The Ben Shapiro Show - November 22, 2019


Chaos Across The World | Ep. 903


Episode Stats

Length

1 hour

Words per Minute

209.3392

Word Count

12,672

Sentence Count

863

Misogynist Sentences

13

Hate Speech Sentences

15


Summary

Benjamin Netanyahu is indicted, throwing the entire system into chaos, as Democrats struggle for ratings in the wake of another snooze-fest debate, and Impeachment Gate 2019 proceeds. Ben Shapiro explains why this is a complete mess, and why it's important to remember that Israel is one of the strongest allies of the US in the Middle East, and a strong advocate for America's First Lady, Michelle Obama, who stood up to Barack Obama for a decade, and who has been a strong voice for America s role in the world for the past ten years. Ben Shapiro is the host of The Ben Shapiro Show on Fox News Radio and host of the Daily Show with Bill Maher. He is also a regular contributor to the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal, and is a long-time friend of the late Michael Bloomberg, who served as a foreign policy adviser to both Obama and Hillary Clinton, and was a member of both houses of Congress from both houses for the first time in 2016 and again in 2017, and has been an avid supporter of Hillary Clinton since she was elected president in 2016. The show is sponsored by ExpressVPN, a company that provides a free VPN service that allows you to access the internet, and access the world's fastest-growing and most popular social media platforms, including the internet-based news and social media sites, by connecting the world s most influential people through the use of the internet and the internet's most influential influencers, using the term "social media and the social network. . Click here to find out more about ExpressVPN and get a free trial-free VPN service! and Subscribe to the show on the best VPN service in the entire world. and get 10% off your first-world VPN service. Subscribe here to get 20% off the first month, and get $10 off the offer, plus an ad-free version of the show, plus a FREE 7-day trial, and 5% discount when you sign up for the next month, when the offer is available for Prime Minister gets 24/7 access to the entire service, starting on Prime Minister s Testify, starting at $99, US$99. ? Learn more about your first month only, and receive a discount of $99 and get 5GBR, FREE PRICING gets better than $99 gets you 5 GBR, and gets you 4 months of VIP access, plus 7 GBR gets 3 months of the service, plus 3 VIP membership and 2 VIP membership gets 4 GBR is also gets 4 VIP access and 3 VIP gets 3 VIP access.


Transcript

00:00:00.000 Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is indicted, throwing the entire system into chaos.
00:00:04.000 Democrats struggle for ratings in the wake of another snooze-fest debate.
00:00:07.000 And Impeachment Gate 2019 proceeds.
00:00:10.000 I'm Ben Shapiro.
00:00:10.000 This is The Ben Shapiro Show.
00:00:11.000 The Ben Shapiro Show is sponsored by ExpressVPN.
00:00:19.000 Why haven't you gotten a VPN yet?
00:00:21.000 What are you doing?
00:00:22.000 Go visit ExpressVPN.com slash Ben.
00:00:24.000 Okay, so it is a chaotic world out there, my goodness.
00:00:28.000 The level of chaos, I mean, just around the globe.
00:00:30.000 You got rolling protests in Iran.
00:00:31.000 Apparently over 100 protesters have been shot by the government.
00:00:34.000 You have the situation in Hong Kong where the Chinese government is running roughshod over protesters, solidifying its grasp on a territory that It was not supposed to be in control of until something like 2040.
00:00:44.000 You've got situations all around the world that are just a mess.
00:00:50.000 I mean, just a mess everywhere.
00:00:51.000 Well, that mess got a lot larger for Israel yesterday when Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was indicted on three separate counts on corruption and fraud and abuse of trust.
00:01:02.000 Well, what exactly were the charges?
00:01:04.000 There were three charges.
00:01:05.000 The charges were really about, effectively, bribery.
00:01:10.000 The charges were made by a man named Mandelblit, Avi Chai Mandelblit.
00:01:15.000 He's the Attorney General.
00:01:16.000 He used to work for Netanyahu.
00:01:17.000 So the idea that Mandelblit is motivated purely by a desire to, quote-unquote, get Netanyahu is likely untrue.
00:01:24.000 Now, there have been accusations of police misconduct or pressure on witnesses.
00:01:27.000 Those are the charges that Netanyahu is making.
00:01:29.000 Netanyahu called the prosecutors, he said that they were staging an attempted coup.
00:01:35.000 Mandelblit himself said, a day in which the Attorney General decides to serve an indictment against a seated Prime Minister for serious crimes of corrupt governance is a heavy and sad day for the Israeli public and for me personally.
00:01:46.000 He obviously was unhappy about having to bring the charges.
00:01:50.000 He said, this is not a matter of politics.
00:01:51.000 It's an obligation placed on us, the people of law enforcement and upon me personally as the one at its head.
00:01:57.000 Now, all of this comes in the middle of a massive political crisis inside of Israel.
00:02:02.000 The massive political crisis is that Israel has experienced two elections in the past year alone.
00:02:07.000 There's an election back near the beginning of the year in which, effectively speaking, no coalition was able to be formed.
00:02:12.000 A second election was declared, no coalition was still able to be formed.
00:02:15.000 To understand exactly what's going on in Israel, you sort of have to understand their system.
00:02:18.000 So very different than the United States.
00:02:19.000 In the United States, there are basically two parties.
00:02:22.000 One party gains a majority in the House.
00:02:24.000 One party gains a majority in the Senate.
00:02:26.000 One party becomes the President.
00:02:28.000 These elections are utterly disconnected.
00:02:30.000 You vote for the person, you don't vote for the party.
00:02:32.000 In Israel, as in Great Britain, for example, instead, you have what's called the parliamentary system.
00:02:36.000 In the parliamentary system, you don't vote for the person, you vote for the party.
00:02:39.000 That means that Benjamin Netanyahu has been Prime Minister of Israel because the Likud party His party has been able to win a plurality of the votes in these elections and then form a coalition with other right-wing parties in Israel to form a majority of the Knesset, which is the Hebrew word for parliament.
00:02:55.000 So there are 120 seats in Knesset.
00:02:56.000 You need 61 seats in your coalition in order to be able to govern.
00:03:00.000 Netanyahu has been doing that consistently since 2009.
00:03:02.000 He's the longest-serving prime minister in Israeli history.
00:03:05.000 Well, he was unable to gain a governing majority at the beginning of this year for the first time in a long time.
00:03:11.000 And that was because an erstwhile party in his coalition, led by a guy named Victor Lieberman, who had once been very close to Netanyahu, decided not to form a coalition with Netanyahu and the right-wing religious parties.
00:03:22.000 He sees the religious parties as rent-seeking and basically taking welfare money, and so he didn't want to join that coalition.
00:03:29.000 And instead, he thought about joining a coalition with the left, but there weren't enough votes on the left for him to form a majority coalition.
00:03:36.000 Second election happens, same thing happens.
00:03:38.000 And that leads to this period in which Netanyahu is serving as Prime Minister, but he doesn't actually have a majority.
00:03:43.000 And that's just because no one else can form a majority.
00:03:46.000 So, I'll explain more about what exactly is happening in Israel, because it is completely chaotic and it is a complete mess.
00:03:51.000 And it's worthwhile knowing, because Israel is one of America's strongest allies.
00:03:55.000 And obviously, Netanyahu is a world historical figure.
00:03:57.000 I mean, this is a guy who has been in charge of a state for a decade.
00:04:02.000 And who stood up to Barack Obama, was a strong advocate for America's role in the world.
00:04:06.000 We'll get to more of this in just one second.
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00:05:27.000 Okay, so the cases against Netanyahu are really threefold.
00:05:33.000 There is case 1,000, case 2,000, and case 4,000.
00:05:37.000 And again, we are now in this period where nobody's able to form a government.
00:05:40.000 Netanyahu is basically the figurehead prime minister.
00:05:43.000 He still has the powers of prime minister, because no one else can form a government, and there can't just be an absence at the top of the government in Israel.
00:05:50.000 Basically, there's two main parties in Israel right now.
00:05:53.000 There's Likud, and there's one called Kachov Levan, which in Hebrew means blue and white.
00:05:57.000 The Blue and White Party is sort of a coalition party of its own.
00:06:01.000 It is led by a man named Benny Gantz, who was the chief of the IDF.
00:06:05.000 He was the head military officer in the IDF.
00:06:07.000 It's also led by a faction led by Bogie Ayalon, who's another general in the IDF, and Yair Lapid, who was a newscaster in Israel and was the son of a very famous figure in Israeli politics named Tommy Lapid.
00:06:18.000 His main thing is that he won't sit with the religious party.
00:06:20.000 So, Benny Gantz His party and Netanyahu's party had approximately the same number of votes in the last election cycle.
00:06:25.000 Again, Avigdor Lieberman, who was that sort of middle guy, the guy who used to side with Netanyahu fairly routinely, and then broke away from Netanyahu, he said he wouldn't sit in a coalition with the religious parties, and so Netanyahu does not have a right-wing majority, even though there really has been a right-wing majority elected.
00:06:42.000 Okay, so this has led to this grave impasse in Israeli politics, where Netanyahu was given a mandate to form a government, could not, and then Benny Gantz was given a mandate to form a government by the president of Israel, Reuven Rivlin, and then he was not able to form a government, and now there's this 21-day period we're in the middle of right now, where literally anyone can form a government.
00:06:57.000 If you go to the president with a piece of paper with 61 signatures, of the members of Knesset, then you can form a government.
00:07:05.000 But that expires on December 11th.
00:07:07.000 On December 11th, a new election will be declared, the third election in the last year for prime minister of Israel.
00:07:13.000 Now, Benny Gantz didn't want to form a coalition with Netanyahu, specifically because he saw these indictments coming down the pipe.
00:07:19.000 And he figured, why am I forming a coalition with Netanyahu, who's going to be indicted?
00:07:23.000 He had basically said, I'm willing to work with Likud, but I'm not willing to work with Netanyahu.
00:07:27.000 Lieberman, similar sort of logic, he doesn't like Netanyahu either, he was sort of ousted from Likud by Netanyahu, so now they both have the wherewithal to basically Put Netanyahu in a box.
00:07:37.000 Now, by the same token, Netanyahu is fighting not only for his political life at this point and for leadership of the Israeli government, he's also fighting for his actual life at this point.
00:07:47.000 Because now that he's been indicted, there are basically two different places he can be tried.
00:07:51.000 If he is Prime Minister of Israel, while he is sitting, right?
00:07:54.000 If he is sitting Prime Minister of Israel, and he is indicted, and he goes through a trial, you're not automatically ousted in Israel.
00:07:59.000 It's not like America, where you can't be prosecuted if you're president.
00:08:02.000 And you have to be impeached before you can be prosecuted.
00:08:04.000 In Israel, you can be prosecuted while you are the president, or rather, while you are the prime minister.
00:08:09.000 So, if Netanyahu is indicted while he is the prime minister, then he has tried in Jerusalem.
00:08:13.000 Jerusalem happens to be a much more conservative, right-wing city.
00:08:17.000 That means that he is likely to get off with some sort of slap on the wrist, pay a fine, pay back whatever Payment for cigars he received, that sort of thing.
00:08:27.000 If, however, he is not Prime Minister, he will be tried, not in Jerusalem, but in Tel Aviv.
00:08:31.000 Tel Aviv is a very left-wing city.
00:08:33.000 This is like the difference between if Donald Trump were going to be tried in Odessa, Texas, versus if Donald Trump were going to be tried in New York.
00:08:42.000 Very, very different thing.
00:08:43.000 L.A.
00:08:43.000 versus L.A.
00:08:44.000 versus Ohio.
00:08:45.000 It's a completely different thing.
00:08:47.000 So Netanyahu really wants to be tried in Jerusalem.
00:08:50.000 And he feels if he's tried in Jerusalem and he gets slapped on the wrist, he continues his political career, right?
00:08:55.000 He continues being Prime Minister.
00:08:56.000 If, however, he is ousted and then tried in Tel Aviv, he may end up in jail for five years, right?
00:09:02.000 He could end up in jail for five to seven years on these charges of bribery.
00:09:04.000 The three charges, by the way, that he is being exposed to and he says, Netanyahu for his part, he says this is all basically a game being played by the political left in Israel that is out to get him.
00:09:14.000 He suggests correctly that the media do not like him.
00:09:17.000 That's been true for a very long time in Israel.
00:09:19.000 Israel has universally left-wing media.
00:09:20.000 The only real conservative news source in Israel is Israel Hayom, which is Sheldon Adelson's free newspaper.
00:09:27.000 Here's Benjamin Netanyahu, the Prime Minister of Israel, explaining yesterday that this is basically a gotcha attempt by the left that could not defeat him in an election.
00:09:36.000 So it feels very much like what President Trump says about the impeachment attempt in the United States.
00:09:41.000 The time has come to investigate the investigators.
00:09:45.000 The time has come to investigate the Attorney General that initiates this kind of investigation.
00:09:53.000 I respect the police department and the attorney general office.
00:09:59.000 But we have to understand.
00:10:02.000 But there are people that these people in police and attorney general, they are not above the law.
00:10:11.000 So according to Netanyahu, basically, this is a railroading attempt because you could not be defeated in elections.
00:10:17.000 The three cases under which Netanyahu is indicted are Case 1000, Case 2000, and Case 4000.
00:10:20.000 is indicted, are case 1000, case 2000, case 4000.
00:10:23.000 Case 1000 is a case where he allegedly received illegal gifts.
00:10:28.000 So did members of his family, including pink champagne and jewelry and Cuban cigars and tickets to a Mariah Carey concert, which is a terrible bribe.
00:10:35.000 And apparently, he supposedly received those gifts in order to benefit political allies.
00:10:40.000 Police say that the allies, including an Israeli-born Hollywood producer named Arnon Milchan, and an Australian investor named James Packer, received Netanyahu's political backing on key issues.
00:10:49.000 For example, the Prime Minister pushed for a law the media labeled the Milchan Law, That cut taxes for Israelis returning to Israel after living abroad.
00:10:57.000 Netanyahu has denied the allegations.
00:10:59.000 He has said, like, you really think that I'm going to sacrifice my political career for some cigars?
00:11:03.000 That is case 1000.
00:11:04.000 And Mandelblit says that Netanyahu should be tried with fraud and breach of trust in connection with that case.
00:11:10.000 Case 2000 is a case in which Netanyahu is accused of using his connections to Sheldon Adelson in order to broker a deal With a newspaper publisher of Yediot Aharonot, which is an Israeli daily paper, which is sort of center-slash-center-right, maybe?
00:11:22.000 Under the alleged deal, the editor of Yediot Aharonot would have given better coverage to Netanyahu in return for Netanyahu telling Adelson to limit the circulation of Israel Hayom.
00:11:32.000 Israel Hayom is a free newspaper published by Adelson, so it's got the biggest circulation in Israel.
00:11:37.000 Adelson, for his part, says, I was never talked to about this by Netanyahu.
00:11:40.000 It was Netanyahu blowing off steam and saying things.
00:11:44.000 Apparently, this is one of the charges where he is basically being charged with breach of trust.
00:11:48.000 And then there's case 4000, which is the most severe case.
00:11:51.000 In this case, Netanyahu is alleged to have offered to help the so-called Bezek Group and its former owner, Shaul Elovich.
00:11:59.000 Elovich is a close friend of Netanyahu.
00:12:00.000 Apparently, he ordered the Walla news site to provide more favorable coverage of the Netanyahu's in return for deregulation of the communications industry.
00:12:09.000 According to the police, Netanyahu and his associates intervene in a blatant and ongoing manner, sometimes even daily, in the content published by the Wallen News website and sought to influence the appointment of senior employees.
00:12:19.000 Now, Netanyahu says that's not bribery, that's just called public relations, right?
00:12:24.000 I mean, we call up newspapers all the time and we tell them we don't like this reporter, we don't like that reporter.
00:12:27.000 Barack Obama used to do it in the United States, Donald Trump does it in the United States.
00:12:30.000 There really is no big issue of calling up newspapers and saying we don't like this or that.
00:12:34.000 The question is whether he was in fact trading regulatory gifts in favor of that sort of positive media coverage.
00:12:42.000 Okay, so those are the charges against Netanyahu.
00:12:44.000 So where does this leave Israel?
00:12:45.000 I'll explain in just one second what the various options are that are on the table because it's complex, man.
00:12:50.000 I mean, this is a decision tree that has a lot of branches.
00:12:53.000 We'll get to that in just one second.
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00:14:03.000 Okay, so what exactly are the options left to the Israeli public?
00:14:06.000 So again, December 11th, new election gets called.
00:14:10.000 And then you have a sitting prime minister under indictment and the head of the Likud party, which is the biggest party in Israel, and he is under indictment.
00:14:17.000 So there are a few different options that could happen here.
00:14:19.000 One is that Netanyahu has the support of Likud and the right-wing bloc, which appears to be the case so far, and he just brazens this out.
00:14:26.000 He just says, listen, I'm gonna keep being Prime Minister, I'm gonna keep running, and you guys are gonna have to oust me with an election, not with any sort of prosecution.
00:14:34.000 In order for that to happen, he first has to go to the Supreme Court.
00:14:37.000 So he's going to the Supreme Court right now, the Israeli Supreme Court, which is left-wing, and he is asking them whether he can continue to serve as Prime Minister while under indictment.
00:14:44.000 Now, there's a law in Israel that if you are not Prime Minister, but one of the other ministers, like Minister of Defense or Minister of Strategic Affairs or something, then you cannot sit while you are under indictment.
00:14:54.000 You are immediately Demoted right you're immediately you immediately lose your post because the idea is you can't perform your functions while you are one of these ministers if however You're a prime minister.
00:15:03.000 The math is completely different.
00:15:04.000 Well, because if you're prime minister and you step down, there literally is nobody else to fill that gap, right?
00:15:04.000 Why?
00:15:12.000 I mean, you're the leader of the government.
00:15:15.000 You're the leader of the government.
00:15:16.000 So there's no substitute for you.
00:15:18.000 So that's in the law.
00:15:20.000 So Netanyahu actually has a pretty good case that he can sit under indictment while serving as prime minister of Israel.
00:15:25.000 And as I say, he has a very strong interest in doing so because if he steps down and then is prosecuted, he ends up in Tel Aviv and then maybe in jail.
00:15:30.000 So the options are these.
00:15:32.000 He goes to the Supreme Court.
00:15:33.000 The Supreme Court either upholds the law and he gets to sit as prime minister until he is removed by the electorate while under indictment.
00:15:39.000 Or they change the law sort of on the fly, which would be illegal, but they could do it.
00:15:43.000 And they say that he has to step down.
00:15:45.000 If they say he has to step down, then Netanyahu is tried.
00:15:47.000 Then Netanyahu is tried.
00:15:48.000 Whatever happens to him, happens to him.
00:15:48.000 Whatever happens to him, happens to him.
00:15:50.000 And then somebody else in Likud takes over the leadership of Likud.
00:15:50.000 And then somebody else in Likud takes over the leadership of Likud.
00:15:52.000 And that's actually probably not great for the left wing.
00:15:53.000 And that's actually probably not great for the left wing.
00:15:57.000 It's probably bad for Benny Gantz, right?
00:15:57.000 It's probably bad for Benny Gantz, right?
00:15:58.000 It's probably bad for the blue and white party in Israel because their entire glue, right?
00:16:06.000 The thing that draws them together is opposition to Netanyahu.
00:16:08.000 If Netanyahu is out of the way, a lot of the voters for blue and white say, okay, well, I don't really like this party very much, but Netanyahu is gone.
00:16:14.000 So I'm going to go back over to Likud.
00:16:16.000 So it's probably not good for Benny Gantz for Netanyahu to go away is the truth.
00:16:19.000 Okay, it's probably bad politically.
00:16:20.000 It's probably good for Likud for Netanyahu to go away to a certain extent.
00:16:24.000 But by the same token, nobody wants to be seen pushing Netanyahu out of the door because you push him out the door and suddenly you're responsible for the most significant prime minister in modern Israeli history going to jail.
00:16:35.000 So nobody is going to push him out the door from the inside.
00:16:38.000 Now there are a few people inside the Likud party who have suggested, listen, it's up to us, let's have a new primary.
00:16:43.000 Because the way you decide the leadership in Likud is just like in the United States deciding a presidential nominee, you have an internal party primary.
00:16:50.000 And if there's an internal party primary and Netanyahu loses, Then, presumably, Likud moves on, Netanyahu moves on, and everything sort of works itself out.
00:16:58.000 There's also the possibility that some breakaway faction inside Likud simply leaves Likud with a bunch of members of the parliament, walks over to Blue and White, and forms a coalition without Likud properly.
00:17:10.000 So those are the various options.
00:17:12.000 Now, does this mean that Netanyahu's political career is over?
00:17:14.000 Well, he has one very narrow path to staying in power, and that basically is that he retains the prime ministership, he's indicted, the trial goes forward, And then he is acquitted or he gets a slap on the wrist.
00:17:27.000 At that point, he continues to serve.
00:17:29.000 But in all likelihood, the most likely outcome in all of this is that the Likud does not oust him, the polls start to look bad for Likud because the Israeli public don't like the idea of a prime minister under indictment, and then they are forced to a choice which is do we leave Netanyahu in power and thus lose a majority and then you have a governing coalition of Vigdor Lieberman and Blue and White and Labor?
00:17:50.000 With the Arab party sitting outside and maintaining the power of the government from the outside?
00:17:54.000 Or do you oust Netanyahu?
00:17:56.000 So it is a mess over there for sure.
00:17:59.000 It's a mess over there for sure.
00:18:00.000 And we'll continue to bring you all of the updates as that progresses.
00:18:04.000 In just a second, we're gonna get to the debate fallout in the United States from the Democratic side.
00:18:08.000 Bad news for the Democrats.
00:18:09.000 Nobody watched this thing.
00:18:10.000 Nobody.
00:18:11.000 Why?
00:18:11.000 Because it was boring as all hell.
00:18:13.000 Why would you have watched this thing?
00:18:14.000 I did because I get paid to do so.
00:18:16.000 But if you weren't paid to do so, why in the world Why in the world would you do this?
00:18:20.000 Okay, we're gonna get to all of that in just one second.
00:18:23.000 First, let's talk about how you make your house safer.
00:18:25.000 So I am a safety fanatic.
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00:18:27.000 I have a couple of kids.
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00:19:29.000 Okay, so the Democratic debate did not go well for the Democrats.
00:19:32.000 It was not a showpiece for any of them.
00:19:34.000 It's funny.
00:19:34.000 I was looking at the New York Times ratings of how the various candidates did.
00:19:38.000 And while I thought that Pete Buttigieg actually did a fairly good job, they were less than enthused.
00:19:42.000 And that is because the New York Times is more radical than Buttigieg.
00:19:45.000 They don't want to see Buttigieg do very well.
00:19:46.000 And so they were talking about how well Bernie Sanders did.
00:19:49.000 And I thought to myself, well, Bernie Sanders was just Bernie Sanders.
00:19:51.000 I'm confused as to why Bernie Sanders did exceedingly well.
00:19:54.000 The answer is because the Democrats are basically now engaged in the same game Republicans were engaged in in 2012.
00:20:00.000 In 2012, Mitt Romney jumped into the race.
00:20:03.000 He had run in 2008 also, right?
00:20:05.000 He had run against John McCain.
00:20:06.000 He was sort of seen as, by many people, the conservative alternative to John McCain in 2008 because McCain was wishy-washy on issues like immigration, for example.
00:20:16.000 Okay, so in 2012, Romney runs again.
00:20:18.000 He's immediately the frontrunner.
00:20:20.000 And the entire Republican Party basically goes, Really?
00:20:23.000 Mitt Romney?
00:20:24.000 Like, Romneycare guy?
00:20:26.000 Are we sure about this?
00:20:28.000 Governor from Massachusetts?
00:20:29.000 Are we totally cool with this?
00:20:31.000 And so, they start searching for another candidate.
00:20:34.000 And so you get people looking at Rick Perry.
00:20:36.000 You get people looking at Herman Cain.
00:20:39.000 You get people looking Literally everyone, Rick Santorum, Newt Gingrich, Michelle Bachman, like everybody gets a chance at the top.
00:20:45.000 For a brief moment in time, every single member of the Republican field gets a chance at the top, right?
00:20:50.000 It is the revolving carousel of Republican politics in 2012.
00:20:53.000 And finally, at the very end, everybody goes, okay, fine.
00:20:55.000 All these people, it turns out, are flawed.
00:20:57.000 Back to Romney.
00:20:57.000 It feels a lot like that for the Democrats and Joe Biden right now.
00:21:00.000 Joe Biden is old.
00:21:02.000 He is not good at his job.
00:21:03.000 He is a bad candidate.
00:21:04.000 He says silly things on a routine basis.
00:21:07.000 But he also happens to be the least nuts of these candidates and the person least likely to alienate vast swaths of voters.
00:21:14.000 And so you're seeing Biden rising in the betting odds again, right?
00:21:18.000 Just mid-October, Elizabeth Warren was a 50% odds-on favorite to be the Democratic nominee.
00:21:26.000 She is all the way down to 26.5% in the betting odds, according to RealClearPolitics right now.
00:21:31.000 Joe Biden maintains an 11-point national lead in the Democratic Party.
00:21:36.000 And part of that is because Warren's mojo is gone.
00:21:39.000 I mean completely gone.
00:21:40.000 She is collapsing in Iowa.
00:21:41.000 She is collapsing in New Hampshire.
00:21:43.000 That probably means she's collapsing in Nevada.
00:21:45.000 And for all of Buttigieg's momentum, in places like Iowa and New Hampshire, he has no national credibility because he has no ability to draw black votes.
00:21:53.000 And when you get down south, where two-thirds of the Democratic electorate in primaries like South Carolina is black, he ain't got nothing.
00:21:58.000 So who benefits from that?
00:22:00.000 Obviously Joe Biden, which is why Biden, despite the fact that he is barely alive at this point.
00:22:05.000 I mean, the man's eye explodes on national television in the middle of a debate.
00:22:10.000 Here is Joe Biden saying something that is true, which is, while the media may maintain that Elizabeth Warren is the frontrunner, she ain't.
00:22:16.000 Biden says, listen, I'm the frontrunner still.
00:22:18.000 I am the clear frontrunner of the party.
00:22:20.000 I'm ahead on the national average of all the polls by seven, eight percent.
00:22:25.000 But it's a long way to go.
00:22:26.000 A long way to go.
00:22:27.000 And the other reason is that, look, whomever is the nominee, it's not going to be enough just to beat Donald Trump.
00:22:34.000 You've got to be able to win in states like this.
00:22:36.000 You've got to be able to be value-added to make sure we pick up Senate seats and House seats.
00:22:41.000 And so, in every one of these polls in these states that I find myself in, again, I'm not counting on the polls, but the fact is that I'm ahead in every one of the toss-up states.
00:22:53.000 Okay, and he is correct about that with regard to the Democrats.
00:22:56.000 He's not correct about that with regard to the Republicans.
00:22:58.000 And this is the bad news for the Democrats.
00:23:01.000 Right now, if you look at the swing states, Trump is pretty solid there.
00:23:05.000 I'm looking at some polls of swing states right now, Trump versus the Democrats.
00:23:08.000 There's one that came out just yesterday.
00:23:10.000 From Marquette University Law School in Wisconsin.
00:23:13.000 And you would figure that Trump would be a little bit weak in Wisconsin, considering that Wisconsin has a pretty long progressive history.
00:23:19.000 Right now, he's running ahead of every major Democrat.
00:23:22.000 He's beating Joe Biden, 47-44, according to that Marquette University Law School poll.
00:23:26.000 He's beating Bernie Sanders, 48-45.
00:23:28.000 He's beating Elizabeth Warren, 48-43, because she's an awful candidate.
00:23:32.000 And he's beating Pete Buttigieg, 47-39.
00:23:35.000 Now notice those numbers.
00:23:37.000 Trump is not above 50% in any of these cases.
00:23:39.000 But the Democrat is certainly not above 50% and not even close to 50% in any of those cases.
00:23:44.000 And that is before Trump gets through running them through the mill.
00:23:48.000 It is true that Donald Trump is never going to surpass 50% approval rating in this country.
00:23:53.000 He's just not going to do that because he's not that kind of candidate.
00:23:57.000 But Donald Trump is a specialist in taking his opponents and just grinding them into dust.
00:24:01.000 It is what the man does best.
00:24:03.000 He's an attack dog and man can he attack, right?
00:24:06.000 I've been saying for years that he's a hammer in search of a nail and when he hits a nail, it is incredibly satisfying.
00:24:11.000 In politics, that is a great skill and Trump certainly has that skill.
00:24:14.000 So if you think that Pete Buttigieg looks all shiny and unvarnished at this point, Well, get—or shiny and varnished, rather.
00:24:22.000 Wait for President Trump to throw a few punches, and that reputation is going to collapse into dust very, very quickly.
00:24:27.000 After all, Pete Buttigieg, who right now is the thing of the moment, his biggest election victory was he won 11,000 votes in a small town in Indiana.
00:24:35.000 11,000 votes.
00:24:37.000 I've had speech crowds that are significantly larger than Pete Buttigieg's constituency in South Bend, Indiana.
00:24:42.000 So there's that.
00:24:44.000 Meanwhile, the Democratic moderates are attacking Elizabeth Warren and continuing to tear her down.
00:24:49.000 So Cory Booker is smacking around Elizabeth Warren's policy proposals.
00:24:53.000 I think at this point, if you had to handicap the field, you say that the most likely ticket looks something like Joe Biden, Cory Booker.
00:24:58.000 Here's Cory Booker going after Elizabeth Warren's wealth tax.
00:25:01.000 Nobody knows why he's still in this race other than to play a tack dog against people like Elizabeth Warren.
00:25:05.000 Here is Booker going after Warren.
00:25:08.000 It is hard to evaluate.
00:25:09.000 Other nations have tried this.
00:25:11.000 You literally have to assess every single year of somebody's wealth, from the paintings on their wall to the value of their farm.
00:25:18.000 People would be fighting that in court.
00:25:20.000 It would take years to figure out.
00:25:22.000 And they want to do this every single year.
00:25:24.000 There are better ways to do this to get revenue.
00:25:28.000 My plan is much, much better.
00:25:30.000 Love Elizabeth.
00:25:31.000 Love the intention behind it.
00:25:32.000 But we can find a way to do fair, just taxation.
00:25:35.000 Okay, so this is obviously, again, another attack by the moderates against Elizabeth Warren.
00:25:41.000 I don't think that Elizabeth Warren is going to last in all of this.
00:25:43.000 Meanwhile, the American people just are not interested.
00:25:45.000 The MSNBC Democratic debate readings were horrible.
00:25:49.000 Horrible.
00:25:50.000 According to Nielsen numbers, Mediaite reporting, more than 6.5 million viewers tuned in to watch the November 20th debate in Atlanta, including 1.6 million in the advertiser-coveted 25-54 demo, which is a lot of viewers, but that is a huge downturn from the 8.5 million viewers CNN earned from the October 15th debate.
00:26:07.000 With 2.4 million from the Target 25 to 54 demo.
00:26:11.000 By the way, 6.5 million viewers for a debate is a very bad number.
00:26:15.000 A very bad number.
00:26:16.000 How do you know it's a bad number?
00:26:16.000 Because during the 2016 debates, the first debate with Donald Trump in 2015 had 24 million viewers.
00:26:23.000 Four times as many people watched that debate as watched this debate.
00:26:26.000 Why?
00:26:26.000 Because nobody likes these candidates and they're incredibly, incredibly boring.
00:26:30.000 Mediaite tries to blame that on MSNBC's coverage of impeachment, but really that should jack up the ratings, not jack them down, right?
00:26:37.000 I mean, when you're trying to impeach the sitting president of the United States and then you have a Democratic primary debate, shouldn't the excitement be super high?
00:26:43.000 Well, the problem is that this debate was incredibly boring.
00:26:45.000 The other problem is that the moderators suck.
00:26:46.000 So Andrew Yang just blasted my boy, Andrew Yang.
00:26:50.000 I mean, listen, if you don't appreciate just Andrew Yang as a human being, you don't have to agree with any of his policies, right?
00:26:55.000 You don't have to think that universal basic income is a good idea, but Andrew Yang is a nice and decent human being.
00:27:00.000 I've sat with Andrew Yang.
00:27:01.000 I've met Andrew Yang.
00:27:02.000 This is a person who is trying to be reasonable in a way that I disagree with, but trying to be reasonable.
00:27:08.000 And so, Andrew Yang being shut out of these debates despite the fact that he has literally come from politically nowhere in order to be in these debates in the first place, The man has a little bit of credibility.
00:27:19.000 He says MSNBC moderators are just terrible.
00:27:22.000 He slams them on CNN and CNN of course laps it up.
00:27:25.000 You know, Wolf, all I can say is I miss CNN moderating these debates.
00:27:31.000 No, no, I mean, they saw it last night, too.
00:27:34.000 I mean, America saw it.
00:27:35.000 I went 32 minutes without a question, and I was raising my hands trying to get a word in edgewise during that time.
00:27:42.000 So when you all moderated the debate, it was straight up the middle.
00:27:46.000 It was professional.
00:27:47.000 We got real substantive topics.
00:27:50.000 Okay, this is absolutely true, and good for Yang for saying something true.
00:27:54.000 And what he's saying there is 100% true.
00:27:56.000 Meanwhile, the DNC is releasing its fundraising numbers for October, and they stink again.
00:28:01.000 The DNC reported less than $8.7 million cash on hand, over $7 million in debt, in an FEC report released on Wednesday.
00:28:08.000 These numbers are bad.
00:28:09.000 They are ugly numbers.
00:28:11.000 Those poor fundraising numbers come less than a year out from the 2020 presidential election.
00:28:15.000 The RNC is Blowing it out.
00:28:17.000 The RNC raised nearly three times as much money as the DNC last month, pulling in over $25 million in October, reporting over $60 million cash on hand.
00:28:25.000 Additionally, the joint fundraising effort between the Trump campaign and the RNC had raised over $300 million in 2019 so far, and reported $156 million cash on hand last month, according to The Daily Caller.
00:28:36.000 Tom Perez is coming under fire for his crap fundraising job.
00:28:40.000 And of course they're having a tough time fundraising.
00:28:42.000 Number one, they don't have a nominee.
00:28:43.000 Number two, none of the people who they're talking about are particularly exciting.
00:28:46.000 And when I say they're not particularly exciting, I mean they are particularly non-exciting.
00:28:51.000 And the new faces are getting slammed.
00:28:53.000 The New York Times, which is more woke than the general base of the Democratic Party.
00:28:57.000 You know, it is fascinating.
00:28:59.000 One of the... I was examining some poll numbers yesterday with regard to how members of each party see the members of the other party.
00:29:07.000 And one of the things that you see is that the parties have a very different view of their opponents than are reflected by reality.
00:29:17.000 So in other words, Republicans tend to think that people who vote Democrat are much more to the left than they are.
00:29:23.000 And Democrats tend to think that people who are Republican are much more extreme than they are.
00:29:29.000 And part of this is driven by media coverage.
00:29:30.000 And part of this is driven by the fact that social media rules the roost.
00:29:34.000 Part of this is driven by the fact that the presidential candidates on the Democratic side of the aisle are more responsible to Twitter than they are to their own actual constituents, which is why you are seeing the durability of Joe Biden.
00:29:48.000 It's why you are seeing Pete Buttigieg surge when he pretends to be a moderate.
00:29:52.000 There's a study this year from an organization called More in Common.
00:29:57.000 55% of Republicans and Democrats believed the majority of the opposing party believed extreme views.
00:30:01.000 In reality, that number was actually 30%.
00:30:03.000 So, for example, Democrats believed only half of Republicans would acknowledge that racism still exists in America.
00:30:09.000 In reality, 80% of Republicans acknowledged that racism still exists in America.
00:30:14.000 Conversely, Republicans believed that only about half of Democrats were proud to be American.
00:30:19.000 The actual number was about 80%.
00:30:20.000 In other words, most Democrats are not actually in alignment with Democrats Who are running for president.
00:30:27.000 They are not.
00:30:27.000 Which leaves a lot of room to run for President Trump.
00:30:30.000 And the media who are pushing the Democrats further to the left are doing the Democrats no favors.
00:30:34.000 In fact, they're hurting them.
00:30:36.000 But that's not going to stop the New York Times from attacking the ersatz moderate, Pete Buttigieg.
00:30:41.000 There's a big attack article in the New York Times today by Reid Epstein against Pete Buttigieg.
00:30:45.000 It's called, Pete Buttigieg is struggling with black Democrats.
00:30:48.000 Here's why.
00:30:49.000 He says, former Vice President Joe Biden has 154 endorsements from current or former black or Hispanic elected officials.
00:30:55.000 Kamala Harris has 93, which has benefited her not at all.
00:30:58.000 Bernie Sanders has 91.
00:30:59.000 Cory Booker has 50.
00:31:01.000 Elizabeth Warren has 43.
00:31:01.000 Pete Buttigieg has 6.
00:31:05.000 According to the New York Times, Buttigieg has failed to demonstrate even minimal support among African-Americans and Hispanics, critical voting blocs that will have a much larger say after Iowa and New Hampshire and their nearly all-white electorates begin the presidential nominating calendar.
00:31:17.000 And watch as the media starts to portray the Democratic nominating calendar as itself inherently racist because it starts off with some heavily white states.
00:31:24.000 On Wednesday night, debate moderators questioned Buttigieg's record on racial issues, while rivals, including Cory Booker and Kamala Harris, suggested he needed on-the-job training in talking to black audiences.
00:31:34.000 And obviously, there's some truth to this.
00:31:35.000 Van Jones said the same thing on CNN.
00:31:37.000 Pete Buttigieg's pitch to black audiences was, I'm gay, so I've been victimized too, just like you, which obviously is not true.
00:31:43.000 Again, Pete Buttigieg has really not experienced significant political discrimination against him.
00:31:48.000 He's the mayor of South Bend, Indiana.
00:31:49.000 When he came out of the closet, I believe he was 30 at the time, when he came out of the closet, Mike Pence was asked about it and he was basically like, enjoy.
00:31:58.000 This idea that he has experienced anything like the discrimination that a John Lewis experienced in the United States is just absurd.
00:32:05.000 According to the New York Times, Buttigieg's weakness with voters of color limits his potential in the 2020 campaign.
00:32:11.000 A donor class favorite who draws capacity crowds across Iowa, Buttigieg counts as his highest profile black supporter, either the man who lost a 2018 election to be Florida's Attorney General, or the former mayor of Kansas City, Missouri.
00:32:23.000 No Democrat in modern times has won the party's nomination without claiming majorities of black voters, the most crucial voting bloc in South Carolina, and in an array of delegate-rich southern states.
00:32:33.000 Buttigieg's supporters say black voters and politicians haven't gotten to know him.
00:32:36.000 They say that once they do, his fortunes will improve.
00:32:39.000 That is very likely untrue.
00:32:41.000 That is very likely untrue.
00:32:43.000 So again, this field is floundering.
00:32:45.000 Not only is it floundering, the Democrats in the media are pushing them to the left.
00:32:49.000 And the Democratic base does not even agree with those principles.
00:32:51.000 Which is why, again, Joe Biden remains your likeliest nominee.
00:32:54.000 In a second, we're going to give you all the updates on Impeachment Gate 2019.
00:32:58.000 But first, it is that glorious time of the week when I give a shout-out to a Daily Wire subscriber today.
00:33:03.000 It's a Twitterer, Dylan Jackson.
00:33:04.000 He knows where to go to get the truth in today's insane news cycle.
00:33:07.000 In the pic, Dylan's majestic drinking vessel sits atop his marble kitchen counter waiting for today's bountiful harvest.
00:33:14.000 The caption reads, finally got my leftist tears tumbler from daily wire thanks to Ben Shapiro, Matt Walsh, Michael Moles, Andrew Clavin for keeping those of us who support the right informed the best way you can.
00:33:24.000 Awesome, and thank you for the tweet.
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00:34:54.000 Okay, so, meanwhile, in impeachment gates, Adam Schiff is self-righteously declaring that Republicans must fulfill their duty despite the fact that Democrats have not yet actually proved the case for impeachment.
00:35:09.000 Again, the initial investigation was based on the idea that Donald Trump specifically militarized American foreign aid in order to get Joe Biden.
00:35:17.000 Right, that's what this whole thing was about.
00:35:19.000 Let's not forget the original accusation.
00:35:21.000 It was a quid pro quo, but it was not just a quid pro quo, it was a quid pro quo for something totally illegitimate.
00:35:25.000 He wanted Ukraine to make up information about Joe Biden or launch a false investigation into Joe Biden or an investigation based on false pretenses in order to help Trump in the 2020 election.
00:35:35.000 It wasn't about 2016.
00:35:36.000 It wasn't about Trump being vindictive.
00:35:38.000 It wasn't about Trump wanting to investigate Ukrainian interference in the 2016 elections.
00:35:42.000 It was purely and solely a get Biden effort.
00:35:44.000 If you want to know what the allegation was, just go back and listen to that ridiculous phony transcript that Adam Schiff Parody.
00:35:50.000 Remember that Adam Schiff did this parody.
00:35:53.000 I'm not going to say, like so many have said, that he was being literal.
00:35:55.000 He was not.
00:35:56.000 He was parodying the transcript.
00:35:57.000 But he was sort of summing up his perception of the memo, the call memo from July 25th, in which he said, I want you to go get Joe Biden.
00:36:05.000 Go get Joe Biden and bring me his head on a platter and all of this.
00:36:08.000 OK, that was the original accusation.
00:36:09.000 Democrats have not proved that.
00:36:11.000 What Democrats have shown is that Trump withheld aid.
00:36:13.000 And that he did so in order to receive investigations, right?
00:36:17.000 But guess what?
00:36:18.000 That was pretty obvious from the July 25th phone call, right?
00:36:20.000 That he was either withholding an actual meeting or withholding aid for that purpose.
00:36:24.000 Now, I'm not going to go along with the Republican talking point that Trump was never withholding aid in exchange for anything.
00:36:29.000 Like, I don't think that that's a credible talking point.
00:36:31.000 I just don't.
00:36:31.000 I think that when Gordon Sondland says, I perceived a quid pro quo, and then everybody was like, yeah, but nobody told you straight out it's a quid pro quo.
00:36:39.000 And he's like, right, but I was talking to Rudy Giuliani, and Trump was saying, go talk to Giuliani, and Giuliani was saying, do X, and Trump was withholding the aid.
00:36:45.000 That looks a lot like a quid pro quo.
00:36:47.000 Like, that makes some sense.
00:36:48.000 It does.
00:36:49.000 But that does not answer the question as to whether the quid pro quo was completely illegitimate.
00:36:53.000 Quid pro quos do happen in American foreign policy all the time.
00:36:56.000 We are constantly conditioning American aid.
00:36:58.000 We are constantly doing that.
00:37:00.000 Nonetheless, you have Adam Schiff self-righteously declaring that Republicans must do their duty and impeach the president.
00:37:04.000 At the same time, Democrats refused to hear testimony from Hunter Biden.
00:37:08.000 Remember, this whole investigation was launched on the back of the allegation that asking Ukraine to investigate Hunter Biden was completely illegitimate.
00:37:16.000 Well, I mean, come on.
00:37:18.000 I'm sorry.
00:37:19.000 I can't buy that.
00:37:20.000 There's a news story out today from the Washington Examiner.
00:37:23.000 Quote, an investment firm linked to Hunter Biden received over $130 million in federal bailout loans while his father, Joe Biden, was vice president and routed profits through a subsidiary in the Cayman Islands, according to federal banking and corporate records reviewed by the Washington Examiner.
00:37:36.000 Financial experts said the offshore corporate structure could have been used to shield earnings from U.S.
00:37:41.000 taxes.
00:37:42.000 Rosemont Capital, an investment firm at the center of Hunter Biden's much-scrutinized financial network, was one of the companies approved to participate in the 2009 federal loan program known as the Term Asset-Backed Securities Loan Facility, or TEL.
00:37:55.000 Which is to be distinguished from the long-running and wonderful TV show ALF.
00:37:59.000 Under the program, the U.S.
00:38:00.000 Treasury Department and the Federal Reserve Bank issued billions of dollars in highly favorable loans to select investors who agreed to buy bonds that banks were struggling to offload, including bundled college and auto loans.
00:38:10.000 Apparently, 177 firms participated in TALF, many of them well-connected in Washington or on Wall Street.
00:38:16.000 Hunter Biden, who is just a sleaze bucket.
00:38:20.000 The guy recently had to take a paternity test in Arkansas, and Joe Biden discovered he had a grandkid he didn't know he had.
00:38:24.000 I mean, Hunter Biden is just gross.
00:38:27.000 He's had a very checkered history.
00:38:30.000 And the fact that he has become extraordinarily wealthy off the back of his daddy's name, and was doing so in Ukraine, does that go to Ukrainian corruption?
00:38:39.000 Yeah, a little bit.
00:38:40.000 A little bit.
00:38:42.000 Roger L. Simon reports today.
00:38:44.000 It's obvious that Joe Biden cannot be impeached were he to win that exalted office, but the case for his immediate impeachment would dwarf Donald Trump's.
00:38:50.000 If we are to believe Interfax Ukraine, there's a report out today.
00:38:53.000 Some $16.5 million received by Hunter Biden, the son of former U.S.
00:38:58.000 Vice President Joe Biden, as payment from Burisma was stolen from Ukrainian citizens, according to a member of parliament named Andrei Derkach.
00:39:04.000 Derkach said at a press conference at the Kiev-based Interfax Ukraine news agency.
00:39:08.000 That on November 14th, the prosecutor general's office announced a new suspicion to the owner of Burisma, former ecology minister, Mykola Zlochevsky.
00:39:17.000 So, Interfax has some questions about it.
00:39:20.000 It's originally a Russian news company, so we should say that.
00:39:22.000 It was established, Roger Simon writes this, it was established during perestroika, generally took a liberal line against conservatives who wish to preserve the old USSR, but they're probably infiltrated by intelligence agencies, and so we have to view their reporting with some skepticism.
00:39:36.000 But that report obviously doesn't look great.
00:39:37.000 It doesn't look great for Hunter Biden.
00:39:41.000 Again, are there questions that are open about Hunter Biden and Ukraine?
00:39:44.000 Yeah, absolutely.
00:39:45.000 So when Schiff says fulfill your duty and then he won't let Hunter Biden testify, and we're not allowed to hear about how these complaints were elevated to the level of whistleblower complaint in the first place, the whole thing does kind of stink, does it not?
00:39:55.000 Now, again, that does not mean that there can't be legitimate questions asked about Trump's behavior here, questions that really go more to his qualifications for the presidency and his character and temperament than they do to impeachable offenses.
00:40:09.000 And you can still ask questions about, did he intend to go get Joe Biden circa 2020?
00:40:13.000 But the Democrats certainly have not proved that case.
00:40:15.000 The self-righteousness on display from Adam Schiff, who again had a pup tent set up outside the Green Room at CNN for two years to talk about why Trump was about to go down for Russian investigations and interference.
00:40:27.000 That guy is out there saying that we should really trust him when it comes to his evaluation of the evidence.
00:40:31.000 Where are the people who are willing to go beyond their party to look to their duty?
00:40:38.000 I was struck Oh, come on.
00:40:42.000 I'm sorry, I'm not going to be lectured by Adam Schiff on duty.
00:40:44.000 that he acted out of duty.
00:40:47.000 What is our duty here?
00:40:50.000 That's what we need to be asking.
00:40:54.000 Not using metaphors about balls and strikes or our team and your team.
00:41:01.000 I've heard my colleagues use those metaphors.
00:41:04.000 This should be about duty.
00:41:06.000 What is our duty?
00:41:07.000 Oh, come on.
00:41:07.000 I'm sorry.
00:41:08.000 I'm not gonna be lectured by Adam Schiff on duty.
00:41:11.000 Like really?
00:41:12.000 The man, I think it's fairly obvious that he is lying when he says he does not know who the whistleblower is.
00:41:18.000 I think that is fairly obvious.
00:41:19.000 I think that it is fairly obvious that this man is politically driven.
00:41:22.000 That's pretty clear.
00:41:24.000 Meanwhile, the Democrats, the media, they keep trying to pump up these witnesses as though the witnesses are saying anything new.
00:41:29.000 In fact, the stuff that the witnesses are saying that are new, very often, are not actually true.
00:41:35.000 So, for example, Fiona Hill, she's a deputy to John Bolton.
00:41:38.000 And John Bolton has tweeted out this morning that he's been off Twitter for two months, but that he'll have much more coming.
00:41:42.000 So is that a threat?
00:41:43.000 Who the hell knows, right?
00:41:43.000 John Bolton is one of the people who actually would know something.
00:41:46.000 As I've said from the beginning, unless you talk to President Trump, you don't know nada.
00:41:49.000 That's why Gordon Sondland's testimony mattered, but it turns out that that was a bit of a dud for Democrats in terms of a window into Donald Trump's brain.
00:41:56.000 Instead, Sondland basically underscored what all the other witnesses suggested about there being a quid pro quo.
00:42:02.000 But he did not state, and actually would not state, despite repeated prompting from Democrats, that the quid pro quo was itself illegitimate.
00:42:09.000 In fact, he said that he didn't believe that the quid pro quo was illegitimate.
00:42:12.000 In any case, Fiona Hill is a John Bolton deputy.
00:42:14.000 She was obviously very skeptical of the holdup in American aid to Ukraine.
00:42:17.000 Even Fiona Hill said, I can't blame Trump for feeling aggrieved over the 2016 election, which is probably what prompted him to be upset about Ukraine in the first place.
00:42:25.000 Many officials from many countries, including Ukraine, bet on the wrong horse.
00:42:30.000 They believed that Secretary Clinton, former Senator Clinton, former First Lady Clinton was going to win.
00:42:36.000 And many said some pretty disparaging and hurtful things about President Trump.
00:42:40.000 And I can't blame him for feeling aggrieved about them.
00:42:42.000 Okay, well, the fact is, that is probably what led Trump to do all of this.
00:42:45.000 Because that's who Trump is.
00:42:46.000 Right?
00:42:46.000 This is a man who, there, who, if you, there's a guy, I think he was writing for, for Vanity Fair magazine, back in the 1990s, and wrote about Donald Trump's small hands, called them, like, freakishly small.
00:42:58.000 Since then, since like 1991, Donald Trump has been sending this man pictures of his hands signed by Donald Trump for like 25 years.
00:43:08.000 For 25 years.
00:43:09.000 That's what you're talking about.
00:43:11.000 Not the guy who's looking forward to 2020.
00:43:12.000 The guy who sends pictures of his hands in the mail to people who disparaged his hand size 20 years ago.
00:43:19.000 That's what this whole Ukraine thing is about, and everybody who has a shred of intellectual honesty basically knows that is the case.
00:43:25.000 Okay, everybody knows that's the case.
00:43:26.000 Now, does that mean it's illegitimate?
00:43:28.000 No!
00:43:28.000 It means that Trump is thin-skinned and vindictive about stuff that's happened in the past.
00:43:31.000 That's why he's constantly fulminating about never-Trumpers who are not actually a political force in American life.
00:43:36.000 Right, but...
00:43:37.000 Does that mean that there isn't an actual American interest in investigating 2016?
00:43:41.000 No, of course there's an interest in investigating 2016.
00:43:43.000 We just spent two years doing it on the Mueller report side.
00:43:47.000 And that's why when Fiona Hill says stuff like, well, it's a fantasy that Ukraine meddled in 2016, I got some questions.
00:43:51.000 Here's Fiona Hill saying that.
00:43:53.000 I mean, despite the charming accent, what she's about to say is actually not particularly true.
00:43:57.000 Based on questions and statements I've heard, some of you on this committee appear to believe that Russia and its security services did not conduct a campaign against our country, and that perhaps, somehow, for some reason, Ukraine did.
00:44:10.000 This is a fictional narrative that has been perpetrated and propagated by the Russian security services themselves.
00:44:18.000 The unfortunate truth is that Russia was the foreign power that systematically attacked our democratic institutions in 2016.
00:44:24.000 Okay, so it is true that Russia was the country that attacked our system in 2016.
00:44:29.000 It is also true that there's fairly serious evidence of Ukrainian 2016 meddling.
00:44:33.000 Our friend Andy McCarthy from National Review, he has an entire column in the New York Post about this.
00:44:38.000 He says, In her testimony before the House impeachment inquiry, Fiona Hill, formerly of the National Security Council, took great pride in telling lawmakers she was a non-partisan intelligence professional.
00:44:47.000 She then labored mightily in service of a Democratic political narrative.
00:44:50.000 Specifically, Hill conflated two separate theories of Ukrainian collusion in the 2016 election.
00:44:54.000 One of these is discredited.
00:44:56.000 The other is quite viable.
00:44:57.000 Hill helped the Democrats suggest they have both been debunked.
00:45:01.000 To be sure, President Trump is largely to blame for propagating the discredited Ukraine theory it holds that somehow it was Ukraine, not Russia, that interfered in the 2016 election by cyber espionage against Democratic email accounts.
00:45:13.000 This is such a loopy theory it defies clear explanation.
00:45:15.000 Suffice it to say it involves suspicions that a hacked DNC server is hidden in Ukraine.
00:45:19.000 Perhaps the speculation runs it was Ukrainian operatives, not Russian ones, who are the culprits.
00:45:22.000 This is a fringe theory.
00:45:23.000 Nobody puts a lot of stock in it.
00:45:25.000 I've said the same thing.
00:45:27.000 And Trump referred to it when he talked about CrowdStrike in his July 25th conversation with Zelensky.
00:45:32.000 And Trump has admittedly trafficked in conspiracy theories nearly his entire career.
00:45:36.000 But then there is a second theory of Ukrainian collusion that is actually backed by evidence.
00:45:41.000 This theory, according to Annie McCarthy, has nothing to do with Russia.
00:45:44.000 It is supported by significant evidence.
00:45:46.000 It includes public professions of support for Clinton and opposition to Trump by Ukrainian officials.
00:45:50.000 It includes acknowledgment by Ukrainian investigators that their Obama administration counterparts encouraged them to investigate Trump's campaign chairman, Paul Manafort.
00:45:58.000 Bolstering this theory is the fact that Ukrainian officials leaked information damaging to Manafort, a ledger of payments possibly fabricated, that forced Manafort to ouster from the Trump campaign, triggering waves of negative publicity for the campaign.
00:46:09.000 And this, of course, is true.
00:46:11.000 We've talked about this repeatedly.
00:46:12.000 The weird idea that Ukraine was not involved in the election at all is not true.
00:46:18.000 And meanwhile, the other big Democratic witness yesterday was a guy named David Holmes, who's an aide to Gordon Sondland and to the State Department.
00:46:24.000 And he was apparently at some sort of phone call with Gordon Sondland where Sondland was talking to Trump.
00:46:29.000 And he said that Trump's phone call was incredibly loud.
00:46:31.000 And so he overheard it.
00:46:32.000 Here's Holmes talking about how loud Trump's phone call was and how he could actually hear Trump blaring through the mouthpiece.
00:46:39.000 You said that you were able to hear President Trump's voice through the receiver.
00:46:47.000 How were you able to hear if it was not on speakerphone?
00:46:51.000 It was several things.
00:46:52.000 It was quite loud when the president came on, quite distinctive.
00:46:56.000 I believe Ambassador Sondland also said yesterday he often speaks very loudly over the phone, and I certainly experienced that.
00:47:04.000 He, when the president came on, he sort of winced and held the phone away from his ear like this.
00:47:10.000 And he did that for the first couple exchanges.
00:47:13.000 I don't know if he then turned the volume down, if he got used to it, if the president's moderated his volume, I don't know.
00:47:19.000 But that's how I was able to hear it.
00:47:21.000 Okay, so a couple of things.
00:47:23.000 One, did he hear it?
00:47:25.000 I mean, sure, maybe.
00:47:27.000 Sure, I mean, but the phone call itself didn't actually add anything to what we already knew, which is that there was this sort of, I'm holding back the aid until I get the investigations that I want.
00:47:36.000 And then David Holmes went on to say that of course Trump was pressing for the Biden investigation.
00:47:40.000 No question Trump was pressing for the Biden investigation.
00:47:42.000 Here's Holmes, you know, going after Jim Jordan on this, but Why it would have to be the Biden investigation as opposed to the other investigations or why the Biden investigation itself is fully about 2020 and not about 2016.
00:47:53.000 Why it's not about corruption, but about getting Biden for 2020 is never made clear.
00:47:57.000 Here's Holmes.
00:47:58.000 I briefed the call in detail to the deputy chief of mission, went away for a week, come back, I refer to the call, and everyone is nodding.
00:48:05.000 Of course that's what's going on.
00:48:06.000 Of course the president is pressing for a Biden investigation before he'll do these things the Ukrainians want.
00:48:12.000 There was nodding agreement.
00:48:14.000 So did I go through every single word in the call?
00:48:16.000 No, because everyone by that point agreed.
00:48:19.000 It was obvious what the president was pressing for.
00:48:21.000 Okay, so, I mean, sure, he thinks that it's obvious what the president was pressing for, but that's, again, a perception.
00:48:27.000 So, bottom line is that none of this is going to be sufficient to drive Republicans in the Senate to impeach, and once this thing gets to the Senate level, Trump is going to get what he wants.
00:48:35.000 Trump came out today, and he said that he wants a trial.
00:48:37.000 Well, if he gets a trial in the Senate, if there's a House impeachment and there's a trial in the Senate, then President Trump is going to get his wish.
00:48:42.000 Here's President Trump saying he wants a trial.
00:48:44.000 The bottom line is all of those witnesses, they're all shifty shifts.
00:48:47.000 Don't forget, there was no due process.
00:48:49.000 You can't have lawyers.
00:48:50.000 We couldn't have any witnesses.
00:48:52.000 We want to call the whistleblower.
00:48:53.000 But you know who I want as the first witness?
00:48:55.000 Because frankly, I want a trial.
00:48:58.000 You know, I could think I could have it.
00:48:59.000 You want a trial?
00:49:00.000 Whatever I want.
00:49:01.000 Oh, I would.
00:49:02.000 Look.
00:49:03.000 Number one, they should never, ever impeach.
00:49:07.000 This is not... I watched five people on your network yesterday say, there's nothing here.
00:49:15.000 Okay, so if he gets that trial, you can expect to hear from the whistleblower.
00:49:19.000 You can expect to hear from Hunter Biden.
00:49:21.000 You can expect to hear from Joe Biden.
00:49:22.000 Republicans are not going to be kind in who they subpoena on this whole thing.
00:49:25.000 They are not going to be kind.
00:49:26.000 It's not going to be great for Democrats.
00:49:27.000 Okay, time for some things I like and then a thing that I hate.
00:49:31.000 So, things that I like today.
00:49:32.000 So, Jon Voight, a man with whom I am friends and one of the great actors in modern movie history.
00:49:38.000 He's just terrific.
00:49:39.000 John Voigt got the Presidential Medal of Freedom yesterday, and everybody on the left went nuts.
00:49:43.000 How could John Voigt get that?
00:49:44.000 He's just a Trump sycophant.
00:49:46.000 You know how many people were given Obama Medals of Freedom just because they were celebrities who were Obama sycophants?
00:49:51.000 That's the way the Medal of Freedom works.
00:49:53.000 Let's be real about this.
00:49:54.000 And Voigt is a Hardcore Trump supporter, no question.
00:49:57.000 He also happens to be a great patriot, a man who cares about his country, a really nice guy, he's done a lot of great charity work, and Jon Voight happens to be a fantastic actor.
00:50:06.000 And if you want to see what a great actor Jon Voight is, you need to check out Ray Donovan, where he plays Mickey Donovan.
00:50:11.000 He and Liv Schreiber hold up the show.
00:50:13.000 I mean, the show is basically the two of them.
00:50:15.000 And I love Liv Schreiber as an actor.
00:50:17.000 I also love Jon Voight as an actor.
00:50:19.000 So if you like great acting and you don't mind scuzzy people doing scuzzy things, then Ray Donovan is a show for you.
00:50:23.000 here's a little bit of the trailer I just want my family back No, you don't.
00:50:37.000 You want my family.
00:50:40.000 We've done bad things, Ray.
00:50:42.000 I've asked you to fix things that should never have been fixed.
00:50:45.000 So the show is, of course, about scuzzy Hollywood people, like incredibly scuzzy Hollywood people doing incredibly scuzzy things.
00:50:52.000 Ray Donovan is basically a Hollywood fixer, and it's a bit of a fancy world where he's going around and killing people and harming people and doing all sorts of evil things, but you kind of like him because he's the anti-hero.
00:51:04.000 But, there's a charm to the show, for sure.
00:51:06.000 And John Boyd is terrific in it.
00:51:08.000 I mean, John Boyd really is first rate.
00:51:10.000 So, if you're into good acting, and you don't care particularly much, it's like the good fellas, sort of.
00:51:16.000 Like, if you don't care too much about the morality of the show, you're fine.
00:51:19.000 Okay, time for a quick thing that I hate.
00:51:21.000 Okay, so there is a video that is making the rounds of a student at Cal State University of Chico holding an All Lives Matter sign and getting assaulted for his trouble.
00:51:37.000 Here's what the video looks like.
00:51:40.000 The man is literally standing there holding a sign saying, All Lives Matter, and next to a woman holding a Black Lives Matter sign and getting berated and the sign ripped away from him and quote-unquote assaulted for his trouble.
00:52:09.000 This sort of stuff does happen on college campuses all the time.
00:52:12.000 We've seen a bunch of university speech shutdowns, including for Art Laffer.
00:52:16.000 I talked about it a little bit earlier on the show.
00:52:18.000 And that is a grand and grave absurdity.
00:52:20.000 These places that are supposed to be super pro-free speech, catering to students who care very little about free speech and care much more About ensuring that their point of view is the only point of view that is heard.
00:52:31.000 It's absurdity, but that is the way that our college campuses work, obviously, right now.
00:52:36.000 Okay, time for a quick Bible note.
00:52:39.000 Okay, so quick Bible note here.
00:52:41.000 So, every week we've been doing this, we've been going through a little bit of the Bible, just like the Jews do.
00:52:45.000 Every week we read a section from the Torah.
00:52:47.000 This week happens to be the Parsha Chayei Sarah, which is the portion of the Old Testament in which the Founding mother of the Jewish people, Sarah, dies.
00:52:59.000 She is buried in Hebron, which Chevron.
00:53:01.000 We are supposed to pretend that this is actually historic Muslim territory, as opposed to historic Jewish territory, despite the fact that it is the first land ever bought in the Bible, and it's bought by Abraham for money, so that he has a legitimate claim on the land.
00:53:12.000 In any case, good for the Trump administration for declaring this week that Israeli settlements are not de facto illegal, because they are not de facto or de jure illegal.
00:53:21.000 The fact is Jews have been in Hebron, they've been living in Hebron for literally thousands of years, and this Sabbath in particular Chevron happens to be a place where literally 100,000 Jews will go and sleep in their cars in like a three-block area just to be near the burial site of Abraham and Sarah, which, by the way, is disproportionately controlled by Muslims.
00:53:41.000 I mean, the actual site, the Marat HaMachpelah, the Cave of the Patriarchs and the Matriarchs, That site, like 80% of the actual site is controlled by Muslims who will not let Jews in except on like three days of the year.
00:53:54.000 In any case, the biblical portion that talks about Sarah is really interesting.
00:53:57.000 So Sarah is sort of a fascinating character in the Bible.
00:53:59.000 She has an incredibly rough life.
00:54:01.000 An incredibly rough life.
00:54:03.000 And she's living inside what can only be described as a patriarchal system.
00:54:06.000 She gets married to Abraham.
00:54:08.000 She's sort of the first real female in the Bible, in the sense that, in my opinion, the Adam and Eve story is largely meant to be a metaphor about human nature.
00:54:17.000 But once you get to Abraham, you start with the actual history of the Jewish people.
00:54:20.000 So Sarah is the founding mother of the Jewish people, and therefore also of Islamic peoples, because she is It's her handmaid, Hagar, who has Ishmael, who's considered the progenitor of Islam, and she also is the grandmother of Esau, who is considered the progenitor of Christians and sort of Jewish tradition.
00:54:40.000 In any case, Sarah lives within the bounds of a patriarchy, right?
00:54:44.000 Throughout the Bible, she is running into rough situations, and she's forced to go to Pharaoh's palace when Abraham wants to avoid death, for example.
00:54:53.000 They go to Egypt, and Abraham is afraid that Sarah is so beautiful that he's going to be killed, and so he tells Farrow that Sarah is his sister and she goes to live in the palace.
00:55:02.000 Nothing untoward happens, the Bible assures us.
00:55:04.000 Later, Abraham does the same thing again with another king named Abimelech.
00:55:08.000 This isn't exactly female-lib kind of stuff.
00:55:10.000 And then later, she makes an offer to Abraham, which is apparently fairly common in the ancient world.
00:55:14.000 She couldn't have kids, and so she makes Abraham an offer to consort with her maidservant, Hagar, and Abraham then goes ahead and does this.
00:55:23.000 And then, finally, when she does give birth, her son is at the mercy of Ishmael, her stepson, and her husband, Abraham, refuses to do anything about this until God explicitly tells him to.
00:55:32.000 And this is the key turning point for Sarah as a character, and I think a key turning point for how women are seen in the Bible generally, and how women ought to be seen.
00:55:41.000 Because God says something pretty special.
00:55:43.000 He tells Abraham, whatever Sarah tells you, heed her voice, since through Isaac will offspring be considered yours.
00:55:50.000 Heed the Voice of Your Wife is a pretty powerful directive in ancient biblical times, right?
00:55:54.000 God's saying that you need to listen to a woman, and for all the people who say that the Bible is inherently patriarchal, ignoring the fact that the Bible itself talks about changing the laws of inheritance to allow women to inherit, for example, by the daughters of Tzlovchad, despite the fact that there are actual leaders of the Jewish people in the Tanakh, in the Old Testament, who are women, like Devorah, Deborah.
00:56:16.000 Despite that, there are people who suggest that the Bible is deeply, deeply patriarchal in every conceivable sense, that it is not a transition away from more patriarchal and more brutal societies.
00:56:24.000 That, of course, is not true.
00:56:25.000 And you can see the impact of this specific commandment.
00:56:28.000 So, God says you need to heed Sarah.
00:56:31.000 And then, in this Parsha, in this portion of the Torah, Sarah dies.
00:56:34.000 And this changes Abraham's view of women.
00:56:37.000 You can see this, right?
00:56:38.000 He sends his servant, and this is manifest in how he finds a wife for his son, Isaac.
00:56:43.000 So he sends his own servant, Eliezer, to find a wife for Isaac.
00:56:46.000 So, in that day, if women were treated as chattel, this isn't a particularly difficult process, right?
00:56:50.000 You find a woman you like, you go to her dad, you pay your dad, and then you get the woman, right?
00:56:52.000 I mean, this was actually incredibly common in the ancient world.
00:56:57.000 For example, when Abraham is posing as Sarah's brother, both Pharaoh and Abimelech, trying to buy his approval, shower him with gifts.
00:57:04.000 But now Abraham's perspective has changed on women because of Sarah.
00:57:08.000 He tells Eliezer to travel from Canaan back to his family to find a wife for Isaac.
00:57:12.000 And then he says, if the woman will not wish to follow you, you will be absolved of this oath of mine.
00:57:17.000 So suddenly the woman's consent matters in a deep and profound way.
00:57:21.000 And the test that Eliezer is given in order to find Isaac's wife is a consent-based test.
00:57:27.000 Right?
00:57:27.000 Because the test is not, I go to this place and then I say, the test that he has given is, I bring my camels here and a woman offers to bring water to the camels.
00:57:35.000 It is not, I order a woman to bring water to the camels and if she complies, then she's marriageable material.
00:57:40.000 It's she must offer voluntarily to bring the water.
00:57:44.000 And then the final evidence of the newfound status for women is the negotiation over Rebecca who ends up marrying Isaac.
00:57:49.000 Eliezer negotiates on behalf of Abraham.
00:57:51.000 He offers the family of Rebecca the customary gift, but he's already negotiated with Rebecca directly, right?
00:57:57.000 He's given her the customary wedding gifts.
00:57:59.000 A golden nose ring, two bracelets on her arm.
00:58:02.000 She accepts them, and then she accepts the marriage proposal.
00:58:05.000 And she voluntarily says that she is going to leave.
00:58:10.000 They are not willing to do so unless they receive fiscal gain, but she... It's the first woman to consent to a marriage in the Bible.
00:58:17.000 She overtly consents.
00:58:19.000 Right?
00:58:19.000 She says, she says, I'm going to, I'm going to go with you and then she goes with.
00:58:24.000 And then it says in the Torah, this is how Isaac was consoled after his mother because suddenly an independent woman who was very powerful in the Bible was replaced by another independent woman who is very powerful in the Bible.
00:58:34.000 And I don't think it's any coincidence.
00:58:36.000 That the most romantic relationship in the Bible is the relationship between Isaac and Rebecca because it is based on a certain level of mutual respect and a consent.
00:58:44.000 It's the only time in the Torah of which I'm aware that there's a description between husband and wife that he loved her, right?
00:58:51.000 That's actually explicitly said in the Bible.
00:58:52.000 It says Isaac brought her into the tents of Sarah, his mother.
00:58:55.000 He married Rebecca.
00:58:55.000 She became his wife and he loved her.
00:58:58.000 Right, because Isaac sees that women ought to be powerful and he is more than happy to marry a powerful woman.
00:59:05.000 And she ends up being incredibly powerful, right?
00:59:07.000 I mean, Rebecca ends up basically deciding the fate of the Jewish people when she helps her son, Jacob, switch the skins and the birthright and the blessings with his brother Esau.
00:59:21.000 So, whenever people say that the Bible is inherently patriarchal and horrible toward women, understand two things.
00:59:25.000 One, the Bible is an ancient document.
00:59:27.000 It's attempting to transition away from a much more patriarchal society.
00:59:30.000 Number two, there are some pretty significant messages in the Bible that really do speak to the idea that women have inherent value, ought to be seen as having inherent value.
00:59:37.000 When God says, listen to your wife, he means it.
00:59:39.000 And he means you should listen to your wife too.
00:59:42.000 And it makes my life a hell of a lot better.
00:59:42.000 I certainly do.
00:59:44.000 Okay, we'll be back here a little bit later today with two additional Hours of content.
00:59:48.000 Otherwise, we'll see you here on Monday for a short Thanksgiving week, but we'll bring you all the updates.
00:59:52.000 I'm Ben Shapiro.
00:59:53.000 This is The Ben Shapiro Show.
00:59:58.000 The Ben Shapiro Show is produced by Robert Sterling.
01:00:01.000 Directed by Mike Joyner.
01:00:02.000 Executive producer, Jeremy Boring.
01:00:04.000 Senior producer, Jonathan Hay.
01:00:06.000 Our supervising producer is Mathis Glover.
01:00:09.000 And our technical producer is Austin Stevens.
01:00:11.000 Assistant director, Pavel Wydowski.
01:00:13.000 Edited by Adam Sievitz.
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