's no problem in Sweden, everything is great.
00:37:14.000And what's hilarious is that the New York Times has now been forced to write pieces about why they're having a severe crime problem in Sweden.
00:37:19.000It turns out that part of that is because when you import an entire population of people coming from countries with higher crime rates and significant cultural differences, you may, in fact, increase the crime rate in your country.
00:37:29.000It's one of the reasons, by the way, why whenever you compare crime rates in particular countries, particular states, when you check the gun homicide rates in particular countries, you actually have to look at the people and not look at the location.
00:37:40.000So, there's this common thing that's done by advocates of gun control, where they say, look at the murder rate in Norway versus the murder rate in the United States.
00:37:47.000Look how the murder rate in Norway is way lower than the murder rate in the United States.
00:37:49.000That's probably because there are more guns in the United States.
00:37:51.000Well, as Milton Friedman once said about the economic status of Norwegians, people were saying, if you look at the economy in Norway, it's stronger in some ways than the economy in the United States.
00:38:00.000He said, not among Norwegians, meaning that
00:38:03.000Norwegians in the United States earn significantly more than Norwegians in Norway.
00:38:06.000Swedes in the United States are living in lower crime areas and commit fewer crimes probably than Swedes in Sweden.
00:38:12.000And so you actually have to look at the people who you're talking about if you want to compare apples to apples and not apples to oranges because it's people who are picking up guns and committing crimes.
00:38:21.000This is why you actually have to treat everybody as an individual.
00:38:25.000But if you are assessing whether a group of people generally
00:38:29.000Is more or less likely to commit crimes, then you have to look at the statistical variability there and you have to look at cultural differentiation.
00:38:36.000It's not an ethnic thing, it's not a racial thing.
00:38:38.000This is about cultures, it's about religions, it's about the assimilability of particular people who are from different cultures.
00:38:46.000Okay, so Trump said that to the Swedish Prime Minister.
00:38:48.000Other things that he said, so yesterday he said,
00:38:50.000We are looking at sanctions on Russia.
00:38:52.000He said, we're not going to allow Russia to influence 2018.
00:38:54.000This made the press very upset because, of course, their theory has been that Trump is working hand-in-glove with Russia and that in 2018, Vladimir Putin will come and personally stuff the ballot box for Devin Nunes in his district, which is, of course, very silly.
00:39:15.000And we are having strong backup systems.
00:39:17.000And we've been working, actually, we haven't been given credit for this, but we've actually been working very hard on the 18 election and the 20 election coming up.
00:40:36.000Okay, so meanwhile, speaking of scandal...
00:40:39.000Top Republicans are now calling for a second special counsel, this time not to investigate Trump-Russia collusion, but to investigate FISA abuses.
00:40:46.000So, yesterday, House Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte and Representative Trey Gowdy demanded the appointment of a special counsel to investigate conflicts of interest and decisions made and not made by current and former Justice Department officials in 2016 and 2017.
00:41:00.000Noting that the public interest requires the action.
00:41:02.000Gowdy, who is, I think, an honest guy, and Goodlatte, who I also think is honest, penned a letter to Attorney General Jeff Sessions and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein.
00:41:17.000So what they say is that they now know that there are two dozen witnesses that Michael Horowitz, the DOJ Inspector General, did not have access to, and these witnesses apparently have information about FISA abuses.
00:41:28.000That list of witnesses includes FBI Director—former FBI Director James Comey.
00:41:33.000So, Sessions announced that Horowitz would investigate allegations of government surveillance abuse in light of memos that the dossier—that suggested that the dossier compiled by Christopher Steele was used to obtain a FISA warrant to surveil former Trump campaign adviser Carter Page.
00:41:48.000Gowdy says this whole FISA warrant was on Carter Page, and all of them agree that this is suspect.
00:41:53.000This is controversial as to how suspect that FISA warrant was, but there is a pattern of FISA warrants being given out without proper evidence.
00:42:03.000And Gowdy says, Congress does not have the tools to investigate, plus we leak like the gossip girls.
00:42:07.000So they're asking for a special counsel to be appointed on this.
00:42:10.000There should be a special counsel appointed on this, because if Jeff Sessions were to either let the FISA system off the hook or to condemn the FISA system, he'd be accused of political bias.
00:42:20.000A special counsel on this is probably something useful.
00:42:23.000Again, the Obama malfeasance with regard to the corruption inside the executive branch was continuous throughout his tenure.
00:42:39.000Eric Holder, who is now trying to run for president, apparently, in 2020, which is just unbelievable, considering that he was held in contempt by Congress for his own corruption.
00:43:44.000Please don't worry about the Oscar ratings or how my mom's doing, although thank you, she's doing great.
00:43:51.000So, don't worry about her or Mom's doing.
00:43:53.000The reason people are worried about how Hillary's doing is because, again, there was unprosecuted corruption that went on during the Obama administration, and now the Republicans are in charge.
00:44:23.000Because she's an adult who has taken on an official role in the White House.
00:44:28.000Do you think she's fair game for criticism, or is she just another presidential child?
00:44:33.000I think anyone who works for the President certainly should expect to be scrutinized for whatever decisions not only she or he is making, but whatever decisions the White House is making on any given day.
00:44:47.000OK, how about people who work for the Clinton Foundation, which was alleged to be involved in corruption while your name was on it?
00:44:52.000It's the Bill Hillary and Chelsea Clinton Foundation.
00:44:55.000How about people who work for their mom's campaign and speak at the DNC?
00:44:59.000Again, the hypocrisy here is pretty astonishing.
00:45:01.000Chelsea has barely been asked any questions about the corruption of her parents because she's been seen as off-limits, but Ivanka apparently is within limits.
00:45:09.000I think both of them should not be off-limits.
00:45:10.000I think questions should be asked of both of them, and all of that is fine.
00:45:13.000But the hypocrisy of the media there is pretty astonishing.
00:45:16.000Okay, so, I want to—let's get to some things I like and some things I hate.
00:45:23.000So, I've been doing heaven-related art this week.
00:45:26.000So, one of those pieces of art is the movie that launched a whole spate of movies in Hollywood in the 1930s and 40s about life after death.
00:45:34.000So, there's a movie called Heaven Can Wait that came out much later in 1978 with Warren Beatty.
00:45:39.000The film is called Here Comes Mr. Jordan, and it's about a prizefighter who is supposed to not die in a plane accident, but the angel of death thinks that he's supposed to die and takes him too early.
00:45:49.000So they take the soul out of his body, but his body is destroyed.
00:45:52.000And so the soul is supposed to be put back down on Earth, and so it's about his soul inhabiting other bodies, and him trying to make a life for himself doing that.
00:46:39.000And here comes Max Korko, Joe's lifetime friend and ex-manager, who thinks Joe cracked up in his plane.
00:46:45.000Joe is having a hard time convincing him he's wrong.
00:46:48.000Okay, so the movie's kind of a comedy, it's kind of a drama.
00:46:51.000It's much better than the 1978 version, and this led to a bunch of other movies, like The Bishop's Wife, about people who come back from the dead and are trying to make a life on Earth, or trying to communicate with people on Earth.
00:47:05.000And again, this was a time when Americans were, I think, when you watch old movies, there's a certain nostalgia, not just because they're in black and white, but because there's a certain set of values there, right?
00:47:13.000There's a certain baseline religiosity to movies like this, that there is an afterlife, and that what you do in this world matters, and that the incorporeal soul is a thing.
00:47:25.000Yeah, that was sort of the commonplace assumption.
00:47:27.000Now all those assumptions, of course, have been ripped away, and in a materialist world, you can't make this movie.
00:47:31.000In a materialist world, you can sort of make Bruce Almighty, and that's the best that you can do.
00:47:35.000But Bruce Almighty is a really watered-down version of Here Comes Mr. Jordan.
00:47:39.000This idea that God is imminent in the universe is played for laughs, but there's a certain reverence for it in the old movies that doesn't take place in some of the new movies.
00:47:46.000Okay, time for a couple of things that I hate.
00:47:53.000So, number one, there is apparently an ISIS-inspired teen who tried to bomb a school yesterday in Utah.
00:47:59.000Here's a piece of the news story on it.
00:48:00.000David Morse is relieved after three weeks of waiting for the person who desecrated an American flag and vandalized Hurricane High School to be found.
00:48:09.000I was totally surprised that I haven't heard anybody say anything about who's done it.
00:48:13.000No suspect had been reported until today, when a 17-year-old Pineview High School student found a suspicious bag in the hallway.
00:48:22.000The entire school was evacuated because of it.
00:48:24.000Follow the instructions of the officers.
00:48:27.000Now, a student who, according to police, was authorized to be on Pineview's campus for coursework is the alleged suspect in both of these cases.
00:48:34.000You got a mentally ill young person that needs some help.
00:48:38.000Okay, so the reason that I point this out is because there's a guy who set off a bomb that didn't go off on a school campus.
00:48:46.000Has this been at the top of the news anywhere?
00:48:47.000Okay, now maybe it's because the bomb was unsuccessful.
00:48:49.000Maybe it's because it was with a bomb.
00:48:51.000If a student had walked into school with a gun and fired a bunch of shots and nobody had been killed, but then it turned out that the person was a member of the NRA, you think it might lead the news?
00:48:59.000You think maybe there's an agenda to the news?
00:49:01.000Yeah, this sort of demonstrates that there's a pretty significant agenda to the news.
00:49:26.000Which is just ridiculous, because people will find ways to buy guns anyway.
00:49:30.000I mean, there are plenty of stores online where you can buy a gun and it ships to a federally licensed firearm dealer.
00:49:34.000Facebook has been slammed for ignoring conservative stories and outlets in its trending news.
00:49:38.000They shifted their algorithm, but now they've shifted their algorithm again, supposedly to downgrade partisan news, saying that instead they want to push news that is going to
00:50:02.000That's the way that they figured this out.
00:50:03.000So, that means that sites that are openly partisan, like Daily Wire, are going to be downgraded.
00:50:08.000But sites that are fake, non-partisan, like the New York Times and CNN, are going to be upgraded.
00:50:12.000Which stands in favor of legacy media.
00:50:14.000So it cuts out the traffic base for a lot of people.
00:50:16.000It means that even though you're a follower of the Daily Wire, even though you're a follower of my show, my stuff may not show up in your feed if you don't actually set it specifically to show up in your feed.
00:50:25.000Because Facebook is trying to downgrade my content for you, even though you enjoy my content and you voluntarily clicked into following me.
00:50:31.000This stuff is really bad, and all the algorithms are being set by a bunch of leftists in Silicon Valley, which is why Peter Thiel just left Silicon Valley.
00:50:38.000The irony here, of course, is that conservatives like me have been making the case against regulation of these industries.
00:50:43.000I don't think these industries ought to be regulated.
00:50:46.000But the people who are being slapped are the deregulators.
00:50:49.000The people who want to regulate the industry are being flattered by all of this.
00:50:52.000All of this really is an attempt to reinstate the dominance of the mainstream media, to restate the power structure, because if you get rid of the ad-supported
00:52:36.000That's the story of Esther in the palace of Ahasuerus, who's probably Xerxes in real history.
00:52:43.000The story there is that Xerxes' top advisor, Haman, was planning a genocide of the Jews, and meanwhile, Ahasuerus, Xerxes, was looking for a new wife.
00:52:53.000He'd killed his first wife, Vashti, and he settled on, in a beauty contest, he settled on Melania Trump.