In this episode, Ben Shapiro reacts to Adam Schiff's emotional testimony in support of Joe Biden during his testimony before the House Intelligence Committee on Thursday. He says it's time for the Democrats to get more emotion and more props in order to make their case against President Trump and Russia, and he suggests an idea that could do just that: a Muppets episode featuring Kermit the Frog, Miss Piggy, and Kermit himself! Ben Shapiro is the host of The Ben Shapiro Show on Fox News Radio and host of the conservative podcast The Weekly Standard. He's also a regular contributor to Fox News and the Weekly Standard, and is a frequent contributor to the New York Times, CNN, and other media outlets. His new book, is out now, and it's available for pre-order on Amazon Prime and Vimeo worldwide. If you don't already own an Amazon Prime membership, you can get 20% off for as little as $99.99, and get 7 days free when you sign up for Prime membership starting July 1st. You'll get 7 months of unlimited access to all of the latest and greatest Prime Video streaming services, including Vimeo and other major podcasting platforms, including the Huffington Post, Comedy Central, NPR, NPR and NPR, and the BBC. Subscribe to his new podcast, The FiveThirtyEight, where he'll be giving you access to his full-length documentary series on all things politics, politics, economics, and culture, politics and culture. and much more. Ben's next book is out soon! He'll also be giving out a limited-edition limited edition hardcover edition of his new novel, The Devil's Advocate, out soon. The Devil Next Door, out in paperback, available for only $99, plus a limited edition paperback edition, out on Audible and Audible, which will be out in hardcover, on May 1st, too! Subscribe now! Learn more about Ben Shapiro's new book: "Ben Shapiro's Testimony" is available for purchase starting July 27th. Watch this entire series on the Four Seasons, starting July 9th, 2020. Listen to Ben's newest book, "The Devil's Workday." Watch the full video version of the show on his new book "The Man Who Couldn't Do It? coming soon, coming out July 9, 2020, coming out on July 18th, 2019.
00:00:34.000Now, I know the media is going to tell you that this is a figment of the right-wing imagination, that actually people are on tenterhooks, but the ratings do not lie.
00:00:40.000The ratings continue to be abysmal for what is supposed to be one of the great historic moments in American history, the moment when Adam Schiff saved the republic.
00:00:48.000I do not think that the American people are tuned into this thing.
00:00:51.000I don't think the American people care deeply.
00:00:53.000I think all of this is baked into the cake at this point.
00:00:56.000So, the fact that the Democrats keep trying to sell this thing, like the entertainment press is trying to sell female Ghostbusters, is entertaining to me.
00:01:04.000It's also entertaining to me how the Democrats have decided to ramp up the theatrics.
00:01:08.000So, in the end, the case that they are making about President Trump is not completely implausible, right?
00:01:13.000They're making the case that Trump tried to pressure The president of Ukraine into going after Joe Biden to benefit Trump in 2020 solely.
00:01:45.000A man who, as I've said before, went on television for two years claiming he had secret information that was going to damn President Trump to impeachment for collusion with Russia.
00:01:55.000You have Adam Schiff pretending to be a leader of the moral hierarchy in the United States.
00:02:00.000You have Adam Schiff, the same fellow who within the last week has openly lied about content he knew he was lying about.
00:02:07.000Notes from Lev Parnas to Rudy Giuliani concerning a meeting with the head of Burisma.
00:02:12.000He portrayed it as a meeting with the head of Ukraine.
00:02:14.000Adam Schiff, the same guy who was pretty much openly cooperating, his office was, with the whistleblower and then pretending he had no idea who the whistleblower was and all of this, which I don't believe for half a second.
00:02:24.000Adam Schiff, a deeply dishonest human being.
00:02:27.000He was out there making his closing argument last night and it was as dishonest as you would suspect, but it was also as emotional as you would suspect.
00:02:35.000He took CNN's Dana Bash's, Dana Bash had a suggestion yesterday.
00:02:38.000She said, the American people, they don't seem all that invested in this.
00:02:40.000What we need is we need more props and more emotion.
00:02:44.000We need the Democrats to get up there and do an episode of The Muppet Show.
00:02:47.000We actually need Kermit the Frog talking about Donald Trump and Ukraine.
00:03:08.000Now, do you believe that Adam Schiff is actually getting choked up here?
00:03:12.000Do you believe that Adam Schiff, a former prosecutor, longtime congressperson, that he is actually getting emotional here?
00:03:20.000That Adam Schiff is just, he was overwhelmed with the moment.
00:03:23.000That he was so overcome with the moment that he was getting choked up because morality matters and right matters.
00:03:32.000Okay, if you believe this, you're an idiot.
00:03:33.000Seriously, if you believe in the emotion of politicians generally, you're an idiot.
00:03:37.000The only time I've ever seen politicians get truly emotional and I thought, okay, this is pretty real.
00:03:41.000is when George W. Bush after 9-11, because everybody was so shaken up by 9-11, or you might say like Edmund Muskie in 1972 when his actual family is being attacked.
00:03:50.000Like I believe it when Joe Biden gets pissed about Hunter Biden or Beau Biden.
00:03:59.000But do I believe it when politicians on the grand stage in their closing argument suddenly turn into Jimmy Stewart from Mr. Smith Goes to Washington?
00:04:08.000No, I don't believe that for a second because Jimmy Stewart was an actor.
00:05:08.000Mr. Smith goes to wash and Claude Rains in the back room shooting himself.
00:05:13.000Or alternatively, this was highly produced and really silly and quite ridiculous.
00:05:18.000And again, the whole argument is quite ridiculous and self-contradictory.
00:05:21.000Because when you actually look at what Adam Schiff said yesterday, so many of the things that he said were just not true.
00:05:26.000So here was Adam Schiff, for example, talking about Barack Obama's Ukraine policy.
00:05:29.000So one of the points that the Trump team has made is that you keep complaining about the Trump team's treatment of Ukraine.
00:05:35.000You keep complaining that Team Trump is really, really mean to Ukraine.
00:05:39.000Well, Team Trump provided actual killing aid to Ukraine, like military aid to Ukraine that included weaponry capable of protecting them against the Russians, which is something the Obama administration did not do.
00:05:49.000And yet you had Adam Schiff saying, no, no, no, you don't understand.
00:05:52.000Obama rallied the world against Russia invading Ukraine.
00:06:00.000And that rallying the world involved President Trump basically doing nothing for months on end, and then every so often saying that it was very, very bad, that Russia was doing a very bad thing.
00:06:08.000Which is exactly what he did in Syria also.
00:06:10.000So here is Adam Schiff just lying about Barack Obama's record.
00:06:14.000President Obama used his calls with foreign leaders to contain the fallout from the global economic crisis, assemble an international coalition to fight the Islamic State, and of course to rally support for Ukraine following Russia's invasion of Crimea.
00:06:31.000No matter what you think of the policy views or priorities of these prior presidents, there is no question that they are examples of the normal diplomacy that happens during presidential telephone calls.
00:06:44.000And then there's the normal diplomacy that happens when you're on the stage with Dimitri Medvedev and telling him that you'll offer his country flexibility after the election so long as they back off before the election.
00:06:52.000That was the part that Adam Schiff didn't play on tape.
00:07:28.000You don't want to talk about that with people.
00:07:29.000You know, maybe it's hard to even talk about that with a doctor.
00:07:32.000Well, good news for you, you can head on over to GetRoman.com right now and you can get it done really fast and really quickly and confidentially.
00:07:47.000Well, if you're dealing with a condition like ED, you want treatment ASAP, which is why our friends at Roman have spent years building a digital platform that can connect you with a doctor licensed in your state, all from the comfort of home.
00:07:57.000Roman makes it convenient to get the treatment you need on your schedule.
00:07:59.000Just grab your phone or computer, complete a free online visit, you'll hear back from a U.S.
00:08:29.000Get this done quickly, get it done easily, and get it taken care of.
00:08:32.000Why exactly would you be sitting around waiting on it?
00:08:34.000Okay, speaking of Adam Schiff pushing silliness.
00:08:37.000So Adam Schiff also made the case that President Trump was pushing Russian propaganda about Ukrainian interference in the election.
00:08:42.000Now, I think that President Trump buys into confirmation bias in an extraordinary way.
00:08:48.000I think that President Trump bought into a bunch of stories about all the stuff that was happening in Ukraine.
00:08:53.000And a lot of those stories were not true.
00:08:54.000The conspiracy theory that CrowdStrike was a Ukrainian-operated business that was hiding the reality that Ukraine had hacked Hillary Clinton's server, that Hillary Clinton's actual server was buried in a forest outside Kiev or some such nonsense.
00:09:06.000I agree that that's nonsense, but the Democrats really overplayed their hand here when they suggest that there was no Ukrainian interference in the election.
00:09:13.000We know that there was Ukrainian interference in the election.
00:09:15.000Politico reported there was Ukrainian interference in the election.
00:09:26.000But for the Democrats to overplay this thing and then say there was no interference, which is what they now have to claim in order so that they can say that it was really about Donald Trump trying to manufacture information about Joe Biden for 2020, they have to fib.
00:09:38.000So here's Adam Schiff fibbing a little bit.
00:09:42.000What the president is talking about here is a very specific conspiracy theory.
00:10:18.000And so again, the reason that he is saying this is because if he acknowledges that maybe there could be legit interest in what Ukraine did and maybe what Trump was doing, even if it was based on wrong information, was not badly motivated.
00:10:29.000And the problem is the Democrats have to assume motive in order to get where they want to go right here.
00:10:34.000Meanwhile, the Democrats are opening the door to testimony by Hunter Biden.
00:10:38.000So Sylvia Garcia, Representative Garcia, she's one of the other impeachment managers in the House.
00:10:43.000And she, like Adam Schiff, they do not want Hunter Biden to testify.
00:10:50.000They want to have Mick Mulvaney, as we'll get to, testify.
00:10:53.000They want everybody to testify except for Hunter Biden.
00:10:55.000They do not want Hunter Biden to testify.
00:10:58.000And so they've been making the argument that Hunter Biden should not testify because they're trying to protect Joe Biden.
00:11:03.000Sheryl Gay Stolberg reporting for the New York Times, House Democrats sought on Thursday to preemptively dismantle President Trump's core defenses in his impeachment trial, invoking his own words to argue that his pressure campaign on Ukraine was an abuse of power that warranted his removal.
00:11:16.000Democrats sought to make the case that Trump's actions were an affront to the Constitution, and they worked to disprove his lawyer's claim that he was acting only in the nation's interest when he sought to enlist Ukraine to investigate political rivals.
00:11:26.000In doing so, they took a calculated risk in talking at length about President Trump's targets, including former VP Joe Biden and his son Hunter Biden, and underscored the political backdrop of a trial unfolding only 10 months before the election and likely to reverberate long after the verdict.
00:11:42.000Even if the president wanted an investigation of Hunter Biden, there is no basis for that either.
00:11:46.000about Hunter Biden, no reason to be concerned about Hunter Biden.
00:11:48.000The Democrats are playing a dangerous game here because once they say we want additional witnesses and then they say we don't want Hunter Biden, people are going to say, OK, why why is the central issue here not being addressed?
00:11:59.000Here's Sylvia Garcia opening the door wide.
00:12:00.000Even if the president wanted an investigation of Hunter Biden, there is no basis for that either.
00:12:31.000One, some Ukrainians say that Hunter Biden did nothing wrong and Joe Biden did nothing wrong.
00:12:35.000Then you have other prosecutors like Victor Shokin, the one that Biden went after, who is actually apparently selling the information that Biden did do something wrong.
00:12:43.000Also, if your line is that Ukrainians said that Hunter Biden and Joe Biden did nothing wrong, you know who has said that Donald Trump did nothing wrong?
00:12:51.000So if you're going to cite the Ukrainian leadership to the effect that Hunter Biden and Joe Biden are off the hook, the same people have also said that Donald Trump is off the hook, but you don't cite them in support of one proposition, but you cite them in support of the other proposition.
00:13:02.000So all of this is a bit of a mess for the Democrats.
00:13:05.000We're going to get to More of this in just one second.
00:13:08.000First, let us talk about why cybersecurity should be an issue for you.
00:13:12.000Why you should really pay attention to your own cybersecurity.
00:13:14.000So we here at The Daily Wire, we spend tons of money and tons of time protecting our cybersecurity because we're a major company and we come under attack on a fairly regular basis.
00:13:25.000There are a lot of hackers who want your personal information.
00:13:27.000In fact, there are a lot of people who will make more money off of stealing your personal information off of your computer than they will trying to hack a big company.
00:13:34.000It takes a lot of resources to hack a big company.
00:14:41.000Now the Democrats, again, are trying to manipulate the process more than a little bit here.
00:14:46.000The way that they are doing this is they are targeting people deliberately, whom they know have executive privilege, specifically so that they can claim that obstruction is going on.
00:14:54.000This is the argument being made by Senator Tom Cotton.
00:15:16.000People who are subject to executive privilege.
00:15:18.000Particularly on foreign policy, executive privilege does run pretty wide.
00:15:23.000Tom Cotton says what Democrats are doing right here is they're attempting to call people who will cite executive privilege so they can then claim that obstruction is taking place.
00:15:32.000The Democrats have not sought the testimony of Rudy Giuliani, a private citizen, or say, Secretary Rick Perry or Secretary Mike Pompeo, who regularly testify in front of Congress.
00:15:44.000Why are they going after the President's closest advisors, those most likely subject to executive privilege?
00:15:49.000It's because they care more about trying to create a campaign issue against Republican senators than they care about getting relevant testimony.
00:15:59.000Okay, and again, that is underscored by the fact that they keep saying that Hunter Biden should not testify.
00:16:03.000Lindsey Graham, who is fairly close with Joe Biden, right?
00:16:07.000He says, listen, I don't think Joe Biden is corrupt, but we sort of have to ask the question at this point, and let's be straight about this.
00:16:13.000If Hunter Biden was named Donald Trump Jr., and he was doing all this stuff right now, wouldn't the Democrats be taking precisely the opposite position?
00:16:24.000From the time they raided the president's home, Joe Biden called the president of Ukraine four times, got on a plane, and said, if you don't fire this guy, you don't get the billion dollars.
00:17:04.000Senator Cruz keeps saying, okay, well, that is the president's defense.
00:17:06.000And now you're trying to deny him his main defense, which is that he was legitimately interested in corruption in Ukraine, including Hunter Biden's corruption.
00:17:16.000Adam Schiff's arguments to open the day-to-day directly drew into question Hunter Biden and made not only his testimony relevant, which it already was, but it is now critical because the House Democrats have built their entire case on the proposition that any investigation into Baris and corruption was a sham, that it was completely debunked.
00:17:38.000The problem is, there is very significant prima facie evidence of corruption.
00:17:46.000Because again, if we call additional witnesses, I think there's very little doubt Hunter Biden ends up on the stand.
00:17:51.000And at the very least, that's not gonna look great for Joe Biden.
00:17:53.000No matter whether Joe Biden did something wrong or whether he didn't do something wrong, it doesn't look great when you're squiring your son around and he's using your last name to pick up bags of cash.
00:18:02.000Meanwhile, the other big news from impeachment gate is that CBS Evening News is reporting that apparently somebody, and it's unclear who, somebody, either a Republican in the Senate or a Republican in the White House is telling people in the Senate that their head will be on a pike, that their head will be on a pike if they oppose President Trump in this impeachment effort.
00:18:24.000Now, why that exactly is newsworthy is beyond me, honestly.
00:18:27.000Like, I understand that the language is very colorful, but do you think that those sorts of threats do not happen literally every single day in the legislature?
00:18:34.000Why do you think that people back down before Nancy Pelosi?
00:18:35.000Do you think it's because she wheedles them?
00:18:37.000Or do you think that she says, guess what, I'm not going to fundraise for you, and the guillotine is prepared in the back room?
00:18:43.000All I'm saying is that your head may not be connected to your body.
00:18:47.000You can't portray her as the Queen of Dragons without there being a little bit of a threat involved, which is exactly the way the Democrats have portrayed Nancy Pelosi for years.
00:18:56.000But apparently it's very, very bad for the White House to employ its leverage over Republicans.
00:19:00.000Now listen, would it be better, would we live in a better world if nobody ever applied leverage to their own congresspeople and everybody just voted their conscience?
00:19:37.000It could be somebody who is a staffer for the president.
00:19:39.000It could be George Conway because he's close to the president by proxy.
00:19:42.000It could be anybody telling CBS News that apparently senators were warned, quote, vote against the president and your head will be on a pike.
00:19:49.000And then the Daily Mail reports, it's unclear from the report whether the warning was issued by the White House or Republican leadership in the Senate.
00:19:55.000So we don't even know who issued the warning.
00:19:56.000It could have been just some guy on a street corner going, your head will be on a pike!
00:19:59.000And CBS News is like, well, that's a threat.
00:20:04.000Does anybody actually believe that President Trump is going to stomp on over to the Senate?
00:20:08.000And he's going to take out a broad axe?
00:20:10.000And he's going to start going to town if somebody votes against him on impeachment?
00:20:13.000No, it means that he's applying political pressure, which again, if you think political pressure was not applied on Democrats during the Clinton impeachment, you're out of your mind.
00:20:23.000But this is now being used as a case in point of Trumpian intimidation, when in reality, that's just the nature of politics.
00:20:32.000What's more interesting than that report, and this one is not getting any play, is the fact that Democrats are not approaching any of the moderate Republicans.
00:20:38.000The Washington Post reports That the most closely watched senators of President Trump's impeachment trial are oddly isolated.
00:20:46.000They say that President Trump is keeping his distance because White House advisors are telling him that outreach wouldn't help his cause, which is obviously true.
00:20:51.000If Trump calls up Susan Collins, she's going to say that he is trying to intimidate her and she's going to stand up to him, right?
00:20:57.000If he calls up Mitt Romney, that's not going to go great for him.
00:20:59.000But meanwhile, Democrats say there is no serious effort to privately lobby the Republicans, with the party instead relying on public opinion and the House prosecutors to squeeze them into breaking ranks.
00:21:09.000It shows that they know that they're not going to get those Republican senators on their side.
00:21:12.000They're just trying to gin up public sentiment in advance of the 2020 elections.
00:21:15.000That's really what that is about, right?
00:21:17.000If the Democrats truly cared about trying to win this impeachment vote, they'd be out there lobbying the Republican senators like day in and day out.
00:21:25.000Instead, they are pushing a different idea, which is public opinion, right?
00:21:29.000They're trying to push public opinion to push the senators, which really suggests that this isn't about winning the impeachment battle at all.
00:21:35.000Really, what this is about, in effect, is trying to undercut those senators for purposes of 2020, which, of course, is what this entire thing is about in the first place.
00:21:43.000In just one second, I'm going to get to the 2020 race because frankly, all of this is about the 2020 race and there is a fascinating example of the left shooting itself directly in the foot because they cannot help themselves.
00:22:05.000If you'd like to know the real truth and get a behind-the-scenes look into everything happening, check out the newly released podcast, Verdict, with Ted Cruz.
00:22:11.000Senator Cruz and The Daily Wire's own useless Michael Knowles take you behind the scenes of the Capitol, give you exclusive conservative insight on the most important political stories of the day.
00:22:24.000Join Senator Ted Cruz as he breaks down the most important political stories of the day on his new podcast, Verdict.
00:22:33.000If you get to the heart of the problem with the House Democrats' case here, it's that they have an alleged treason, bribery, or other high crimes or misdemeanors.
00:22:42.000And let's actually talk about what the constitutional standard is.
00:22:45.000Subscribe today and leave a five-star review for Verdict with Ted Cruz, co-hosted by me, Michael Knowles.
00:22:51.000On Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and everywhere else you get your podcasts.
00:22:57.000I know that that podcast is soaring up the charts.
00:22:59.000Be sure to go check it out on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your favorite streaming service.
00:23:02.000Again, it's called Verdict with Ted Cruz, and it really is a good inside look at what exactly is going on on a day to day level in the Senate.
00:23:09.000Meanwhile, in the 2020 race, I am amused by the radical left.
00:23:31.000He's had Barry Weiss, and he's had people who I think are wildly not Barry Weiss, right?
00:23:38.000I mean, he's had people from virtually every area of life.
00:23:42.000Well, Joe Rogan was asked by Barry Weiss on his show I think I'll probably vote for Bernie.
00:23:53.000Him as a human being, when I was hanging out with him, I believe in him, I like him, I like him a lot.
00:23:59.000What Bernie stands for is a guy who, look, you could dig up dirt on every single human being that's ever existed if you catch them in their worst moment and you magnify those moments and you cut out everything else and you only display those worst moments.
00:24:13.000That said, You can't find very many with Bernie.
00:24:17.000He's been insanely consistent his entire life.
00:24:20.000Okay, so Rogan is saying, what really is Bernie's appeal?
00:24:24.000Which is that Bernie has been this old commie for his entire life.
00:24:27.000Now, I don't find that appealing, right?
00:24:28.000I think that his ideas have been bad since, basically, he emerged from his mother's womb at age 82.
00:24:33.000But, like, he's like the high school principal in Back to the Future.
00:24:45.000People who like Bernie believe that he is authentic, and so they're like, okay, at least he believes what he believes, and that goes a long way with Joe.
00:24:51.000Now, again, I disagree with Joe on this.
00:24:52.000I think Bernie Sanders is a trash heap.
00:24:55.000I think he associates with the worst people.
00:24:57.000I think that he champions the worst people.
00:24:59.000But what's hilarious is the left, which has no problem whatsoever with Bernie Sanders hanging out with Linda Sarsour, no problem with him being endorsed by Sean King, no problem with Bernie Sanders touting the endorsements of some of the most radical people in American life.
00:25:27.000That's not, it really is not super shocking.
00:25:30.000And authenticity matters an awful lot to Joe.
00:25:32.000The reason people are mad is because Joe Rogan has had people like me on his show.
00:25:36.000And the fact that Joe Rogan has had people like me on his show means that Joe Rogan is a very bad man who's very bad and very bad.
00:25:41.000And that means that Bernie Sanders touting his endorsement is really awful.
00:25:45.000Because Joe Rogan believes things like sometimes he says that men are men and women are women and that men should not fight women in MMA.
00:25:52.000That's a thing he has said, and that is quite terrible.
00:25:54.000And also, Joe Rogan is a comedian, which means he has said very politically correct and offensive things in the past, and that is very bad.
00:25:59.000And so now, Bernie Sanders is being attacked by the woke left for the sin of touting the fact that the most popular podcaster in America, right?
00:27:07.000And then people started filling up Sanders' feed with all the things that Cenk has said over the years, and Sanders basically withdrew his endorsement of the endorsement.
00:27:16.000He basically disassociated from Cenk, which is the most gutless move in the entire world.
00:27:25.000I would not be surprised if Bernie Sanders backs off of this.
00:27:28.000I would not be surprised if Bernie Sanders pulls down the tweet and says, while I'm grateful for Joe Rogan's support, I don't agree with everything that Joe Rogan says, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
00:27:36.000That would not be surprising to me at all.
00:27:58.000I mean, Rogan has had on a variety of Democratic candidates, and many of the candidates have asked to come on, and he has said, I don't really want you to come on, right?
00:28:06.000But, Andrew, I'll give you another example of how the woke left is ruining America.
00:28:11.000Andrew Yang is, according to the Emerson poll, now running fourth, right?
00:28:14.000He has like 8% in national polls, according to some polls, which is amazing for a dude who has been completely shut out of the media.
00:28:19.000Andrew Yang had the temerity to appear with me on a Sunday special where he had an hour-long discussion of universal basic income that was completely cordial and interesting and fun and informative.
00:28:34.000One of the reasons Andrew Yang is popular is because Andrew Yang is willing to have conversations with people who disagree without demonizing them.
00:28:41.000Pete Buttigieg has catered to the woke left every step of the way, very early on in the campaign when he first announced, I invited Pete Buttigieg to come on the Sunday special.
00:28:48.000And his campaign manager said he'd love to come on the Sunday special, because at that point he had no attention.
00:28:52.000And then, they got so much blowback that he just ghosted, right?
00:28:55.000Then it was like, nope, don't exist anymore, not interested in coming on, not even going to respond to emails.
00:29:00.000That is not how you build a coalition, obviously.
00:29:03.000But the Democrats are not interested in building a coalition.
00:29:05.000The woke Democrats, at least, are not interested in building a coalition.
00:29:13.000If you are going to force Joe Rogan out of your circle, if you're going to tell you that Joe Rogan cannot, you cannot tout an endorsement from Joe Rogan because he said some bad things about how men are men and women are women.
00:29:35.000You want to push people like Joe Rogan, people like Andrew Yang over to my All you have to do is keep being vicious jackasses all the time and dredging up old comments and then suggesting, well, this person is very bad.
00:30:29.000I don't see any evidence that he's violated the law in Brazil.
00:30:32.000Here I am defending somebody I completely disagree with and I think has vicious views on a variety of topics.
00:30:35.000But Glenn Greenwald, he has an exchange with Sam Stein.
00:30:40.000Sam Stein's a reporter for the Daily Beast.
00:30:43.000And Sam Stein starts criticizing Bernie for the Rogan stuff.
00:30:50.000Right, he tweets out, I totally see the merits in Bernie touting the Joe Rogan endorsement, but I'm also deeply cognizant that I'm not from a community of people that he has attacked and ridiculed, and I have to imagine this is very hard for them.
00:31:05.000Okay, and then Glenn Greenwald responded, quite appropriately, well, you know, it makes kind of sense that he is touting the endorsement from Rogan, because if you actually want to win a coalition, then one of the things that you're going to have to do is Appeal to people who may disagree with you on a variety of other topics.
00:31:31.000The way that they've gone is, first of all, I would never endorse Bernie Sanders, but the thought experiment goes something like this.
00:31:36.000If Joe Rogan, who has said bad, mean things, is endorsed by Bernie Sanders, or at least his endorsement is endorsed by Bernie Sanders, that's very bad.
00:31:57.000What the left wants is to circle the wagons, shut that Overton window so tight that anybody who's outside that Overton window cannot ever be acknowledged as a human being.
00:32:07.000And to make it so that if somebody endorses you, you have to agree with every one of their views in order for you to accept the endorsement.
00:32:13.000Now listen, it would be perfectly appropriate if neo-Nazis endorsed Bernie Sanders for Bernie to say, I don't want their endorsement, right?
00:32:21.000There are certain views that obviously are outside the bounds of, shall we say, the mainstream in American society.
00:32:27.000Men are men and women are women is not outside the bounds of mainstream in American society.
00:32:31.000Joe Rogan is the most popular podcaster in America.
00:32:33.000The fact that the Democrats see fit to go after Bernie Sanders for the great sin of acknowledging that people who disagree on transgender issues might support him.
00:32:53.000For a guy who is considered so courageous, when's the last time he actually stood up on his hind legs and said no to anybody who wasn't the capitalist?
00:32:59.000It's the only issue where he won't back down is when he's ripping on capitalism.
00:33:03.000When it comes to the woke left, there's been no point anywhere along the line here where he has just said, nope, this is a bunch of crap.
00:33:59.000I mean, I think he's the worst candidate in a general election for exactly that reason.
00:34:04.000You think Bernie's the worst candidate?
00:34:05.000Oh, I don't think there's a question about it.
00:34:08.000Okay, so the guns have opened up from Team Obama on Team Bernie, and that is not particularly surprising, but this is the time for Bernie to fight back.
00:34:20.000This is Stalingrad, to use a better analogy, because Bernie is indeed a Stalinist.
00:34:25.000The people who are attacking him are not Nazis, though, so I guess I'll have to think of another analogy.
00:34:30.000All right, in any case, the fact that the Democrats are going after Bernie and that they're going after him for the great sin of unwokeness is amusing to me.
00:34:38.000I am enjoying it, and enjoy, really, enjoy yourselves, guys.
00:34:41.000Okay, in just a second, we're actually gonna do the mailbag.
00:34:43.000We haven't done that in a few weeks, so I would love to take your questions in the mailbag, and we are gonna do that momentarily.
00:34:49.000First, Let me talk about the fact that you will have a better life when your teeth are straighter.
00:35:05.000Well, if you have teeth that have fallen out of place since you were younger or you never got braces, the best way to get those teeth straight looking real good again is to check out Candid.
00:35:14.000I know because I'm using Candid aligners right now.
00:35:17.000My teeth are pretty straight, but They slip out of place over the years, and sometimes you need the aligners to put things back where they should be.
00:36:42.000In this picture, Joe and his son are wearing matching blue Lion King t-shirts, standing out in the hot sun, proudly carrying our glorious tumbler.
00:36:49.000The caption reads, I don't always do Disney, but when I do, I stay hydrated with the greatest in all beverage vessels, the Leftist Tears Hot or Cold Tumbler.
00:36:56.000At Ben Shapiro, hashtag Leftist Tears Tumbler, hashtag always full.
00:37:16.000If you've ever listened to the show, you know this.
00:37:17.000We broadcast live from March for Life last year.
00:37:20.000What you may not know is that because we did that, the leftist activists, the same people going after Joe Rogan today because this is what they do, they decided to go after our advertisers.
00:37:54.000You can go to dailywire.com right now.
00:37:56.000And right now when you subscribe at dailywire.com and you use promo code LIVEACTION, a portion of your subscription membership is donated to LIVEACTION from now until January 31st in expectation of the March for Life.
00:38:08.000Use promo code LIVEACTION and you can get our subscription and give money to a great cause when you go to dailywire.com and make your pro-life voice heard.
00:38:15.000We are the largest, fastest-growing conservative podcast and radio show in the nation.
00:38:18.000Okay, so Chelsea writes, we're going to do some mailbag.
00:38:26.000So Chelsea writes, hey Ben, yesterday you talked about how you think Elizabeth Warren would be able to push through universal childcare.
00:38:31.000With increasing frequency, Republicans are warming up to this idea, even if they understand it would be just another step of the government interfering with and replacing the family.
00:38:38.000What are the best arguments against universal childcare?
00:38:41.000Well, actually Elizabeth Warren, back in 2003, wrote a book called The Two Income Trap, in which she discussed the problem with universal childcare.
00:38:47.000One of the problems with universal childcare is it now assumes that both members of a family have to work.
00:38:52.000That is the basic premise of universal childcare.
00:38:54.000The problem with that is that once you have both members of the family working, she makes this point in the two-income trap, is that it actually drives up real estate prices.
00:39:03.000It requires you to earn more in the market in order to get what you could have gotten for cheaper before when there was only one worker in the household.
00:39:10.000And so what you end up with is a broader labor pool, which does drive down wages.
00:39:14.000Not only does it do that, it requires both members of the family to be working.
00:39:17.000And then in order to buy that house in the suburbs that you want, you need both members of the household working.
00:39:21.000And if you are a stay-at-home mom, you are disadvantaged.
00:39:23.000So it does disadvantage stay-at-home moms.
00:39:25.000It basically subsidizes working moms at the expense of stay-at-home moms, is the idea.
00:39:30.000Also, it subsidizes single moms at the expense of married moms.
00:39:35.000Beyond that, there's a basic premise to universal childcare, which is that all women find fulfillment in working.
00:39:41.000So, the best that you could do, maybe, if you're really concerned about this, here's a great idea, just lower taxes.
00:39:47.000And then if people want to pay for childcare, they can pay for childcare.
00:39:50.000And by the way, there are plenty of workplaces right now that are offering childcare for kids.
00:39:54.000Like seriously, they have childcare downstairs and mom can drop off the kids for the day after school.
00:40:00.000But the idea that universal childcare is an inherent good because mom has to work is an assumption being made about what mothers should be doing that I think cuts against the very grain of female choice in a lot of cases.
00:40:13.000And beyond that, it also creates a weird economic structure whereby everybody is expected to work, including women.
00:40:19.000So it actually removes the choice from women to work or not work in many cases because Now, the idea is that you are expected to work because, after all, universal childcare is available to you.
00:40:29.000I mean, this is the case that Elizabeth Warren, again, herself made while she's pushing universal childcare now.
00:40:34.000So she's reversed herself on that in some pretty dramatic ways.
00:40:37.000Then there is the general libertarian argument, which is, it's none of my business what you do with your kids.
00:40:41.000It is your job to take care of your kids as a general rule.
00:40:45.000I'm all for making sure that those kids are taken care of.
00:40:47.000And if you're in economic straits, I'm all for giving you direct charity.
00:40:50.000But the idea that it is society's job to make sure that you are working a 10-hour day, and that your child is in childcare.
00:40:57.000Also, there's an assumption that childcare is better for kids than being at home with mom, which again, I think is not backed by social science.
00:41:03.000The notion that A family is better off when mom is dumping the kid in child care all day.
00:41:07.000That has some significant drawbacks as well.
00:41:10.000Now, again, local communities can do this, but the idea of a federally mandated universal child care, in which we are all supposed to pay in and that's going to cover everybody, it does incentivize, it creates a perverse incentive.
00:41:20.000It creates a perverse incentive for people to take advantage of the universal child care, and again, makes the government into mommy, which is not a good idea.
00:41:29.000Michael says, hey Ben, If the Chief Justice is presiding over the impeachment trial, why can't he be the deciding factor in calling witnesses?
00:42:35.000And the same thing holds true with communism.
00:42:37.000So communism, it's hard for the Democrats or anybody on the left who is a Marxist to run away from the communist label anymore because communist countries, ones that have self-declared communists have been complete failures every time it's tried.
00:42:48.000So instead what they try to do is distinguish socialism from communism.
00:42:51.000The reality is that if you're calling for public ownership of the means of production, then what you are really talking about is communism.
00:42:57.000What you're talking about is socialism, communism, Marxism, they're all equivalent in this way.
00:43:02.000This has been a longstanding sort of confused debate Von Mises writes about it in his book Socialism from 1920.
00:43:08.000He suggests that really, if you're going to define Marxism, Marxism in the end is not even about the principle from each according to his abilities to each according to his needs.
00:43:15.000It really is about the public ownership of the means of production.
00:43:18.000And there are a lot of aspects to Marxism.
00:43:21.000And different aspects can be analyzed on their own or in combination.
00:43:25.000But the root of economic Marxism is the idea that we cannot have private industry because private industry is profit driven.
00:43:31.000Profits are bad because they are excess and because you are stealing from the workers.
00:43:34.000And the only way to remove those excess profits is to have the workers own the business, but not in a private market.
00:43:40.000Instead, you have to have the government run everything to make sure that workers could be just as capitalist as anybody else.
00:43:45.000Instead, the government has to decide supply demand.
00:44:23.000But if it exists in the context of a free market for drugs, for doctors, if it exists in a free market In general, that is drawing from taxpayer revenue, then you have to distinguish between the socialist aspect and the not socialist aspect.
00:44:35.000Socialism is basically the idea that the entire capitalist system should be overthrown.
00:45:09.000I mean, global warming by best available evidence is occurring.
00:45:14.000It is largely man-caused by best available evidence, even people who are sort of lukewarmers like Roy Spencer, who you've heard on Rush Limbaugh's program, for example.
00:45:23.000Even he will say he believes that over 50% of global warming is being caused by man-made activities and carbon emissions.
00:45:29.000So I don't believe the sort of full-on denial case at all.
00:45:35.000Well, the best answer, honestly, is not going to be a global carbon tax, which is never going to take place.
00:45:39.000China and India will never sign on to that, and it won't be effective without China and India signing on to it.
00:45:43.000Instead, what will be effective is actual economic development.
00:45:49.000The substitution of natural gas for oil in the United States has been responsible for the United States actually dropping its carbon emissions, its rate of carbon emissions, over the last several years.
00:45:59.000Nuclear power is an excellent solution.
00:46:01.000There are new, smaller nuclear plants that can be built using newer technology that's basically been stymied by the environmentalists.
00:46:08.000If you want to know if an environmentalist is serious or not about climate change, just ask if they're trying to ban nuclear power.
00:46:12.000If the answer is they're trying to ban nuclear power, they're not serious about climate change.
00:46:15.000Most of the people who say they're serious about climate change are not, in fact, serious about climate change.
00:46:19.000They don't want to talk about adaptation.
00:46:21.000They don't want to talk about building seawalls.
00:46:23.000They don't want to talk about the possibility of carbon capture.
00:46:27.000They don't want to talk about any of those things.
00:46:29.000They just want to rail against the moon.
00:46:30.000And that's why they love Greta Thunberg, because she will say things openly like, we should just get rid of all carbon-based fossil fuels on planet Earth and not use them anymore, which would reduce pretty much everybody back to the level of our homo erectus ancestors in terms of living standards.
00:46:48.000What do you think of the notion that the Electoral College should move away from a winner-take-all system and instead proportionally allocate electoral votes?
00:46:53.000It seems like this would make candidates focus on states that are not swing states.
00:46:57.000Well, the whole purpose of the Electoral College originally was to balance out the needs of states and the needs of the population generally.
00:47:05.000And it's sort of the same balance that you see in terms of the United States Congress.
00:47:09.000And we ourselves today very often don't even understand why the states ought to matter, because we've lost the concept of federalism and localism entirely.
00:47:16.000So you see Democrats militating against the United States Senate, saying the United States Senate is not representative.
00:47:22.000After all, Montana has as many votes in the Senate as California, and Montana has nine people and California has 50 million.
00:47:27.000So what exactly, why are we doing that?
00:47:29.000The answer is the proportional representation Makes states irrelevant and states never would have signed on to the Constitution if they had known that they were going to become adjuncts to basically, there were going to be barnacles on the whales of California and New York and Massachusetts and New Jersey and all the big population states.
00:47:46.000So the Electoral College, I do not think it should be proportionally allocated.
00:47:49.000I think if you want to do that, just go to a popular vote.
00:47:51.000It doesn't seem to actually mean anything to be proportionally allocated beyond just a reflection of the popular vote.
00:47:57.000Alrighty, time for a quick thing that I like and then a quick thing that I hate.
00:48:39.000He was not, in fact, there's real controversy as to just how much of a criminal Billy the Kid was because he was really involved more in sort of farming disputes and neighbor disputes.
00:48:48.000And then there were some disputed circumstances where he was killing other bad men.
00:48:51.000In any case, the basic premise of the film is that there's a kid who he and his sister Are present when his father is beating his mother and the kid shoots the father and then tries to escape, run away with his sister.
00:49:03.000They're sort of taken under wing by Billy the Kid.
00:49:06.000Pat Garrett is chasing Billy the Kid at the time.
00:49:10.000And so all of this takes place in the context of that very, very famous pursuit.
00:50:09.000Alrighty, time for, you know, instead of a thing I hate, let's do a little bit of Bible talk.
00:50:12.000I've missed it the last several weeks.
00:50:13.000So, every week, the Jews read a portion of the Bible.
00:50:18.000And this week, the Jews read from the Book of Exodus.
00:50:21.000This is the portion of the Bible in which the Jews are basically preparing to leave Egypt, and Moses goes and he's threatening Pharaoh, and he's telling him that if you don't let the Jews go, things are gonna get real bad for you, real quick, right quick, here.
00:50:38.000So, there's a really interesting part of this week's Parsha, right?
00:50:42.000There's this particular Torah portion.
00:50:44.000That is the bizarre statement that God says he's going to harden Pharaoh's heart.
00:50:49.000He says that Pharaoh is going to be willing to let you go, and then I'm going to harden his heart.
00:50:51.000And people, all the commentators in Jewish lore, and Christian lore too, they go, like, how is that a thing?
00:50:56.000God is not supposed to interfere with your free will.
00:50:58.000Why is God getting involved in hardening Pharaoh's heart to make him do a bad thing, right?
00:51:01.000Why is it that God is telling Pharaoh, like, Pharaoh's willing to let the Jews go, and then this whole thing comes to a sort of Natural denouement.
00:51:09.000Instead, why is God hardening Pharaoh's heart?
00:51:13.000And God says, I shall harden Pharaoh's heart, and I shall put my hand upon Egypt, and I shall take out my legions, the children of Israel, from the land of Egypt.
00:51:21.000So, how can you harden Pharaoh's heart and then hold him responsible for what he's doing?
00:51:46.000Marxist materialists say it's all environmental.
00:51:48.000It's all environment and biology that determines everything.
00:51:50.000And then they say we can magically change our own system using free will, right?
00:51:53.000We can supplant Capitalism with communism, that will change the social system and then we will all be better people.
00:51:59.000So they contradict their own philosophy in the middle of their philosophy, but the sort of materialist point of view generally is that we don't have any free will.
00:52:05.000This has led to some really interesting debates between me and Sam Harris, another person who is no longer welcome in the hard left for having conversations with people.
00:52:13.000Sam takes the materialist position that we don't have any free will.
00:52:16.000I take the position that we do have free will and that we have the ability to overcome, to at least a certain extent, our own biological drives in order to make better decisions.
00:52:26.000Sam takes the position that basically you're screwed, right?
00:53:30.000Now he had put aside his fear, and he was more brave.
00:53:33.000So when the Bible says that God hardens Pharaoh's heart, what he's actually doing is he's giving Pharaoh the capacity to choose more broadly.
00:53:39.000He is saying, I know what you want to do, and I'm giving you the capacity to choose more broadly.
00:53:43.000So God is actually changing Pharaoh in order to allow him more freedom of choice.
00:53:47.000So in that same way, this is basically what psychologists do every day when they engage in cognitive behavioral therapy or exposure therapy.
00:53:54.000They're helping you get over Whatever fear you have so that you have more freedom of choice available to you.
00:54:01.000So this is how God gives us free will, right?
00:54:33.000You say, don't be afraid, make your own decisions.
00:54:35.000In this case, Pharaoh makes the wrong decision.
00:54:38.000In this case, he feels stronger to make the decision and he makes a bad decision.
00:54:42.000But what we should be doing in our normal lives is giving people the capacity to make decisions for which they end up taking responsibility.
00:54:49.000Social psychologist Roy Baumeister, he explains what scientists mean by free will.
00:54:52.000He says, self-control counts as a kind of freedom because it begins with not acting on every impulse.
00:54:56.000The use of abstract ideas such as moral principles to guide action takes us far beyond anything you will find in a physics or chemistry textbook.
00:55:03.000And so we are free, in the sense of emergence, of going beyond simpler forms of causality.
00:55:07.000Again, we cannot break the laws of physics, but we can act in ways that add new causes that go far beyond physical causation.
00:55:14.000Now, when I talk about free will, I don't mean that every decision is subject to it, right?
00:55:17.000You can't decide right now whether your heart should beat or not, right?
00:55:19.000I mean, that part is a naturalistic part of your brain.
00:55:22.000But, it does mean that when we make plans, that when we think things through, we are capable of changing our own behavior.
00:55:27.000This is why Pharaoh still bears responsibility for his actions.
00:55:30.000So what we should be doing as a society is granting people the capacity to make freer decisions, telling them that they have the strength to make their own decisions, and then holding them responsible for their decisions.
00:55:40.000If it's good enough for God and Pharaoh, it should be good enough for us as well.
00:55:43.000Okay, we'll be back here later today with a couple additional hours of content, all your updates on impeachment and all the rest.