Iranian forces have now attacked two oil tankers in the Strait of Hormuz, further ratcheting up tensions between the United States and Iran. Iran has long been a source of tension in the region, especially with Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, which are allied with the West, and are backing opposite sides in the civil war in Yemen, which Iran calls death to the Jews, death to Israel, and death to America . Today's episode of The Ben Shapiro Show is all about the Iranian regime's continued attempts to destabilize the Middle East, and how the U.S. and its allies are doing their best to try to deal with it, including by using economic sanctions and diplomatic pressure, to try and force Iran to give up its designs on the world s oil supply lines. But if they keep doing what they do, we're going to have to go to war, and the sooner rather than later, aren't we all going to be paying the price for it? Ben Shapiro's full report on Iran's continued aggression, plus breaking news out of Iran, including Iran's latest attack on the Persian Gulf, and what it means for the chances of us going to war with Iran, and why we should all be worried about it and why it won't go away any time soon. Subscribe to our new podcast, The Weekly Standard, wherever you get your news and updates on the happenings in the world, including the latest breaking news, your personal finance tip of the past 24 hours! Subscribe today! Subscribe on Apple Podcasts! Subscribe on iTunes Learn more about your ad choices, and become a supporter of the show, rate, review and subscribe to our podcast, and leave us a rating and review in iTunes! - we'll be giving you the best listening experience in the podcast you get the best reviews on the podcast next week! Best of all things podcasting and social media links, including recommendations, reviews, tips, and more! Thanks for listening to the Ben Shapiroism? Subscribe and reviewing our new episodes are featured on the show! and reviews on social media! Want to become a fellow podcaster? - subscribe to the show? and subscribe on your favorite podchronicity? , and we'll send us your thoughts on what s going to the world's best podchow podcast in the next episode of this week's episode will be reviewed on the next one?
00:00:12.000Man, a lot to get to today, plus breaking news out of Iran, where the Iranian regime continues to be extraordinarily militant.
00:00:22.000This time, they have fired on two oil tankers in the Straits of Hormuz, so tensions are ratcheting up.
00:00:29.000We'll get to all of that in just a second.
00:00:30.000First, if you follow the news every day, and this makes you think, God, maybe I'm going to die one day because this news is just terrible.
00:00:37.000Well, then probably while you're thinking about death, you may as well make the best of it.
00:00:40.000Go over to Policy Genius and go check out life insurance.
00:00:43.000Now, if you've been procrastinating on this thing, usually that's bad news, but your procrastination has now worked in your favor because while you were procrastinating on life insurance, Policy Genius was putting together a great way for you to get PolicyGenius.
00:00:55.000Now is the time for procrastinating to stop.
00:00:58.000PolicyGenius is the easy way to shop for insurance online.
00:01:00.000In just two minutes, you can compare quotes from top insurers and find your best price.
00:01:04.000Once you apply, the PolicyGenius team will handle all the paperwork and the red tape.
00:01:07.000No sales pressure, no hidden fees, just financial protection and peace of mind.
00:01:10.000PolicyGenius doesn't just make life insurance easy.
00:01:13.000They can also help you find the right home insurance, auto insurance, disability insurance.
00:01:16.000If you need life insurance, but you've been busy doing literally anything else, check out PolicyGenius.
00:01:21.000It's the easy way to compare all the top insurers and find the best value for you.
00:01:44.000Two oil tankers came under attack on Thursday in the Gulf of Oman, forcing their crews to abandon ship and setting at least one vessel ablaze a month after four tankers were damaged in the same waterway, a vital thoroughfare for much of the world's oil products.
00:01:57.000The early morning attacks escalated tensions in an already tense region where Iran had long been at odds with Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, and they are backing opposite sides in the civil war in Yemen.
00:02:07.000The Houthis, backed by the Iranians, whose slogan is, death to the Jews, death to Israel, death to America.
00:02:13.000Those are the folks who are fighting on behalf of Iran.
00:02:15.000The Saudis, of course, have their own set of problems, and they are at war in Yemen.
00:02:20.000Relations between the United States, allied with the UAE and Saudi Arabia and Iran, have also worsened.
00:02:25.000Frictions have become so intense, other nations have pled with all sides to stay calm rather than provoke an all-out war, which is really kind of pathetic because the reality is the United States is not interested in war with Iran.
00:02:35.000No one in the United States is up for a conflict with Iran.
00:02:38.000But if they keep firing on our ships, I'm not sure exactly what we are supposed to do other than ratchet up economic tension.
00:02:44.000At a certain point, if they fire on too many of our ships, we're not going to have a choice.
00:02:47.000We're going to have to eviscerate the regime.
00:02:49.000Up to that point, nobody is really interested in that.
00:02:52.000The Trump administration clearly is not interested in that.
00:02:55.000On Wednesday, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe of Japan, who is visiting Iran and trying to bridge the gap between Iran and the United States, warned of the risk of stumbling into military conflict.
00:03:03.000Well, you know what heightens that risk?
00:03:08.000That's one of those things that might heighten the possibility of a conflict.
00:03:11.000This is everybody sort of whistling past the graveyard with regard to Iran.
00:03:14.000worried about the risk of a conflict happening by accident with an escalation that is unintended on either side.
00:03:19.000This is everybody sort of whistling past the graveyard with regard to Iran.
00:03:23.000The Iranian regime is deliberately attempting to provoke military action by the United States that is limited in scope, limited enough that it doesn't actually take down the regime, but far enough that it unifies the Iranian people behind a very unpopular regime, There have been rolling economic protests across Iran for years at a time.
00:03:39.000And since 2009, there's been a broiling, seething undercurrent of anti-government activity in Iran.
00:03:45.000The Obama administration committed a great act of evil by funding the Iranian government and undercutting that undercurrent of resistance to an evil regime.
00:03:53.000They decided instead they were going to work with that evil regime, strengthen that evil regime, hand them pallets of cash.
00:04:05.000The Trump administration has done the reverse.
00:04:07.000And so now Iran is basically trying to do the same thing that North Korea has done for years.
00:04:11.000Act so militant that everybody sort of backs down and says, you know, if we just give you some money, will you leave us alone?
00:04:15.000It was not immediately clear how the most recent attacks were carried out or by whom, just as the circumstances of last month's attacks remain murky.
00:04:22.000Well, the circumstances of last month don't actually remain all that murky.
00:04:24.000Everybody sort of understands the Iranian government was behind it.
00:04:27.000The two ships that were struck on Thursday appeared to be more seriously damaged than those hit in May.
00:04:32.000On a visit to the UAE about two weeks ago, John Bolton, President Trump's national security advisor, said without disclosing any evidence that Iran was almost certainly responsible for the attacks in May, which Iranian officials denied.
00:05:03.000Mr. Trump has repudiated the 2015 deal, limiting Iran's nuclear program.
00:05:07.000He recently moved to cut off Iran's remaining oil exports and sends additional military forces to the region.
00:05:12.000Just yesterday, President Trump spoke about the German government's willingness to take Iranian oil and blasted former German officials, like the former Chancellor of Germany, Gerhard Schroeder, who has basically acted as an Iranian oil interest.
00:05:24.000in Germany, trying to funnel Iranian oil into Germany.
00:05:27.000Iran recently threatened to block the Strait of Hormuz, which controls something, it's a choke point for something like 80 to 90% of all oil supply on planet Earth.
00:05:38.000The Houthi faction in Yemen backed by Iran has launched attacks recently on targets in Saudi Arabia, including oil pipelines, fueling fears of a wider conflict.
00:05:45.000Now, this should go to show you, by the way, all of this should go to show you that there has been this lie in American foreign policy for years, promulgated by folks who dislike Israel and the State Department, that at the very center of all Middle Eastern conflict lies the state of Israel and its existence.
00:06:00.000That if you just solve the Israel-Palestinian issue, then all other conflict in the region would disappear.
00:06:05.000Weird, because every major war in the region, effectively speaking, has not involved Israel.
00:06:29.000So this notion that we have to solve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in order to calm the region is just a bunch of crap, and it always was a bunch of crap, and that's being proved on a daily basis in the Middle East.
00:06:39.000That is a side point, but it's worthy of note because no matter who the next Democrat in office is, they will immediately swivel back to the lie that at the center of all conflict lies the Jews!
00:06:49.000Much of the world's oil and gas comes from the Persian Gulf area, bordered by energy powerhouses like Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, and Bahrain.
00:06:56.000Some of it leaves the region through pipelines.
00:06:58.000A significant portion is carried by ships that must pass through the Strait of Hormuz and the Gulf of Oman.
00:07:02.000Oil prices rose more than 3% on world markets in the hours after the attacks on Thursday.
00:07:08.000Shinzo Abe, the head of Japan, he met Wednesday with President Hassan Rouhani of Iran, and Thursday with Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the Supreme Leader, who's actually in charge.
00:07:16.000He delivered a note from Mr. Trump to Khamenei, but the Ayatollah rebuffed the overture, said he could not expect honest negotiation from the American administration.
00:07:23.000Because when I think honest negotiation, I think the Iranian government, which has lied at every step along the way about its desire to develop nuclear weapons.
00:07:31.000Khamenei said, Basically, the Iranians are hoping and praying that Trump is ejected from office in 2020, and then they will be dealing with a much warmer President Buttigieg, or President Biden, or President Kamala Harris, or President Elizabeth Warren.
00:07:49.000Iranian officials suggested the tanker attacks were meant to prevent friendly dialogue and provoke aggression.
00:07:53.000So they're trying to claim that the United States basically bombed ships that were associated with the United States.
00:07:57.000That's what they're trying to— Sure.
00:08:20.000The fact is that Iran could do damage to the United States because there are terror cells associated with and funded by Iran all over planet Earth.
00:08:28.000It is true that a war with Iran would be more protracted than a war with Iraq only because the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps is extraordinarily large and paid off by the government.
00:08:38.000However, Would the regime in Iran survive a direct conflict with the United States?
00:08:44.000The regime in Iran would not survive a direct conflict with the United States, which is why they are attempting a sort of mosquito bite directed at the United States, hoping that the United States will then knock a couple of Iranian ships out of the water, for example, and then the Iranians can stump around, the Iranian government can stump around talking about how they need to defend their country side with the Ayatollahs.
00:09:02.000And they're looking for a rally around the flag effect that's the entire purpose of this particular move.
00:09:08.000Because the fact is that the Iranian government is out of money.
00:09:10.000The choking of the Iranian economy, which has happened under the Trump administration and for which they deserve full credit, has had significant effects on the Iranian government.
00:09:18.000They are feeling it all across the country.
00:09:20.000They're not able to fund their terrorist friends at Hamas in the Gaza Strip anymore.
00:09:25.000All of their regional ambitions are being gradually thwarted by the fact that they are running out of cash.
00:09:30.000And so they're attempting to lash out in the hopes that this will create an impetus for everybody to basically pay them off.
00:09:37.000American analysts were poring over imagery as well as signal intercepts on Thursday to help determine how the attack happened and who was responsible, according to a senior American official.
00:09:45.000Based on the extent of the damage to the tankers, early indications suggested that either mines or torpedoes were used, said the senior official who acknowledged the investigation was still in its early stages.
00:09:55.000Last week, General Frank McKenzie, who's the head of U.S.
00:09:58.000Central Command, told reporters traveling with him in the Middle East he believed the Iranians or their proxies could carry out an attack at any moment.
00:10:04.000He said, I think the threat is imminent.
00:10:06.000And you remember that there was a British general who had disagreed, and then the British foreign secretary said, oh yeah, he's wrong.
00:10:11.000The Iranians are getting really, really militant.
00:10:13.000One of the ships struck on Thursday is the Front Altair, owned by the Norwegian shipping company Frontline.
00:10:20.000CPC Corporation is a Taiwanese oil company that had chartered the ship to carry naphtha, which is a petroleum product, and confirmed that it had been attacked.
00:10:28.000The Norwegian newspaper VG quoted a frontline spokesman as saying that its ship was on fire, that all 23 members had been rescued.
00:10:34.000The other tanker was the Panamanian flag, Kokuka Courageous, it was carrying methanol.
00:10:39.000And the Iranian state news media reported that it too was on fire.
00:10:43.000It eventually ended up finding a port in, it was reportedly headed from the Saudi port of Al-Jubeil to Singapore, Both the ship's owner and its operator said all 21 crew members had abandoned ship, were later rescued by a nearby vessel.
00:10:54.000So, if I mentioned earlier that these were American flag, they were not American flag, they were foreign flag, but these are all allies of the United States, obviously.
00:11:01.000Iran's state news media confirmed the attacks on the two tankers and the rescue of 44 mariners.
00:11:06.000The news channel IRINN said a rescue team from the southern Iranian province of Horozgan had picked up the crew of the ship carrying the Panamanian flag Japan's trade ministry said both ships were carrying Japan-related cargo.
00:11:19.000So, we'll bring you the latest on that.
00:11:21.000I will point out in one second how insane the media coverage of these sorts of incidents are, how preconceived narratives about the evils of the Trump administration really shape the coverage in an extraordinarily significant way.
00:11:33.000First, I gotta talk to you about a topic that I love, sports.
00:11:36.000I don't know if you've been watching the NBA Finals.
00:11:38.000It is fantastic this year, although the injuries to Kevin Durant, I mean, it's devastating, obviously.
00:11:43.000I love sports, whether we are talking about tennis or whether you're talking about basketball or my favorite sport, baseball.
00:11:48.000Well, let me tell you about another great podcast that I told you about a few months ago.
00:12:09.000He has a lifetime winning record against Roger Federer.
00:12:12.000And if he wins another major, it's going to be fascinating to see where he lists on sort of the final ranking.
00:12:17.000Now they're doing a series on former NBA stars Isaiah Thomas versus Michael Jordan, which is an amazing story.
00:12:23.000Basically, Michael Jordan militated to keep Isaiah Thomas off the Dream Team, off the 1992 Dream Team, because he hated Isaiah Thomas so much.
00:12:29.000There was serious bad blood between those two.
00:12:31.000It's a surprising story and a really fascinating story.
00:13:02.000Two oil tankers struck and on fire in the Strait of Hormuz, focus of U.S.-Iran tensions, comes after Trump failed to heed the last tanker warning and imposed more sanctions.
00:13:10.000Okay, that last sentence is so astonishing.
00:13:15.000Comes after Trump failed to heed the last tanker warning and imposed more sanctions.
00:13:18.000So in other words, if the Iranian government, a terrorist, a terrorist backing, evil, repressive, disgusting regime, bombs a couple of tankers and then threatens the largest military force, the most powerful military force in the history of mankind.
00:13:36.000And that most powerful military force in the history of mankind, led by the President of the United States, the Commander-in-Chief, refuses to kowtow to a third-rate power that represses its own people and jails dissidents, then it's his fault, it's President Trump's fault, if the Iranians get more militant.
00:13:53.000There's this soft bigotry of low expectations that the media have with regard to the ruling of Muslim states in particular that is really pathetic.
00:14:02.000Can you imagine if The UK, France, even Russia were to be bombing tankers that were allied with the United States in a direct slap at the United States.
00:14:13.000Would there be these sorts of headlines?
00:14:15.000Do you think there'd be these sorts of headlines about, you know, this is all because the United States has just been so provocative toward these countries, been so provocative toward Russia?
00:14:22.000No, it'd be, why isn't Trump being more militant with Russia?
00:14:25.000Why isn't Trump doing something about Russia?
00:14:26.000It must be he's a Russian stooge, guys!
00:14:29.000But Barack Obama, who actually acted as an Iranian stooge, who spent years lying blatantly to the faces of the American people, lying in their face, Ben Rhodes, his national security advisor, He openly acknowledged that his involvement in the administration involved crafting a narrative, i.e.
00:14:45.000lying to the American people, that the Iranian regime was about to moderate, and if the United States made some sort of payoff deal, then Iran would become a moderate, stable force for good in the region.
00:15:19.000And as I say, there is this tendency on the part of the media to treat terrorist activity by Muslim governments as though it is not terrorist activity at all.
00:15:28.000So when the Palestinian Authority engages in the paying of terrorists, when Hamas engages in rocket fire on a democratic ally of the United States, When the Iranian government engages in the spread of terror across planet Earth, then it's all about, well, I guess the West must have provoked them.
00:15:43.000The West must have done something bad.
00:15:44.000This springs from a peculiar and ugly perspective on American foreign policy and really the world that suggests that there is a power hierarchy that dictates morality.
00:15:52.000In other words, that if you are more powerful, you must have victimized somebody at the bottom of the scale.
00:15:57.000And so the people at the bottom of the scale should feel fully liberated to be as evil as they want to be.
00:16:03.000And therefore, if they bomb random ships, well, you know, that's just what they do, guys, and you gotta give them some room to express themselves.
00:16:10.000You expect the President of the United States to bow before the whims of dictators who literally lead chants, death to Israel, death to America?
00:16:24.000Okay, now speaking of pathetic, yesterday the Democrats decided to hold the Commerce Secretary and the AG, the Attorney General, in contempt, at least in one House committee.
00:16:35.000A House panel voted to hold Attorney General William Barr and Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross in contempt of Congress over the administration's efforts to shield documents related to its decision to add a citizenship question to the 2020 census.
00:16:47.000Now you may be asking yourself, What's so wrong with asking people if they're citizens in the census?
00:16:52.000I thought the census was all about finding out who's in the country.
00:16:56.000That is what the census is designed to do.
00:16:58.000But Democrats are really angry about this.
00:17:00.000And you should ask yourself, why are Democrats so upset about all of this?
00:17:04.000Why are Democrats so upset about the asking about illegal immigration in the country, asking people their citizenship status?
00:17:10.000So they've filed a federal case, I kid you not, with the Supreme Court trying to suggest That if illegal immigrants don't want to answer those questions, and if associated Hispanic folks in districts with lots of illegal immigrants decide not to answer census workers' questions, then the census cannot properly be done, and thus we ought not to ask the question.
00:17:30.000I mean, I'm sorry, that is a ridiculous contention.
00:17:32.000That is akin to saying that if you ask, if census workers ask about your career, your job, which they do, if they ask about your career and you are offended by those questions and are less likely to answer the Census Bureau question, well, that means that the census should be barred from asking the question in the first place.
00:17:48.000The question is, what's the real rationale here?
00:17:50.000The Democrats have exposed why exactly they love illegal immigration so much.
00:17:54.000And I really am puzzled Now, you're asking yourself, you know, those illegal immigrants, they're not going to be able to vote, so why would Democrats want them in the country?
00:18:05.000And the reason they don't wanna do that is because they want those people not held at the border, but released into the interior of the United States.
00:18:10.000All of this could be solved with a simple act of Congress.
00:18:12.000Democrats do not wanna pass that act of Congress because they have an actual interest in ensuring that illegal immigrants enter the country.
00:18:19.000Now, you're asking yourself, those illegal immigrants, they're not gonna be able to vote, so why would Democrats want them in the country?
00:18:24.000Why is that something that is important to Democrats?
00:18:27.000And this Census Bureau controversy really answers the question.
00:18:31.000So the Census Bureau controversy is based on Democrats being very, very upset that there is a memo that was in a dead guy's computer, okay?
00:18:39.000And what this memo basically suggested is that the Census Bureau should ask these questions because it would lead to redistricting.
00:18:47.000That there should be a push in the United States to allocate districts based not on the sheer population in a district, but based on the voting population in a district.
00:18:55.000In other words, if you have 800,000 illegal immigrants in a particular district and 200,000 voting citizens, then that should not be treated the same as a district with one million voting American citizens, which makes sense.
00:19:07.000We live in a country one man, one vote, right?
00:19:10.000If I am not subject to America's laws, then why exactly should I be represented in Congress, especially when I can't vote for the people in Congress?
00:19:18.000It's a very strange, weird notion that we should allocate districts based on people who cannot vote, are not citizens of the United States and are actively breaking American law.
00:19:27.000But the reality is that if we redistricted based on citizenship and not based on sheer population size, Democrats would lose something like nine houses and nine seats in the House of Representatives, according to data analysis.
00:19:39.000The reality is that Republicans would pick up a bunch of seats because, again, there are a lot of illegal immigrants in the country and they are all living in areas that have a lot of Democrats.
00:19:49.000Not all of them, a huge number are living in areas that, I mean, California is the number one source.
00:19:56.000Of people who are illegal immigrants living in the United States.
00:19:59.000So if you wanted to, let's say you're a Democrat, and let's say that you wanted to ensure that you had a lot of Democratic seats in the House, but you didn't want to really add more voters, or you didn't see the need to add more voters.
00:20:09.000You might create maybe a sanctuary city.
00:20:12.000And maybe what you would do is you would welcome in millions of illegal immigrants to your city, knowing that with every illegal immigrant, you are gaining a share of a new congressional seat.
00:20:21.000And now, based on the population of the census, you would be allocated more congressional seats.
00:20:25.000And now imagine someone was going to go around asking whether those people were illegal immigrants for purposes of determining how many congressional seats were allocated.
00:20:34.000You might find that to be problematic.
00:20:35.000Because now, those congressional seats will bleed away from the areas that you have created that are heavy on illegal immigrants and low on voters.
00:20:51.000It's pretty amazing, honestly, and it is extraordinarily telling.
00:20:56.000It's extraordinarily telling that Democrats are making this case.
00:21:00.000American Civil Liberties Union lawyer Dale Ho wrote in a request to the Supreme Court, Well, you know what undermines my confidence in our representative democracy?
00:21:07.000for partisan and racially discriminatory purposes would undermine public confidence in our representative democracy.
00:21:13.000Well, you know what undermines my confidence in our representative democracy?
00:21:16.000When there are a bunch of people who are being represented who aren't voters or subject to American law.
00:21:21.000It turns out that that really undermines my faith in representative democracy.
00:21:26.000If I and a bunch of my fellow citizens can vote, and we are being represented with exactly the same number of representatives as a bunch of people who come in the country, cannot pay taxes, and cannot vote, I feel like that's a little weird and a little bit of a problem.
00:21:39.000In fact, it feels like I'm being governed by a group of folks who are actually a political minority in many areas.
00:21:46.000The Justice Department and the Oversight Committee are essentially on the same trajectory as the Department and the House Judiciary Committee were on last month.
00:21:52.000The Judiciary Committee voted to hold Attorney General Barr in contempt for failing to turn over materials related to Robert Mueller's probe.
00:21:59.000In that case, the Judiciary Committee and the Justice Department worked out a compromise.
00:22:02.000Basically, the Democrats are very, very upset that they believe that there will be political ramifications to the change in the census question.
00:22:10.000And they're particularly upset about it because, again, if there are changes in the census question, it could have some serious impact on how many Democrats end up in Congress.
00:22:19.000They are giving credence to every complaint about Democrats not caring about illegal immigration and actively seeking illegal immigration right now.
00:22:26.000They think that they're making a case against evil Republican racism.
00:22:28.000What they're actually making a case against is themselves.
00:22:32.000President Trump is not wrong when he says that Democrats, with their subpoenas, they're out of control, that they are basically just lashing out at everyone on Earth in an attempt to avoid all of the ramifications of their own bad policy.
00:22:48.000Okay, in just a second, we're gonna get to President Trump, and we're gonna get to Bernie Sanders, who's dropping like a stone in the polls.
00:22:54.000All it took, apparently, was another quote-unquote Democratic Socialist to rise for Bernie Sanders to fall.
00:22:59.000We'll get to all that in just a second.
00:23:10.000If you're not sleeping enough, it can affect your cognitive function during the day.
00:23:13.000Learning, problem solving, decision making, lack of sleep actually leads to loss of IQ points, believe it or not.
00:23:17.000That's why we are partnering with Calm, the number one app for sleep.
00:23:20.000Sleep deficiency does serious damage, not just to your brain, but to your body as well.
00:23:24.000I mean, I personally have the body of a Greek god, but if I don't sleep for like three nights, I look like a Michelin man.
00:23:28.000The sleepless are more prone to accidents, weight gain, depression, With Calm, you'll discover a whole library of programs designed to help you get the sleep your brain and body needs, like Soundscapes, over 100 sleep stories narrated by soothing voices like Jerome Flynn from Game of Thrones and Stephen Fry.
00:23:44.000Right now, Ben Shapiro listeners get 25% off a Calm Premium subscription at calm.com slash ben that's c-a-l-m.com slash ben they also have sleep listening programs for like little kids so your kids won't go to sleep knock them out with calm.com seriously 40 million people have downloaded calm find out why at calm.com slash ben that's c-a-l-m.com slash ben go check them out right now okay so meanwhile president trump is is in trouble again today
00:24:12.000He is in trouble again because somebody on his comms team decided, you know what would be smart?
00:24:17.000Let's put him in front of George Stephanopoulos at ABC News.
00:24:54.000So, I am not a fan, to put it mildly, of the notion that when President Trump was approached by a foreign government, namely the Russian government, and given dirt on Hillary Clinton that he didn't call up the FBI.
00:25:05.000Now, I will point out here two things.
00:25:08.000And two, Hillary Clinton did do the same thing with the Ukrainian government.
00:25:11.000So it is true that the Ukrainian government was trying to pass dirt on President Trump On to Hillary Clinton, and Hillary Clinton's team took it, didn't say anything about it.
00:25:19.000Now, the Ukrainian government is not militantly opposed to the United States government in the same way that Vladimir Putin is, so there is a distinction there, but Hillary should have reported that too.
00:25:27.000It is also true that the Steele dossier was largely based, the Steele dossier, which was the basis for a lot of the Trump-Russia collusion charges, and was basically a fantasy made up By a bunch of Russian operatives.
00:25:40.000Basically, Christopher Steele, this former British spy, went over to Russia, talked to a bunch of Russian government officials, and then funneled that information to the Hillary Clinton campaign.
00:25:49.000So while you can say the Hillary Clinton campaign got that information not directly from the Russian government, they got it from Christopher Steele, in effect, they were taking Russian government-created Intel that was false about Trump and then disseminating that inside the halls of power in Washington, D.C.
00:26:03.000and trotting it out to the media as well.
00:26:06.000So with all of those caveats, the fact that the Trump administration was openly approached by members of the Russian government and allies with the Russian government to take dirt on Hillary Clinton and didn't report it to the FBI was a low point in American politics.
00:26:28.000It would be illegal if there was a quid pro quo.
00:26:30.000If you said, okay, I'm going to take the oppo and later I'm going to give you this thing under the table, right?
00:26:34.000But Eugene Volokh has written, professor of law at UCLA, he wrote a long post at the Washington Post, probably four years ago now, talking specifically about whether it would be illegal if a member of the government of Turkey approached Hillary Clinton with info about Trump for her to use that information.
00:26:48.000The answer he came up with, and I think that his legal analysis is correct, is no.
00:26:51.000Now, with that said, would it behoove the President of the United States to simply say, if I am approached by a foreign government with intel about my opponents, I will talk to the FBI about it?
00:27:01.000Yes, it would, particularly because the President of the United States, you know, he was not, according to the Mueller report, involved in the Trump Tower meeting.
00:27:11.000He was not apprised of the Trump Tower meeting.
00:27:31.000Instead, President Trump, who has never met a thing he will not double down upon, he's asked about this and here was his response.
00:27:39.000Your campaign this time around, if foreigners, if Russia, if China, if someone else offers you information on an opponent, should they accept it or should they call the FBI?
00:28:41.000Now, William Barr, the Attorney General, was asked about exactly this subject about a month and a half ago by Chris Coons, the senator from Connecticut?
00:28:51.000And Chris Coons asked Barr about whether you should report it to the FBI if somebody approaches you with information, and here was William Barr, the Attorney General's answer.
00:29:00.000What if a foreign adversary, let's now say North Korea, offers a presidential candidate dirt on a competitor in 2020?
00:29:07.000Do you agree with me the campaign should immediately contact the FBI?
00:29:16.000If a foreign intelligence service, a representative of a foreign government says, we have dirt on your opponent, should they say, I love it, let's meet?
00:29:43.000On the moral side, it is a very dicey proposition at best to be taking information from America's enemies just because they happen to be giving you information about your political opponent.
00:29:54.000And if Hillary Clinton did it, People on the right would be yelling and screaming about it.
00:29:58.000If Elizabeth Warren does that, if she gets information from the Chinese government directed against President Trump and just goes ahead and uses it, people are going to be pissed and people are going to have a right to be pissed.
00:31:14.000Get your life back under control with LendingClub.
00:31:17.000OK, in just one second, we're going to get to President Trump's response to himself.
00:31:20.000We will also get to Bernie Sanders dropping like a stone in the polls.
00:31:24.000We'll get to Mike Pence being ripped up and down for the basic stance that only the American flag should fly outside the American embassy, which I don't know why that's controversial.
00:31:33.000We'll get to all that in just one second.
00:31:35.000First, you have to go and subscribe over at dailywire.com.
00:31:37.000When you do, you not only get the rest of today's show live on video, you also get two additional hours.
00:31:43.000I mean, we are working hard to bring you that two additional hours in the afternoon.
00:31:46.000You also get to ask us questions in the mailbag, which we'll be doing tomorrow.
00:31:49.000You also sometimes get to interact with me during the breaks on the radio show that we do later today.
00:31:54.000You get to be part of the mailbag when we do the Daily Wire backstage.
00:31:57.000The Sunday Special, which comes out on Saturday for you if you are, in fact, a Daily Water subscriber.
00:32:36.000But also subscribe directly at dailywire.com because the fact is the left is militantly attempting to take everything conservative off the air.
00:32:43.000Deplatforming people from big tech, trying to attack our advertisers.
00:33:18.000He tweeted out, Although the radical left doesn't use the name Russia anymore since the issuance of the Mueller report, House committee now plays a seldom used contempt card on our great AG and Secretary of Commerce, this time on the census.
00:33:30.000Dems play a much tougher game than the Republicans did when they had the House majority.
00:36:20.000They're looking for Fake Native American, Elizabeth Warren, or something.
00:36:24.000So Bernie gives a big speech yesterday, in which he talks about democratic socialism, and his pitch is going to be that he is the truest defender of democratic socialism.
00:36:33.000Now, recall, for most of his career, Bernie was an actual supporter of communists.
00:36:38.000In not just Norway and Denmark, which are not, in fact, socialist countries, they are capitalist countries with a heavy welfare state, not the same thing.
00:36:45.000Democratic socialism is simply a way of shoehorning the term socialism into a system that is really driven, in terms of prosperity, by free markets.
00:36:54.000But Bernie Sanders, flanked by one million American flags, was speaking... I mean, I guess it beats flying the Soviet flag.
00:37:00.000He was more comfortable there in 88, but now he's running for president.
00:37:04.000He did a whole speech in which he talked about democratic socialism.
00:37:07.000He said democratic socialism was the path of justice and love.
00:37:09.000Because when I think justice and love, I think an octogenarian loon bag who spends all of his days determining how many types of deodorant you should be able to buy.
00:37:17.000Here's Bernie Sanders making his case.
00:37:19.000It is my very strong belief that the United States must reject that path of hatred and divisiveness and instead find the moral conviction to choose a different path A higher path, a path of compassion, justice, and love.
00:37:40.000And that is the path that I call democratic socialism.
00:38:13.000Henry Olsen is a columnist over at the Washington Post.
00:38:16.000He's sort of a Trump-supporting columnist over at the Washington Post.
00:38:19.000We talked, I think, a couple of podcasts ago about a piece that he wrote in which he explicitly suggested that the job of conservatives was to prune the garden planted by FDR, which is, to me, an insane contention.
00:38:55.000Here's Bernie Sanders saying that he wants to carry the business of the New Deal to completion.
00:38:59.000For folks who have never studied the New Deal, it is rare to find a more fascistic take on American economics than the New Deal.
00:39:05.000The New Deal literally had something called the National Recovery Administration, where the government would hand out blue eagles, blue patriotic eagles, to firms that pledged to support FDR's particular brand of economics.
00:39:26.000Over 80 years ago, Franklin Delano Roosevelt helped create a government that made transformative progress in protecting the needs of working families.
00:39:39.000Today, in the second decade of the 21st century, we must take up the unfinished business of the New Deal and carry it to completion.
00:39:53.000OK, so if you want to carry the business of the New Deal to completion, then good news.
00:40:00.000He's not going to make America great again.
00:40:02.000He's going to make the Great Depression great again.
00:40:38.000Look, I just think we got a lot of really good candidates out there, and they're making the case, and I don't put a whole lot in terms of labels.
00:40:46.000I just think that if you think about it, the vast majority of the members that are running, the folks that are running, they're all kind of on the same page.
00:40:55.000I'm not going to comment on Bernie's characterization of who or what he is.
00:41:00.000He's sincere about what he thinks, and I think he should go out and say it.
00:41:04.000Okay, so I'm not gonna go after Bernie.
00:43:42.000But Joy Behar is already making excuses for why Joe Biden may not actually be able to cure cancer.
00:43:48.000Those excuses do not include that it's very hard to cure cancer, since cancer is, in fact, a bucket of different things.
00:43:54.000It doesn't include the fact that we've been trying to cure cancer for decades, and we have made some progress, but not tremendous progress.
00:44:01.000The real problem, according to Joy Behar, is that if Joe Biden becomes president and wants to cure cancer, it may be too late because it flips through deck.
00:44:13.000I would say that curing cancer is going to be much more difficult when there's so much climate change and pollutants in the environment, because a lot of cancer is environmentally caused.
00:44:22.000And this president rolls back anything that will clean the air.
00:44:26.000So they're working against each other if they don't also clean up the emissions.
00:45:22.000And then it was, okay, well, we want the same government benefits as married couples.
00:45:25.000And people were like, well, not so sure about that one since married couples, heterosexual married couples actually, you know, are in the business of producing children.
00:45:32.000And then heterosexual marriage is really about the production and rearing of children.
00:45:35.000So there are different societal benefits to that than just two people who love each other living together.
00:45:48.000And everybody was like, Well, you know, not so hot on this one, but maybe if the government stays out of the business of marriage, and maybe if you sort of leave us alone, we'll learn to live with it.
00:46:06.000So your pitch is, That something that your original case was, leave us alone so we can engage in the private consensual behavior we like.
00:46:14.000That went to, we need you to celebrate that private consensual behavior on a flag on the top of the United States Embassy in Lake Botswana.
00:46:26.000So, Mike Pence was asked about this, the Vice President, because he put out an edict, basically, or he was asked to defend an edict put out by the Trump administration, that at the U.S.
00:46:33.000Embassy, we should fly the, wait for it, the U.S.
00:46:38.000Like, because it's the United States, so the flag we should fly, it shouldn't be like the gay pride flag, or like a Christian flag, or a Planned Parenthood flag.
00:46:46.000It should probably just be like the United States flag.
00:46:48.000So Pence was asked about this, and here's what he said.
00:46:56.000I'm aware that the State Department indicated that on the flagpole of our American embassies that one flag should fly and that's the American flag and I support that.
00:47:06.000To the LGBTQ community who feels as though that runs counter to the president celebrating Pride Month in his tweet.
00:47:12.000When it comes to the American flagpole at American embassies and capitals around the world, having the one American flag fly, I think, is the right decision.
00:47:25.000But Sarah Silverman found it controversial.
00:47:27.000So I can't do a Sarah Silverman voice because no one actually has a voice that high.
00:47:31.000whole shtick is to do this cutesy voice and then curse.
00:47:34.000So she said, dear VP, you're a hate mongering, fear-based weasel.
00:47:37.000And your biggest irony is that if there was hell, you'd a hundred percent be going there.
00:47:40.000I'm not sure like Sarah McLaughlin, if she knows what irony means, because I hope you go to prison for crimes against humanity regarding the LGBT community.
00:47:47.000Remember this started with private consensual behavior should be left alone by the government.
00:47:51.000And now it's, you should go to prison.
00:47:52.000If you don't want to fly a gay pride flag at the USSR.
00:48:05.000So we've now reached the point where I think frankly that we should remove the American flag patches from American soldiers shoulders.
00:48:12.000And now when they go into battle against like the Taliban, they should wear, it's gay pride month, they should wear a gay pride flag.
00:48:17.000They should know what they're fighting for.
00:48:18.000And then when it's breast cancer awareness month, they should wear a breast cancer awareness flag so that when a Taliban soldier is getting his brains shot out, he should know that we here in the United States, we hate breast cancer and we will fight breast cancer with every last vestige of our strength and ability.
00:48:32.000Yes, the country may be too stupid for repair.
00:48:35.000All right, time for some things I like and then some things that I hate.
00:48:53.000It's called Progress vs. Parasites, a brief history of the conflict that shaped our world.
00:48:57.000It covers an enormous amount of ground.
00:48:59.000It really does talk about why it is that certain areas of the world thrive and other areas of the world do not.
00:49:04.000His basic thesis is that when you have a Mandarin class, when you have a group of people who sit atop a government, who are taking All of the gains of a particular country and centralizing it in that body for either redistribution or for political purposes, it ends up sapping the will and sapping the entrepreneurship inside that society.
00:49:22.000And he traces that pattern throughout history, not just sticking to the West, but moving around the world.
00:49:28.000The book is a really good, kind of fun historical read.
00:49:41.000So the thing that I hate today, so Bill Maher, he has crafted this weird sort of conspiracy theory.
00:49:46.000So I was on Maher's show last year and Maher asked me about the Russia collusion stuff.
00:49:52.000And I said, listen, if you prove that Trump colluded with Russia, meaning if you prove that Trump was in a conspiracy with Russia to thwart our elections, then impeachment should be on the table.
00:50:43.000So here's Bill Maher explaining his new conspiracy theory, which is that Trump is going to, I guess, wedge himself into the Oval Office with superglue, and then dare people to carry him out.
00:50:57.000I've been saying that since before he got elected, that if he loses the second time, if he loses the coming election, And Michael Cohen said that, Nancy Pelosi echoed, said that.
00:51:08.000A lot of people say, well, yes, it can happen here, meaning fascism, meaning something other than what we—is democracy.
00:51:17.000You know, I have a dictator checklist that I read on my show sometimes, things that no American president has ever done, but this president does.
00:51:41.000All the same people who are claiming that Donald Trump will not leave if he loses an election are still claiming that Stacey Abrams is the legitimate governor of Georgia.
00:51:50.000I mean, if this is where, if you're so far gone that your new shtick is that Donald Trump will not be ejected from the Oval Office, that what, he'll set up like squatters rights in the Oval Office?
00:52:57.000President Trump makes a big foreign policy faux pas as shells hit oil tankers in the Gulf of Oman and hundreds of thousands of people take to the streets to protest in Hong Kong.
00:53:08.000Then, Jordan B. Peterson has a new social media platform for free speech and deep fake videos threaten to upend the 2020 election and reality.