Dems call Republicans' bluff on impeachment procedures, a U.S. military member blasts Trump over Ukraine, and an Obama official calls for rewriting the First Amendment. Ben Shapiro's show is sponsored by ExpressVPN. Protect your online privacy today at ExpressVPN, where you can get 3 months of free 3-month membership for a 1-year package. You can also get a 30-day money-back guarantee on Express VPN, which is the fastest VPN I've tried, and it costs less than $7 per month. It comes with a 30 Day Money Back Guarantee, which means you ll get $10 off your first month if you sign up for 3 months with Express VPN. That's free and includes 3 months free of the ExpressVPN Professional membership. Use the promo code "ELISSA" at checkout to receive $10 credit and a free year of Express VPN membership when you become a patron. If you like what you hear, please HIT SUBSCRIBE and leave us a five star rating and review on Apple Podcasts and other major podcasting platforms. The average rating is 4 stars and a review will get you an ad-free version of the show for as little as $1.99 a month! Subscribe to The Ben Shapiro Show on iTunes and become a supporter! You'll get 7% off the entire service, plus I'll get 10% off my entire annual membership plan when I mention it in the ad-post. I'll be giving you 5 stars, plus an additional $5 and a FREE shipping discount when I recommend it to a friend. Ben will get $5 or more, and a discount of $10/month gets me $5/day, and I'll receive a FREE VIP membership when I sign up to become a VIP membership offer when I review the program gets my ad-only offer starts in the program. Thanks Ben Shapiro is a supporter of the program? - Rate, rate me a review and review that gets me 5 stars and receive 5 stars for my review? Thanks, Ben Shapiro: 5 stars equals 5 stars gets me an ad discount, and gets me a free month for the show gets me 7 stars and I get a discount on my ad discount? FREE FASTEST PRICING $5, FREE VIP PRIVATE PRIVATION AND VIP PROMOTION AND FREE PROGRAMION AND VIP SUPPORTING THE PODCAST?
00:00:00.000Democrats call Republicans' bluff on impeachment procedures, an American military member blasts Trump over Ukraine, and an Obama official calls for rewriting the First Amendment.
00:00:09.000Ben Shapiro, this is The Ben Shapiro Show.
00:00:10.000The Ben Shapiro Show is sponsored by ExpressVPN professionals.
00:00:18.000Protect your online privacy today at expressvpn.com slash Ben.
00:00:23.000Okay, so we begin today with Impeachment Day 2019 because there are some new developments.
00:00:28.000These developments are really two in nature.
00:00:31.000One is the House Democrats Changing their rules and procedures for the impeachment inquiry.
00:00:36.000And this has got a lot of Republicans out there saying things like, well, if they're changing the rules, this shows that their rules were insufficient the first time.
00:00:42.000Like, they could have just been transparent from the beginning.
00:00:45.000Obviously, they now acknowledge they did something wrong.
00:00:49.000There's only one problem, which is that nobody cares.
00:00:50.000The reason nobody cares is now the Democrats will simply claim, well, you know, at the very beginning, it was important that we have behind closed doors meetings and that we restrict public views so we could get the early information.
00:01:01.000But now we're going to get that out there in public.
00:01:05.000Trying to hang your hat in defense of President Trump on all this impeachment stuff on the basis of procedural Inequities is just a fail.
00:01:17.000And the reason it's not going to work particularly is because what you are now seeing is Democrats saying that we're going to broaden the procedures.
00:01:58.000Development number two, as we're about to discuss, is the testimony of a lieutenant colonel who is a member of the National Security Council, who was probably the source for the whistleblower.
00:02:07.000We'll talk about that in just one second.
00:02:09.000First, Let's talk about protecting yourself online.
00:02:16.000I mean, if you're working in the business world, there's a good shot that you are online an enormous amount of the time.
00:02:20.000And when you are online, there's a significant possibility that somebody is seeking your information, whether it is big data or whether it is hackers trying to actually break into your secure communications, steal data from you.
00:02:30.000If you ever had your credit card hacked, Usually that happens because you're at some sort of public Wi-Fi and somebody on the public Wi-Fi is grabbing all of your data and then using it against you.
00:02:39.000This is why you ought to be using a VPN.
00:02:41.000And the VPN that I trust, the fastest VPN, the best VPN, is ExpressVPN.
00:02:45.000ExpressVPN runs in the background of your computer or phone.
00:02:48.000And then you just use the internet the way you normally would.
00:02:50.000You download the app, you click to connect, and voila, you're now protected.
00:02:54.000I won't go online without ExpressVPN, and you should not either.
00:02:57.000ExpressVPN is the fastest VPN I've tried.
00:03:00.000It comes with a 30-day money-back guarantee.
00:03:02.000ExpressVPN uses new cutting-edge technology called Trusted Server to make sure there are no logs of what you do online.
00:03:08.000It's time to stop hackers, Big Brother, internet companies from grabbing that data.
00:03:12.000Take back your online privacy the same way I did, with ExpressVPN.
00:03:15.000Right now, you can protect your online activity today.
00:03:18.000Find out how you can get three months for free at ExpressVPN.com slash Ben.
00:03:21.000That's E-X-P-R-E-S-S-V-P-N.com slash Ben for three months free with a one-year package.
00:03:26.000Again, that's visit ExpressVPN.com slash Ben to learn more.
00:03:29.000There's a reason that we discuss them each and every day on the program.
00:03:31.000I really do trust the folks over at ExpressVPN.
00:03:34.000So as I say, House Democrats said on Monday the House will vote Thursday to formalize procedures for the next phase of the impeachment inquiry into President Trump's decision.
00:03:42.000Democrats say the move will ensure transparency and provide a clear path forward.
00:03:46.000This has prompted the White House to point out that if the Democrats are so interested in transparency moving forward, why weren't they interested in transparency?
00:03:53.000To begin with, that is a fine critique.
00:03:59.000And meanwhile, Democrats are focused in, not on the procedural question, they're focused in on the testimony of one Lieutenant Colonel Alexander Vindman, who is a Ukraine expert assigned to the National Security Council.
00:04:10.000He testified in the House impeachment inquiry on Tuesday, and he offered new details on the push for investigations of President Trump's political rivals and corroborating other witnesses with his firsthand account of the alleged attempt at a quid pro quo, according to the Washington Post.
00:04:23.000Vindman is the first person to have listened in personally on the July 25th phone call between Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, during which Trump said he wanted a favor after Zelensky broached defense cooperation between the United States and Ukraine.
00:04:35.000So apparently, Vindman was listening from the White House Situation Room along with other NSC officials and members of Vice President Pence's staff.
00:04:43.000He said this in prepared remarks, and he said he was so concerned by the call, he said that it could be seen as a partisan play that could undermine American national security.
00:04:50.000He reported it to the NSC's lead counsel.
00:04:53.000Behind closed doors, according to people familiar with what transpired—again, this is why all of this should be out in the open, it should be televised, because we get these selective leaks—Vindman also testified on Tuesday that the contents of the July 25th call differed slightly from what is stated in the official transcript that the White House released late last month.
00:05:11.000So now he's making the claim that the actual transcript that was released by the White House, which was actually a call memo, the way that that is put together is a bunch of witnesses to the call come together and try to reconstruct from notes and from memory exactly what was said on the call.
00:05:23.000It's not like they take a recording, play it back, and then put together a transcript.
00:05:27.000And there are some accusations that the Trump administration had messed around with the transcript.
00:05:31.000And I had said that seemed far-fetched because there were a lot of people who were Listening to the call, and presumably they all took part in putting together the transcript, Vindman says that the contents of the July 25th call were in fact slightly different from the official quote-unquote memo that the White House released late last month.
00:05:48.000Vindman says that Zelensky did reference Burisma and not just some nameless company, and when Trump pressed him to investigate former Vice President Joe Biden's son Hunter, Zelensky responded positively.
00:05:59.000Hunter Biden sat on the board of Burisma, a Ukrainian energy company, for some five years.
00:06:04.000He said that he remembered Trump going on about how Joe Biden was on tape boasting about Ukrainian funds, which is probably just a reference to the fact that Joe Biden is on tape boasting about how he withheld $1 billion in American loan guarantees to Ukraine.
00:06:22.000I mean, this is what's so astonishing.
00:06:23.000Everybody is treating the Vindman testimony as though this is something new and shocking.
00:06:28.000Well, again, we've all seen the transcript.
00:06:31.000What he is alleging was different in the transcript is not all that different from what we saw in the transcript, so that does not amount to a Nixonian Watergate cover-up of the actual contents of the call.
00:06:40.000The contents of the call were problematic enough, right?
00:06:55.000Now, What Democrats are doing is they're trotting out witnesses to the phone call to suggest that somehow they have some additional information to add.
00:07:03.000I don't see the additional information that Vindman is adding.
00:07:05.000The only thing that becomes pretty clear from Vindman's testimony is that Vindman was probably the person who was talking to the whistleblower.
00:07:11.000Remember, the whistleblower was not on the call.
00:07:13.000He says he spoke to people who were on the call, who were supremely concerned about the call, and then he reported it up the chain of command.
00:07:20.000anonymously in another part of the government.
00:07:22.000So this really isn't about the whistleblower anymore.
00:07:24.000Probably Vindman was talking to the whistleblower in the first place.
00:07:27.000He says he wasn't the whistleblower, but again, multiple officials apparently were troubled by the call.
00:07:33.000So is he really adding anything new to the debate here?
00:07:38.000I mean, he's sort of doing the same thing that Bill Taylor was doing from afar or that Gordon Sondland was doing.
00:07:42.000He is adding his gloss to what happened.
00:07:45.000Well, now we have the transcript, so we sort of know what happened.
00:07:48.000And we have the text messages between Bill Taylor and Gordon Sondland, so we know what happened.
00:07:51.000And we have testimony coming out from people who were first-hand involved in these conversations, not just people who heard the conversations.
00:07:58.000So why is Vindman being trotted forward?
00:08:00.000Well, the reason that Democrats are putting Vindman out there is because he's a really good-looking witness for them.
00:08:04.000The reason he's a good-looking witness is because he's an Iraq War veteran with a purple heart.
00:08:08.000Because he has a long career in the military, and because he's very much pro-aid, American aid, to Ukraine.
00:08:15.000So it was almost as though the Democrats were bringing out Vindman, believing, hoping, that Democrats would attack Vindman, so then they could suggest that Republicans were willing to attack an Iraq War veteran with a sterling career.
00:08:27.000In order to protect President Trump, right?
00:08:56.000We have now seen the transcript of the phone call and all of these sort of color commentary that he's adding about, well, you know, the transcript left out this little piece or this little piece.
00:09:05.000From what we are being told by Vindman, nothing fundamentally changes in the text or tenor of the phone call based on what happened during a few of the ellipses.
00:09:14.000And President Trump immediately fell into this trap because, of course, President Trump is a man who hates exquisitely.
00:09:21.000And when somebody crosses him, he really attacks them.
00:09:23.000So President Trump went after this Lieutenant Colonel Vindman.
00:09:28.000He wrote on Twitter, Now, the media are playing that as though Trump is going after Vindman in a serious way.
00:09:44.000Okay, that's just that in the lexicon of President Trump insults, that one really does not rank.
00:09:50.000He just means somebody who doesn't like him.
00:09:52.000Anytime somebody doesn't like President Trump or doesn't like something he does, President Trump calls him an ever-Trumper.
00:09:56.000So does that rise to the level of him challenging Vindman's patriotism or suggesting that Vindman is a bad guy or something like that?
00:10:03.000Well, in order to make that claim, You really have to connect the NeverTrumper tweet with the NeverTrumpersAreHumanScum tweet from a couple of weeks ago.
00:10:09.000But when President Trump goes after Vindman this way, is he really attacking Vindman's patriotism?
00:10:15.000I'm not seeing that explicitly, at least.
00:10:18.000Trump's tweet followed assertions on Fox News by a former Justice Department official named John Yoo.
00:10:23.000John Yoo was on it with Laura Ingraham, and he talked about Vindman.
00:10:26.000And I think that he claims that his comments are being misinterpreted.
00:10:30.000I think that that is probably correct.
00:10:32.000But here is what John Yoo had to say about Vindman and about the allegations that the Ukrainian government was talking to people like Vindman and saying, like, what do we do to get our aid here?
00:10:40.000By the way, the Ukrainian government is sort of allowed to do that.
00:10:43.000Any claims that the Ukrainian government is doing something wrong by going to U.S.
00:10:46.000officials and saying, listen, we don't know what Trump wants.
00:11:13.000national security official who is advising Ukraine while working inside the White House, apparently against the president's interest, and usually they spoke in English.
00:11:26.000Isn't that kind of an interesting angle on this story?
00:11:31.000I find that astounding, and some people might call that espionage.
00:11:36.000Okay, well, when he talks about espionage, he says he's talking about the Ukrainians reaching out, not about Vindman engaging in espionage or being a traitor or something.
00:11:43.000Is it astonishing that the Ukrainians reached out to somebody on the National Security Council to find out what was going on?
00:11:57.000There are plenty of people who are calling routinely, members of the American foreign policy community, trying to gather information about what they can do in order to obtain what they want from the United States.
00:12:07.000As long as the American officials aren't spilling confidential information, nothing wrong is going on there.
00:12:13.000I mean, by the way, Bill Taylor suggested that he'd had those sorts of conversations.
00:12:17.000Sundlund had suggested he had those sorts of conversations in the text messages.
00:12:20.000So, I fail to see that Vindman did anything wrong here.
00:12:24.000I also, like, again, this is so stupid because the best Republican defense on this, Trump's best defense is, Vindman perceived the phone call differently than I did.
00:12:36.000And until you get, for the 1000th time, Donald Trump or Rudy Giuliani to testify about what exactly this whole thing was about, was it about investigating President Trump's suspicions about Ukrainian corruption going back to 2016, which obviously exercised him, or was this about him hating Joe Biden and wanting to get Joe Biden and mobilize a foreign country to prosecute Joe Biden?
00:12:55.000Perceptions by third-party players really make no difference here.
00:12:58.000So the testimony doesn't actually add anything, but Republicans fell into the trap of attacking the witness, which is exactly what Democrats wanted here.
00:13:05.000We're going to get to more of this in just one second.
00:13:07.000First, let's talk about the importance of the Second Amendment.
00:13:10.000So as we're going to talk about a little bit later on in the show, the Democrats really do not like the First Amendment.
00:13:14.000A lot of Democrats want to undermine free speech.
00:13:16.000They want to undermine freedom of religion.
00:13:18.000Well, when the founders enshrined those freedoms, In the end, those freedoms are protected by your vote, and if the government decides to override those freedoms, in the end they are protected by the Second Amendment.
00:13:28.000When the Founders crafted the Constitution, the first thing they did was to make sacred the rights of the individual to share their ideas, practice, religion without limitation by government.
00:13:40.000Because I care about protecting my rights.
00:13:41.000I care about deterring the government from violating my rights.
00:13:43.000I care about protecting myself from people who would attempt to hurt my family.
00:13:47.000Owning a rifle is an awesome responsibility and building rifles is no different.
00:13:50.000Started in a garage by a marine veteran more than two decades ago, Bravo Company Manufacturing, BCM for short, builds a professional-grade product which is built to combat standards.
00:13:59.000Bravo Company Manufacturing is not a sporting arms company.
00:14:17.000If you need more convincing, find out even more about BCM and the awesome people who make their products at youtube.com slash bravocompanyusa.
00:14:30.000Okay, so the Democrats are very high on this Vindman testimony Apparently, Vindman went to the NSC's lead council with concerns about a July 10th meeting between Gordon Sondland, Kurt Volker, who was then Special Envoy to Ukraine Energy Secretary Rick Perry, then National Security Advisor John Bolton, and senior Ukrainian officials.
00:14:48.000During the meeting, according to Vindman's prepared statement, Sondland demanded that Ukrainian leaders deliver specific investigations to secure a meeting between Zelensky and Trump.
00:14:56.000Vindman says he was told about the meeting by Sondland.
00:14:58.000And he says that Sondland emphasized the importance that Ukraine deliver the investigations into the 2016 election, the Bidens and Burisma, which is basically just a complete copy of what Bill Taylor said, right?
00:15:09.000Bill Taylor, the highest ranking official in Ukraine from America, the charged affairs in Ukraine, he said exactly the same thing.
00:15:16.000Vindman says, I stated to Ambassador Sondland that his statements were inappropriate, that the request to investigate Biden and his son had nothing to do with national security, and that such investigations were not something the NSC was going to get involved in or push.
00:15:28.000Is he saying the same thing that Bill Taylor was saying?
00:15:30.000So what exactly is special about his testimony?
00:15:32.000The answer is not a whole hell of a lot.
00:15:35.000Not a whole hell of a lot, but because there have been some Republicans who have made disparaging remarks about Vindman, suggesting that because he is of Ukrainian-American origin, that he has some sort of dual loyalty to Ukraine, that really he cares about Ukraine and them getting their money.
00:15:47.000He doesn't care about America's foreign policy, which is silly.
00:15:54.000By the way, until the last five minutes, Donald Trump backed aid to Ukraine and provided lethal aid to Ukrainians in their fight against the Russians.
00:16:00.000President Trump, last I checked, is not from Ukraine.
00:16:55.000I've never met him, but he is a hell of a patriot.
00:16:58.000Okay, well, he seems like a patriot, and I'm not really challenging his patriotic status.
00:17:03.000I will say that the celebration of Vindman is very different from the Democrats' treatment of military members and other walks of life, suffice it to say.
00:17:11.000With all of this said, the question becomes, okay, is any of this impeachable?
00:17:14.000And we're basically going around in circles here.
00:17:15.000We're going around in circles, because the bottom line is, until we hear from Giuliani or Trump and the math changes in some way, it's gonna be very difficult to get Republican senators on board for impeachment.
00:17:24.000But that's not really what this is about.
00:17:26.000In the end, what this is about is democratic misdirection from the fact that they're going to be unbelievably bad at governing the country.
00:17:33.000Whether or not you believe that President Trump committed impeachable offense, if you're a Democrat, what you really don't want to talk about is your own agenda.
00:17:41.000Because your own agenda is wildly unpopular with the American people.
00:17:44.000If you're running an anti-Trump campaign, which is smart, then you make impeachment the focal point.
00:17:49.000If you're trying to push your own ideas, you're going to be in a lot more trouble if you are a Democrat.
00:17:53.000And you can see that this is actually impacting the polls going forward to 2020.
00:17:57.000According to Axios, Republicans are worried about a quote-unquote total wipeout in 2020.
00:18:02.000The House, the Senate, and the White House.
00:18:05.000House Republicans in swing districts are retiring at a very fast pace, especially in the suburbs of Texas and elsewhere.
00:18:10.000There are 19 GOP House members who are not seeking re-election this time around, which is a very high number.
00:18:15.000The Republican Senate majority suddenly looks like it's in serious jeopardy because a lot of the Republicans in swing states are lagging behind.
00:18:21.000Democrats are raising a lot of money and polling better than Republican incumbents in a lot of the battleground states.
00:18:26.000President Trump right now in the polls is trailing every major Democratic candidate nationally and in the swing states.
00:18:32.000The real Senate question is a problem.
00:18:35.000National Journal's Josh Crashour points out that if Trump doesn't win a second term, Democrats only need to net three seats to win back the majority.
00:18:43.000Chamber of Commerce, he says that third quarter fundraising reports show three Republican senators being outraged by Democratic challengers in Arizona, Iowa, and Maine.
00:18:52.000That'd be Susan Collins and Joni Ernst and Martha McSally in Arizona.
00:19:01.000So, all of this is scary stuff for President Trump and for the Republican Party, obviously.
00:19:07.000And Democrats are excited about all of this, because in the end, the more impeachment is in the headlines, the less they are in the headlines.
00:19:13.000The more you're reading about Vindman, and attacks on Vindman, and President Trump railing about all this on Twitter, the less you are thinking about the fact that Beto O'Rourke called for the revocation of every non-profit status for every religious charity in America.
00:19:26.000The more that you are thinking about Donald Trump and Ukraine, the more headlines there are about Donald Trump and Ukraine, the less you are thinking about the fact that Elizabeth Warren wants to completely decimate the American economy, and that she is a hypocrite and a liar.
00:19:38.000The more you are thinking about Ukraine and President Trump, the less you are thinking about Medicare for all and the complete takeover of your healthcare.
00:19:48.000Because the more you focus in on the Democrats, the less you want to vote for them.
00:19:51.000The more you focus in on President Trump, Democrats assume, and the polls tend to show, the less you want to vote for him.
00:19:57.000So, what should Republicans be doing at this point?
00:19:59.000They should be spending a lot of their time, of course, defending Trump if they believe that he shouldn't be impeached, right?
00:20:05.000They should, of course, be defending Trump from the overwrought accusations of Democrats at this point, but they should really be spending the bulk of their time pointing out that there's an entire Democratic race going on on this side of the aisle where Democrats are doing extremely radical things.
00:20:18.000And we're in the end, let's be practical about this, Republicans in the Senate are not going to vote to impeach President Trump in all likelihood.
00:20:24.000It would take a cataclysmic occurrence.
00:20:25.000It would take Rudy Giuliani going on the Hill and saying, of course we're about to get Joe Biden, right?
00:20:29.000It would take him literally saying that in order for the impeachment to take place, which means this thing peters out at the beginning of next year, and then you are left with the Democrats running on Trump is corrupt and Republicans are corrupt, so Republicans had better get their act together and start campaigning on, guys, you know what Democrats want to do if they actually are in charge of the country?
00:20:50.000We're going to get to more of this in just one second.
00:20:52.000I'm going to explain a few of the more radical democratic proposals being put out there that are moving into the mainstream pretty quickly.
00:20:58.000First, let's talk about the earbuds you are using to listen to this show.
00:21:01.000So, are you using those old-fashioned Marty McFly headphones that pop over your entire ear?
00:21:07.000They look like earmuffs and you're out in the middle of a blizzard in winter in Minnesota.
00:21:11.000Or are you using those earbuds that have the wires and the stems and you take those you put them in your pocket and they tangle up and then you have to unknot it like Alexander the Great except you can't just cut them?
00:21:20.000Well, maybe what you ought to do is check out Raycon.
00:21:22.000Raycon has just released their best model yet, the E25.
00:21:26.000They have six hours of playtime, seamless Bluetooth pairing, more bass, a more compact design that gives you a nice noise-isolating fit.
00:21:32.000Raycon's wireless earbuds are incredibly comfortable.
00:21:34.000They are perfect for on-the-go listening and for taking phone calls.
00:21:37.000Unlike some of your other wireless options, Raycon earbuds are stylish and discreet.
00:22:03.000Okay, so as I say, Democrats are focused on impeachment because it's hurting a lot of the Republicans.
00:22:09.000According to The Hill, impeachment is raising the likelihood the Senate will be a real battleground next year and that Democrats could regain the majority.
00:22:15.000Democrats are going to lose Doug Jones's seat in Alabama, so that means they're going to have to make up four seats.
00:22:20.000But there are a bunch of vulnerable incumbents.
00:22:22.000Susan Collins in Maine, Cory Gardner in Colorado, McSally in Arizona, Joni Ernst in Iowa, and Tom Tillis in North Carolina.
00:22:28.000Four of those people were outraised by their Democratic opponents in the third quarter of 2019.
00:22:33.000All five have higher disapproval than approval in their home states.
00:22:38.000She has a 49% disapproval rating compared to 43% approval rating.
00:22:43.000If Trump's numbers go down, then the Republicans could lose the presidency, and they could continue to lose the House, and they could lose the Senate.
00:22:50.000Things could get really ugly really, really quickly.
00:22:52.000So impeachment is playing for Democrats?
00:22:55.000Republicans had better shift the conversation pretty quickly.
00:22:58.000There was this assumption made by Republicans that the more impeachment was talked about, the better it was for Trump.
00:23:02.000And Trump made those sorts of noises early on.
00:23:05.000That is true when the president has an inherently high level of popularity going into the impeachment.
00:23:09.000If you're Bill Clinton and you're walking into impeachment with over a 50% approval rating, and then people are like, we got to impeach him.
00:23:15.000Your numbers are going to go up, not down.
00:23:17.000If you are the most polarizing president in modern American history, and you are already riding at like 41% in the polls, and then people start talking impeachment over you being you on a phone call with Ukraine, the numbers are going to go down.
00:23:36.000About what the polls show when it comes to approval for impeachment.
00:23:39.000Approval for impeachment shows right now a majority of Americans, okay, a majority of Americans now say, according to most polls, that they are willing to see Trump impeached.
00:23:49.000Now, does that actually mean that this is true in each state?
00:23:54.000Not really, but it's damaging Trump even in the states where they don't approve impeachment.
00:23:57.000So, for example, there is a poll that was just done in Arizona, and the poll shows that the people of Arizona are giving Trump very low marks, but by the same token, they don't want to see him impeached.
00:24:10.000But that really doesn't matter because he's not getting impeached.
00:24:14.000Impeachment is a proxy for do you like the president or not at the highest available level.
00:24:19.000Over at FiveThirtyEight, the columnist Amelia Thompson at DeVoe, she has a piece called Why Democrats Are Moving Quickly With Impeachment, and she says because they're attempting to get this done before primary season really opens up, because they understand that Republicans are going to vote this thing down, and so they may as well simply Get this thing over with so that they can run on the basis of it.
00:24:43.000So how should Republicans respond to all of this?
00:24:45.000Well, they should respond in a few ways.
00:24:47.000One, they should respond by defending Trump on the merits.
00:24:50.000They should, as I say, make the case that I have made, which is the only plausible case, which is that when it comes to Trump's activities in Ukraine, he basically has what you might call the UFO theory of Ukraine.
00:25:01.000If the president of the United States urged a foreign country to investigate UFOs because the United States was very interested in the presence of UFOs, Would that be, like, a waste of time and money?
00:25:46.000And then he should be moving on to the generalized fact that Democrats are talking impeachment not because they're good at their jobs, but because they're very, very bad at their jobs.
00:25:55.000Okay, so now let's talk about that Democratic agenda.
00:25:57.000First of all, let's talk about the sudden concern that Democrats have over foreign interference with America's electoral system and foreign interference with regard to America's politics.
00:26:09.000Hey, remember all the way back to the 1990s when Bill Clinton and Hillary Clinton were involved, allegedly, in a scheme to funnel Chinese money into the U.S.
00:26:19.000That did not result in Clinton's impeachment.
00:26:22.000Well, now we're finding out that when Barack Obama was re-elected in 2012, a Saudi tycoon and his business associate sent hundreds of thousands of dollars to the United States to help pay for the inaugural celebration and get a picture with the president, according to court documents and an analysis of campaign finance records by the Associated Press.
00:26:37.000election law prohibits foreign nationals from making those sorts of political contributions, but the donations Sheikh Mohammed al-Rabbani tried to send to Obama's inaugural committee were funneled through a seasoned straw donor instead.
00:26:48.000The intermediary, Imad Zubari, agreed this month to plead guilty to making illegal campaign contributions to several American political candidates on behalf of foreign nationals.
00:26:57.000He is also set to plead guilty to concealing his work as a foreign agent as he lobbied high-level U.S.
00:27:03.000He served—Zuberi, by the way—served as a top fundraiser for both Obama and Hillary Clinton during their presidential runs, including stints on both of their campaign finance committees.
00:27:13.000And then he switched his support to Trump immediately after the 2016 victory.
00:27:17.000It means that corruption, unfortunately, is sort of rife in American politics, and as Americans feel that way, they are less likely to believe that Trump has done something utterly, utterly without precedent.
00:27:29.000Okay, with all of that said, where should Republicans be focusing right now?
00:27:32.000As I say, Half on impeachment and half on the Democrats' agenda, because the Democrats' agenda right now is so terrible and so awful and so bad, and now they're coming out of the woodwork.
00:27:44.000They're saying the quiet part out loud, whether it's Beto saying that he wants to remove nonprofit status from every religious charity in America, or whether it's Richard Stengel, former editor of Time magazine, And State Department Undersecretary for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs under Obama from 2013 to 2016.
00:28:00.000So that you would imagine, as the Undersecretary for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs, he'd be very much in favor of free speech.
00:28:08.000He has a piece today in the Washington Post titled, Why America Needs a Hate Speech Law.
00:28:13.000He says, as a government official traveling around the world championing the virtues of free speech, I came to see how our First Amendment standard is an outlier.
00:28:20.000Even the most sophisticated Arab diplomats that I dealt with did not understand why the First Amendment allows someone to burn a Quran.
00:28:26.000Why, they asked me, would you ever want to protect that?
00:28:48.000You're getting it asked backwards, Richard Engel.
00:28:50.000He says, Yes, the First Amendment protects the thought that we hate, but it should not protect hateful speech that can cause violence by one group against another.
00:28:58.000So now he's not even claiming that incitement to violence is the standard.
00:29:01.000He's saying that if I burn a Quran, which I wouldn't do, by the way, because why would I burn a Quran?
00:29:05.000Like, perfectly decent book not to burn.
00:29:46.000Russian agents assumed fake identities, promulgated false narratives, and spread lies on Twitter and Facebook, all protected by the First Amendment.
00:29:53.000The Russians understood that our free press and its reflex toward balance and fairness would enable Moscow to slip its destructive ideas into our media ecosystem.
00:30:01.000When Putin said back in 2014 there were no Russian troops in Crimea, an outright lie, he knew our media would report it.
00:30:11.000Because some people uncritically repeated Vladimir Putin's lies in 2014, that means that we have to outlaw American speech?
00:30:18.000So basically, any information that Richard Engel doesn't like should be considered hate speech and then banned in the United States.
00:30:24.000I've been saying for a while, the First Amendment is under severe attack by the hard left in this country, and it's not going to remain on the hard left very long.
00:30:29.000It is going to skew over into the mainstream left incredibly quickly.
00:30:33.000It's already done this in the UK, as well as Canada, where there are serious questions about whether you can raise your child as a boy, if your boy is a biological boy and claims he is a girl, and then you say, well, no, I have a right to raise my child the way that I want.
00:30:46.000In Ontario, theoretically, that kid could be taken away from you.
00:30:49.000Now, in the United States, we have a First Amendment that protects freedom of religion and freedom of speech, but you can see that the left doesn't like those amendments very much, which is why the New York City Human Rights Commission keeps passing all of these regulations suggesting that they will fine you a quarter of a million dollars if you intentionally misgender somebody or something.
00:31:29.000But their understanding of human nature and the Constitution is wrong.
00:31:32.000But according to Richard Engel, we should just get rid of the First Amendment.
00:31:34.000He says the amendment rests on the notion that truth will win out in what Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas called the marketplace of ideas.
00:31:41.000The marketplace model has a long history going back to the 17th century English intellectual John Milton.
00:31:45.000But in all that time, no one ever quite explained how good ideas drive out bad ones, how truth triumphs over falsehood.
00:31:52.000Milton and early opponents of censorship said truth would prevail in a free and open encounter.
00:31:56.000A century later, the framers believed that this marketplace was necessary for people to make informed choices in a democracy.
00:32:01.000Somehow, magically, truth would emerge.
00:32:04.000The presumption has always been made that the marketplace would offer a level playing field, but in the age of social media, that landscape is neither fair nor level.
00:32:11.000So in other words, he doesn't trust people to make good decisions, so he's going to control what you ought to see.
00:32:17.000He's gonna control how you access information.
00:32:19.000He says, since World War II, many nations have passed laws to curb the incitement of racial and religious hatred.
00:32:24.000These laws started out as protections against the kinds of anti-Semitic bigotry that gave rise to the Holocaust.
00:32:29.000We call them hate speech laws, but there's no agreed-upon definition of what hate speech actually is.
00:32:33.000In general, hate speech is speech that attacks and insults people on the basis of race, religion, ethnic origin, and sexual orientation.
00:32:40.000I think it's time to consider these statutes.
00:32:43.000He says the modern standard of dangerous speech comes from Brandenburg versus Ohio and holds that speech that directly incites imminent lawless action or is likely to do so can be restricted.
00:32:53.000He says that domestic terrorists like Dylann Roof and Omar Mateen and the El Paso shooter were consumers of hate speech.
00:33:12.000Why shouldn't the states experiment with their own version of hate speech statutes to penalize speech that deliberately insults people based on religion, race, ethnicity, and sexual orientation?
00:33:44.000Once all the information is out, then put your focus there.
00:33:47.000But, right now, where should Republicans be putting their focus?
00:33:49.000In the fact that this is the America that Democrats want.
00:33:52.000is Richard Engel's America, and that scares the living hell out of me, as it should you.
00:33:55.000I don't want those people in charge of the federal government, or any government, for that matter.
00:33:59.000We'll get to more of this in one second.
00:34:01.000First, let's talk about that great day back when you were 13 years old and you got those braces off, and you were like, oh man, I'm never gonna wear those ugly, terrible braces.
00:34:09.000They cut my cheeks and they looked terrible.
00:34:13.000And your orthodontist is like, and also remember where are these retainers?
00:34:16.000And then a week later, you're brushing your teeth and you accidentally knock the retainers in the toilet and rather than reaching into the toilet, you're like, eh, well, I guess that's that.
00:34:23.000And now it's 20 years later and your teeth are all out of alignment.
00:34:25.000Well, maybe you should be considering Candid.
00:34:28.000Candid's aligners can help straighten your teeth faster than traditional wire braces.
00:34:31.000Treatment takes just six months on average.
00:34:33.000An experienced orthodontist licensed in your state creates a custom treatment plan.
00:34:37.000Then they show you a 3D preview, so you can see how your teeth will look after you're done.
00:34:40.000Candid's aligners are comfortable and removable, and completely invisible.
00:34:44.000Candid ships your aligners directly to you, so there's no hassle of going to an orthodontist's office, and Candid costs 65% less than braces.
00:34:51.000With each aligner purchased, by the way, Candid also will donate $25 to Smile Train.
00:34:55.000They bring safe, 100% free cleft lip and palate treatment to kids around the globe, which is a really awesome thing to do.
00:35:00.000I'm gonna have that photo-ready smile ready by the holidays.
00:36:11.000How has President Trump not tweeted out yet about Richard Engel, an Obama official, overtly saying he wants to overthrow the First Amendment in favor of a cadre of brilliant leftists figuring out what you can and cannot say.
00:36:21.000And then, there are their economic takes.
00:36:23.000There's an article by a guy named Steven Mim over at Bloomberg today, Bloomberg Economics, called, A Wealth Tax Could Deliver a Happiness Dividend.
00:36:49.000Basically, we could take the aristos, and we could put them in this thing called the guillotine, and we could just behead them to the cheers of the rabble.
00:36:56.000That seems like that would also create a happiness dividend for the non-bourgeois.
00:37:05.000According to Stephen Mim, tax-the-rich plans faced doubt about the amount of money they could raise.
00:37:09.000But researchers say they dependably produce an emotional lift for society as a whole.
00:37:16.000Oh, well, you know, so long as we pursue policies that are completely ineffective, and also punish wealth creation, but make people who were not involved in that wealth creation feel really good, we should totally do it.
00:37:29.000In fact, we should hold public spankings.
00:37:30.000And we need to bring Jeff Bezos out, and we need to get the paddle from fifth grade in 1972, and we need to whack Jeff Bezos around a few times.
00:37:38.000Like, we could all have some fun with that, says Steven Mim.
00:37:42.000When a study released earlier this month showed the wealthiest Americans paying a lower tax rate than any other group, Democratic presidential candidates embraced it as proof they were on the right track.
00:37:51.000While their tax-the-rich proposals vowed to create a better economic balance, the candidates often pivot to what they would do with the proceeds—Medicare for All, student loan relief, infrastructure repair, other expensive programs.
00:38:00.000Those equations have raised serious doubts, for good reason.
00:38:03.000Turning tax revenue into a massive health care system or measurable economic growth is incredibly complicated, but Raising taxes on the wealthy could deliver something meaningful that millions of Americans would rather feel quickly.
00:38:16.000Recent research found that progressive taxes may make the average citizen happier and more content.
00:38:21.000In the course of their study, psychologists Shigeru Oishi and Kostatin Kuchlev of the University of Virginia and Ulrich Schimmack of the University of Toronto eschewed the usual debate over tax increases.
00:38:53.000You mean people who earn the least are really happy to see people who earn a lot of money punished publicly?
00:38:58.000No, you mean the worst in human instinct is given free reign when you punish people for success?
00:39:04.000The correlation steadily diminished among higher income groups, disappearing altogether for the top 40%.
00:39:08.000By the way, this does reveal a certain truth, but it's not the truth that people on the left think it reveals.
00:39:13.000So people on the left are like, well, that's because we have an innate sense of fairness.
00:39:15.000When we see somebody who's rich and somebody who's poor, we immediately think that they should share the wealth, right?
00:39:20.000I mean, it's like when you were a kid and there were two cookies and there were two of you and you need to share the cookies.
00:39:26.000But what this actually reveals is that people who tend to get ahead in American society are people who are not spending their time focusing in on how much wealth other people are making.
00:39:34.000They're spending their time building up businesses and trying to forge careers.
00:39:37.000If you spend your time being jealous of people who have more wealth than you, believe me, there's an endless supply of people who have more wealth than you.
00:39:43.000There are a lot of people who are richer than I am.
00:39:45.000And five years ago, there were a lot more people than that who were richer than I was.
00:39:49.000And you can either spend your time bitching about it, or you could spend your time going out and making the wealth.
00:39:53.000And it's funny, this actually, look, it violates one of the 10 Commandments.
00:39:56.000The 9th Commandment, which is, the 10th Commandment, you shall not covet thy neighbor's property.
00:40:02.000Okay, the 10th Commandment is pretty specific about this.
00:40:05.000In Jewish law, this doesn't mean that you're not allowed to covet the kind of thing your neighbor has.
00:40:10.000If my neighbor has a Ferrari, and I'm like, God, that's an amazing car, I wish I had that car.
00:40:13.000That is not a violation of the 10th Commandment.
00:40:15.000It is a violation of the 10th Commandment if I say, I really want that car.
00:40:41.000I'm only going back to the Bible here because the Judeo-Christian roots of our morality are pretty deeply embedded.
00:40:45.000There's this old Solomonic tale that I'm sure you've all heard in which King Solomon is confronted with this bizarre case.
00:40:51.000There are two women and they live in sort of an apartment complex and they both have babies at the same time and one of the women's babies dies and the other woman claims that and the other woman's baby lives and both women claim that the live baby is theirs and the dead baby is the baby of the other person.
00:41:08.000And so Solomon calls forth one of his guards and he says, I want you to take this living baby and I want you to cut it in half.
00:41:14.000And one of the mothers says, absolutely do it.
00:41:17.000And the other mother says, no, give the baby to the other mom.
00:41:20.000Better that the baby should live than that I should have the baby.
00:41:23.000And Solomon says, obviously that one's the mother.
00:41:25.000And when it comes to wealth, the same principle holds.
00:41:28.000If you are into the division and destruction of wealth, simply because you are jealous that somebody else has some, you are doing decency, virtue, and economics wrong.
00:41:38.000But apparently, what the left would like is a world where you feel better about yourself because somebody else has their wealth taken away.
00:41:43.000So, they're not a fan of the First Amendment, they're not a fan of economic freedom.
00:41:46.000How the right isn't honing in on this is simply beyond me, especially because again, these Democratic candidates are incredibly vulnerable on a variety of scores.
00:41:55.000Democratic governance just, it just does not work.
00:41:58.000Even the cases where Democrats suggest that the solution is bigger government, that's just not true.
00:42:02.000Like right now, Democrats are busily suggesting that the situation in California, where PG&E, which is Pacific Gas and Electric, A semi-private company.
00:42:11.000I'll explain why it's semi-private in just a second.
00:42:13.000That PG&E is under severe flack because they've been shutting down their power grids because they haven't updated the power grids in like a hundred years.
00:42:19.000This is leading Democrats to be like, we should nationalize the utilities.
00:42:22.000This shows that profit-seeking companies are really, really bad.
00:42:25.000But as the Wall Street Journal points out, in an article written by Alicia Finley, she says, PG&E exemplifies the left's stakeholder model, according to which businesses are accountable not only to shareholders, but also to workers, the environment, and local communities and society at large.
00:42:40.000In California, utilities are the most heavily regulated businesses.
00:42:43.000Their rates and return on equity are set by the California Public Utilities Commission and the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission.
00:42:49.000Every three years, PG&E must submit funding plans to the CPUC, which holds public hearings with quote-unquote stakeholders, including customers and activist groups.
00:42:58.000The Commission and state legislature dictate energy investments.
00:43:01.000State law requires utilities to obtain 60% of their power from renewable sources by 2030.
00:43:06.000Plus, the Commission has ordered utilities to buy energy from homeowners with solar panels, meaning that they are paying a higher rate than wholesale power providers get.
00:43:14.000Last year, the commission instructed PG&E to install 7,500 electric car charging stations at apartment buildings and workplaces.
00:43:23.000So if shareholders want to earn a profit, they have to indulge their political masters' fashionable views on matters like climate, identity politics, and corporate governance.
00:43:31.000The utility proclaims diversity and inclusion are integral to how we do business.
00:43:35.000They talk about environmental justice, focusing in on low-income communities and communities of color.
00:43:41.000Well, it turns out that when you heavily Regulate and subsidize businesses.
00:43:45.000You basically made them into arms of the state.
00:43:49.000The utility mainly donates to Democrats.
00:43:52.000The Human Rights Campaign gave the utility a 100% rating on its Corporate Equality Index from 2003 to 2018.
00:44:00.000Democrats have blasted PG&E for spending millions on political lobbying, but much of the advocacy has been in support of the state's climate goals, including consumer electric car-driven subsidies and fuel economy mandates.
00:44:11.000So again, Democrats are ripping on the profit centers, supposedly, at these utilities, but this is just another case of bad Democratic governance.
00:44:18.000If you'd like a First Amendment governed by Richard Engel, if you'd like an economy governed by people who are mostly happy just to take down wealth, And if you are really into the kind of governance that led to PG&E shutting off the power on millions of customers in the last couple weeks in California, by all means elect a Democrat.
00:44:36.000Because this is the world the Democrats want.
00:44:39.000And after all the impeachment stuff is over, and again, the chances of Trump actually being removed from office are incredibly low, after all the impeachment stuff is over, the only thing that is going to matter is whether Is whether Americans prefer the governance of Democrats to the governance of President Trump.
00:44:56.000So Republicans need to refocus and this is what they should be focusing on.
00:45:24.000Elizabeth Warren right now is widely perceived to be the front-runner for the nomination.
00:45:28.000Well, Elizabeth Warren is being now called out for her corporate cronyism for years.
00:45:33.000She was taking something like half a million dollars from major corporations, particularly one company named LTV Steel, which we talked about yesterday on the podcast, in which the New York Times dived into Warren's previous work for LTV.
00:45:46.000They said, to settle a coal miner strike, the federal government forged an agreement that miners would have health care coverage when they retired, provided by their last employer.
00:45:53.000And then, LTV went bankrupt and they stopped paying.
00:46:09.000In 2006, here's Elizabeth Warren, 11 years later, ripping on the very company that she actually represented in the bankruptcy hearings, deriding LTV's bankruptcy as the epitome of broken promises to workers, according to Tommy Christopher over at Mediaite.
00:46:26.000LTV is just the first of many that we're going to see along these lines.
00:46:29.000Where the question is what happens to all those promises you made to the employees when this steel business simply will not support that kind of payment.
00:46:37.000LTV showed how you could lock up all the assets so that essentially the company could say We're broke.
00:46:50.000And use those assets, put them back into operation to create a newer, more profitable company.
00:46:58.000Weird, that's a company she repped in 1995.
00:47:01.000Very odd, it's almost as though she's wildly dishonest.
00:47:03.000Which leaves it to people like John Legend to talk about the reason why people are not getting behind Elizabeth Warren is because men feel threatened by women.
00:47:53.000By the way, if you thought Bernie Sanders is honest, he's not honest either.
00:47:57.000So I've said he's the most honest of the Democratic candidates.
00:47:59.000That doesn't mean he's actually honest.
00:48:00.000Bernie Sanders yesterday was asked about his plan to pay for Medicare for all.
00:48:03.000He's like, I'm not going to show you that plan.
00:48:05.000Why would I show you the plan to pay for this thing?
00:48:07.000We all know we're going to kill the rich people and eat them.
00:48:09.000That's where this money is coming from.
00:48:11.000The fight right now is to get the American people To understand that we're spending twice as much per capita, that of course we can pay for it.
00:48:19.000We're paying it now in a very reactionary, regressive way.
00:48:23.000I want to pay for it in a progressive way.
00:48:24.000Now you're asking me to come up with an exact, detailed plan of how, you know, every American, how much you're going to pay more in taxes, how much I'm going to pay.
00:48:32.000I don't think I have to do that right now.
00:48:34.000Okay, so yeah, he doesn't have to do it.
00:48:35.000He's just not going to explain the plan.
00:48:37.000There's so much rich material for Republicans.
00:48:39.000What they have to do is get past this impeachment thing.
00:48:41.000What that means is what they should be doing right now is just shutting up.
00:48:44.000Seriously, I understand that Trump is clamoring for them to be shouting from the rooftops about impeachment is a hoax and it's a witch hunt and all of this stuff.
00:48:53.000What Republicans should do is basically the same thing they did during the Mueller investigation.
00:48:57.000They just said, okay, we'll wait for all of it to come out, and then we'll make a judgment.
00:49:01.000Because the Democrats are gonna do it anyway.
00:49:02.000And the more focus is brought to the impeachment stuff, the worse it is for Republicans.
00:49:06.000Just on a public relations level, what you actually want is for the Republicans to say, okay, bring all this stuff forth, we'll hear it all, and then we'll make a decision.
00:49:38.000On the front lines, cheering and pouring hot oil and all of this about impeachment, when the information isn't out there yet, it's not going to be to his benefit.
00:50:00.000First of all, the NCAA has made a good decision that I've been calling for for a long time, that is to allow The student-athletes to capitalize on their own image.
00:50:09.000Frankly, it was an absurdity that student-athletes were not allowed to do this.
00:50:12.000That it was treated as though when Zion Williamson was a Duke, that Zion Williamson was getting the benefit of a Duke education, and that is why he shouldn't be able to capitalize on his image, but the NCAA should.
00:50:25.000Okay, Zion Williamson wasn't there to get his degree in business management.
00:50:28.000Zion Williamson was there to play basketball and then move on to the NBA.
00:50:32.000Which is why there are so many people in college basketball who are doing this one-and-done routine.
00:50:36.000And they're going in for a year, or they go in for two years, and then they go directly to the NBA.
00:50:39.000By the way, they should totally do that.
00:50:41.000If you have a skill set, I'm not a believer that you have to stay in college just to stay in college.
00:50:46.000If it worked for Bill Gates, why shouldn't it work for Zion Williamson?
00:50:50.000I've always thought it's bizarre that people are so concerned.
00:50:52.000And when people talk about implicit bias, I've always thought it's very bizarre.
00:50:55.000People are very concerned about how many basketball players go to college, as opposed to, for example, how many baseball players go to college.
00:51:01.000And the answer is a lot of baseball players go direct high school to the minor leagues.
00:51:04.000Now, if you want to go into a college basketball If you want to go into the NCAA to get prepped for a year or two for your own benefit, that seems reasonable to me.
00:51:13.000But it also seems more than reasonable that you should be able to own your own image.
00:51:17.000You shouldn't forfeit that right simply because you play college basketball.
00:52:03.000Okay, so there is President Trump, Melania, here comes one of these kids dressed as a minion, and Trump takes a candy bar and puts it on the head of the minion, and then Melania does the same thing and promptly slides off while the kid reaches for it.
00:52:49.000It was rapey because he was trying to get this woman into bed, and she kept talking about how she wanted to go, but she was worn by the fire.
00:52:56.000And except for, you know, every human relationship which has vagaries of wooing, We're all supposed to believe that he's trying to date rape her, right?
00:53:07.000The whole argument is about a man trying to wheedle a woman into bed, which has never happened in the history of man, by the way.
00:53:11.000No man has ever wheedled a woman into bed.
00:53:13.000Normally, when you have sex with a girl, the way that it works is that you actually get out a contract, notarized by your attorney, and then you have her check particular boxes as to which activities she would seek to participate in.
00:53:28.000In California, they've been trying to pass this yes-means-yes law for years, in which you actually have to get, quote-unquote, affirmative consent.
00:53:33.000It's not enough for a woman to enthusiastically participate in the event.
00:53:35.000You have to get affirmative verbal consent for each step, which is just hot, man.
00:53:39.000I mean, there is nothing quite as hot as, do you mind if I do exactly this?
00:53:50.000is just a clever song about a man and a woman and the man wooing the woman.
00:53:55.000And it is like, this is, here's the part where people get really uptight.
00:54:01.000The woman sings, I ought to say no, no, no, sir.
00:54:04.000Because women have never said that before, ever.
00:54:06.000Women have never said that they ought to say no, but their heart says yes.
00:54:09.000That's never happened in the history of mankind.
00:54:11.000It's not how 75% of pregnancies in the history of mankind have ever happened.
00:54:15.000And then the man says, she says, my sister will be suspicious, and he sings, gosh, your lips look delicious.
00:54:20.000And then she says, say, what's in this drink?
00:54:22.000Now, people read that as like he's drugging her, or alternatively, she is trying to make excuses for the fact that she actually wants to stay, and that she's lightheaded and woozy, and that really she's in love with the guy, right?
00:55:06.000I can't tell you how many times serial rapists like Harvey Weinstein hit the button, baby, it's cold outside comes on, and he immediately just goes out and does his thing.
00:55:54.000A San Francisco station that dropped the song last year reversed course after most listeners said they wanted the song in rotation.
00:56:01.000Susan Lesser, who is the daughter of Frank Lesser, one of the great songwriters in American history, he's responsible for all the songs in Guys and Dolls, he's responsible for The Most Happy Fellow, a lot of great American musicals written by Frank Lesser, one of the great songwriters in American history.
00:56:14.000Susan Lesser said, way before Me Too, I would hear from time to time people call it a date rape song.
00:56:18.000I would get annoyed because it's a song my dad wrote for him and my mother to sing at parties.
00:56:22.000She says, people used to say, what's in this drink, as a joke.
00:56:50.000Okay, you guys, you're taking things too seriously.
00:56:53.000You're taking things much, much, much too seriously.
00:56:54.000But the good news is Richard Engel wants to outlaw the song, presumably, as a form of hate speech.
00:56:58.000So I think these are the people who we should have in charge of our fundamental debates about the nature of speech, or people who think that, baby, it's cold outside is a real problem, but the lyrics of Jay-Z are not only acceptable, but absolutely praiseworthy.
00:57:12.000Great American figures include Snoop Dogg and his lyrics, but Frank Lesser, rapey, super rapey.
00:57:20.000Yeah, or everybody's just full of crap.
00:57:55.000Because a lot of Jews in the aftermath of that, like particularly holocaust survivors, tend to be supporters of Israel.
00:58:00.000Can you think of a reason why maybe holocaust survivors tend to be supporters of Israel?
00:58:06.000Like maybe the fact that during the holocaust every country closed its doors to Jews attempting to escape Nazi Germany, including British Mandate Palestine, and that the establishment of a Jewish state means that will never happen again.
00:58:16.000Maybe that's the reason why Holocaust survivors are sort of supporters of Israel in heavy measure.
00:58:20.000Well, an SJP activist, whose greatest hardship has been that one time their iPhone broke, confronts a Holocaust survivor about Palestinian ethnic cleansing by the Jewish state.
00:59:09.000The city of Hebron, which is a major Palestinian center, 215,000 Palestinians, has like a mall with a KFC.
00:59:18.000A lot of the stuff that you're told about the inherent poverty that's happening here is just not true.
00:59:22.000There is no ethnic cleansing going on, but here is a Students in Justice in Palestine activist confronting a Holocaust survivor, virtue signaling all over somebody who survived Hitler.
00:59:30.000Because the establishment of the Israeli state and the idea of Zionism ties back to the right of the Israeli state at any cost.
00:59:40.000And that cost is the Palestinian people.
00:59:42.000I am a result of experiences that you've been through.
00:59:46.000I am a survivor of the Intifada, and that is way after 1948 when the Palestinian land was occupied.
00:59:53.000I went through minimal amounts of things that the Palestinian people historically went through, and I'm asking you, and it's disappointing to know that a Holocaust survivor would remain neutral in a situation of injustice.
01:00:06.000It's not a matter of neutral, it's a matter of, I think the two sides have to really, who are much more experienced than I, it's not Total guilt and innocence on either side.
01:00:38.000It wasn't Israel that declared the Intifada.
01:00:40.000If you're a survivor of the Intifada, you might want to blame the Palestinian leadership, which turned down the best peace deal they will ever receive from Ehud Barak, including the division of Jerusalem, and then instead opted for a massive outbreak of violence ending in the death of thousands of Palestinians and thousands of Jews as well.
01:00:57.000So, yeah, this sort of nonsense, the fact that the left gives credence to it demonstrates how many lives they're willing to buy into in the name of social justice warrior wokeness.
01:01:07.000Okay, we'll be back here later to deal with two additional hours of content.