The theory of impeachment keeps changing, Shana Tavenova, the continues to push full steam ahead, and President Trump continues to lash out in all directions. Today, Mike Pompeo confirms that he listened to a phone call between Trump and the Ukrainian President, and Democrats are quick to point the finger at the Trump administration for covering up the details of the phone call. But is this really a cover-up? Or is this evidence of something bigger than that? Or is it evidence of a deep-rooted conspiracy to smear Trump as a "PoopHead"? Ben Shapiro explains why Democrats keep broadening the scope of the case, and why they don't seem to be focused on any one specific criminal offense, but rather, on Trump being a "poophead." The Ben Shapiro Show is on all of the social medias, if you search for the show, you'll find us. The latest episode of the show is available in Kindle, iBook, Paperback, Hardcover, Audio Book, and Audio Book format. If you don't have a Kindle device, you can get a free eReader device with a built-in eReader, too! Kindle $9.99, or an Audible $19.95, and Audible Free $99, too ($99.99). Audio Book is also available for trial on Audible at Audible, $99.95. or Audible 4949, Free Strava 4999, and Vimeo Free $49.99. . Audible is also a good price for a copy of the book "The Testaments of The Dark Side of the novel "The Dark Lord" by John McCain's "The Good Fight". and The Good Fight, $49, and it will be available for Audible 99.99 at=1.99 at==1&mt=3&theft=1_1&t=4_5_3&3=3_1_4_3_4&3_3 Free Training is also worksheets are now available for purchase. and will be shipping soon! Thanks for listening to the show! Tweet me Timestamps to let me know what you think of the podcast? Tweet Me! if you have a question or topic you d like to be featured on the show? in the next episode?
00:00:00.000Shana Tova, the theory of impeachment keeps changing, Democrats keep pushing full steam ahead, and President Trump continues to lash out in all directions.
00:00:09.000So when last we left, our impeachment story, last Friday, I was preparing for Rosh Hashanah.
00:00:19.000I figured not much would happen over the weekend.
00:00:21.000And it turns out not much did happen over the weekend, except that the theory of impeachment keeps changing.
00:00:26.000So back on Thursday and Friday, the theory of impeachment seemed to still be sort of that President Trump had engaged in a quid pro quo with the Ukrainian government in which he basically threatened to withhold aid, American aid, military aid to Ukraine in exchange for the Ukrainian government checking out his chief domestic political opponent, Joe Biden.
00:00:44.000Well, as it turns out, over the past couple of days, it appears, and I'm just catching up on the news, it appears that the theory of impeachment is now changing.
00:00:52.000It is malleable that Democrats weren't able to come up with the quid pro quo they were seeking on the specific transcript of this phone call that Trump had with Ukraine.
00:01:00.000And so now they are attempting to construct Another impeachment based crime and that would be obstruction of justice They are trying to come up with some rationale why they can blame the Trump administration for blocking the investigation now doesn't matter that the Trump administration Turned over the transcript doesn't matter.
00:01:14.000They turned over the whistleblower report doesn't matter that the Witnesses who have been requested by the house thus far have basically been scheduled so far as I can tell including the former ambassador to Ukraine as well as other officials American officials from the State Department who are active in Ukraine.
00:01:30.000Still, the Democrats are pushing forward with the idea that if we can't get them for the underlying crime, we'll get President Trump for obstruction.
00:01:38.000And then there's the generalized democratic angle, and you can see this happening in the press, which is that impeachment isn't truly about what Trump did here.
00:01:45.000Impeachment isn't truly about any specific criminal allegation.
00:01:49.000Impeachment is about Trump being a poopoo head.
00:02:17.000Hey, Bill Clinton was impeached, but that was for a specific crime.
00:02:20.000That was not because people didn't like his tax policy in 1994.
00:02:24.000We had an election to fix his tax policy in 1994.
00:02:26.000So as we will see, as the impeachment proceeding moves forward, it seems less like Democrats are honing in on any one theory of impeachment, And then getting to the heart of it, it seems instead that like an octopus, the tentacles are just reaching out in every direction and hopefully they can snag something that will be sufficient to move the public so that the public isn't anti-impeachment and it doesn't blow back on Democrats.
00:02:51.000The media are making a very big deal out of the fact that Mike Pompeo, the Secretary of State, has now confirmed that he listened to President Trump's call with the Ukrainian president, which isn't a big surprise.
00:03:00.000There are a lot of people who are listening to that phone call.
00:03:03.000The Secretary of State very often frequently listens to phone calls that the president has with foreign leaders, but this was the first time that Pompeo had openly acknowledged that that is something that happened.
00:03:13.000Before, he had been asked about the whistleblower complaint.
00:03:15.000He said, I never saw the whistleblower complaint, so I have no specific answers about the whistleblower complaint.
00:03:20.000But he never said that he was on the call itself.
00:03:23.000So Democrats, of course, are jumping to, well, this means that it was a cover-up.
00:04:30.000Well, because the fact is that the president could have done things that are inappropriate but not impeachable.
00:04:35.000But the fact is that Pompeo also works for Trump.
00:04:37.000Trump is particularly thin skinned when it comes to this sort of stuff.
00:04:40.000He doesn't like when his own officials are out there saying that he does stuff that they don't approve of.
00:04:44.000This is what happened to John Bolton, and Mike Pompeo isn't about to fall into that trap.
00:04:49.000Okay, so this follows hard on the Democrats claiming over the past 48 hours that Pompeo is somehow holding up their access to State Department officials.
00:04:59.000So, the New York Times reported yesterday, Now, notice, again, that the language here used by the New York Times, and it's been used consistently by the media now, is that Trump was pressuring Ukraine as opposed to requesting Ukraine, which is a more accurate description of that phone call.
00:05:09.000to pressure Ukraine for political advantage.
00:05:11.000Now, notice again that the language here used by the New York Times, and it's been used consistently by the media now, is that Trump was pressuring Ukraine as opposed to requesting Ukraine, which is a more accurate description of that phone call.
00:05:23.000Pressuring Ukraine would presume, I mean, that assumes the question that is in doubt.
00:05:28.000The question in doubt is whether there was a quid pro quo, right?
00:05:32.000Not whether Trump asked for something, but whether there was a quid pro quo.
00:05:35.000When you use the word pressured, the assumption is that there is something credible on the other end of that pressure, namely a threat.
00:05:41.000So you notice that the word pressure, whenever the media used the word pressure and not the word requested or asked, then that is the media infusing their own bias into a story.
00:05:50.000In any case, the New York Times says, In the first skirmish in what promises to be an epic impeachment struggle between the executive and legislative branches, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo lashed out at three congressional committees that are seeking to depose diplomats involved in American policy toward Ukraine.
00:06:05.000Mr. Pompeo called their demands for confidential interviews an act of intimidation.
00:06:10.000Now, the reason that he says that is because he is saying you're not giving them time to get lawyers and deal with State Department lawyers.
00:06:15.000Which, by the way, if that sounds like somebody covering up or somebody covering their butt, let me assure you, I know people who were questioned by the Mueller report.
00:06:24.000Because I know a lot of folks inside the administration.
00:06:26.000I know people who were questioned by the Mueller report.
00:06:27.000It cost them tens of thousands of dollars with lawyers in order to be questioned.
00:06:31.000Because anybody who goes and is questioned by a government committee under oath without a lawyer present at their side to advise them on what they should and should not say is a fool.
00:06:40.000You would be a fool too, and that has nothing to do with truth-telling or not truth-telling.
00:06:44.000It's like going to deal with the IRS without any lawyer on the line.
00:06:50.000They're literally putting you there so that they can then charge you with some form of perjury or misleading statement, and then they can use that to pressure you to say things you don't want to say.
00:06:59.000Pompeo is saying, okay, we need time to get all these people the lawyers that they want.
00:07:03.000And the Democrats, naturally, because they are attempting to gin up some sort of belief that there is a cover-up going on, they are saying that Pompeo is engaged in the cover-up.
00:07:11.000And again, The two biggest officials who are being questioned so far have already set dates on which they are to be questioned.
00:07:18.000The House postponed the first of the depositions, which had been scheduled for Wednesday, with the former U.S.
00:07:22.000ambassador to Ukraine, but not before the impeachment inquiry's leaders upbraided Pompeo for questioning their work and for asserting that their bid to swiftly schedule depositions did not allow enough time for a proper response.
00:07:33.000The latest standoff unfolded as lawmakers were unexpectedly put on notice Tuesday afternoon that they could soon be provided with new evidence related to the State Department and Ukraine, a twist that could add crucial information to their investigation and potentially complicate Mr. Trump's efforts to block it.
00:07:46.000We'll get to what exactly that crucial piece of information is and why Democrats in the house are extraordinarily excited about a visit from a member of the State Department.
00:07:56.000First, let's talk about going to the post office.
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00:08:24.000Simply use your computer to print official U.S.
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00:08:43.000Last time I went to the post office, I got a parking ticket because there's only one thing that the authorities in Los Angeles are good at.
00:08:49.000And no, it is not cleaning up the streets.
00:09:09.000Okay, so why are the House Democrats so excited?
00:09:11.000Because the State Department's independent watchdog wrote to several House and Senate committees to request a last-minute meeting on Wednesday to discuss and provide staff with copies of documents, according to an invitation reviewed by the New York Times.
00:09:27.000Maybe when we know, then we can determine whether in fact there was either a quid pro quo or a cover-up, but at this point we do not have evidence of either.
00:09:34.000It said the documents had been given to the Inspector General Stephen Linick by the State Department's Acting Legal Advisor, but did not provide additional information or indicate whether Mr. Pompeo was aware of the action.
00:09:44.000Mr. Linick's office has not responded to calls or emails seeking comment for two days.
00:09:48.000Well, maybe the whole purpose of the speed is because they know that the executive branch is not going to want to comply that quickly because it's actually kind of complicated to comply with subpoenas from the executive branch.
00:09:57.000They are determined to quickly nail down facts at the heart of the whistleblower complaint.
00:10:01.000Well, maybe the whole purpose of the speed is because they know that the executive branch is not going to want to comply that quickly because it's actually kind of complicated to comply with subpoenas from the executive branch.
00:10:12.000You have to determine, for example, what is classified and what is not classified, what the president is going to declare executive privilege over and what he is not.
00:10:19.000You have to make sure that everybody gets lawyers.
00:10:21.000So, by artificially boosting the timeline, perhaps the goal here is for Democrats to actually create exactly the sort of conflict they are pretending they wish to avoid.
00:10:30.000The White House is just as determined to thwart or at least slow the investigation.
00:10:34.000I do love the New York Times language there.
00:10:36.000They're just as determined to thwart or at least slow the investigation.
00:10:42.000Why don't you just say that they are determined to slow?
00:10:44.000That's obvious, but thwart is a different thing.
00:10:46.000Following back on the approach it has used to stonewall efforts by Congress to delve into episodes detailed by Robert Mueller, the special counsel who investigated Russia's interference in the 2016 election.
00:10:56.000Okay, so we have a few pieces of competing news.
00:10:59.000You have the Pompeo acknowledgement that he was in fact on the phone call, which doesn't actually mean anything unless there was something wrong with the phone call itself.
00:11:08.000You have the House Democrats who are going to try and subpoena members of Pompeo's State Department.
00:11:14.000And Pompeo saying, hold up a second guys, you're moving too fast here.
00:11:17.000And the Democrats then claiming cover up.
00:11:19.000And you have the State Department's Inspector General requesting an urgent briefing with senior congressional staff members after Pompeo pushed back on House Democratic demands to turn over documents.
00:11:30.000So, we are still wondering exactly what exactly, the only real piece of news there, the only real piece of news, is not the hubbub between Pompeo and the House Democrats, and it's not really that Pompeo was on the call, because the call would be just as criminal or non-criminal, depending on whether Pompeo was there.
00:11:46.000Like, Pompeo's presence doesn't change the tenor of the phone call, unless the case is somehow that Pompeo was the hatchet man for the quid pro quo, but even that doesn't answer the question as to whether there was, in fact, a quid pro quo.
00:11:59.000The real piece of news here is that there may be new information that emerges thanks to the State Department Inspector General's request.
00:12:06.000One congressional aide described the State's Inspector General's request as highly unusual and cryptically worded.
00:12:13.000The Inspector General again said the reason for the briefing was that they had obtained documents from an acting legal advisor in the State Department.
00:12:20.000But as I say, you know, all this talk about the Trump administration preventing members of the Trump administration from testifying, not so much.
00:12:28.000Special Envoy to Ukraine Kurt Volker is set to appear on Thursday, and Kurt Volker is the one who allegedly was texting with Rudy Giuliani.
00:12:34.000So we're going to find out some more information there.
00:12:36.000Was he texting with Giuliani because the Trump administration, in efforts to procure the quid pro quo, had deputized Giuliani from the State Department in order to go over there and dig up dirt with the Ukrainian government?
00:12:48.000Or was Kurt Volker basically just a guy in Ukraine who knew, who was working for the government, knew Rudy Giuliani.
00:12:54.000Giuliani called him up and said, I'd like to talk to Axe.
00:12:56.000And he said, okay, here's his phone number.
00:13:13.000Three committees, the House Foreign Affairs, Intelligence, and Oversight panels have scheduled the depositions as part of their probe into whether the president solicited help from a foreign government to dig up dirt on his political opponent.
00:13:24.000And again, that remains the central issue, but we are not seeing any additional information as of yet that suggests that the quid pro quo either took place or that was even threatened.
00:13:34.000Remember, last week we uncovered three separate stories That suggested that the Ukrainian government didn't even know that military aid was on the line.
00:13:42.000And even the aspects of the transcript that look like they are dealing with military aid.
00:13:46.000Where you have Zelensky, the president of Ukraine, talking about buying Javelin missiles.
00:13:51.000I was informed by somebody in the defense arena, shall we say, that even that has nothing to do with the so-called quid pro quo with regard to military aid.
00:14:00.000That had to do with Zelensky trying to butter Trump up by saying he wanted to buy Javelins.
00:14:03.000Meaning that, actually, the entire call was just Zelensky trying to butter Trump up.
00:14:08.000Because foreign leaders are constantly trying to butter the President up.
00:14:10.000That doesn't mean that the President was actually threatening.
00:14:13.000Meanwhile, the House is threatening to subpoena the White House for Ukraine records.
00:14:17.000On Wednesday, the House threatened to subpoena the White House if it did not comply by Friday with requests for a broad range of documents relating to President Trump's efforts to pressure Ukraine into investigating Joe Biden and his son.
00:14:28.000Again, there is the word pressure again.
00:14:30.000Representative Elijah Cummings of Maryland, the chairman of the Oversight and Reform Committee, notified his committee of the impending subpoena on Wednesday.
00:14:36.000He said the White House had thus far ignored Congress's voluntary request.
00:14:39.000He said, I do not take this step lightly.
00:14:41.000Over the past several weeks, the committee's tried several times to attain voluntary compliance with our request for documents.
00:14:47.000Wait up, what is this past several weeks business?
00:14:50.000I mean, what exactly is that supposed to mean?
00:14:55.000This whole thing happened five seconds ago.
00:14:57.000I mean, it's only been going for two moments so far as we can tell.
00:15:05.000So, again, this seems like thus far overblown Democrats trying to accelerate the timeline specifically so that the White House will buck the timeline.
00:15:14.000And Cummings threatening a subpoena is obviously an escalation along these lines.
00:15:19.000The subpoena threat comes as House Democratic leaders are preparing to lay out steps in their rapidly unfolding impeachment inquiry.
00:15:25.000And we will find out what the State Department Inspector General is about to say as of today.
00:15:31.000In just a second, we're gonna get to President Trump's response to all this.
00:15:49.000I think that his political beliefs are awful, but you don't want to see anybody who is not a terrorist, basically, or a murderer, in this position.
00:15:59.000And so, thoughts to his family, even if I wildly disagree with all of Bernie Sanders's politics.
00:16:05.000Apparently he's conversing, and in good spirits, he'll be resting up over the next few days, according to senior advisor Jeff Weaver.
00:16:11.000We are canceling his events and appearances until further notice.
00:16:14.000Obviously, on a political level, that spells doom for Bernie Sanders' campaign, and it probably means that Elizabeth Warren is the Democratic nominee, which was the direction that this was moving anyway.
00:16:22.000So that is indeed a piece of enormous news.
00:16:25.000We'll get to more on Bernie Sanders and more on President Trump and the impeachment effort in just one second.
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00:17:50.000Okay, we'll get to more of that Bernie Sanders stuff in just a minute because at the moment it is breaking news, but President Trump, meanwhile, is blowing back against the whistleblower.
00:17:59.000So, while the Democrats are pushing forward, President Trump is rage-tweeting.
00:18:02.000So, over the last 72 hours, he's been rage-tweeting up a storm.
00:18:06.000And this is where the Democratic case has shifted, and you're starting to see it shift from, maybe Trump did something criminal to Trump is a big poopoo head.
00:18:14.000Really, because Trump started tweeting a lot of stuff, and then people were like, oh my god, I can't believe he tweets all this stuff.
00:18:20.000If you still find Trump tweeting like a madman, somehow shocking, appalling, if it adds a new level of pressure to your day and stress to your day, if you believe that this is like, every time he tweets, it's a new level of low, may I suggest that you take a chill pill?
00:18:37.000Because the fact is that this is what Trump's gonna do, it's what he's always done.
00:18:40.000It's so funny, whenever I say this, people are like, well, if Obama tweeted this, you'd take it seriously.
00:18:44.000Correct, because Barack Obama was a serious human being.
00:18:49.000I mean, Donald Trump is the President of the United States, which means that we should take him with a certain amount of seriousness when he does things.
00:18:57.000Like, we're gonna pretend that everything Donald Trump says is well-considered, thought-out policy, an official statement from the White House?
00:19:40.000He tweeted, So if the so-called whistleblower has all secondhand information, and almost everything he has said about my perfect call with the Ukrainian president is wrong, much to the embarrassment of Pelosi and Schiff, why aren't we entitled to interview and learn everything about the whistleblower, and also the person who gave all the false information to him?
00:19:55.000This is simply about a phone conversation that could not have been nicer, warmer, or better.
00:20:00.000No pressure at all, as can confirmed by Ukrainian press.
00:20:03.000And so there's some things in this tweet that are true, some things in this tweet that are not true.
00:20:07.000It is true that the Ukrainian president said he was not pressured.
00:20:09.000It is also true that I am very skeptical that the whistleblower did not have outside legal help on that letter that he wrote.
00:20:16.000I'm also skeptical the whistleblower is not actually working with Democrats behind the scenes, considering that Adam Schiff was tweeting out the exact points of the whistleblower report two weeks before he was supposed to know about it.
00:20:26.000With that said, the whistleblower was not wrong about the cause.
00:20:28.000I mean, the details of the call, there was one detail of the call that was wrong.
00:20:31.000The vast majority of the details were correct.
00:20:33.000Anyway, Trump says, As I learn more and more each day, I am coming to the conclusion that what is taking place is not an impeachment.
00:20:39.000It is a coup intended to take away the power of the people, their vote, their freedoms, their Second Amendment, religion, military, border wall, and their God, given rights as a citizen of the United States of America.
00:20:51.000Okay, and this is obviously a wild overstatement.
00:21:06.000They're things that can be done to oust an illegal dictator.
00:21:10.000But working within the system to oust a sitting president within the impeachment system is not, in fact, a coup, and for President Trump to call it that is dumb.
00:21:20.000However, is anyone supposed to be surprised here?
00:21:23.000Like, are we supposed to pretend that President Trump tweeting things out is supposed to be the big disqualifier?
00:21:30.000And yet, oddly enough, that's exactly what Democrats and many Democrats are now claiming.
00:21:34.000Is that because Trump is a poopoo head, right?
00:21:36.000This is, really, this is, I keep saying poopoo head because that is the best way to describe the sort of labels that they are throwing at Trump, right?
00:21:43.000They're not accusing him of actual criminal activity, really.
00:21:46.000They're not accusing him of violating his oath of office in any serious way.
00:21:50.000They're accusing him of being somebody who they don't like, who mouths off a lot on Twitter.
00:21:54.000And that, I guess, is their case for him being impeachable.
00:22:31.000Like, really, this Democratic line, which is so irritating and so stupid and has been trotted out by people like Ilhan Omar repeatedly, that if you criticize her, if you say that she's a bad congressperson, you're actually threatening her with violence.
00:22:42.000As somebody who has 24-7 security because of legit threats of violence, I can pretty well tell the damn difference between a threat of violence and people who just don't like what I say and are saying mean things about me.
00:22:53.000But Democrats, in an effort to stretch impeachment beyond its natural boundaries, they're like, oh, well, Trump is gonna harm the whistleblower.
00:23:01.000The president at this point has been very abusive of the Whistleblower Protection Act and really is basically on the verge of not only revealing the identity or getting somebody else to reveal the identity of the whistleblower, but also bringing harm to that person.
00:23:18.000It's getting quite scary, the president's behavior and his words and what that could conjure up.
00:23:23.000Okay, and then my favorite part of this is that Castro says that, right, that Trump is going to bring harm to the whistleblower.
00:23:29.000And this is obviously a very, very, very bad thing.
00:23:34.000She tweets, I'm calling on the GOP to stop Trump's filthy talk of whistleblowers being spies and using mob language implying they should be killed.
00:23:41.000Impeachment is not good enough for Trump.
00:23:43.000He needs to be imprisoned and placed in solitary confinement.
00:23:46.000But for now, impeachment is the imperative.
00:23:49.000Hey, so Trump says he doesn't like the whistleblower and he calls him a traitor because Bill Weld called him a traitor and everybody's calling each other traitors these days.
00:23:56.000Maxine Waters suggests the sitting president of the United States should be imprisoned and placed in solitary confinement.
00:24:02.000What does Julian Castro have to- what does Joaquin Castro have to say about that?
00:24:09.000I have a lot of respect for Maxine Waters, and she's a very passionate person and has felt very strongly for a long time that the president has broken the law.
00:24:22.000I think a lot of Americans have been very upset and outraged about the president's conduct.
00:24:27.000I think all of us want to make sure that this process is a fair one, that there is due process for the president and all the other witnesses that are going to come forward.
00:24:35.000But we're committed to getting to the bottom of what happened.
00:24:37.000She's just a passionate person, that's it.
00:24:39.000So when she threatens to put the president in jail in solitary confinement, that's her being passionate.
00:24:43.000When Trump yells about the whistleblower, that's him being impeachable and horrible and terrible and no good and very bad.
00:24:48.000This is part of the broader democratic agenda at this point to delegitimize Trump as president, not on the basis of actual crimes, but based on who Trump is as a person.
00:24:57.000Well, if you want to do that, we have a thing called elections.
00:25:00.000But that's not what Democrats are doing.
00:25:02.000Instead, they seem to continually be broadening out the scope of the impeachment itself, of the impeachment inquiry, of the impeachment grounds.
00:25:12.000As we'll see, that actually ties into a broader agenda on the part of many people on the left, which is to use Legal methods and silencing methods to shut down opposition rather than winning the argument, right?
00:25:27.000We'll get to more of that in just one second.
00:25:28.000First, gotta tell you about something cool that happened in our house over Rosh Hashanah.
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00:27:32.000Beto O'Rourke said in March, I think the American people are going to have a chance to decide this at the ballot box in November 2020, but says Wilkinson, this is no longer a tenable position.
00:27:40.000It's not tenable to allow an election to go forward.
00:27:43.000Trump has to be impeached because otherwise he's going to cheat and he's going to win the election by cheating.
00:27:48.000It's hilarious to watch as Democrats claim that Trump is going to do this while simultaneously claiming that Trump claiming the Democrats are going to do this is somehow impeachable.
00:27:55.000So just to get this straight, if Trump says it's a coup and they're cheating, that's impeachable.
00:27:59.000If Democrats say that Trump is cheating and will engage in a coup, then that's totally fine.
00:28:05.000And not only that, it should be grounds for impeaching Trump.
00:28:07.000So, I mean, that is heads I win, tails you lose right there.
00:28:11.000Wilkinson says, This is no longer a tenable position.
00:28:14.000The president's bungled bid to coerce Ukraine's leader into helping the Trump 2020 reelection campaign smear a rival struck decided at the ballot box off the menu of reasonable opinion forever.
00:28:32.000Because apparently the vote is illegitimate.
00:28:34.000Wilkinson says, Trump's brazen attempt to cheat his way into a second term stands so scandalously exposed there can be no assurance of a fair election if he's allowed to stay in office.
00:28:45.000Resolving the question of the president's fitness at the ballot box isn't really an option, much less the best option, when the question boils down to whether the ballot box will be stuffed Impeachment is therefore imperative.
00:28:56.000So in other words, they still have improved quid pro quo, but because Trump and his campaign were digging in Ukraine for dirt, this apparently perverts the election beyond all reasonable measure and thus all results are perverse.
00:29:07.000Well, there's only one problem with that.
00:29:08.000Hillary Clinton in 2016 worked with the Ukrainian embassy in order to dig up dirt on Trump.
00:29:13.000Did that make the results of the election illegitimate?
00:29:19.000Rudy Giuliani is out there, by the way, making the case that he's going to be able to prove that Barack Obama ordered Hillary Clinton and the Democrats to dig up dirt in Ukraine.
00:29:28.000We'll see if this is true or not or whether this is just another overplay by Rudy.
00:29:32.000The reason why I was investigating, and the reason why the President of the United States had an obligation to ask the President of Ukraine to follow up on these allegations, because there is substantial, and I don't want to exaggerate it, but pretty close to overwhelming evidence, including a finding by a Ukrainian court, that Hillary Clinton and the Democrats Cooperated with Ukrainians with the order coming directly from the White House in January of 2017 to dig up dirt.
00:30:03.000on her political opponent, and they did.
00:30:26.000But still, the case that the Democrats seem to be making over and over is that they can just keep broadening out this inquiry until it's meaningless.
00:30:33.000Again, Wilkinson is not making a case that an actual quid pro quo will happen.
00:30:41.000This is, this I guess is the grounds for impeachment is that he's not going to allow an actual election to go forward.
00:30:48.000And it turns out that that is not the only Democrat case that's being made today.
00:30:51.000As you'll notice, whenever the impeachment grounds get less and less specific, they get more and more passionate.
00:30:56.000That seems to be the way that this works.
00:30:58.000When this started off, it was supposed to be a very narrowly focused inquiry with a very narrow end goal or end point.
00:31:07.000And that does not seem like what this is turning into.
00:31:10.000It seems like instead it is broadening out and like the case for impeachment is broadening out over and over and over again.
00:31:16.000By the way, I should mention that while Rudy Giuliani is out there talking about how Joe Biden ought to be investigated and Republicans and Trump are saying Joe Biden ought to be investigated and they're saying that's a legitimate point of inquiry given the fact that Ukraine is requesting help and good relationship with us, and therefore we want to make sure that corruption is taken care of.
00:31:37.000The same people on the left who suggest that people on the right are shying away from the Trump investigation because they're afraid of what they're going to find.
00:31:44.000They're saying over and over and over, there's nothing to find with the Biden stuff.
00:31:51.000Because there can't be anything because we know this.
00:31:53.000Here's Kamala Harris doing this routine.
00:31:55.000If you're elected president, would you allow the son or daughter of your vice president to serve on the board of an oil company outside this country?
00:32:03.000But I think that the problem that we've got, again, with this issue is that it's a distraction from the fact that, look, as far as I'm concerned, leave Joe Biden alone.
00:32:15.000Just leave him alone on this issue of what this president has done that has been about corrupting America's democracy.
00:32:24.000Okay, my favorite part of that is where she starts laughing hysterically about Joe Biden and his son.
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00:33:39.000So, as I keep saying, The goal of the Democrats and many in the media seems to be to broaden out the scope of the rationale for Trump's impeachment from quid pro quo, which would be an actual legal standard, to he's a meanie and we don't like him.
00:34:03.000So Thomas Friedman has a really famously awful column today.
00:34:07.000Thomas Friedman is an awful, awful columnist.
00:34:09.000I've said for years that if you want Thomas Friedman to write a nice column about you, all you have to do is offer him a hotel suite in a nice place for a night.
00:34:15.000He would go to Iran and people would offer him a nice hotel suite and Thomas Friedman of the New York Times would be like, Iran, a wonderful open country with a regime that has been misunderstood.
00:34:39.000I'm going to discuss impeachment today, but first I want to talk about the National Symphony Orchestra's opening concert and gala last Saturday night.
00:34:47.000At mid-concert, the chairman of the Kennedy Center, David Rubinstein, came out to greet the audience and the VIPs.
00:34:52.000He welcomed the different ambassadors, and then he went through the cabinet members present and then the Supreme Court justices.
00:34:56.000He introduced Justice Samuel Alito, who got a smattering of applause.
00:34:59.000Then he introduced Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, seated in the balcony.
00:35:02.000First, many women in the audience stood up to applaud, and then everyone stood up, and then everyone applauded, and then everyone applauded more, and then some people cheered, and then some whistled, and it went on and on.
00:35:39.000This was a spontaneous bipartisan expression of respect for and longing for a national leader of integrity and humility.
00:35:45.000By the way, Ruth Bader Ginsburg is an awful justice.
00:35:49.000I also pray for her health because the fact is we should pray for the health of all of our officials in public positions, but she's a terrible justice who has ruled terribly on virtually every major ruling of the last 30 years.
00:36:02.000But basically, Friedman is saying, Ginsburg is a person of class who unifies the country, but Trump is classless and should be impeached.
00:36:09.000So we've had Will Wilkinson's case, which is Trump won't let an election go forward, which is nonsense.
00:36:13.000And then you have Friedman's case, which is everyone likes Ruth Bader Ginsburg.
00:36:17.000And then you get Susan Rice's case, which is that nothing says we should write about impeachment and corruption in foreign policy, like Susan Rice, a woman who lied repeatedly to the American public about Benghazi writing in the New York Times.
00:36:33.000By the way, you want to know what drives the right so fully insane about all of this?
00:36:37.000Is the fact that you've got Democrats sitting there on their high horses when they engaged in nearly the same activity repeatedly.
00:36:42.000Whether you're talking about Hillary seeking dirt on Donald Trump from the Ukrainians, or whether you're talking about Barack Obama pledging flexibility to the Russians openly on Mike.
00:36:51.000But you get Susan Rice writing for the New York Times about Trump should be impeached.
00:36:57.000Well, because Joe Biden is innocent, right?
00:37:00.000She says Joe Biden is innocent and Trump is guilty because she says that Biden had nothing to do with the Obama policy and that Biden is fine and that Biden was backing a good policy.
00:37:12.000Nothing there about how it was inappropriate for the Obama administration to let Biden run up the Ukrainian policy, to lead up the Ukrainian policy when his son was earning money off his name in Ukraine while working with groups that were under investigation.
00:37:26.000Nonetheless, Susan Rice pushing the point that the Trump administration is the corrupt administration as opposed to the beautiful, wonderful, great Obama administration.
00:37:38.000If you want to drive people nuts, this is the way to do it.
00:37:40.000I mean, this is full-on gaslighting at this point.
00:37:44.000She says, the differences in these two engagements are stark.
00:37:47.000In Biden's case, the purpose of the intervention was to pursue a widely accepted U.S.
00:37:51.000policy objective in the full light of day.
00:37:54.000In Trump's case, it was to advance a personal political interest in opposition to the national interest, and it was deliberately hidden from view.
00:38:00.000Was it deliberately hidden from view that Trump wanted Giuliani in Ukraine?
00:38:03.000I mean, we've known for two years that Giuliani is running around in Ukraine.
00:38:07.000And as it turns out, the Washington Post agreed.
00:38:09.000I mean, they reported that the transcript of the call was not hidden for purposes of this specific call was bad, but because Trump hides all the transcripts because all of them leak.
00:38:19.000This is the stuff that drives Republicans up a wall.
00:38:23.000You'll see articles from the press, repeatedly, suggesting that Trump is engaged in corruption, where if you just flip the parties, they'd be talking about how great it was.
00:38:32.000A perfect example today, there's a piece in the Washington Post called, A Presidency of One, Key Federal Agencies Increasingly Compelled to Benefit Trump.
00:38:41.000Have you, maybe you noticed, by the way, that, did you, that, Obama did the exact same- Like, there was the Obama IRS scandal.
00:38:49.000There was the Obama Health and Human Services scandal.
00:38:52.000There was Obama utilizing his DOJ as a protection racket for himself in Fast and Furious.
00:38:58.000But apparently, according to the Washington Post, it is a great shock that the head of the executive branch is also the head of the executive branch.
00:39:05.000They point out that a series of disclosures has illuminated President Trump's command over key federal agencies, revealing how he has compelled them to pursue his personal and political goals, investigate his enemies, and lend legitimacy to his theories about the 2016 election.
00:39:18.000Yes, that's called being the head of the executive branch.
00:39:21.000This stuff drives Republicans up the wall for a reason.
00:39:24.000Again, if we were talking about Obama, the press would be cheering right now.
00:39:28.000By the way, the best case in point, Eric Holder, the head of the DOJ, the Attorney General, who suggested that he was Barack Obama's wingman, now says that Attorney General William Barr may have crossed political lines.
00:39:40.000Are we supposed to not laugh out loud?
00:39:43.000To see how the President is now involved in trying to help the Attorney General in that effort gives me pause.
00:39:50.000I think the Attorney General needs to be a little more sensitive to the appearance that that gives.
00:39:55.000You have to not only be substantively neutral, you have to appear to be neutral when you are the Attorney General of the United States, and I fear that he has crossed a political line.
00:40:17.000It's because there's a generalized belief in the United States that there's a miasma of corruption in Washington, D.C., that the swamp exists, and when Trump is kind of swampy sometimes, people are like, okay, well, and?
00:40:28.000Really, because, sorry, if you think that the world began spinning when Donald Trump was elected president, you may have missed the past 20 years in American politics.
00:40:36.000Meanwhile, I think that this is part of a broader agenda, unfortunately.
00:40:39.000Impeachment is indicative of a broader lefty mindset that has set in, which is that even if you don't have the goods, you use what you have to silence your opposition.
00:40:47.000Again, there's an election in 14 months.
00:40:49.000All the Democrats have to do, if they wish to win, is simply go forward to the election and make a good case for themselves.
00:41:20.000When you look at what he's been tweeting today, directed at the whistleblower, directed at so many people, I frankly think that based on this and all we've seen him do before, including attacking members of Congress, that his Twitter account should be suspended.
00:41:36.000When the President of the United States speaks, her words are very powerful and should be used in a way that is not about belittling, much less harming, anyone.
00:41:49.000And this president has, I think, never fully appreciated that responsibility.
00:41:54.000So he should be barred from Twitter, according to Kamala Harris.
00:41:56.000It's funny how comfortable the left is with deplatforming people they just don't like.
00:42:01.000This is the same Kara Swisher who once suggested to Susan Wojcicki, the head of YouTube, that I should be barred from YouTube because her son watches my videos.
00:42:09.000I'm sorry that I make a convincing case to your kid, Kara.
00:42:12.000But, like, now here she is saying Trump is too dangerous for Twitter.
00:42:29.000I mean, there are people who target me day in and day out on Twitter.
00:42:31.000I've never called for any of them to be barred unless they're making actual violent threats to me.
00:42:36.000But this is part and parcel of a basic attempt to pressure everyone.
00:42:39.000So you're going to use the pressure tactics of impeachment in order to get rid of a president you don't like, not elections.
00:42:45.000You're going to use the pressure tactics against the advertisers to get rid of shows that you don't like, not just not listening to the shows, not the ratings, and you're going to try and pressure big tech to crack down on opinions you don't like, not simply tune out from those opinions, which would be the proper policy.
00:43:01.000Which, by the way, raises the issue Facebook has now put forward a policy about elections.
00:43:07.000Nick Clegg, who's the VP of Global Affairs and Communications, I'm gonna put forward this policy, and it's a pretty decent policy.
00:43:15.000The basic policy is that they are not going to referee political debates and prevent a politician's speech from reaching its audience and being subject to public debate and scrutiny.
00:43:23.000So, Facebook exempts politicians from third-party fact-checking programs.
00:43:28.000So, very often, Facebook has what I think is a dumb system of third-party fact-checkers who are very often left.
00:43:34.000You'll see Snopes, or you will see PolitiFact, and these are left-leaning, Left-leaning fact-check sites, and they will use that as an excuse to go after particular stories.
00:43:43.000I've always argued that that's foolishness because bad data in means bad data out.
00:43:47.000There are very few right-wing fact-checking sites.
00:43:49.000There probably should be one, but there aren't.
00:43:51.000Okay, but at least Facebook is not applying that to politicians because that effectively would make them the great truth arbiters in politics, and that is an enormous mistake.
00:44:00.000They said we will not send organic content or ads from our politicians to third-party fact-checking partners for review.
00:44:06.000When a politician shares previously debunked content, including links, videos, and photos, we plan to demote that content, display related information from fact-checkers, and reject its inclusion in advertisements.
00:44:47.000She's an existential threat to big tech.
00:44:49.000And while the right may celebrate the downfall of big tech, the fact is you don't want Democrats in control of big tech.
00:44:54.000That's really what this is about for Democrats.
00:44:56.000In the same way they want to bar Trump from Twitter, they would like to see Facebook broken up so they can then control Facebook and determine what it is that you see and you hear.
00:45:03.000And naturally, the press are cheering this on.
00:45:05.000The New York Times has a headline, Zuckerberg hates Warren's plan to break up Facebook.
00:45:16.000Mark Zuckerberg built up a bajillion-dollar company that affects billions of people around the world, and Elizabeth Warren is going to willy-nilly grab the power of the American government and try to break it up, and she's the courageous one?
00:46:01.000And this is, by the way, this is why when people say, older politicians may have health problems, and then everybody's like, that's ageist!
00:46:11.000According to his senior advisor, Jeff Weaver, he said, Senator Sanders is conversing and in good spirits.
00:46:15.000He'll be resting up over the next few days.
00:46:17.000We are canceling his events and appearances until further notice.
00:46:19.000We will continue to provide appropriate updates.
00:46:21.000Sanders has maintained a relentless campaign schedule over the past several months.
00:46:26.000He is the oldest candidate in the Democratic field, but has projected vigor belying his age.
00:46:30.000The news came a day after Sanders posted a robust $25 million fundraising haul in the third quarter of the year, but as he's been eclipsed in recent weeks by Elizabeth Warren in the polls.
00:46:40.000So apparently, the Sanders campaign canceled the entirety of its recently scheduled ad buy in Iowa on broadcast television.
00:46:47.000They'd announced a $1.3 million ad buy on Monday in the state that was set to begin on Thursday.
00:46:53.000Kamala Harris was eager to jump in and wish him the best.
00:46:57.000She says she looks forward to seeing him on the campaign trail soon.
00:46:59.000I'm sure that is not true, but it is certainly true that, you know, listen, you never want to see politicians put out of it by health, obviously.
00:47:09.000Beneficiary politically, you know, putting aside the human aspect, which is, you know, thoughts and prayers to the Sanders family.
00:47:14.000With that said, Politically speaking, obviously Elizabeth Warren now looks to be the heavy favorite for the nomination because the going theory for Joe Biden was that Elizabeth Warren would split the vote with Bernie Sanders on the socialist left.
00:47:27.000Well, now that Bernie Sanders looks to be out of the race for the foreseeable future, there's no way he's gonna recover coming back in.
00:47:35.000It is now Elizabeth Warren and Joe Biden, and Joe Biden is collapsing in the polls.
00:47:39.000According to the national polling average, Biden is up just a point and a half on Elizabeth Warren, There are now several polls that show them in a dead heat.
00:47:48.000There's an Economist YouGov poll that came out yesterday showing that Warren is now up six on Biden.
00:47:53.000There's a Monmouth poll showing that Warren is up three on Biden.
00:47:56.000So, Warren is obviously in commanding position in the early running here.
00:48:04.000All of that probably kicks to Elizabeth Warren.
00:48:07.000In New Hampshire, Elizabeth Warren is again running within the margin of error.
00:48:11.000In Nevada, she's running inside the margin of error.
00:48:14.000The betting odds on Elizabeth Warren are now up to 49% to Biden's 22%.
00:48:19.000So, she is the prohibitive favorite in this election.
00:48:23.000That means that what we are looking at right now is Donald Trump versus Elizabeth Warren.
00:48:26.000And that, by the way, does explain, at least in part, why the Democrats are moving forward with the impeachment inquiry, even if they're not able to come up with any hard evidence of a quid pro quo.
00:48:33.000That is, if they can portray Trump as corrupt, and then they can portray Elizabeth Warren as the fighter against corruption, the populist fighter against corruption, she wins.
00:48:41.000Well, that's a very scary prospect, because she's a dangerous politician with wild left views.
00:48:46.000Man, there's gonna be one hell of a race.
00:48:48.000Okay, let's do a quick thing I like, and then a thing I hate, and we will be out of here.
00:48:54.000So there's a lot of talk, very frequently, about racial bias in the justice system.
00:49:00.000Well, there is a case that happened in Dallas of, I guess it was last year it would have been, in which an officer, an off-duty officer, Amber Geiger, She's white.
00:49:20.000The man she shot was not an intruder, but her neighbor, Botham Shemjean, a 26-year-old black accountant who was watching TV and eating ice cream in the apartment he rented directly above Ms.
00:49:30.000On Tuesday, Gene's family braced themselves for the possibility his death would be treated like many others across the country, in which police officers have been cleared of wrongdoing, but that moment never came.
00:49:38.000Instead, a Dallas County jury found Geiger 31 guilty of murder, choosing the more serious conviction over a lesser option of manslaughter.
00:49:47.000Perfectly appropriate for this fact pattern.
00:49:50.000The case did not fit into the familiar narratives of police killings in which the officers fired their weapons on duty.
00:49:55.000And it just goes to show, again, that the notion that everyone in the United States is eagerly awaiting police shootings of black people by white officers is just not true.
00:50:04.000It's always funny, the left tends to pick out cases where the fact pattern is murky in order to make the case that people don't pay enough attention to black folks being killed.
00:50:16.000I mean, they never talk about the case of a man in South Carolina who was shot to death from behind by a police officer who planted the gun on him.
00:50:27.000They never talk about that, because we all agree on the fact pattern.
00:50:29.000Instead, they talk about Michael Brown, where the fact pattern is in dispute, or Eric Garner, where the fact pattern is in dispute.
00:50:35.000In this case, the fact pattern was not in dispute, and so this officer will go to jail for a very, very long time.
00:50:41.000As is appropriate, because if you shoot somebody in an apartment not your own, that means that you should go to jail.
00:50:46.000Okay, time for a quick thing that I hate.
00:50:52.000Okay, so, there is a new ruling from a judge about Harvard University.
00:50:57.000New York Times reports, a federal judge on Tuesday rejected claims that Harvard had intentionally discriminated against Asian American applicants in a closely watched case that presented one of the biggest legal challenges to affirmative action in years.
00:51:08.000The lawsuit against the university came from a group hoping to overturn a long-standing Supreme Court precedent that allows race to be considered as one factor among many in admissions, but prohibits universities from using racial quotas.
00:51:18.000The group argued, Harvard favored black and Hispanic applicants at the expense of another minority group, Asians.
00:51:24.000The judge rejected the plaintiff's argument, said the university met the strict constitutional standard for considering race in its admissions process.
00:51:32.000She defended the benefits of diversity.
00:51:50.000But why it should make a difference that a black person and a white person are in a room and somehow this is like better than two white people or two black people in a room.
00:51:57.000is beyond me without any other metric.
00:52:00.000But she said diversity will foster the tolerance, acceptance, and understanding that will ultimately make race-conscious admissions obsolete.
00:52:07.000Okay, they've been saying that for 40 years now since Grutter v. Bollinger in the late 70s, and the court's not letting up on this nonsense.
00:52:14.000So I do—there is a great irony to the fact that now the courts are standing up for diversity by barring Asians from Harvard.
00:52:24.000Alrighty, we'll be back here a little bit later today with all the updates on Bernie Sanders' health, and on the impeachment inquiry, and all of it.
00:52:29.000Otherwise, we'll see you here tomorrow.
00:52:31.000Shana Tova, I'm Ben Shapiro, this is The Ben Shapiro Show.
00:52:38.000The Ben Shapiro Show is produced by Robert Sterling.
00:53:04.000Hey everyone, it's Andrew Klavan, host of The Andrew Klavan Show.
00:53:07.000Well, I guess we have to cover this stupid Ukraine story, an amazingly shameless and naked attempt to discredit the people who are in the process of exposing the Obama administration's spying campaign on Donald Trump.
00:53:19.000So that's unpleasant, but we'll also have the mail back, so all your problems will be solved.