Ben Shapiro reacts to the Mueller report, calls for impeachment, and calls for the media to change its tune from "collusion" to "obstruction" in the wake of the bombshell report that was supposed to shake the earth and make the trees tremble. He also points out that the Mueller Report does not prove that the Trump campaign colluded with the Russians in any way, and that President Trump is not guilty of any crime. Ben Shapiro is the host of the conservative podcast "The Weekly Standard" and host of "The Ben Shapiro Show" on Fox News Radio. He is a regular contributor to the New York Times, CNN, CBS, NBC, CNN and other media outlets. He is also a frequent contributor to The Weekly Standard, and has been featured on CNN, ABC, CBS and NBC. His articles have been syndicated in The Daily Caller, The Hill, and The Hill Magazine, and he is a frequent guest on CNN and NPR. If you like what you hear, please HIT SUBSCRIBE and tell a friend about what you think of the show! You can also join our FB group, and join the conversation by using the hashtag on that hashtag , and find him on Insta if you're looking for a free copy of his newest book, . or tweet him to let him know what you thought of the latest episode of his new novel, The Dark Side Of . or his book, He's Good Mythology? Thank you for listening to The Ben Shapiro's new book Good Morning Joe? Good morning, Ben Shapiro, Good morning! Good evening, Ben, I'm listening to you! and Good night, and Good Night, Mr. Ben Shapiro! Thanks for listening, and thanks for listening and Good Morning, and God Blessings, God Bless You, Blessings Blessings! Timestamps: Thanks, Kristy, Tims, Cheers, Tims and Cheers! - Your Day Off? - Jonothans, Jonothan, Jake, Kristian, Glynch, Sarah, and Saje, and Ackerman, Sarah, - Sarah, Rachael, Johnathan, and Joseph, and the Crews, and Sarah, Caitie, and Jaxon, and Jack, Jr., - Rachel, and Jake, and Jacob, and Rachel, etc.
00:00:07.000Well, it's the day after and the radiation is wafting in the wind, the ashes falling from the sky.
00:00:18.000And we're going to recap exactly where we stand in the aftermath of the bombshell Mueller report that was supposed to shake the earth and make the trees tremble.
00:00:27.000We'll get to all that in just a second.
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00:01:32.000We have now all had a chance to sit and think and digest with regard to the Mueller Report.
00:01:38.000And last night, I was sitting and thinking and digesting after doing 1,000 hours on air about the Mueller Report, and I came to a few conclusions about the Mueller Report that I think are worthy of note.
00:01:49.000And it's funny, I got a lot of flack from everybody yesterday because I thought Attorney General William Barr was correct not to push prosecution on obstruction of justice.
00:02:00.000I also think that the Mueller report shows that President Trump lies a lot and that he is dishonest in his dealings with others.
00:02:06.000These two statements piss off pretty much everybody on the left.
00:02:10.000The idea is that if Trump lies sometimes, but not illegally, then he should go to prison.
00:02:15.000And on the right, the idea is that if Trump was exonerated on obstruction, meaning that he wasn't really exonerated on obstruction, but at least he wasn't prosecuted on obstruction, if he was acquitted of obstruction or non-prosecuted on obstruction, if that's the case, then he is a grand and glorious man who has never lied ever.
00:03:12.000What's amazing is that the first half of the report does not actually deliver the goods on anything remotely resembling Trump campaign collusion with the Russians.
00:03:20.000Even the stuff that the press really blew up.
00:03:23.000I'm talking about the stuff where they suggested that the RNC had rewritten its own platform with regard to providing lethal aid to Ukraine in service to Vladimir Putin and the Trump campaign.
00:04:18.000So a lot of the media narratives that were put out there were simply overblown or untrue.
00:04:23.000BuzzFeed's big report saying that Michael Cohen had been instructed to lie to investigators by President Trump, which would constitute subordination of perjury.
00:04:32.000The crime for which President Clinton was impeached in the House.
00:04:36.000That turned out not to be true either.
00:04:37.000None of that was in the Mueller report.
00:04:38.000So all of the talk about Trump-Russia collusion, that was really, really overblown.
00:04:42.000The Mueller report itself states, quote, although the investigation established that the Russian government perceived it would benefit from a Trump presidency and worked to secure that outcome, and that the campaign expected it would benefit electorally from information stolen and released through Russian efforts, the investigation did not establish that members of the Trump campaign conspired or coordinated with the Russian government in its election interference activities.
00:05:16.000And the people who were even prosecuted, people like George Papadopoulos, were basically dupes, not active agents of the Kremlin.
00:05:23.000People who were prosecuted, like, like, Papadopoulos, who else was prosecuted?
00:05:29.000So Manafort was prosecuted, but he was prosecuted for crimes involving his kinship with the Ukrainian oligarchs based on activity back in like 2013-2014.
00:05:40.000So the idea that the campaign itself was involved in collusion was just wrong.
00:05:44.000Now, the media are not totally ready to let this go.
00:05:46.000John Carl, over at ABC News, doing a terrible job covering this, actually, he said, listen, the evidence shows that while there wasn't actual conspiracy, there was certainly collusion.
00:05:56.000OK, well, if you're not shifting the goalposts to the point that collusion is not conspiracy, that collusion is somebody received information from a Russian source that was public already and then used it in OPPO research, That ain't what you were talking about.
00:06:10.000You were talking about the election being skewed because of cooperation between the Trump campaign and the Russians.
00:06:15.000Jonathan Karl still tried to push that one yesterday.
00:06:17.000There's significant material in here that we did not know on the question of collusion.
00:06:23.000Now, of course, there's no finding that anybody in the Trump campaign was guilty of a criminal conspiracy in terms of dealing with the Russians on this.
00:06:31.000But the chapter on collusion shows significant contact between people on the Trump campaign Oh, you might say collusion, might you?
00:06:41.000the conclusion here in the special counsel was it did not rise to the level of a violation of the law, but there is significant contact here.
00:06:51.000Oh, you might say collusion, might you?
00:06:53.000Well, no, you wouldn't say collusion because there wasn't actual collusion.
00:06:56.000Adam Schiff is still going around trying to promote the idea that collusion occurred because he spent years lying to the American public that he had secret knowledge, secret inside information about the level of conspiracy between Trump and Russia.
00:07:08.000The man had set up a pump tent outside the CNN headquarters and he basically left his job in Congress so he could hang out at CNN full-time and be best friends with Wolf Blitzer.
00:07:17.000Well, now he's back on CNN yesterday trying to cover his butt after it turns out that his entire claim fell apart yesterday.
00:07:24.000Many of us do think the president's unfit for office, but unless that's a bipartisan conclusion, an impeachment would be doomed to failure.
00:07:33.000I continue to think that a failed impeachment is not in the national interest.
00:07:37.000Whether these acts are criminal or not.
00:07:40.000Whether the obstruction of justice was criminal or not, or whether these contacts were sufficiently illicit or not to rise to the level of a criminal conspiracy, they are unquestionably dishonest, unethical, immoral, and unpatriotic, and should be condemned by every American.
00:07:58.000That is not the subject of vindication.
00:08:15.000You promised that President Trump was hanging out with Vladimir Putin down by the pool, figuring out how to shift those votes in Wisconsin.
00:08:22.000You said you had inside information to that effect.
00:08:24.000So Adam Schiff has lost all credibility on this.
00:08:27.000So the collusion stuff was wildly overblown, the media wildly overplayed it, and they deserve all the criticism that they are receiving today.
00:08:37.000The original suspicions regarding the Trump team might not have been unreasonable.
00:08:40.000Now, I know this one is controversial with a lot of people on the right who believe that the investigation was initiated in bad faith, that the Obama team and its intelligence team decided, you know what?
00:08:51.000We're going to come up with an excuse to target him and his team.
00:08:53.000And so on the basis of skimpy evidence, they decided to launch an internal investigation that would eventually take down the president and provide fire insurance against the possibility of him winning.
00:09:03.000Now, I'm open to the argument based on the evidence that is already out there.
00:09:06.000That the investigation became that, because Peter Strzok was in fact a politically motivated player.
00:09:11.000James Clapper was a politically motivated player.
00:09:13.000John Brennan was a politically motivated player.
00:09:15.000I'm fully willing to hear the case, based on the evidence that is already public, that the investigation became something bad, and became something corrupt, as people fell into a habit of listening to everyone in their echo chamber, fell into confirmation bias.
00:09:32.000There is still not enough evidence for me to believe the case that the investigation was initiated originally under false pretenses.
00:09:41.000Because that has been one of the popular talking points.
00:09:43.000There was plenty of smoke in the early days of the investigation.
00:09:45.000George Papadopoulos meeting with Joseph Mifsud, a suspected Russian asset who allegedly bragged that he had access to Hillary Clinton's emails and then Papadopoulos trying to pass that up the chain.
00:09:53.000Roger Stone bringing WikiLeaks promises to the attention of the Trump campaign.
00:09:57.000Trump's dishonesty regarding the continuation of Trump Tower Moscow negotiations.
00:10:01.000His open commentary in which he continued to praise Vladimir Putin puzzling pretty much everyone.
00:10:40.000And so it's not totally unreasonable for people inside the intel community to say, well, Trump is surrounding himself with a lot of bad people.
00:11:02.000I need more evidence on the case before I take it super seriously.
00:11:06.000So that is point number two with regard to the Mueller report.
00:11:09.000I'm trying to just be as fair about this as I possibly can be.
00:11:11.000We'll get to some more commentary on the Mueller report and then the reaction In one second.
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00:12:36.000That does not mean that every individual report about Trump fulminating on obstruction was false.
00:12:41.000A lot of those reports were true, and a lot of that reporting was good.
00:12:45.000But the reports on Trump-Russia collusion Almost all of that blew up in the faces of the media.
00:12:51.000Point number two is that the original suspicions regarding the Trump team might not have been unreasonable.
00:12:55.000Point number three, the Steele dossier is nowhere to be found.
00:12:58.000And this is where I say I think the investigation went wrong.
00:13:01.000I think that Peter Strzok and other politically motivated actors inside the intelligence apparatus hated President Trump and were willing to use overblown information, scanty information, Thin information, easily debunkable information in order to target Trump and his team.
00:13:16.000I do think that's what this investigation eventually became under the auspices of people like Peter Strzok.
00:13:22.000Well, because they used the Steele dossier over and over in the original investigation to get FISA warrants against people like Carter Page.
00:13:29.000That Steele dossier is the intelligence mishmash that was funneled to the Obama intelligence agencies, the Effusion GPS and Oppo research firm working on behalf of Hillary Clinton.
00:13:39.000But the Steele dossier barely comes up in the Mueller report.
00:13:41.000So you would figure that if that Steele dossier were so important, if it were so filled with golden nuggets of information that provided the basis for further investigation and deeper digging, that that would appear, you know, like, Three times?
00:14:58.000One of the things you learn as a lawyer is that you try to draw laws as specifically as possible, you try to draw contracts as specifically as possible, so you know what applies and what does not apply.
00:15:07.000That is not really present in the obstruction statutes and that creates a lot of play in the joints and it creates enough room for there to be controversy between T. Mueller and Attorney General William Barr on whether President Trump's activity actually constituted obstruction of justice.
00:15:22.000Under Barr's analysis, he says, To obtain and sustain an obstruction conviction, this is in his March 24th four-page letter, the government would need to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that a person acting with corrupt intent engaged in obstructive conduct with a sufficient nexus to a pending or contemplated proceeding.
00:15:39.000And then Barr clarified his standard in his press conference yesterday.
00:15:43.000And this standard, I think, is correct.
00:15:45.000He says, Although the Deputy Attorney General and I disagreed with some of the Special Counsel's legal theories and felt that some of the episodes examined did not amount to obstruction as a matter of law, we did not rely solely on that in making our decision.
00:15:56.000Instead, we accepted the Special Counsel's legal framework for purposes of our analysis and evaluated the evidence as presented by the Special Counsel in reaching our conclusion.
00:16:04.000So Barr is trying to argue that he used the standard that Mueller was using for obstruction of justice, and even under that standard, it wasn't obstruction.
00:16:10.000I think that's a slightly dicey case for Barr.
00:16:13.000I think if you use Mueller's standard for obstruction, then some of what Trump did looks like obstruction.
00:16:17.000But I don't think that Mueller's standard is correct, which is why you see Barr say here, we had some disagreements about the theory.
00:16:23.000In assessing the president's actions discussed in the report, it is important to bear in mind the context.
00:16:28.000President Trump faced an unprecedented situation as he entered into office and sought to perform his responsibilities as president.
00:16:34.000Federal agents and prosecutors were scrutinizing his conduct before and after taking office And the conduct of some of his associates.
00:16:41.000At the same time, there is relentless speculation in the news media about the president's personal culpability.
00:16:46.000Yet, as he said from the beginning, there was in fact no collusion.
00:16:49.000And as the special counsel's report acknowledges, there is substantial evidence to show that the president was frustrated and angered by his sincere belief that the investigation was undermining his presidency, propelled by his political opponents, fueled by illegal leaks.
00:17:02.000Nonetheless, the White House fully cooperated with the special counsel's investigation, providing unfettered access to the campaign and White House documents, directing senior aides to testify freely, asserting no privilege claims.
00:17:11.000Now, that one line is being taken out of context, the one where he says, the White House fully cooperated with the special counsel's investigation.
00:17:17.000People are rightly pointing out, well, Trump didn't sit down for an interview, did he?
00:17:22.000And Trump was constantly fulminating publicly and privately about the Mueller investigation, and President Trump was creating these incentives for people not to talk to the Mueller investigation by tweeting out things to Michael Cohen and Paul Manafort.
00:17:47.000They did allow everybody inside the White House to talk to the special counsel's office.
00:17:51.000I know this because I've talked to many people who have talked to the special counsel's office.
00:17:55.000At the same time, the president took no act that in fact deprived the special counsel of the documents and witnesses necessary to complete his investigation.
00:18:10.000Apart from whether the acts were obstructive, this evidence of non-corrupt motives weighs heavily against any allegation that the president had a corrupt intent to obstruct the investigation.
00:18:18.000And that last phrase is the one that matters because the crime of obstruction requires corrupt intent.
00:18:23.000I noted this yesterday with regard to contrasting Hillary Clinton's behaviors with President Trump's behaviors.
00:18:28.000Hillary Clinton taking classified material and storing it on a homebrew server was de facto just facially illegal.
00:18:36.000It's facially illegal because there is no element of intent in the crime.
00:18:39.000If I take classified material from the VA and I accidentally leave it on the front seat of my car and someone smashes the car window and takes the data, I am guilty of a crime.
00:18:48.000It doesn't matter if I just accidentally left it in my backpack or something.
00:19:08.000So what Barr is saying is it's not corrupt intent for President Trump to fulminate publicly about the Mueller report.
00:19:14.000That doesn't demonstrate that he was trying to stop it.
00:19:17.000It doesn't demonstrate that he was trying to end the investigation, and it certainly doesn't demonstrate that he was trying to do all of this with an intent toward thwarting finding out of underlying crime, because there was no underlying crime.
00:19:27.000So those are the two facts that Barr keeps relying on in saying no prosecution is available here.
00:19:32.000One, no underlying collusion for Trump to hide, and two, no corrupt intent to hide something that was not really there.
00:19:48.000That is not the standard that the Mueller report suggests for obstruction.
00:19:51.000According to their broader standard, obstruction of justice law reaches all corrupt conduct capable of producing an effect that prevents justice from being duly administered regardless of the means employed.
00:20:01.000That is a quote from a particular circuit court case.
00:20:04.000That's an extraordinarily broad standard.
00:20:06.000All corrupt conduct capable of producing an effect that prevents justice from being duly administered.
00:20:12.000So now we have to analyze every term there.
00:20:32.000But it could theoretically fall under that rubric here.
00:20:35.000The Mueller report says an improper motive can render an actor's conduct criminal even when the conduct would otherwise be lawful and within the actor's authority.
00:20:42.000So in other words, President Trump fires somebody within his office.
00:20:46.000That would be criminal conduct if the intent is wrong?
00:20:49.000Well, that's an insanely broad standard.
00:20:51.000That means the prosecutors are now mind readers and it is their job to go through and read minds.
00:20:56.000A defendant need not directly impede the proceeding.
00:20:58.000The requisite showing of motive is made when a person acted with an intent to obtain an improper advantage for himself or someone else inconsistent with official duty and the rights of others.
00:21:06.000Again, the question is, did Trump violate his official duty or the rights of others here?
00:21:14.000While mere abstract talk does not suffice to create the crime of attempt, any concrete and specific acts that corroborate the defendant's intent can constitute a substantial step.
00:22:02.000This is why Freedom Project Academy was created.
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00:22:11.000They focus on real-world skills like reading, writing, arithmetic, and American history.
00:22:15.000Freedom Project Academy has created an interactive online atmosphere where students across the country are instructed by live teachers in small classes who teach students how to think, not what to think.
00:22:54.000That you need to have corrupt intent and that means that you have to have intended to obstruct the investigation because what you were trying to do was stop the investigation from finding underlying crime.
00:23:04.000And so there's no underlying crime, therefore no corrupt intent.
00:23:08.000Trump's emotional state comes into play here.
00:23:11.000The Mueller report provides an obstruction of justice definition that encompasses pretty much everything.
00:23:15.000Now, that is a plausible read inside the statute, but as I say, the statutes are broadly drawn, too broadly drawn, particularly 1503, 18 U.S.C.
00:23:22.000I mentioned 1512 because that defines attempt earlier.
00:23:28.000This broadly defined version of obstruction, where the president could undertake an otherwise legal act so long as it is capable of producing an effect, even if it does not directly impede a proceeding, so long as the person acts with an intent to obtain improper advantage, allows the Mueller report to consider whether Trump tweeting about Michael Cohen being a rat or Paul Manafort being a solid citizen amounts to obstruction of justice.
00:24:00.000To my mind, that is an extraordinarily broad reading of obstruction of justice, and it is non-prosecutable.
00:24:05.000No prosecutor would be able to get that through a court.
00:24:07.000The president still has First Amendment rights.
00:24:10.000To suggest that the president publicly criticizing Robert Mueller, which comes up a lot in the report, every time Trump tweeted about Mueller, it's basically named in the report, or publicly praising Paul Manafort, or ripping into Michael Cohen, to say that that amounts to criminal obstruction of justice, that does require an extraordinarily broad reading of obstruction of justice statutes.
00:24:28.000That's also true of the presidential pardon power and the presidential power to fire.
00:24:32.000So if the president just fired Mueller, would that be a criminal offense?
00:24:42.000Simply applying an intent test to those powers turns prosecutors into all-powerful mind readers, which was not what the statutes were designed to do in the first place.
00:24:50.000A fifth point to be made about the Mueller report, and this one is very controversial.
00:24:54.000I know for folks on the right, many of whom want to believe that President Trump is as honest as the day is long.
00:25:00.000Honestly, I would find it difficult to believe that even President Trump would make that argument, but there are people who defend President Trump who suggest that this report really suggests his honesty.
00:25:09.000There is no way to read the second half of the Mueller Report, Volume 2 of Kill Bill.
00:25:33.000Barack Obama spent years maintaining he did not have the legal authority to actually do DACA, to just legalize the dreamers.
00:25:41.000President Obama spent years assuring Americans that if they liked their plan and their doctor, they could keep their plan and their doctor.
00:25:49.000President Obama and his administration lied for years, that the Iranian government was moderating, and that he had not in fact cut a secret deal with the Iranians to send them pallets of cash.
00:25:58.000All of this stuff was blatant bullcrap.
00:26:00.000So all administrations lie, but to pretend that Trump is somehow more honest than other administrations, he's only more honest in the sense that he's pretty open about the fact he does this stuff.
00:26:09.000And President Trump is extraordinarily cynical about politics.
00:26:27.000So Trump doesn't hide the ball here, but still you have to be kind of stunned by the level of the activity that he was attempting to push down on other members of his team.
00:26:39.000If the other members of his team had not stopped him, if they'd gone forward with this sort of activity, much, much better case for obstruction of justice.
00:26:45.000The fact that they did not go forward with it suggests that obstruction of justice is harder to prove.
00:26:50.000What are some of the activities that I'm talking about?
00:26:52.000Well, first of all, he acted embarrassingly.
00:26:55.000Repeatedly with regard to Russia during the 2016 campaign.
00:27:13.000Yes, and he knew it was immoral and embarrassing because then he tried to cover it up with more embarrassing and immoral but non-criminal behavior.
00:27:43.000He lied to her, and then he paid her off to shut up.
00:27:46.000And then he lied about paying her off to shut her up.
00:27:49.000I mean, so, like, this is what Trump does.
00:27:51.000He lies, he does a bad thing, and then he lies about the bad thing, and then he lies about the lie, and then it's turtles all the way down.
00:27:58.000That doesn't mean that the lies are illegal.
00:27:59.000It does mean that as moral human beings, we should point out that the president seems to lie a lot, which is true.
00:28:06.000He acted embarrassingly a lot during the 2016 campaign.
00:28:09.000He lied about Trump Tower in Moscow to the American public for months.
00:28:13.000He was praising WikiLeaks, he was suggesting that WikiLeaks was not a Russian friend, he didn't know anything about WikiLeaks, all of that.
00:28:18.000And then he acted even more embarrassingly and immorally in order to avoid the consequences of his original activity.
00:28:23.000So, for example, he instructed his own son, Donald Trump Jr., to lie to the press in his statement about the Trump Tower meeting.
00:28:49.000Okay, it's not criminal, but just as moral humans, we should be able to say that things are bad.
00:28:54.000He tried to push his White House counsel, Don McGahn, to lie to the press regarding his desire to fire James Comey and Robert Mueller.
00:29:03.000He tried via Corey Lewandowski, To push Attorney General Sessions to talk about his innocence and constrict the scope of the Mueller investigation.
00:29:10.000He tried to have Corey Lewandowski send a letter from him to Sessions trying to dictate what Sessions said.
00:29:16.000He tried to pressure Sessions to unrecuse himself and publicly browbeat him to do so.
00:29:21.000A lot of this stuff was happening and we knew about it.
00:29:23.000He tried to get Don McGahn to fire Mueller based on nonsensical accusations of conflict of interest.
00:29:28.000All of this is immoral and bad and terrible behavior.
00:29:31.000He encouraged Sarah Huckabee Sanders to lie about the firing of Comey.
00:29:35.000Flashback, here's Sarah Huckabee Sanders talking about how the reason that Comey was fired is because he was unpopular inside the FBI and then she admitted in the Mueller report to the Mueller team she had no evidence of this.
00:29:47.000I've heard from countless members of the FBI that are grateful and thankful for the President's decision.
00:29:53.000I've certainly heard from a large number of individuals, and that's just myself, and I don't even know that many people in the FBI.
00:29:59.000You said now today, and I think you said again yesterday, that you personally have talked to countless FBI officials, employees, since this happened.
00:30:13.000Between like email, text messages, absolutely.
00:30:18.000Look, we're not going to get into a numbers game.
00:30:22.000I mean, I have heard from a large number of individuals that work at the FBI that said that they're very happy with the president's decision.
00:30:30.000OK, according to the Mueller report, this was nonsense.
00:30:32.000She told the Mueller report, she told the Mueller team that this was completely baseless, that it was not true.
00:30:44.000Why can't you acknowledge that what you said then was not true?
00:30:49.000I said that the word I used countless, and I also said if you look at what's in quotations for me, it's that, and it's that it was in the heat of the moment, meaning that it wasn't a scripted talking point.
00:31:01.000I'm sorry that I wasn't a robot like the Democrat Party.
00:31:05.000Okay, so again, this is not a good defense.
00:31:07.000President Trump was encouraging his people to lie for him, as I've said before.
00:31:10.000Obama also encouraged his team to lie for him.
00:31:12.000I mean, this is something that happened.
00:31:13.000He asserted executive privilege to protect his own attorney general from a contempt charge from Congress.
00:31:18.000But we do have to note immorality when it occurs, or we are morally compromised.
00:31:37.000Okay, now, a couple more points that I want to make about the Mueller report, and then we'll get to all the blowback on the Mueller report.
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00:33:17.000I think he'd rather be drinking from the bottle that is probably next to him.
00:33:19.000tumblr he will grow to be big and strong with tremendous brain power there's a lot going on in this picture for one brian does not look happy about his situation sorry brian i think he'd rather be drinking from the bottle that is probably next to him second move brian away from the knives I mean, that's true.
00:33:35.000Childproofing, probably a good idea here.
00:33:37.000But really, thank you for being a subscriber all the way from Paris too, which is pretty awesome.
00:33:41.000Certainly Paris is on our mind this week, so this is really great.
00:33:44.000And you too can enjoy the Leftist Tears Tumblr when you subscribe.
00:33:47.000And if you send us a photo like this and you hashtag it LeftistTearsTumblr, then you may be featured next week.
00:33:53.000On the Ben Shapiro show, so who knows?
00:34:03.000Also, there's a reason that you should subscribe.
00:34:06.000Not only do you get two additional hours of the show every day, and yesterday's show was great because we had a bunch of legal experts who were breaking down the Mueller report all day, every day.
00:34:15.000Plus, Get access to Ask Us Questions on Daily Wire backstage, which we did last night to break down the Mueller Report even more, as though you weren't Mueller'd out already.
00:34:25.000And you get our Sunday special on Saturday.
00:35:28.000McGann stopped Trump from firing both Sessions and Mueller.
00:35:31.000He refused to comply with Trump's order to lie about the Mueller incident in a statement to the public.
00:35:36.000Jeff Sessions refused to unrecuse himself and fire Mueller.
00:35:38.000Chris Christie, even Chris Christie, refused to facilitate bizarre phone calls with James Comey.
00:35:43.000When Chris Christie is saying, dude, you're going too far, you may be going too far.
00:35:47.000Rick Dearborn refused to threaten Jeff Sessions.
00:35:50.000Corey Lewandowski refused to directly carry a letter.
00:35:52.000I mean, when Corey Lewandowski is the angel on your shoulder, you're doing things wrong.
00:35:58.000James Comey didn't end his investigation of Mike Flynn and Trump didn't pressure him to continue to do so.
00:36:03.000As the report notes, quote, the president's efforts to influence the investigation were mostly unsuccessful, but that is largely because the persons who surrounded the president declined to carry out orders or accede to his requests.
00:36:14.000So what that statement is basically saying there for Mueller is, you know, we wish we could charge him with obstruction, but he didn't actually obstruct.
00:36:22.000And one of the reasons he didn't obstruct is because his team prevented him from doing that, which, good for them.
00:36:27.000Also, Trump doesn't know what obstruction of justice is.
00:36:30.000Also, Trump doesn't understand how many things work inside the government, and so he says lots of stuff.
00:36:34.000There's an upside to that, which is that he violates long-held taboos that happen to be stupid.
00:36:39.000The downside of that is that he gets himself in trouble an awful lot by violating taboos that are there for a reason.
00:36:44.000Okay, point number seven on the Mueller report.
00:36:47.000Trump probably was not trying to cover anything up.
00:37:33.000And I've been through two divorces, man.
00:37:35.000So, you know, that last line right there, that's the one that matters.
00:37:39.000So the press took that first line out of context, the one where it says that he is effed, this is the end of my presidency.
00:37:45.000They took that out of context to suggest that the president of the United States was saying he's guilty of something and now Mueller is going to uncover the guilt and now he is obstructing because Mueller is going to uncover the guilt.
00:37:54.000But that's not what he's saying at all.
00:37:56.000What Trump is saying rightly is that this entire investigation is stupid.
00:38:00.000There's no reason for the collusion investigation because there's nothing there.
00:38:17.000That is not only not unreasonable, that is factually true.
00:38:20.000So when Trump said that, and then the media doing what the media do, take that out of context to suggest this was some sort of admission of guilt.
00:39:13.000What is Mueller actually doing with the report?
00:39:16.000So the first half of the report, Mueller does his job.
00:39:19.000He checks into collusion, and then he says, not evidence sufficient to prosecute, effectively exoneration.
00:39:26.000Second half of the report is him naming incident after incident after incident in which Trump acted badly, but borderline non-criminally, meaning that President Trump told people to lie to the media.
00:39:54.000I mean, this is the common thread that runs through here.
00:39:56.000So Mueller had basically four choices here.
00:39:59.000He had four choices after looking at all the material.
00:40:01.000Choice number one, recommend obstruction of justice charges against the president.
00:40:05.000Now, there are some burdens that prevent him from doing that.
00:40:08.000One, an obstruction of justice charge is very difficult to prove.
00:40:11.000Two, an obstruction of justice charge against the president of the United States exercising his lawful authority under the executive branch is very difficult to prove and the president's own branch indicting him.
00:40:22.000for obstruction of justice is questionable at best.
00:40:29.000He says, we could recommend that obstruction of justice charges be brought against him, but they may not be able to be brought until after he is no longer president.
00:40:37.000If he's in the White House, then that provides him with a certain level of immunity.
00:40:40.000So there are a bunch of problems with option number one, recommend obstruction of justice charges.
00:40:45.000Option number two, say not evidence-sufficient to prosecute.
00:40:49.000Now, this is the one that actually applies.
00:40:52.000Because there is not evidence sufficient to prosecute.
00:40:54.000I've talked to several prosecutors over the last 24 hours.
00:40:57.000I don't know a prosecutor who would have been able to successfully prosecute this case or even would have taken this case.
00:41:03.000There is just too much reasonable doubt.
00:41:05.000In fact, this is basically a 50-50 coin flip at best for the prosecution.
00:41:09.000I think it's more like a 20-80 coin flip for the prosecution.
00:41:15.000Because the most plausible explanation for all of Trump's behavior is not corrupt intent, it's dude's pissed off and immature, and so he does pissed off immature things.
00:41:23.000And that's, that's the best explanation.
00:41:28.000Which brings us to option number three.
00:41:30.000Him just saying, there's nothing here, acquittal, exonerated, be on your way.
00:41:35.000He wasn't going to say that, because Mueller uncovered all of this activity and he didn't like the activity, and so he wasn't just going to say there's nothing here.
00:41:42.000So again, of the three options stated so far, number two was the best.
00:42:23.000Which means that what Mueller is actually doing here, and pretty much everybody is onto the game, what Mueller and his team are doing here is they don't like Trump very much.
00:42:52.000Andy McCarthy correctly writes, if special counsel Mueller believed there was an obstruction offense, he should have had the courage of his convictions and recommended charging the president.
00:42:59.000Since he wasn't convinced there was enough evidence to charge, he should have said he wasn't recommending charges.
00:43:04.000But he didn't do either of those things, which means he copped out because what he actually wants is an impeachment hearing on all of these things.
00:43:12.000So the question is, did Mueller abdicate his responsibility here?
00:43:17.000What is his actual responsibility here?
00:43:18.000So the case in favor of Mueller, to be fair to him, is that the immense public scrutiny on this investigation meant that his report was going to be public.
00:43:27.000And because his report was going to be public, he did not want to be in a position of acquitting the president on charges.
00:43:33.000He felt that his job here was not, in fact, to recommend an up or down.
00:43:38.000It was to provide the information to the American public.
00:43:41.000Now, that really should not be his job.
00:43:43.000Remember, this started off as a counterintelligence investigation, trying to uncover nefarious activities by foreigners interfering in American elections, and it morphed into a criminal investigation.
00:43:53.000Under the auspices of a criminal investigation, as McCarthy says, this should be an up-or-down thing.
00:44:09.000James Comey, in 2016, famously went out there and laid forth all the grounds for Hillary Clinton's guilt and then said, not recommending prosecution.
00:44:48.000Now, maybe the FBI feels a newfound public responsibility to be the public relations branch of every investigation.
00:44:55.000But the problem is that because this investigation was run that way, that's one of the things that led President Trump to be as obstructive and thwarting In his attitude as he was.
00:45:09.000Because Trump felt correctly throughout the entire investigation that every five minutes somebody was leaking something about Trump-Russia collusion or obstruction to the press.
00:45:30.000They came out publicly, and they exposed all of this information.
00:45:33.000Now, I thought that that was a good idea, and I still think it's a good idea for all the information to be in the public eye, because this is what we expect.
00:45:38.000But, as a balance of powers question, this is inside Congress's purview.
00:45:42.000It is not the job of the FBI to provide the grounds for impeachment.
00:45:46.000It is up to the FBI to provide the grounds for a criminal indictment.
00:45:48.000If that is not forthcoming, Then they were really supposed to shut up.
00:45:52.000The fact the process works the way it works is not on Mueller.
00:45:55.000It is an indictment of the entire system, which should not work this way.
00:45:58.000If Congress wants to subpoena people and create grounds for impeachment, that is their job.
00:46:03.000It's not up to the executive branch to do the dirty work of providing the grid work for getting rid of other members of the executive branch on behalf of the legislature.
00:46:10.000It's a serious balance of powers problem.
00:46:12.000Okay, time for some things I like and then some things that I hate.
00:46:59.000It tells you the whole story of the Exodus in a really creative and interesting way.
00:47:03.000If you've never been to a Seder, you should go to a Seder, whether you are a Jew or a non-Jew.
00:47:07.000We've had non-Jews to our Seder for many years, and it's really great.
00:47:10.000People want to engage with their heritage.
00:47:12.000By the way, the reason that Good Friday happens to usually coincide with Passover is because the Last Supper was presumably a Passover meal.
00:48:18.000Okay, time for a quick thing that I hate.
00:48:24.000Okay, so a quick thing that I hate today.
00:48:27.000Well, first of all, the entire media is suggesting that impeachment should be on the table when they really don't have the grounds for impeachment.
00:48:34.000But the other kind of silly thing that I hate today is we now have to retroactively go back and dig up people's bodies to yell at them.
00:48:43.000So the Yankees have decided they are no longer going to play Kate Smith's rendition of God Bless America.
00:48:49.000After learning her history of racist song lyrics.
00:48:52.000She was a famous singer during World War II and usually they play her version of God Bless America.
00:48:58.000But apparently, she was a famous singer and previously recorded a song titled, Piccaninny Heaven.
00:49:03.000The tune was directed at colored children who had fantasized about an amazing place with great big watermelons.
00:49:08.000And the video that accompanied the song was shot in an orphanage for black kids and included imagery that was startlingly racist.
00:49:15.000Smith also reportedly recorded a tune called, That's Why Darkies Were Born, which includes the lyric, someone had to pick the cotton, that's why darkies were born.
00:49:24.000Also, this lady's been dead for half a century.
00:49:27.000So, are we just looking for excuses to be pissed off right now?
00:49:30.000Like, if we're really going to spend all of our time digging up old bodies and yelling at them, and then wiping away the contributions that we like from history, we do have to, to a certain extent, separate the art from the artist.
00:49:42.000There are lots of bad people who have been artists.
00:49:44.000Lots of people who believe terrible things.
00:49:47.000Who have provided art that we really enjoy.
00:49:49.000Is the idea that we are no longer allowed to enjoy their art because they said bad things in the past?
00:49:53.000I enjoy a lot of the art created by open communists during the 1950s.
00:49:58.000Do I have to not enjoy the music of Dmitry Tyomkin anymore?
00:50:02.000Am I supposed to pretend that I hate John Wayne movies because he gave a bad Playboy interview in 1972?
00:50:51.000If you are looking for reasons to be offended, you will certainly find them, but I would suggest that you're not gonna live a very happy life if you do.
00:50:57.000Alrighty, so we will be back here next week with much more.
00:51:01.000So I'm not doing the radio show next week because of Passover.
00:51:03.000I will still be here every week that is not a Yom Tov for the podcast, Yom Tov, meaning a holiday.
00:51:08.000And so we will see you here next week.
00:51:10.000If you're celebrating Passover, have a wonderful Passover.
00:51:12.000If you are celebrating Easter in the upcoming future, have a wonderful Easter.
00:51:16.000Really, it's a great time of the year.
00:51:19.000Enjoy your weekend, and we'll be back here to tell you about everything that's happening on Monday.