Speaker of the House Paul Ryan steps down, the Trump probe pushes the president toward precipitous action, and James Comey s book is out! We'll have all of it on The Ben Shapiro Show with Ben Shapiro! Subscribe to Ben Shapiro's new show, The Weekly Standard, wherever you get your news and politics. Subscribe today using our podcast s promo code for 20% off your first month with discount code . Use the promo code: "ELISSA" to receive $10 OFF your first purchase when you enter the discount code: CRIMINALS at checkout. To find a list of our sponsors and show-related promo codes, go to gimlet.fm/OurAdvertisers and use promo code "Advertiser" at checkout to receive 10% off their entire purchase when they sign up for our VIP Member discount offer. Thanks to our sponsor, LegalZoom, we're giving you FREE legal advice for your business, and saving you time and money on your legal fees! You won't want to miss it! Use promo code BenShapiro at checkout! to save 10% on your first bill, and get 15% off the entire bill plus free shipping when you sign up using our VIP discount offer when you become a patron! Thanks, Ben Shapiro and I'll send you an ad-free version of the Ben Shapiro show! . Ben Shapiro is a writer, editor, and host of the podcast "The Ben Shapiro Podcast." and a supporter of The FiveThirtyEight Podcast. . He also writes a book called "The Devil's Playbook" and hosts a podcast called "Ben Shapiro's New York Times" and he also gives you a free copy of his new book out on Audible, "A Comin' It's a Real Deal With Ben Shapiro" in the next episode of "The FiveThirty Eight Podcast? "A Man's Guide to the White House Is a Man's Story" in "The Real Deal" and "I'm Not a Deal With It All." and more! "The Man Who Talks It All That and More! "A Real Deal, I'm A Man's Real Deal?" "I'll Tell It All, I'll Hear It All," "I Can't Say That, I've Been There, Too Real Deal & I'll Say It, Too Much, I Say It's All That & I'm Not Gave It."
00:00:00.000Speaker of the House Paul Ryan steps down, the Trump probe pushes the president toward precipitous action, and James Comey's book is a-comin'.
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00:01:47.000Speaker of the House Paul Ryan is now out.
00:01:50.000And what's been fascinating to see is how the left and how the media have reacted to Paul Ryan leaving.
00:01:55.000So for a long time, they were looking at Paul Ryan as though he was the future of the party.
00:02:00.000And there are a lot of people who are who are thinking that this was a Trump-Ryan battle.
00:02:03.000That was the battle that really mattered.
00:02:04.000Now, listen, President Trump won the presidency and that battle
00:02:08.000Ended in a certain way with a rapprochement, which is that President Trump was going to be the attitude of the party and Paul Ryan was going to be the idea man of the party.
00:02:17.000And that's essentially how things worked for the first year.
00:02:19.000Because let's be real, most of Trump's sort of heretical priorities, you know, the things like trade wars or infrastructure plans, those things didn't go anywhere with Paul Ryan in the House.
00:02:41.000So what you actually got was Paul Ryan type governance in many areas and Donald Trump style rhetoric.
00:02:47.000That was the sort of agreement that Republicans came to.
00:02:49.000But with Ryan out, now what you're seeing is an attempt to recast this entire battle as a battle between Ryan and Trump, even though Ryan was actually pushing a lot of Trump's priorities and Trump was signing a lot of Ryan's priorities.
00:02:59.000That doesn't make a whole hell of a lot of sense.
00:03:01.000And this misread, I think, is an attempt to paint everyone in the Republican Party as sort of beholden to everything bad about Trump.
00:03:08.000See, this is the goal of the left now.
00:03:09.000So the left tried to do this in 2016 by calling everybody a deplorable who supported President Trump.
00:03:14.000Now what they're attempting to do is they're attempting to say that anyone who even tangentially worked with President Trump actually made a Faustian bargain with President Trump.
00:03:21.000This is the tenor of the media coverage.
00:03:22.000And I don't think that that's correct.
00:03:24.000I don't think it's a Faustian bargain at all to say, listen,
00:03:27.000I don't like President Trump's character.
00:03:28.000I don't like what he's been doing on character.
00:03:31.000That doesn't seem like a Faustian bargain at all.
00:03:33.000That seems like normal politics on a pretty daily basis in Washington, D.C., where everybody sucks and where the politics is what matters in the end.
00:03:40.000The policy is what's supposed to matter in the end.
00:03:43.000But Paul Ryan was asked about this by Jake Tapper.
00:03:45.000Tapper on CNN said to Ryan, you know, did you make a Faustian bargain with President Trump?
00:03:50.000I'm really proud of the accomplishments we have here.
00:03:53.000And so I don't see this as some Faustian bargain, devil's bargain, or whatever it is you call it.
00:03:58.000I see it as the country said, go fix these problems.
00:04:01.000You guys get the majority in the House.
00:05:30.000We've got a Bentley's budget memo we're passing this week.
00:05:33.000We've got a lot to do, and that's what I'm focused on.
00:05:34.000So here's what's hilarious about this.
00:05:36.000Basically, if you're Paul Ryan and you're just a guy who's trying to get an agenda through, you're just trying to get some things done, you're getting ripped by the right as somebody who's not sufficiently supportive of President Trump, even while you're pushing President Trump's agenda, and you're being ripped by the left for not going out there and ripping Trump every day.
00:05:49.000Well, for Paul Ryan and for a lot of other Congress people who I'm talking to in Congress, Trump is not the top of their priority list.
00:05:55.000They weren't elected 10, 15, 20 years ago to be beholden to Trump, nor were they elected 10, 20, 30 years ago in order for them to shift their entire schedule of their day around reacting in the media to what President Trump does, either negative or positive.
00:06:09.000And so, you know, when Paul Ryan says, listen, I'm gonna keep my nose to the grindstone and do what I'm supposed to do, he gets ripped on both sides.
00:06:17.000And I think Meghan McCain made a really good point yesterday.
00:06:19.000So Meghan McCain obviously is John McCain's daughter.
00:06:21.000And yesterday on The View, there are a bunch of people who are all the left was cheering Paul Ryan.
00:06:27.000Oh, it's just so great that Paul Ryan is out because Paul Ryan is a shill and Paul Ryan hasn't stood up to Trump and all the rest of this stuff.
00:06:33.000All these same Democrats who never stood up to Bill Clinton or Hillary Clinton, one iota, and now it's about Paul Ryan who didn't stand up to Trump, even though during the election cycle, Paul Ryan actually did stand up to then-candidate Trump in the middle of the election cycle and disinvited him from a particular event after the Access Hollywood tape and told all the members of his Republican caucus that he wasn't going to be openly campaigning for Trump up till the election.
00:06:54.000Right, but this was not enough for the folks on the left.
00:06:56.000They say that, you know, they're really happy that Ryan is going.
00:06:59.000She says, listen, if Ryan is not sufficient for you in terms of his sort of tenor, then why exactly wouldn't people vote for President Trump?
00:07:51.000They said, well maybe it was their decency that lost them the election.
00:07:53.000Maybe what we need is an indecent man who punches in order to win an election.
00:07:57.000And then Trump won on exactly that basis.
00:07:59.000And then you're wondering why the right has resonated to President Trump?
00:08:01.000You're seeing this sort of coverage across the spectrum from folks on the left.
00:08:06.000Tim Alberta, who actually used to work at National Review, so he's not a left-winger, but he writes now for Politico, and he has a whole article called, The Tragedy of Paul Ryan.
00:09:00.000I mean, that's why President Trump was praising Paul Ryan yesterday, because in President Trump's view, correctly, Paul Ryan was an ally in helping him push some of his political priorities.
00:09:08.000But here's the article from Tim Alberta at Politico.
00:09:31.000The harsh reality is that he might be remembered more for accommodating the impulses of the 45th president than for crafting a generational overhaul of the tax code.
00:09:38.000This is a political obituary of Ryan's own writing.
00:09:41.000His silence in the face of Trump's indignities and his observance of the exquisite presidential leadership, a line that will live in infamy,
00:09:47.000Would be less remarkable had he not first established himself as one of Congress's good guys, someone whose sense of principle and decency informed his objections to Trump's candidacy in the first place.
00:09:55.000Indeed, the Speaker's habit of turning a blind eye to the President's behavior is relevant and revelatory because it was not always so.
00:10:01.000There was hardly a tougher Trump critic during the 2016 campaign than Ryan, who felt duty-bound to combat the candidate's dark rhetoric and the party's nativist drift.
00:10:09.000Yet there has hardly been anyone softer on Trump since Election Day than Ryan, who felt duty-bound to deliver on the policy promises made to voters, and decided that doing so meant ignoring the ad hominem and savaging of private citizens, the hush money paid to porn stars, the attacks on private companies, the attempts to delegitimize institutions, and the innumerable other acts for which Barack Obama would have been impaled by the right.
00:10:27.000This was Paul's deal with the devil, a phrase used by several of the speaker's confidants in the days following Trump's shocking triumph.
00:10:33.000So again, the idea here from some of these folks is that presumably, I guess, the idea is that that Paul Ryan should have been out front all the time, spending his time ripping on President Trump.
00:10:44.000This is this would have pleased a lot of the folks on the left.
00:10:47.000Now, listen, I'm in the business of political commentating.
00:10:50.000And so one of the things I'm able to do is when I think Trump has done something wrong, I will rip him for it.
00:10:54.000And when I think President Trump does something right, I will praise him to the skies.
00:10:57.000This is something that I am able to do.
00:10:59.000But I also am not in the position of having to negotiate with President Trump over policy.
00:11:03.000So to pretend that Paul Ryan's sole job was to comment on President Trump's doings day in and day out is to ignore the role of the legislature in the process.
00:11:13.000I think if Paul Ryan committed any great sin, it was not standing up to Trump and McConnell on policy, not even on Trump's character.
00:11:19.000Listen, would I prefer that all Republicans played the same fiddle that I'm playing?
00:11:24.000I would prefer that when Donald Trump does something bad, all Republicans say that's bad, and when Donald Trump does something good, all Republicans say that's good, and that would include legislators.
00:11:31.000But these are the people who also have to negotiate with Trump, and there is a bit of practicality that has to take place here with regard to how you get policy done that you have promised your own constituents.
00:11:40.000This may be the last time in our modern history that Republicans run all the branches of government.
00:11:46.000And you expect him, Paul Ryan, to blow that on a daily basis by talking about Donald Trump's dumb tweets when everybody already knows Donald Trump's tweets are dumb?
00:11:54.000Again, the media are really driving people toward Trump because a bunch of people on the right are simply going to respond to all of this by saying very simply, listen, you don't like Paul Ryan?
00:12:02.000We'll give you somebody who really doesn't care what you think.
00:12:05.000Okay, so before I go any further on this, and I want to get into the continuation of the probe into President Trump, first I want to say thank you to our sponsors over at Tommy John.
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00:12:31.000Women have had it just as bad as men when it comes to underwear, if not worse than guys.
00:12:34.000They have to worry about pinching, squirming, tugging at uncomfortable undergarments.
00:13:37.000I think that the focus on Paul Ryan from the left has been Paul Ryan is a bad guy because he didn't spend enough time ripping Trump up and down.
00:13:45.000And then if you watch Fox News and some of the commentators on Fox News, the problem with Paul Ryan is that he wasn't sufficiently obsequious to Donald Trump.
00:13:53.000He should have spent all of his time kissing Trump's ass more.
00:13:56.000Well, again, talking to the legislatures, talking to the legislators, I can tell you this.
00:14:01.000There are a lot of legislators who don't like President Trump much personally, but they are keeping it under wraps for a couple of reasons.
00:14:06.000One, because they think that it is counterproductive to rip into a president they have to negotiate with.
00:14:11.000And number two, because they already figured that it is well known that President Trump has some character flaws that are pretty serious, and them mouthing off about it only allows the media to use them as a tool against the Republican Party more generally.
00:14:23.000That's why I think it's very important to draw distinction in our minds in the conservative movement between our legislators and our thought leaders.
00:14:49.000But the reality is that the way that the founders drew up the Constitution, that the folks who were running all of our lawmaking were not supposed to be the quote-unquote thought leaders, they were supposed to be the implementers subject to the public will.
00:15:00.000And that meant that thought leaders were really supposed to exist, in many cases, outside of government.
00:15:05.000And many of the great thought leaders in American history were people who never served as president, who barely served in legislatures.
00:15:13.000Alexander Hamilton was somebody who never became president, obviously.
00:15:16.000He served inside a couple of administrations.
00:15:18.000But he was not somebody who was going to be president of the United States.
00:15:22.000Benjamin Franklin, another great thought leader.
00:15:25.000There are many great thought leaders in American history, and those thought leaders
00:15:29.000Have been as important or more important than people who are in positions of power.
00:15:33.000Looking to people whose job it is to write and rewrite legislation as the people who are going to speak to principle, I think is largely a mistake.
00:15:47.000Their philosophy sounds a lot like yours in the base.
00:15:49.000Their philosophy sounds a lot like mine.
00:15:51.000This is why when I interviewed Paul Ryan a couple of weeks ago, and he and I talked conservative philosophy, he sounds exactly like me with regard to spending priorities.
00:15:58.000And then a week later, he's pushing into law a $1.3 trillion omnibus spending package, with which I assume he totally disagrees.
00:16:39.000And blaming Paul Ryan for how the system works I think is a mistake and also leads us to some pretty stupid conclusions about the kind of politicians that we should be electing instead of the kind of politicians who can get things done and then it's up to us to toss them out if they don't get those things done or if they don't reflect our own ideology.
00:16:58.000He continues to be very, very upset about this FBI probe.
00:17:01.000And we are now finding out what exactly the FBI was looking for when it raided Michael Cohen's office.
00:17:05.000Michael Cohen, of course, was President Trump's personal lawyer, and the personal office of Michael Cohen was raided by the FBI.
00:17:12.000Apparently, one of the things that they were looking for were documents related to the Access Hollywood tape.
00:17:17.000So what exactly does Michael Cohen have to do with the Access Hollywood tape?
00:17:21.000As you recall, in the late days of the election,
00:17:23.000There is a tape that was broken from Access Hollywood in which President Trump was caught on a hot mic talking with Billy Bush and speaking about how he was a found fan of grabbing women by the genitals and how if famous people grabbed women by the genitals, they were totally fine with this.
00:17:39.000And of course, this is a big hubbub and Donald Trump dropped.
00:17:41.0008 to 10 points in the polls, and everybody assumes his electoral chances were over, including me, right?
00:17:46.000All of this was a big hubbub at the time, but what does it have to do with Michael Cohen?
00:17:49.000What does that have to do with President Trump's lawyer?
00:17:51.000Well, the suggestion is now being made, and if this is really all this is going to be, honestly, if the FBI raided Michael Cohen on this basis, if the FBI raided Michael Cohen based on only the Stormy Daniels stuff,
00:18:11.000He said, quote, That's one possibility.
00:18:28.000It's also a possibility that they're looking at whether the Trump campaign and Michael Cohen had any role in the timing of the WikiLeaks of the Russia-stolen Podesta emails.
00:18:35.000You'll recall that the timeline that day was the Access Hollywood tapes were released at like 3.56 p.m.
00:18:42.000WikiLeaks dropped all of the Podesta emails.
00:18:44.000And so I guess the suggestion is now being made by Adam Schiff that Michael Cohen called up the Russians and said, listen, guys, I know you're going to release the Podesta emails anyway, but it'd be great if you could accelerate that release so that we can have a counter-narrative.
00:18:55.000I find that exceedingly hard to believe.
00:18:57.000Now, it's quite possible that they're looking for evidence that Michael Cohen has spent a lot of time paying off various paramours and bad stories for Donald Trump.
00:19:07.000There's another story like that from The New Yorker today.
00:19:10.000The New Yorker printed a story that says that the National Enquirer paid $30,000 to a doorman of Donald Trump's who was trying to sell a story that said that Donald Trump had fathered a child out of wedlock in the late 80s.
00:19:54.000I think campaign finance violations are a big nothing when it comes to the American public imagination.
00:19:59.000Very few people care about campaign finance violations.
00:20:02.000People assume that there is a lot of corruption with regard to how campaign finance is done.
00:20:07.000And again, the Obama administration took in $2 million in 2008 of illegal campaign contributions, and they ended up paying a $400,000 fine by 2012.
00:20:15.000There was no suggestion that Obama should have been impeached over all of that.
00:20:20.000But again, this investigation is certainly a thorn in the side of President Trump.
00:20:26.000You remember Sloppy Steve, and President Trump ousted him to my great enjoyment.
00:20:31.000And Steve Bannon, who was the former White House chief strategist, who then went
00:20:37.000Well, now Bannon is back and he's trying to weasel his way back into Trump's good graces by doing what he does best, giving unbelievably crappy advice.
00:20:48.000According to the Washington Post, Steve Bannon has called up Trump and he's pitching a plan to West Wing aides to try and end the special counsel probe, to end Robert Mueller's probe.
00:20:58.000The first step would be to fire Rod Rosenstein.
00:21:02.000is the deputy attorney general who actually recused himself and appointed the special counsel.
00:21:07.000He still has the jurisdiction to fire Robert Mueller.
00:21:10.000But Rosenstein has been blamed for a lot of stuff by President Trump.
00:21:14.000So step one would be firing Rod Rosenstein.
00:21:16.000Step two would be stop cooperating with Mueller.
00:21:18.000And step three would be invoking executive privilege so that previous White House staffer interviews with Mueller become null and void, according to Bannon.
00:21:24.000So Bannon told The Washington Post, quote,
00:21:34.000An executive privilege should be exerted immediately and retroactively.
00:21:39.000Okay, well, that is not a possibility.
00:21:41.000Executive privilege only applies when you apply it.
00:22:26.000I've done it with my wife in Big Bear, in Hawaii, and it is just terrific.
00:22:30.000The folks you need to go to are the folks over at Tripping.com.
00:22:32.000It's one search that lets you compare every home from the world's top vacation rental sites in one place to find the best deal on your perfect vacation rental.
00:24:02.000We have to carefully protect attorney-client privilege.
00:24:05.000One of the most amazing things that I saw yesterday, this is really funny, is the New York Times saying, if Trump's innocent, why would he care about attorney-client privilege?
00:24:14.000Okay, that's like saying, if you don't have anything to hide, why don't you just let the police search your house every day?
00:24:18.000If you don't have anything to hide, why don't you just make your walls of glass?
00:24:21.000Maybe because you actually like your privacy.
00:24:23.000Maybe because there's stuff that Trump has done with Cohen that's not illegal, but that's embarrassing.
00:24:27.000There are plenty of reasons why you would like attorney-client privilege if you're President Trump, even if you're not trying to cover up a crime.
00:24:32.000The New York Times, however, doesn't accept that.
00:24:34.000Again, Alan Dershowitz has said that he thinks that this search was overbroad, that since we don't know the basis of the search or what they're looking for, it seems like a wild jump to allow the FBI to raid the offices of Michael Cohen, who's the president's lawyer.
00:24:46.000I know that there are other talk show hosts who have been suggesting
00:24:50.000That it may not in fact even be a campaign finance violation if the president of the United States and Michael Cohen were to pay off Stormy Daniels.
00:24:57.000So what exactly would be the underlying crime?
00:25:00.000Nonetheless, what Newt Gingrich says here is so crazy that it's not good for President Trump's case.
00:25:04.000Here's what Newt Gingrich said about the FBI search.
00:25:07.000We're supposed to have the rule of law.
00:25:09.000It ain't the rule of law when they kick in your door at 3 o'clock in the morning, and you're faced with armed men, and you have had no reason to be told you're going to have that kind of treatment.
00:25:41.000Now, does this mean that Mueller hasn't exceeded his brief here?
00:25:44.000I think Mueller pretty clearly has exceeded his brief in some ways.
00:25:47.000Do I think that this violation of attorney-client privilege is a wonderful idea?
00:25:51.000I'm not going to know that until I see more evidence.
00:25:53.000I'm happy to wait for more evidence instead of jumping to conclusions about where this is going.
00:25:57.000But one thing is clear, with all of the hubbub over it, with all of the lack of information, it's pretty obvious that President Trump is getting more and more agitated about this.
00:26:05.000And you can see that the media are goading him.
00:26:07.000If you watch CNN, the media are goading President Trump.
00:26:10.000Over and over and over, they're goading President Trump.
00:26:13.000Wolf Blitzer yesterday was spending most of the day talking about, the President is probably in the Oval Office, fulminating right now.
00:26:19.000The President is probably in the West Wing, just angry and tweeting right now.
00:26:23.000And then they would have full panel conversations on how angry Trump was, which of course is designed to make Trump angrier because the media would love nothing better than for President Trump to fire Robert Mueller.
00:26:33.000Whoopi Goldberg sort of let the cat out of the bag here.
00:26:39.000We're sitting around pontificating about something that hasn't happened, that's going on a lot of unnamed sources, so I don't think that we should get too far ahead of our skis.
00:26:46.000I do think everything you're saying about what would happen if he does fire Mueller, I've said, Lindsey Graham has said it's political suicide.
00:26:53.000I 100% think there would be, I think there would actually be rioting in Washington, D.C.
00:26:56.000I think it would be at levels we haven't seen.
00:26:58.000Now that would be fun to watch, I have to say.
00:27:00.000Yeah, I mean, but I think it would take levels that we can't comprehend since the Nixon era.
00:27:05.000Okay, so she says that she would love it, right?
00:27:07.000That Whoopi is looking forward to the riots.
00:27:30.000Lindsey Graham is exactly correct about this.
00:27:31.000Even if you hate the Mueller investigation, even if you think the Mueller investigation sucks, even if you think that it's all a sham, even if you think they've got nothing on collusion, I think they have nothing on collusion, even if you think that there's no evidence of criminal activity yet, and I've seen no evidence of actual criminal activity yet, even if you believe all of that, firing Mueller is a big mistake, as Lindsey Graham says.
00:27:57.000I don't believe you colluded with the Russians, but Mueller will soon tell us.
00:28:00.000The Cohen situation, I am convinced, has got nothing to do with Russia.
00:28:05.000I think they're trying to squeeze Michael Cohen in order to—and there's obviously all kinds of correspondence that would have related to President Trump in the time even before he was running that would be in that office.
00:28:15.000And the president seems incensed about it, based on what he's writing.
00:28:18.000I understand the president feel like they're getting out of bounds here, but I want to tell you this.
00:28:22.000If Mueller was trying to squeeze Cohen, Mueller would have done it.
00:28:27.000This is something unconnected to Russia.
00:28:34.000Okay, so, you know, I think that Lindsey Graham is totally right about this.
00:28:37.000But again, the media are now in the business of trying to goad President Trump into making a presidency-ending mistake by firing Robert Mueller.
00:28:44.000One of the other ways they're doing this is by pushing James Comey's book.
00:29:04.000It was completely inappropriate for him to do a full press conference laying out all the reasons that Hillary Clinton had committed criminal violations and then to recommend to the DOJ in order to cover for then-Attorney General Loretta Lynch.
00:29:15.000And say that she shouldn't be prosecuted anyway.
00:29:17.000Then he came back about a few days before the election and he issued a letter about how he had reopened the Hillary email investigation, essentially.
00:29:24.000And then a couple days later, he shut it down again.
00:29:37.000Instead, President Trump kept him around in some sort of misguided bid for, I guess, bipartisanship.
00:29:42.000And then he kept going to James Comey, and he kept saying, listen, you know, FBI director, can you just say that I'm not under investigation?
00:29:49.000And Comey kept saying, you're not under investigation, but I'm not going to say it.
00:29:52.000And the reason I'm not going to say it is because if you do fall under investigation, then I'll have to announce it.
00:30:06.000James Comey himself testified before Congress that his investigation was not impeded in any way by President Trump, that President Trump did not act well, that President Trump had asked him about loyalty, that President Trump had suggested that he drop the investigation of Mike Flynn, but at no point had Trump actually exerted pressure on Comey to do anything.
00:30:24.000He said a couple of things, but that does not necessarily amount to exerting pressure, especially when he's the President of the United States, and he can actually do a lot of stuff within the purview of his executive power in order to quash an investigation if he wants to.
00:30:34.000Well, Comey waits a full year, a full year after his firing, and now he's coming out with this book.
00:30:40.000All about how honorable and duty-bound he is.
00:30:42.000And now he'll answer all the questions.
00:30:43.000So we've been told that he's answering.
00:30:45.000He was with, for an hour, with George Stephanopoulos on ABC News.
00:30:48.000And that's where he's launching his book.
00:30:50.000And we're supposed to believe that he is some sort of great honorable figure who's now going to answer all the questions.
00:30:55.000Well, he was in front of Congress and didn't answer like half their questions.
00:30:58.000So now all of a sudden he's a great honorable figure?
00:31:01.000And of course, the media are truly well and good excited about this.
00:31:04.000I mean, they are just, they're sweating bullets with excitement over how wonderful this is going to be.
00:31:10.000I'll show you just how excited they are in just a second.
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00:33:07.000You can see George—I mean, I love that promo, especially because all you have are cutaway shots of Comey.
00:33:12.000Comey doesn't say a word anywhere in there.
00:33:15.000He apparently calls Trump a mob-like figure, a mob boss figure.
00:33:18.000Well, again, I don't think that that's wildly unpredictable, given the fact that
00:33:23.000President Trump's own lawyer has suggested he is Tom Hagen, right?
00:33:26.000I mean, Michael Cohen has said that he's Tom Hagen to Donald Trump's Michael Corleone, so that's not exactly a shock in any real sense.
00:33:32.000But the media are very excited about Comey because what they're hoping is that, again, Donald Trump gets so angry over Comey that he just gets mad the next day and fires Mueller for no reason at all.
00:33:42.000The reality is that James Comey, there's so much politics going on and so little of honor going on, it's pretty insane.
00:33:48.000The media are also hot and bothered by the news that the RNC is going after James Comey in advance of the release of this book.
00:33:57.000So, according to CNN, the battle plan against Comey, obtained by CNN, calls for branding the nation's former top law enforcement official as Lion Comey through a website, digital advertising, and talking points to be sent to Republicans across the country before his memoir is released next week.
00:34:10.000The White House signed off on the plan, which is being overseen by the RNC.
00:34:13.000The chairwoman of the RNC, Ronna Romney McDaniel, has said, quote, Comey is a liar and a leaker, and his misconduct led both Republicans and Democrats to call for his firing.
00:34:21.000If Comey wants the spotlight back on, and will make sure the American people understand why he has no one to blame but himself,
00:34:32.000They've been using Trump's appellation for James Comey.
00:34:35.000And it has quotes from Democrats testifying how James Comey was unfit for office, as well as explanations for why Trump's firing of Comey was not obstruction of justice.
00:34:44.000Now, the media, of course, are treating this as a scandal.
00:35:07.000It doesn't mean that Trump was smart in how he fired him.
00:35:09.000He fired him, and then he went on TV two days later and suggested that the reason that he fired James Comey was because he didn't like how James Comey had been asking about the Russia investigation, and he used Rod Rosenstein, the Deputy Attorney General, as cover for the firing of James Comey, requiring Rod Rosenstein to appoint Robert Mueller in the first place.
00:35:25.000So if Trump had never fired Comey, none of this ever happened.
00:35:28.000That said, does James Comey deserve the criticism?
00:35:31.000You bet your ass he deserves the criticism.
00:35:33.000James Comey is, in fact, a grandstander.
00:35:36.000That said, is it smart strategy of the RNC to be parroting Trump's branding of Lyin' Comey?
00:36:00.000He's here for the publicity, and he's here for the money.
00:36:02.000And that is not unfair by any stretch of the imagination.
00:36:05.000I want to see a reporter ask Comey that.
00:36:06.000Why is it that he wouldn't answer these questions for a year, but suddenly you want to go around talking about how James Comey is the king of honor?
00:36:23.000I think that's pretty clear at this point.
00:36:26.000The objective reality is Comey's off grandstanding and making money, but the truth is that he didn't do his job in the Bush administration.
00:36:33.000He colluded with Schumer to embarrass President Bush.
00:36:36.000The truth is he appointed a special counsel in the Bush administration who ran wild.
00:36:41.000And the truth is he failed to prosecute the people in the Clinton campaign.
00:36:45.000And I think we ought to take this as a chance to educate the country about Comey.
00:36:51.000Okay, and I think that that is exactly right.
00:36:53.000Again, all these battles can be fought, but these should be fought by proxy.
00:36:56.000These should not be done by the President of the United States himself.
00:36:58.000He'd be better off being above the fray and dealing with serious issues that we are dealing with right now, like the situation in Syria.
00:37:04.000There are people who are going to speak out on his behalf when he deserves it.
00:37:07.000And right now, you know, it is fair to say that this Comey attempt by the media is an area where the President deserves a certain amount of defense, a certain rational, reasonable defense.
00:37:17.000Trotting out the Lion Comey line, I think, is counterproductive.
00:37:20.000Okay, meanwhile, Mark Zuckerberg was appearing on the Hill yesterday, and he got himself in a bit of hot water.
00:37:25.000Steve Scalise, who's the House Majority Whip.
00:37:36.000I wrote algorithms before, and you can determine whether or not you want to write an algorithm to sort data, to compartmentalize data, but you can also put a bias in if that's the directive.
00:37:48.000Was there a directive to put a bias in?
00:37:50.000And first, are you aware of this bias that many people have looked at and analyzed and seen?
00:37:56.000Congressman, this is a really important question.
00:37:59.000There is absolutely no directive in any of the changes that we make to have a bias in anything that we do.
00:38:05.000To the contrary, our goal is to be a platform for all ideas.
00:38:36.000It's the day in Israel that they do something that's pretty amazing.
00:38:38.000I think that we should probably do it in the United States on Memorial Day as well.
00:38:43.000They actually, there's a certain time of the day where the siren goes off and everyone in the country, literally everyone in the country, stops their cars.
00:38:50.000Everybody steps out of their cars and there is about a minute of silence across the entire country in honor of the Holocaust.
00:38:56.000That seems to me something we should do in the United States with regard to our fallen soldiers.
00:39:02.000There's a poll out that really is shocking on Holocaust Memorial Day, and that is a poll from the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany.
00:39:09.000According to this poll, fully 41% of Americans do not know what Auschwitz was, including two-thirds of millennials.
00:39:15.000Approximately 22% of millennials had not heard of the Holocaust.
00:39:19.00041% of millennials thought two million or fewer Jews were murdered during the Holocaust.
00:40:16.000Because his entire take on history is that America is responsible for virtually everything bad.
00:40:21.000And the way that American students should learn is by learning what America has done that's wrong.
00:40:24.000Now, I think that part of a well-rounded education is understanding what Americans have done right and what we have done wrong.
00:40:29.000What America has done right and what we have done wrong.
00:40:32.000If you want to look at the actual learning of history, you have to look at world history, and you have to look at the alternatives to America.
00:40:38.000You have to look at what has happened in other countries, when other systems of thought have been embraced.
00:40:42.000The Holocaust was not something that happened in a vacuum.
00:40:45.000The Holocaust happened because it was subject to a particularly virulent strain of a nasty nationalist ideology combined with a big government ideology that suggested that a fascist central government ought to bind the German people together in a sort of romantic unity.
00:41:04.000There's a sort of Weltanschauung that dominated in Germany.
00:41:07.000And that the government was the font head of all of this.
00:41:39.000It should tell us about the dangers of a centralized government that disarms people and then determines that some people are subjected to different rules because of their race.
00:41:47.000It should tell us that identity politics is really negative and really dangerous, and that judging people by their race and ethnicity ends poorly.
00:41:53.000It should tell us that romantic nationalism is not the same as patriotism, that if you are a patriot, you believe in America because of our ideals and our creed.
00:42:00.000You don't believe in America just because of the people who are here.
00:42:03.000And you certainly don't believe in America because of ethnic solidarity.
00:42:06.000These are the lessons of the Holocaust, but you're not going to learn those lessons if you don't know anything about it.
00:42:10.000And you're certainly not going to know anything about the Middle East if you don't know anything about the Holocaust.
00:42:15.000You're going to give a lot of credibility and credence to groups that openly call for a second Holocaust.
00:42:19.000I'm talking about Hamas and Hezbollah, both of which have been praised by Jeremy Corbyn, the leading figure in the Labour Party in Britain, the possible next Prime Minister of that country.
00:42:27.000You're not going to know why Israel exists if you don't understand the threat of anti-Semitism in Europe.
00:42:32.000They're going to give a lot more credence to the Iran deal if you don't recognize the possibility of a second Holocaust.
00:42:37.000This is something that happened, folks.
00:43:20.000This is one that your high school probably produced, but I was re-listening to it the other day, and the lyrics particularly to this musical are just great.
00:44:44.000I'll probably do another one tomorrow by Frank Lesser, which I will tell you about then, because he wrote, like, three or four really good musicals.
00:44:52.000So, I believe I've done How to Succeed in Business without really trying before, but there's another one that people don't know that much about that was a relatively big hit on Broadway.
00:45:55.000To explain what we all heard was, and I know you didn't mean to say it, but you gave us a G instead of a C. But we're gonna, we'll look at things and make sure we did things correctly during our commercial, but that's the way it's been heard everywhere.
00:46:24.000Yeah, we may need to revitalize our education system for a second reason, namely learning how to read because wow, just the thing, just the thing.
00:46:33.000Okay, so other things that, time for a couple of things that I hate.
00:46:41.000All right, so yesterday, President Trump signed a bill into law against sex trafficking.
00:46:45.000This is not a thing I hate, this is a thing I like very much.
00:46:47.000Here's what it looked like when President Trump did this yesterday.
00:46:49.000You'll see a couple of the women actually dancing as he signs the bill, because it's rather important to have laws on the books against sex trafficking of women and children.
00:47:25.000This is my great honor, and I will say the political people around the desk of every one of them, Democrat and Republican, have worked very hard.
00:47:35.000Okay, so this is obviously a good thing.
00:47:37.000Well, there is a problem, however, and that's that the Women's March is very upset about it.
00:47:40.000So you ask, why would the Women's March be in favor of a site that involves itself in sex trafficking?
00:47:47.000The answer is because the Women's March is also standing up for prostitution.
00:47:51.000So they tweeted out on April 7th, the shutting down of Backpage is an absolute crisis for sex workers who rely on the site to safely get in touch with clients.
00:47:58.000Sex workers' rights are women's rights.
00:48:12.000Well, but I assume that the Women's Marchers would also think that men who engage in prostitution are disgusting pieces of human filth, which is a proposition with which I generally agree.
00:48:27.000Also worth noting, Backpage itself is directly linked, according to critics, with sex trafficking and sexual abuse of children.
00:48:34.000Senator Rob Portman said, it is a positive step forward in our efforts to hold accountable sex traffickers that sell women and children online.
00:48:42.000She said, State and local law enforcement need this bill to enable them to take swift action against websites that knowingly facilitate sex trafficking of children online.
00:48:51.000So the Women's March, why exactly would they be defending this?
00:48:54.000Because the Women's March defends the worst things on earth.
00:48:56.000The leaders of the Women's March have defended Louis Farrakhan.
00:48:59.000The leaders of the Women's March have been involved with Planned Parenthood.
00:49:02.000Is it any shock that they're defending Backpage.com because they haven't done the sufficient research at best?
00:49:07.000Again, it's pretty astonishing that they would go so far as to defend a site that apparently is involved in child sex trafficking, but I guess that we're supposed to believe that only Trump voters are deplorable.
00:49:17.000Okay, well we'll be back here tomorrow with all the latest.