Hunter Biden has been indicted on federal gun charges. Is this a ploy to distract us from the tax and foreign agent charges that are yet to be brought against him? Or is this just the latest in a long line of distractions the DOJ uses to get attention away from other pressing matters, like tax evasion and the Foreign Agents Registration Act charges that have not yet been brought? or is this an attempt to get Hunter Biden to plead not guilty to the most serious of all the charges he's been charged with, which is possession of a firearm while under the influence of a controlled substance? or something even worse, conspiracy to commit perjury and conspiracy to obstruct justice. Or is there something else going on here that we should be worried about, other than Hunter Biden being a crook, and Joe Biden getting off relatively unscathed? Well, we'll tell you what we know for sure, and that's that Hunter Biden is not going to go to jail for any significant amount of time, which means he's probably not even going to get much of a slap on the wrist, even if he does plead guilty to any of the other charges he s been accused of committing a crime he s currently facing. or not even being charged at all. Today's episode is all about why this is a ploy, and why it's a good one, and what it means for the Biden administration's chances of getting away with it. (1:00) (2:30) (3:15) (4:00 (5:00). (6:30). (7:00.) (8:30.) (9:20) (11:00), (15:30), (16:00 ) (17:40) (18:40). ) (19:30 ) Is Hunter Biden guilty of a crime? (20:40 ) (21:20 ) (23:30 (22:15 ) (24:00 ). Can he get off the hook? ) (25:00?) (26:20 (27:00)? (28:15 (29:00): Is this really a big deal? ? ?) And is this a deal ? (30:00 ? ) Is this deal a good deal? (31:10) (32:30?) (33:40 36:30)?
00:00:08.000Well, there are a bunch of reasons why I say this is a ploy.
00:00:10.000He is not going to jail for a significant period of time.
00:00:13.000This prosecution is not over the actual charges anyone cares about, namely the tax charges and the Foreign Agents Registration Act charges that have not yet been brought.
00:00:41.000And then he had the gun and he threw it in the garbage can.
00:00:43.000It's gonna be awkward for the Biden administration.
00:00:46.000Because now, Hunter Biden and his lawyers are going to argue that it violates the Second Amendment for him to be prosecuted under these terms.
00:00:53.000Meanwhile, his dad is out there saying that, So that's kind of awkward for Joe Biden.
00:01:01.000But is this a key issue in terms of Hunter and Joe?
00:01:06.000We currently have an impeachment inquiry going on that is entirely predicated upon the corrupt relationship between Hunter Biden and Joe Biden.
00:01:13.000And Joe Biden's response to this, and his DOJ's response to this, presumably, is, we will prosecute Hunter Biden on some ancillary charge.
00:01:19.000He'll get off with a relative slap on the wrist.
00:01:22.000And then you all just go about your business.
00:01:27.000According to NBC News, federal prosecutors have indicted Hunter Biden, the son of President Biden, on gun charges.
00:01:32.000Court documents show Biden was indicted Thursday in federal court in Delaware on three counts tied to possession of a gun while using narcotics.
00:01:37.000Two counts accused Biden of having completed a form indicating he was not using illegal drugs when he bought a Colt Cobra revolver in October 2018.
00:01:44.000The third count alleges he possessed a firearm while using a narcotic.
00:01:47.000The indictment says that Biden certified on a federally mandated form, quote, he was not an unlawful user of and addicted to any stimulant, narcotic drug, and any other controlled substance, when in fact, as he knew, that statement was false and fictitious.
00:01:58.000Two of the counts carry maximum prison sentences of 10 years.
00:02:00.000A third has a maximum sentence of five years.
00:02:02.000Each count also carries a maximum fine of $250,000, given the fact that Hunter Biden has not spent a day in jail yet, and he's never pled guilty to a crime, so far as I'm aware.
00:02:11.000This means he's probably, again, not going to go to jail for any significant period of time.
00:02:15.000That case is being overseen by special counsel David Weiss.
00:02:27.000One, this particular case is happening in Delaware, as Andy McCarthy points out.
00:02:31.000Well, as you'll recall, the entire scandal revolving around David Weiss is that he was not granted access to prosecute Hunter Biden in any jurisdiction outside of Delaware.
00:02:39.000He always had the jurisdiction to prosecute Hunter Biden inside of Delaware.
00:02:45.000The answer is he was trying to cut a sweetheart deal with Hunter Biden via Joe Biden.
00:02:50.000And this also doesn't actually rebut any of the charges that David Weiss was denied the ability to prosecute Hunter Biden outside of Delaware because, again, he's currently prosecuting him inside of Delaware.
00:03:01.000As Annie McCarthy writes, there are no Biden-appointed U.S.
00:03:03.000attorneys to blame for Weiss's failure for five years to file the indictment that was finally returned on Thursday.
00:03:08.000The statute of limitations was on the precipice of expiring.
00:03:11.000It was Weiss and Weiss alone who delayed bringing one of the most straightforward felony gun cases you will ever see.
00:03:19.000And also, as Annie McCarthy points out, given the fact that the Biden Justice Department tried to disappear the case against Hunter Biden just a couple of months ago with that diversion plan, his defense, Hunter Biden's defense is going to be really, really easy.
00:03:30.000They're just going to point to the prosecutors and say, guys, they didn't take it seriously.
00:03:34.000They were willing to sign a deal with us five seconds ago.
00:03:36.000It's only because that deal fell apart in public view that they ran away from it.
00:03:40.000But they obviously don't consider this a particularly serious crime.
00:03:44.000As Annie McCarthy says, it's rich for the same Justice Department to put out a statement in connection with today's indictment, stressing that Hunter is facing up to 25 years imprisonment.
00:03:52.000If Bynum is convicted on any or all of the three felonies, his defense lawyers are going to have a really strong argument.
00:03:57.000They'll just need to recount what the prosecutors said and did in the first place.
00:04:01.000And then, as Annie McCarthy points out quite correctly, the only case Weiss has brought is the one that Hunter Biden is involved in, but Joe isn't.
00:04:12.000There's a six-year statute of limitation on possible tax crimes.
00:04:16.000Those charges have not yet been brought.
00:04:18.000The latest possible tax crimes that we know about for Hunter Biden that were in some of the charging documents and the proposed plea deal arrangement.
00:04:26.000The latest charging documents carried crimes up to 2018-2019.
00:04:48.000Well, it means the statute of limitations could easily run while they are trying to distract you over here with the shiny gun indictment object.
00:05:10.000They're charging him on the ancillary crime to distract from the fact that they're not charging him on the key crimes.
00:05:14.000Namely, violation of the Foreign Agents Registration Act, which might immediately link up with Joe Biden and influence peddling.
00:05:20.000Or on the tax avoidance stuff, which again, might immediately link up to his father, Joe Biden.
00:05:26.000Hunter Biden's lawyer for his part is claiming that really the only reason this is happening is because of partisan interference, which is weird.
00:05:32.000The reason this is really happening is because you guys tried to create a sweetheart deal and a judge exposed the sweetheart deal and then the DOJ was embarrassed and reneged on the sweetheart deal.
00:05:42.000We have a brand new statement from Hunter Biden's attorney, Abby Lowell, that has just come in.
00:05:47.000It says, in part, quote, as expected, prosecutors filed charges today that they deemed were not warranted six weeks ago following a five-year investigation into this case.
00:05:57.000The evidence in this matter has not changed in the last six weeks, but the law has, and so has MAGA Republicans' improper and partisan interference in this process, he says.
00:06:10.000Okay, Abby Lowell also continued by telling Aaron Burnett, quote, The law says whether or not the person is possessing the gun while they are addicted.
00:06:16.000There's ambiguity in the statute, which we'll have to pursue if the case continues.
00:06:19.000At the time he purchased the gun, I don't think there's evidence that that's when he was suffering.
00:06:22.000When you refer to his book, he had just come out of rehabilitation.
00:06:25.000So they're going to present whatever defenses they're going to present.
00:06:27.000But really, again, what is this about?
00:06:29.000This is about the DOJ getting this charge off the table so that they can then claim that they've done enough here.
00:06:35.000And then they can wash their hands of the entire thing.
00:06:37.000This is the direction in which they are moving, pretty obviously.
00:06:40.000And you can see the media are calling for it.
00:08:05.000This is the tenor that the media are now taking.
00:08:08.000CNN's Breonna Keillor, she's like, is anyone else even charged this way?
00:08:11.000Hunter is actually a victim, isn't he?
00:08:13.000He's kind of a victim when you think about it.
00:08:16.000You know that Hunter Biden's attorneys are going to point to that ruling in the Fifth Circuit that calls into question whether this law is even going to stand by the time this is all said and done and certainly before it gets to the Supreme Court.
00:08:48.000Yeah, I'm sure they'd be asking the exact same questions if one of Donald Trump's children had been charged while he was President of the United States.
00:08:54.000Or maybe, maybe they would actually just be cheering.
00:08:56.000They'd actually break out the pom-poms and cheerleader outfits and all the rest.
00:08:58.000Reporters were going after James Comer.
00:09:00.000Comer, of course, has been leading the investigation into Hunter Biden's corrupt business relationships with Dad.
00:09:04.000And reporters are like, isn't this enough?
00:09:06.000Why can't you leave the poor, drug-addicted prostitute using derelict alone?
00:09:12.000Sounds like you're still expressing the skepticism here.
00:09:15.000I mean, the idea that you wanted an indictment from your perspective here, that's not enough?
00:09:19.000An indictment for money laundering, violation of the Foreign Agents Registration Act, tax evasion, the list goes on and on.
00:09:29.000You've never heard me say anything about gun charges.
00:09:33.000So, again, that's the one crime he's committed that you cannot tie to Joe Biden.
00:09:53.000The impeachment inquiry is not going away because it is perfectly obvious.
00:09:56.000As I said yesterday on the show, when you hear people shouting there is no evidence, they're totally right.
00:10:00.000There's no evidence that Joe was involved in Hunter's business, in his business transactions, in his business life, except for evidence from two of Hunter Biden's business partners, statements by Hunter Biden himself, texts from Hunter Biden's, They themselves have filed suspicious accounts.
00:10:15.000And I just wonder, are they helping you?
00:10:34.000It sounds to me like they'd be happy to unburden themselves and show all this stuff to you.
00:10:40.000The banks have been very helpful with the shell companies.
00:10:44.000Now we're getting into the personal Biden bank account and we suspect that the lawyers have already warned the banks against handing anything over to us.
00:10:54.000But we're going to give the banks another chance and we'll see.
00:10:59.000Representative Nancy Mace of South Carolina.
00:11:01.000She is similarly saying that they will subpoena Hunter while investigating Joe, which is which is right.
00:11:07.000Did they explain why they did not say subpoenaing Hunter Biden?
00:11:09.000Well, I believe that will happen, but we've got to get the bank records first.
00:11:13.000I mean, it's the chicken before the egg.
00:11:16.000Hunter Biden is not going to tell the truth under under oath.
00:11:19.000And so we want to make sure that we have all of the financial statements and records in accordance with the transactions that allegedly happened.
00:11:26.000And so that way we know if he's telling the truth.
00:11:35.000Okay, meanwhile, if you ever wonder how Donald Trump happened, how he happened, the reason is Mitt Romney.
00:11:41.000Okay, that is the reason that Donald Trump happened, for a wide variety of reasons.
00:11:44.000Reason number one is that the media, the left, attacked Mitt Romney, who's the most milquetoast politician of our era, with extraordinary alacrity.
00:11:51.000And so everybody in the Republican Party was like, okay, we're gonna give you a giant orange middle finger now.
00:11:55.000You didn't like the super polite guy who refused to say a bad word about anybody?
00:12:15.000I mean, first of all, I think the entire Republican Party, broad writ, has rejected that sort of direction.
00:12:20.000Even the other people who are up for the Republican presidential nomination who are running right now are not in Mitt Romney lane.
00:12:25.000There's not much of a Mitt Romney lane in the Republican Party anymore, nor should there be.
00:12:28.000I mean, Mitt Romney yesterday, again, his sole job appears to be to gain strange new respect from the left at this point.
00:12:35.000And again, I think he's a good person, but I don't understand why he thinks that the mark of a good person is to gain respect from, like, the CNNs and the MSNBCs.
00:12:43.000So yesterday, Romney was asked about the impeachment inquiry into Joe Biden.
00:12:49.000You wonder why the Democratic Party has tremendous loyalty among its base.
00:12:54.000There's not a lot of breakaways in the Democratic Party.
00:12:58.000The reason is because the Democratic Party is an excellent vehicle for progressivism.
00:13:01.000When it comes down to it, Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders are not separated by much other than affect.
00:13:06.000Joe Biden's policies look a lot like Bernie Sanders.
00:13:08.000So the radical left looks at Joe and they're like, okay, yeah, he's old, yeah, he's decrepit, yeah, he's corrupt, but he's doing the things we want to do.
00:13:14.000Meanwhile, the Republican base looks at the Republican Party and they're like, We ask you to do X and you just won't do it.
00:13:20.000Here's Mitt Romney saying that he's not hearing a high crime and misdemeanor when it comes to Hunter and Joe Biden.
00:13:25.000I know the House is beginning an impeachment inquiry.
00:13:29.000I haven't heard any allegation of something that would rise to the level of a high crime or misdemeanor.
00:13:34.000I think it'd be very unusual to actually see a referral of impeachment.
00:13:43.000Okay, that's an amazing statement, given the fact that he voted for Trump's impeachment on both accounts, right?
00:13:48.000On the first one, the Ukraine one, which is insane.
00:13:51.000Okay, the Ukraine one didn't even allege a crime.
00:13:53.000And he said that Donald Trump deserves to be impeached for high crimes and misdemeanors, while, by the way, defending the business relationships between Hunter and Joe.
00:14:01.000Here's Mitt Romney just a couple of years ago.
00:14:03.000The grave question the Constitution tasks senators to answer is whether the president committed an act so extreme and egregious that it rises to the level of a high crime and misdemeanor.
00:15:00.000What he actually said in that speech is, quote, with regards to Hunter Biden, taking excessive advantage of his father's name is unsavory, but also not a crime.
00:15:07.000Given that neither case of the father nor the son was any evidence presented by the president's counsel that a crime had been committed, the president's insistence that they be investigated by the Ukrainians is hard to explain other than as a political pursuit.
00:15:17.000There's no question in my mind that were their names not Biden, the president never would have done what he did.
00:15:22.000Again, the fact that Mitt Romney spent his days defending the Bidens while attacking Trump and is still doing that is kind of an insane referendum on the old school Republican Party.
00:15:32.000Okay, in just one second we'll get to Joe Biden's attempt to avoid A rather bad presidential electoral fate by relying on his economic plans.
00:15:41.000First, the Ben Shapiro Show is sponsored by Grand Canyon University, an affordable private Christian university with a vibrant campus in beautiful Phoenix, Arizona.
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00:16:24.000It's why eventually he's just going to turn to democracy talk.
00:16:27.000In fact, there are already reports today that the next several weeks Joe Biden is just going to say the word democracy over and over and over again.
00:16:37.000It seemed to work out fairly well for him in the 2022 elections.
00:16:41.000When he ran against the so-called MAGA Republican insurrectionists and all of this, and running against Donald Trump, he's hoping that it will carry him to victory again.
00:16:48.000He certainly cannot rely on his economic program, because the economic program is a full-scale disaster area.
00:16:55.000According to the New York Times, President Biden challenged his Republican opponents on Thursday in their area of political strength, arguing he has done a better job of managing the economy than former President Donald Trump did, and accusing his predecessor's congressional allies of undercutting working-class Americans.
00:18:13.000We're for you not inflating the currency.
00:18:14.000We're for you not spending $7 trillion a year.
00:18:16.000We're for you not blowing trillions of dollars into random boondoggle projects via the Inflation Reduction Act, which has not reduced inflation.
00:18:24.000We're for... Like, that's a bunch of things that I'm for.
00:18:32.000Honest to God, it's like your employee is embezzling against you and you're like, you call up the police and you say, I'm against my employee embezzling.
00:20:27.000If you have dependents, you got a wife, you got kids, you got to make sure that God forbid something happens to you, that's going to be bad enough.
00:20:32.000But if they lose their entire source of income, that's really, really bad as well.
00:20:36.000Life insurance can give you the peace of mind of knowing that at least that is not going to happen.
00:22:28.000So you can get some small concessions from them, but the notion that you're going to radically remake American government because the power of the purse is with the House.
00:22:34.000Yes, the power of the purse is with the House.
00:22:36.000And guess what happens if you lead to a large-scale government shutdown?
00:23:15.000If he gives me a deliverable, I'm perfectly happy to go along with the deliverable.
00:23:18.000Chip Roy, during the last speakership fight, gave me his list of deliverables, and I was very much in favor of a lot of those deliverables.
00:24:26.000I also don't believe the Democrats are simply going to cave to Republicans because Matt Gaetz goes on MSNBC and yells about Kevin McCarthy.
00:25:52.000We have to do whatever we can to avoid a government shutdown.
00:25:55.000If McCarthy now takes the stand, I'm going to shut down the government, then all of the benefit of the government shutdown accrues to the Democrats.
00:26:02.000See, there's something that I object to in sort of my industry.
00:26:06.000There are a lot of people in my industry who believe that idealism requires you to charge headlong into hard objects.
00:26:14.000Idealism is understanding what we would like.
00:26:17.000Realism is understanding what you can get.
00:26:19.000An idealist who is not a realist is a fool.
00:26:23.000If you're an idealist, and what you think is that you always go for broke, always and forever, and that anything short of that is ideological treason, that is incorrect.
00:26:35.000It's not how anything gets done, in fact.
00:26:37.000In fact, it is a recipe for losing, repeatedly.
00:26:39.000Because when you go for 100, and you won't take anything less than 100, you're much likelier to get zero than you are to get 80.
00:26:45.000If you're trying to get most of what you want, well, then you better know the lay of the land.
00:26:49.000You better actually take into account tactics and strategy.
00:26:52.000And there is this defeatism that has come into the Republican Party that suggests no matter what we do, we're not going to get what we want, so we may as well just yell as loud as we can with no actual end goal here that is doable.
00:27:03.000And then everyone who refuses to do that, we're just going to yell them out of the party, or we're going to alienate them, or we're going to put up candidates who are bound to lose.
00:27:10.000Because if we yell a lot, maybe we'll feel better about it.
00:27:16.000It's not stuff that you should be doing as somebody who watches politics.
00:27:19.000And people in my industry shouldn't be doing it either.
00:27:20.000It is my job to tell you, yes, what my principles are, but also the realistic lay of the land so we know what we can get.
00:27:26.000And I think there are a lot of people in my industry who don't tell you the lay of the land.
00:27:31.000And so they give a false perception of what it is that you can get.
00:27:35.000And that's a mistake, because it sets up unrealistic expectations.
00:27:38.000It means that there are politicians who are negotiating, who are trying to make the sausage, and then we object to the sausage-making process, and then the sausage doesn't get made, and then we're really mad the sausage didn't get made, and we blame them.
00:27:48.000Yeah, but the reality is that it's an ugly process.
00:27:53.000If you want Republicans to make serious changes in the spending habits of the United States, which is what I would like, what I would like is the stuff that no one will talk about.
00:28:28.000Or you can plan for it now, but nobody will touch that.
00:28:31.000Instead, we'll jabber about pork barrel spending and bridges to nowhere that cost a fraction of what it would cost to actually look at Social Security and Medicare.
00:28:40.000And the reality is, we're not going to do any of that unless you actually win.
00:28:49.000What's amazing to me is that the calls for political courage constantly seem to be directly in inverse proportion to the amount of power Republicans wield.
00:29:35.000Now, what does that— what does that bespeak?
00:29:37.000It bespeaks that when you're victorious, you tend to be lazy.
00:29:39.000And when you are not victorious, you tend to be defeatist, and thus, desperate, and thus, charging to walls at top speed.
00:29:45.000Here's McCarthy talking about how nobody wins in a government shutdown, which, I mean, Speaking in terms of just political wins and losses, we've had several of these.
00:29:54.000Nobody's been like a big winner from a government shutdown in the recent past.
00:29:59.000I showed frustration in here because I am frustrated with the committee.
00:30:02.000I'm frustrated with some people in the conference.
00:30:04.000But when we come back, we're not going to leave.
00:30:30.000Again, I'll give you the idealism, I'll tell you what I want, and then I'll tell you what's realistic.
00:30:34.000Because that's what responsible people do.
00:30:36.000And it seems to me that if you're talking about the fate of the United States and our fiscal future, responsibility should be at the top of the list.
00:30:43.000Or we can just be defeatist and then run against walls.
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00:31:12.000Balance of Nature sent a bunch of their product down to the studio for my team to try their kosher, so I've been using them as well.
00:31:16.000As you know, I've said it many times on the show, I think vegetables are the enemy of man, but you have to ingest them so that you actually can live longer.
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00:32:39.000Now, speaking of the idea that defeatism and despair is a bad strategy, we gotta talk about the 2024 presidential election.
00:32:46.000Donald Trump has a very decent shot of being president of the United States, if in fact he is the nominee.
00:32:50.000When I say very decent, I don't mean like 50%, I don't mean 60% or 70%, I mean like a 33, 35% shot.
00:32:56.000The reason that I say that is because, again, he lost the last election cycle.
00:32:59.000And he lost in a bunch of states he shouldn't have lost, including Arizona and Georgia, and I don't know how he's going to make up the ground in places like Arizona and Georgia given his current campaign status, the fact that he's spending all of his campaign money on, for example, legal expenses, and the fact that he's going to face down four separate criminal indictments in the next year.
00:33:16.000But that doesn't mean he can't possibly be president.
00:33:18.000There's only one thing that could certainly foreclose Trump from being president.
00:33:44.000If I tell you, I played really hard last night in my basketball game, but let me tell you, the referee was actively paid by the other side.
00:34:33.000Two Democrat senators and $7 trillion in spending thanks to Donald Trump's dumbass attempts to turn the Georgia 2021 special election into a referendum on how he did in Georgia, leading a bunch of rural Republicans not to vote and hand two separate Senate seats to Democrats and control of the Senate and $7 trillion in spending.
00:34:51.000So you know what strategy I would like to not do?
00:34:56.000He has to stop saying that the election is rigged.
00:34:58.000The reason he has to stop saying the election is rigged is why would you vote if the election is rigged?
00:35:02.000Why would I vote if the election is rigged?
00:35:04.000No matter what I do, they're going to rig the election.
00:35:06.000Okay, the other thing that he could say, theoretically, is something has changed systemically between 2020 and 2024, right?
00:35:12.000He could say, well, you know, there are a bunch of Republican states that have cleaned up their act, which, sure, I mean, Georgia passed a bill, Florida passed a bill, okay.
00:35:19.000He could theoretically make that case, although he's going to have a tougher time in Arizona.
00:35:23.000He could make the case that we are taking serious, on-the-ground steps to engage in some of the things Democrats do, like ballot harvesting or early voting.
00:35:40.000Donald Trump could still be president.
00:35:41.000He would still be president today if he had run a good campaign in 2020.
00:35:46.000And by the way, he would be leading Joe Biden by leaps and bounds if after the election of 2020, he had said, okay, I lost, but Joe Biden's going to be a terrible president.
00:35:54.000And I'll be back in like a year telling you how terrible it was.
00:36:00.000It would have been that simple, but we're not doing that.
00:36:03.000In any case, Donald Trump does an interview with Megyn Kelly, and she asks him the question that I have been asking for like a couple of years at this point.
00:36:11.000If you say the 2020 election was rigged, how do you plan on winning the 2024 election if it is similarly rigged?
00:36:17.000And his answer is everything that I said he should not say.
00:36:39.000You can win by 100 million votes and you'll still lose because your argument is, as we would have said in law school, an argument that proves too much.
00:36:45.000In fact, you are discouraging your own voters from voting when you say their votes don't matter.
00:37:41.000We have unbelievable people and we're going to be and we're going and we're going to be fighting like hell is not an answer to they cheated and rigged all the rules.
00:37:59.000If I tell you, again, the referee in this basketball game is paid off by the opposition and is going to rig the game for the opposition, and you say, how are you going to win?
00:38:08.000And I say, I'm going to play unbelievable.
00:39:04.000So if he actually wants to win, he should stop with the whining and he should start actually, I don't know, investing tens of millions of dollars in ballot harvesting operations.
00:39:10.000He should start investing tens of millions of dollars in get-out-the-vote efforts with regard to early balloting.
00:39:15.000He should spend tens of his own money.
00:39:18.000He should be spending this money on his legal fees so that when I give a dollar to his campaign in the general, which I'm sure I will, then that money will not go to his legal fees.
00:39:26.000It will go to actually doing the things necessary to win votes.
00:42:43.000If you want Trump to win, he needs to have an answer to this question, an actual, on-the-ground answer that involves spending money in particular ways and deploying resources in particular ways.
00:42:52.000And if he's not focused on any of those things, you have to ask the question as to why he is not focused on those things.
00:43:08.000Complaining that they're literally going to take all the ballots and throw them out the window.
00:43:11.000Because if that's true, it doesn't matter what Trump does, he's going to lose.
00:43:14.000According to him, not according to me.
00:43:17.000Well, that wasn't the end of Donald Trump's interview with Megyn Kelly.
00:43:19.000So Megyn gave the first interview with Trump I've seen in a very long time that actually was a good interview with Trump because Megyn is the best in the business.
00:43:25.000It wasn't sycophantic nonsense about how he was nice to Mike Pence.
00:43:28.000And it wasn't the left simply asking why such a bad, mean man.
00:43:31.000It was her asking actual incisive questions.
00:43:34.000And I got to say, Trump underperformed.
00:43:37.000I mean, that's just the reality of the situation.
00:43:38.000In this interview with Megyn Kelly, and if there were anyone who are still objective in this race, I don't know that they would be in love with Trump's answer.
00:43:44.000So for example, she asked him about his performance on COVID.
00:43:47.000His performance on COVID was at best an extremely mixed bag.
00:43:50.000Everyone who was there and who has a memory longer than a goldfish knows that.
00:43:56.000He was ripping on Brian Kemp in one moment saying, why is he reopening his state?
00:44:00.000And in the other, he was like, liberate Michigan!
00:44:02.000And he's like, I don't understand what you want.
00:44:05.000On the one hand it was, Dr. Fauci, the greatest public ser- and on the other hand it was, Dr. Fauci, he's terrible- like, it was just all confused and discombobulated.
00:45:02.000That he was out at every presser, that he was running herd for the administration on COVID, and that you actually gave him a presidential commendation before he left office.
00:46:51.000DeSantis fought back on that, of course, as he should.
00:46:55.000I'm sure you saw the former president's interview with Megyn Kelly last night, trying to relitigate a lot of these COVID issues and controversies from the end of his presidency.
00:47:07.000You were accused of having one of the worst lockdowns in the country, vaccine mandates, praising Fauci for months on end.
00:47:15.000I want to give you a chance to respond to all of that, because all that stuff was mentioned by the former president in that interview.
00:47:23.000Well, first, I think it's important to say that that is different from what Donald Trump used to say.
00:47:27.000I mean, he used to praise Florida for having been open.
00:47:30.000He used to say I was one of the country's great governors.
00:47:34.000He said we handled COVID correctly and brilliantly.
00:47:54.000She asked Trump about his classified documents case.
00:47:57.000And, by the way, Meghan is a believer that Trump should not be prosecuted on the classified documents case, so far as I'm aware, specifically because Hillary Clinton was not prosecuted for pretty much the same thing.
00:48:06.000But she asked him a pretty simple question, which is, why did you keep the documents?
00:48:09.000And then why were you waving them around?
00:48:10.000And also, why did you lie to Bret Baier and say that the documents you were waving around, on tape, saying that they were classified, and you could have declassified to them, but you didn't?
00:48:17.000Why did you say that those were golf plans when they clearly were not?
00:48:20.000And at this point, Trump's lawyers must just be like setting their hair on fire.
00:48:25.000Again, guys, if you're going to do criming, don't do the criming on tape and then don't retrospectively admit that you did the criming like this is.
00:48:32.000Here is Donald Trump making his lawyers, you know, I think his lawyers all have.
00:48:41.000Now, why would you describe a newspaper article as highly confidential and still a secret, saying as president you could have declassified it, but now you can't?
00:48:51.000Number one, I did nothing wrong, because I come under the Presidential Records Act.
00:48:56.000The fascists who are going after me, and they're not going after Biden, even though he has about 10 times more documents, maybe more than that, he has documents going back 40 years or 50 years.
00:49:29.000They were classified documents, but he's making the argument that he's allowed to have the classified documents.
00:49:34.000I mean, now he's basically just said, like, what he's talking about is a legal interpretation of the statute.
00:49:41.000For the record, the Presidential Records Act covers personal presidential communications.
00:49:45.000It is if you keep a diary of your time in the White House, that does not become classified material that is yours.
00:49:49.000It does not mean that if there's a CIA report that crosses your desk, and you don't declassify it, and you take it home, and you put it in your drawer, that it is now magically declassified.
00:49:57.000That is not what the Presidential Records Act says.
00:50:03.000Even if you interpret the law like Trump is interpreting the law, that's a legal argument, that is not a factual argument.
00:50:07.000What Trump is going to be asked to testify about if he testifies in that case is he says that he will, and his lawyers certainly will not let him.
00:50:13.000If he were to testify in that case, they're not going to ask him about his interpretation of the Presidential Records Act.
00:50:18.000That's an argument for legal analysts.
00:50:21.000They're going to ask him whether he declassified the documents.
00:50:24.000Whether he went through any process, and he's going to say no, because he did not go through any process.
00:50:28.000He's going to say, they're automatically declassified.
00:50:30.000Again, that's a legal argument, not a factual one.
00:50:32.000They're going to say, did you go through any process for declassifying the documents?
00:51:06.000They're not even looking at what he does.
00:51:07.000They feel like they know the guy and they're loyal to him and they believe that because he won in 2016, he'll pull a rabbit out of the hat in 2024 and he doesn't have to have a plan.
00:51:15.000He'll magic his way to the White House.
00:51:18.000But, you know, in the world of actual political analysis, where we are supposed to look at what people say and what people do, Megyn Kelly did a good job of interviewing Trump and he did not do a good job of handling those questions, just on any objective level.
00:51:30.000Okay, time for some things I like and then some things that I hate.
00:51:36.000I'm excited to announce to you that the Union Solidarity Coalition, which is apparently a group of quasi-famous actors and actresses and writers and such, they are now auctioning off their services to benefit their crew's healthcare fund.
00:51:49.000Now, at this point, I should remind you that every single person who's auctioning off services is worth many millions of dollars.
00:51:54.000And if they actually wanted to help benefit their crew's healthcare fund, they could just sign a check.
00:51:58.000In fact, that would be the best way to do it.
00:51:59.000So, if you are Lena Dunham, And number one, you come from a very wealthy family.
00:52:04.000And number two, you have a net worth of 10, 12 million dollars.
00:52:09.000You know, it's a great way to help out the people who are members of your crew,
00:53:34.000And also, Respect for talent and their staff will be expected at all times.
00:53:37.000Inappropriate behavior or solicitation for personal gain by the winner could result in the immediate conclusion of the experience with no refund.
00:53:43.000The talent has the right to end the experience at any time for any reason with no refund and background check and all the rest.
00:53:48.000So if you want Lena Dunham, a weirdo, in your house painting strange things on your walls, you could do that.
00:53:54.000By the way, that's only going to cost you about three grand.
00:55:34.000Apparently Adam Scott, you know the guy from like Severance?
00:55:38.000He is offering to walk your dog for one hour, LA-based dogs only, $2,500.
00:55:42.000Or Adam Scott could sign a check that would benefit the crew, but he's gonna walk your dog for like an hour, which sounds amazing.
00:55:52.000Or theoretically, you could just walk your dog yourself.
00:55:55.000But I guess if you really want to be able to say that you hired Adam Scott to walk your dog, because it's like a good cocktail party story or something, you could do that.
00:56:03.000I'm very into the sessions that are now being auctioned off with like old Fox shows that lasted for a few seasons, but nobody remembers.
00:56:12.000So there's now a virtual hangout available with the cast of Bones.
00:56:22.000I mostly just remember the commercials during 24.
00:56:25.000But if you really want to hang with the cast of Bones, now is your absolute, virtually of course, they don't want to be in a room with you, but like virtually, now is your moment.
00:56:33.000I'm gonna hold off on betting on that until Lie to Me, until the cast of Lie to Me, a short-lived Fox series, is available, like Tim Roth.
00:56:54.000She has directed the first full season of Netflix Feel Good, and, uh, she has written on an unpronounceable show on, uh, because it has a curse word, on 20th Century Fox Bleeps Creek.
00:57:08.000Uh, and, um, yeah, and she has done, like, an episode of Black Mirror, so that's exciting.
00:57:13.000You can have this no-name coach you through an hour directing mentorship.
00:57:19.000Man, so many just awesome options here, all of which would be obviated by any of these very, very wealthy people signing a check to the people who actually do most of the work on their show.
00:57:53.000Well, the richness with which these people have endowed our lives and the lack of richness with which they will endow their crew who are out of work right now is truly awe-inspiring.
00:58:26.000She's the Undersecretary General for Global Communications talking about how we need more trans-global control of information flow.
00:58:34.000We do feel like we are in an information war and that we need to massively ramp up our response.
00:58:42.000So we're creating at the UN a central capacity to monitor and also have the ability to rapidly react when misinformation and hate speech is threatening not just our people, our operations, but also the issues and the causes that we're working on.
00:58:59.000But also we're going to be gearing up our verified initiative around climate change and developing this UN Code of Conduct on Information Integrity on Digital Platforms, hoping to set global standards that we can all advocate around.
00:59:20.000Run by an organization that has on its security council China and Russia.
00:59:24.000I can't see how this will go wrong in any way, shape, or form.
00:59:27.000I can't see how people who worry about the globalist agenda, why are they concerned?
00:59:32.000I mean, after all, we have experts on hate speech who are going to come in and dictate to all the social media companies what they can and cannot allow.