The Senate Judiciary Committee uncovers a very weird letter from the Obama administration. Plus, is Wakanda real? We ll discuss all of the glories of Wakanda, the greatest place in the universe. On The Ben Shapiro Show, Ben talks about: - The Rob Porter Scandal - Susan Rice's Last Day in the White House - Is Wakanda Real? - What actually happened at a meeting between James Comey and Sally Yates - Who was present at the January 5th, 2017, briefing by President Obama on Russian hacking - and why it matters - And much, much more! Subscribe to the show Subscribe on iTunes Learn more about your ad choices. If you like what you hear, please HIT SUBSCRIBE and also consider leaving us a five star rating and a review! The opinions stated here are our own, not those of our wonderful employers, the ones we trust the most with our time, their discretion, and their support of our products and services. Thank you so much for all the support you've shown so far, it really means a lot to us, and we appreciate it so much to us. Peace, Blessings, Cheers. Ben and Cheers, your continued support is much appreciated. - Your continued support will be greatly appreciated, too, and so much so that we can all be heard by the rest of the world, too much so we can be heard across the world. "The whole world needs to hear it." - The entire world needs it too much of it, from the world." - ETC - Thank you, Ben Shapiro - P.S. - Thank You, Mr. B. Goodness, Thank You So Much, Good Night, Good Morning, Good Luck, Good Bless, Good Day, Bless, etc., etc., Bless, By Bless, etc., - ERS, etc. -- VOTED TO CHECK OUT THE WORLD, CHEERING, MRS. AND KELLY AND FAST FOOTPROODS AND GOT IT, ENJOYED, CHOTTER AND FOTOGRAPHY AND A PODCAST AND A PRODCAST OUTSAKE AND A FOTOGRAM AND A LOT CHOTOTHE CHEOTHE OUTS OUTS AND A PLACE AND A MECKET AND A SONG AND A BED AND A DOUG AND A MAGCAST AND MAKE A PEDCAST OUT AND A TOTIE AND A CRY TO CHOT AND A QOTHE AND A CHOTHE CORLINE AND A LOT MORE AND A THOTIE PAPER AND A NECK AND A ROW AND A MONTH AND A COURTELLING THAT S NOT QOT HE WAS QOTED IN A BOTHE RAP AND A RETRIE AND A SCOTCH AND A GOT A BODY AND A SUPPORTER AND A VOTER AND AN AMCAST OF THAT AND A CEDCAST AND AN APCAST OF ME AND A RELATIONSHIP AND A SECRETRY AND A TELLING OUT A BIRD AND A BALANCE OF THOT AND AN IMPRONE AND A BUTTER AND AN ETS AND A BAD THOT OF A FOTO AND A FEEDCAST OF A SOTTERPRISE AND A HEAD AND A REST OF THE FOTOT HEARING THAT BECAUSE A BECAECHE HEAR AND A MAKING THOT HEB AND A CHRISTOTHE HE WAS THOTTERTHING AND A TREMENT AND A VIOTHE TO THAT AND AN FOTORY AND A BLOT HEARD AND A KED AND AN A BING AND A NA CHOT HE AND A FACE AND A BETTER THIEPR AND A FINALLY A FALLY A THIRD THOT TO A BEE AND A NOT THOT THOT OUT AND AN ALOT OF ALL THOT THAT AND THOT OR A FONE AND FALLY AND A FRY AND BALLY AND AN AND A ME AND AN ALL OF THEA AND A ... ... AND A YOT AND ALL OF THE THOTLE AND A MOVIE AND AN INFERION AND A THROT HEY AND ALL THAT AND AND A DEFINED THAT AND THE FALLY THOT HER AND A HEAL AND A ....)
00:00:29.000The media continues to worship at the altar of North Korea and go crazy over tweets from a New York Times writer.
00:00:35.000But I'm going—and I definitely will talk about the Wakanda stuff, because everybody is going nuts over Wakanda, a place that does not exist, has not existed, and will never exist, but apparently is the great aspiration for black people across the planet or some such.
00:01:03.000This is a fellow trying to break into a house, and then you can see how it all goes wrong because Ring.com is there to thwart his attempts.
00:02:07.000Very often when people are breaking into your house, they ring the doorbell first to make sure that you're not home, and then they break into your house.
00:02:56.000We begin today with a little-covered story that is actually, I think, could be a big story.
00:03:01.000We don't know enough yet to know, but we will find out, I think, pretty soon.
00:03:05.000So, on Monday, the Senate Judiciary Committee Senators Charles Grassley and Lindsey Graham sent a letter to former Obama National Security Advisor Susan Rice, and they asked her to explain an email that she actually sent to herself on the last day of the Obama administration.
00:03:18.000So, January 20th, they're all getting ready to go to the inauguration, and Susan Rice is at her keyboard typing out an email to Susan Rice.
00:03:26.000Well, it explained that President Obama had held a briefing on January 5th regarding a supposed Trump-Russia collusion.
00:03:32.000So according to the letter from Grassley and Graham to Rice, it says, if the timestamp is correct, you sent this email to yourself at 12.15 p.m., presumably a very short time before you departed the White House for the last time.
00:03:42.000In this email to yourself, you purport to document a meeting that had taken place more than two weeks before on January 5th, 2017.
00:03:48.000So like, the last minute she's in the White House, she's sending herself an email about a meeting that was held in the White House
00:03:54.000Between James Comey, the then FBI director, the Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates—both of these people have been fired or are gone from the Trump administration—Vice President Biden was present, and Susan Rice was present, and President Obama was present.
00:04:06.000So what actually happened at this meeting?
00:04:08.000According to the email that Susan Rice sent to Susan Rice, it says this, quote,
00:04:13.000On January 5th, following a briefing by IC leadership, intelligence community leadership, on Russian hacking during the 2016 presidential election, President Obama had a brief follow-on conversation with FBI Director Jim Comey and Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates in the Oval Office.
00:04:27.000Vice President Biden and I were also present.
00:04:29.000President Obama began the conversation by stressing his continued commitment to ensuring that every aspect of this issue is handled by the intelligence and law enforcement communities, quote-unquote, by the book.
00:04:38.000The president stressed he is not asking about initiating or instructing anything from a law enforcement perspective.
00:04:43.000He reiterated that our law enforcement team needs to proceed as it normally would by the book.
00:04:49.000From a national security perspective, however, President Obama said he wants to be sure that, as we engage with the incoming team, we are mindful to ascertain if there is any reason that we cannot share information fully as it relates to Russia.
00:05:00.000The president asked Comey to inform him if anything changes in the next few weeks that should affect how we share classified information with the incoming team, and Comey said that he would.
00:05:08.000So there are a bunch of things about this email that Rice sent to Rice that should be disturbing.
00:05:12.000First of all, why was she sending a memo to herself?
00:05:14.000The only reason that you send a memo to yourself, legally speaking as a lawyer, the only reason you do that is to create a paper trail.
00:05:19.000So she wanted a paper trail suggesting that this meeting was totally hunky-dory, which is why it says twice in the email that this was all happening quote-unquote by the book.
00:05:30.000How exactly would Obama have planned to prevent the intelligence community from handing over information to the incoming commander-in-chief?
00:05:37.000We talk about violation of presidential norms.
00:05:40.000Well, one of the presidential norms is—not just norms, what is the law—is that when the chief executive comes in, when the commander-in-chief enters,
00:05:48.000He now has access to all the classified materials.
00:05:50.000But here is Obama saying to Comey, tell me what I should not tell the president of the United States, the president-elect of the United States.
00:05:58.000The implication being that the outgoing administration was going to hide information about the incoming administration from the incoming administration with regard to, quote unquote, Trump-Russia collusion.
00:06:08.000Trump has full constitutional power over the executive branch, including the IC.
00:06:12.000But Obama said he might want to prevent the full sharing of information regarding Russia.
00:06:15.000I mean, talk about violation of norms.
00:06:17.000Shift the names here, and then imagine the fallout.
00:06:20.000Imagine that George W. Bush, in the last days of his administration, had had into his office the heads of his intelligence community and Vice President Cheney, and he said to them, listen, I'm very suspicious of this Obama guy.
00:06:30.000It seems like he has a lot of conflicting feelings about the United States.
00:06:34.000What if we just don't give him all the information?
00:06:42.000The president-elect of the United States is owed this information.
00:06:45.000And yet, that's apparently exactly what Obama was talking about.
00:06:48.000Third, Obama said he didn't want to interfere with anything from a law enforcement perspective.
00:06:52.000But how about from an intelligence-gathering perspective?
00:06:54.000So, Andy McCarthy, over at National Review, has been aces on this.
00:06:57.000He says, since the beginning, there's been a major distinction people have missed between the Mueller investigation as a counterintelligence investigation and the Mueller investigation as a criminal investigation.
00:07:07.000A counterintelligence investigation is an investigation where you're attempting to determine if someone's trying to influence our elections, if somebody in the United States is maybe working with those people.
00:07:16.000But it is not a criminal investigation in the sense that you need to gather evidence for possible prosecution.
00:07:21.000Well, Obama seems to be making the same distinction.
00:07:23.000He's not saying we're going to prosecute anyone from the Trump administration.
00:07:27.000He is saying that we're in the middle of a counterintelligence investigation, and maybe that means that we shouldn't hand over information to Trump.
00:07:34.000So Grassley and Graham asked a series of questions that do deserve answers from Susan Rice.
00:07:38.000She's not famous for giving forthright answers to straight questions.
00:07:41.000Some of these questions, why did Rice send the email in the first place?
00:07:44.000When was she aware of the Trump-Russia collusion investigation?
00:07:46.000Because if this meeting was about the Trump-Russia collusion investigation, and they were using that as an excuse not to hand over information to Trump and team, that's a problem.
00:07:56.000Was Susan Rice aware of the FISA warrants on Carter Page?
00:07:58.000Was the Obama administration using a thinly obtained FISA warrant on Carter Page in order to target the Trump administration for future curbs on their intelligence gathering?
00:08:10.000Did Comey or Yates mention any media coverage of the Steele dossier?
00:08:13.000Was Susan Rice aware of the Steele dossier?
00:08:15.000Were there any more meetings of this sort?
00:08:17.000You know, we don't know the answers to any of these questions, but we better get the answers to some of these questions, because this is a violation of serious norms.
00:08:24.000We keep hearing, over and over again, that the Trump administration has breached norms.
00:08:29.000And listen, I'm the first to say when I think something that is not normal is going on.
00:08:33.000I don't think that it's normal to have this level of turnover in the White House in the first year.
00:08:36.000I don't think that it's normal the President of the United States to say what he said after Charlottesville, or for him to suggest that he doesn't want Haitian immigrants.
00:08:42.000I don't think that it's normal for the president of the United States to be making excuses for an alleged child molester in Alabama, or for him to suggest that a guy on his own staff, who there's evidence of wife beating, that that guy says he's innocent, and therefore, meh.
00:08:56.000I don't think that any of that is normal.
00:08:58.000But if we're going to talk about breaches of normality that actually go to the heart of the system, this is one of them.
00:09:03.000For all the talk about Trump being the incipient tyrant, the Hitlerian figure who is going to come in and overthrow all constitutional boundaries, just destroy the Constitution piece by piece, that's not what's happened.
00:09:13.000The norms that Trump has destroyed have been norms of behavior.
00:09:16.000That's stuff that I don't like, because a lot of those norms I think are good.
00:09:19.000But if you're talking about who perverted institutions, the Obama administration perverted institutions far more than the Trump administration has.
00:09:27.000I mean, the Obama administration had an attorney general, who now wants to talk about running for president, who called himself the President of the United States' wingman.
00:09:35.000The Obama administration militarized the IRS for use against conservative nonprofits.
00:09:41.000The IRS had to apologize for that just in recent months.
00:09:43.000The Obama administration used the HHS as a center of corruption under Kathleen Sebelius.
00:09:49.000The Obama administration was utilizing the FBI in order to let Hillary Clinton off the hook.
00:09:54.000The Obama administration corrupted institution after institution, so when we talk about violation of norms, that's where we should start.
00:10:01.000You know, everybody's focused on the shiny object of the silliness of some of the stuff happening inside the Trump administration.
00:10:06.000When we talk about norms that have been destroyed and violated, that did not begin with Trump.
00:10:11.000Trump is a response to violation of norms.
00:10:13.000And the American public said, fine, you want to violate some norms?
00:11:37.000Keep listening over the next few weeks and find out how LegalZoom can help you during National Small Business Month, and you're not going to want to miss out.
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00:12:08.000OK, so the media, while they haven't been focusing on the violation of institutional norms by the Obama administration, they're focusing in on supposed breaches of protocol by the Trump administration.
00:12:19.000Well, some of those breaches are actual breaches, right?
00:12:22.000Like, why was Omarosa working in the Trump administration?
00:12:25.000So, Omarosa Manigault was on The Apprentice, fired three times, and then Trump hired her for the White House, and then fired her again.
00:12:31.000And now she's on Celebrity Big Brother, where apparently there are rumors that she was slipping out of her robe.
00:12:35.000I haven't actually watched the show, so—and now I have no desire to do so.
00:12:39.000But Omarosa actually—on the show last night, she ripped into Mike Pence.
00:13:00.000OK, the violation of norms that went on here is why in the hell was this woman anywhere near power?
00:13:04.000She was a celebrity reality TV contestant, and then she was ousted, and now she's back on celebrity reality TV.
00:13:09.000I mean, there's a hell of a career arc.
00:13:11.000To go from reality TV to the White House and back to reality TV, just spectacular.
00:13:14.000But is that violation of presidential norms severely damaging to the United States in the same way as, say, a prior administration refusing to hand over intelligence data?
00:13:32.000This is what they're constantly saying.
00:13:33.000So yesterday, for example, they decided to jump on Jeff Sessions, the attorney general.
00:13:37.000Attorney General Sessions, I think, has overall been doing a fine job.
00:13:40.000And Attorney General Sessions was giving a speech about the sheriff's office, and here's what he had to say.
00:13:44.000Since our founding, the independently elected sheriff has been the people's protector, who keeps law enforcement close to and accountable to people through the elected process.
00:13:58.000The Office of Sheriff is a critical part of the Anglo-American heritage of law enforcement.
00:14:05.000Okay, so everyone, everyone jumped on that phrase, the Anglo-American heritage of law enforcement.
00:14:37.000The Anglo-American heritage of law enforcement and the Anglo-American heritage of America's legal system has been commented on by virtually every president.
00:14:43.000It springs all the way back to—you can go all the way back to William Blackstone, which was used as the basis for a lot of American law.
00:14:49.000British common law was the basis for a lot of American law.
00:14:52.000Here's Senator Obama in 2006, before he was president, talking about habeas corpus, quote,
00:14:57.000I sincerely hope we can protect what has been called the Great Writ, a writ that has been in place in the Anglo-American legal system for over 700 years.
00:15:06.000In 2008, during the campaign, quote, calling it the foundation of Anglo-American law, he said that the principle of habeas corpus says very simply, if the government grabs you, you have the right to at least ask, why was I grabbed, right?
00:15:17.000So again, talking about the Anglo-American law.
00:15:20.000And then there was President Obama saying, quote, How dare Jeff Sessions!
00:15:36.000This is what I'm saying about why people don't trust the media.
00:15:39.000When you guys go looking for reasons to say this is not normal about Trump, but then you completely ignore this is not normal about Democrats, then we start to think that maybe, just maybe, you have a little bit of bias.
00:15:49.000Speaking of bias and normalization of terrible behavior, a top DNC official, Keith Ellison, dined with Louis Farrakhan and the president of Iran in 2013.
00:16:02.000Democratic National Committee Deputy Chair Keith Ellison, who is an anti-Semite, a raging anti-Semite, attended a private dinner hosted by Iranian President Hassan Rouhani in 2013, along with the head of the black nationalist group Nation of Islam, Louis Farrakhan.
00:16:14.000You'll remember that this guy was endorsed by Chuck Schumer to become head of the DNC.
00:16:19.000You'll also remember that he said at the time that he had completely cut ties with Louis Farrakhan.
00:16:23.000Yet there he was, in 2013, having dinner with the president of a genocidal anti-Jewish state in Iran.
00:16:29.000And the head of the Nation of Islam, the anti-Semite, Louis Farrakhan.
00:16:33.000Ellison also visited with Farrakhan again in 2015.
00:16:38.000Ellison attended the 2013 dinner with two other members of the CBC, the Congressional Black Caucus, Representatives Andre Carson, Democrat from Indiana, and Gregory Meeks, Democrat from New York.
00:16:46.000Rouhani invited Muslim leaders from around the United States to dinner after addressing the UN General Assembly.
00:16:51.000And the Nation of Islam website confirmed the attendance of Louis Farrakhan.
00:16:55.000And then there were articles at the Nation of Islam publication confirming Ellison there, with photos of Ellison and Farrakhan at the table.
00:17:03.000After the guests were hosted at a dinner, the Iranian president entered an engaged and warm discussion with guests, including Democratic Congressman Greg Meeks of New York, Keith Ellison of Minnesota, who is a Muslim.
00:17:13.000This is what Final Call wrote on October 2, 2013.
00:17:16.000This, of course, is not the first time Ellison has been associated with Louis Farrakhan.
00:17:19.000Ellison attended the Million Man March in 1995 and publicly defended Farrakhan years ago, even after Farrakhan made a bunch of anti-Semitic remarks and called Jews satanic.
00:17:30.000Farrakhan slammed Ellison in 2015 after Ellison tried to distance himself from Farrakhan.
00:18:29.000Now, speaking of not normal, the media continued to fawn over North Korea because North Korean sister Kim Yo-jong, I can't remember her last name, Young-yo, or her first name, because in Korean the names are opposite Western.
00:18:46.000The media continued to fawn over North Korea.
00:18:49.000Remember, they were fawning over North Korean cheerleaders.
00:18:51.000It is worth noting, that is an update to yesterday, North Korean cheerleaders have been sent to prison camps before, according to Vice News.
00:19:01.000It says after a 2005 performance, 21 members of the cheerleading squad were sent to a prison camp after speaking out about what they saw in North Korea.
00:19:27.000Again, the media continue to cover Vice News doing something most of the media did not do.
00:19:31.000There was some talk yesterday about the fact that Fox News gave even some fawning coverage to the North Korean charm offensive that Breitbart did as well.
00:19:39.000Well, we didn't hear it at Daily Wire, nor did we tolerate it, because that's silly.
00:19:42.000So just because, whether it's right or left, if you're crediting the North Koreans with a wonderful PR push,
00:19:48.000Then number one, you're demonstrating complete ignorance of the system in North Korea and South Korea.
00:19:53.000The truth is that the South Korean government was going to portray all of this as fine and dandy because the South Korean government, the recently elected government, is called a sunshine government, meaning that one of their stated purposes
00:20:04.000is to push the idea of a unified Korea with conciliation with the North Korean regime.
00:20:09.000And it wouldn't have mattered what North Korea did.
00:20:11.000I mean, the sister could have come down and taken a dump on the president's table in South Korea, and they would have portrayed it as some sort of great diplomatic coup.
00:20:18.000The people of South Korea, however, are not happy with the North Koreans, and they're not happy with the North Korean regime.
00:20:23.000So, all of the talk about this charm offensive are wildly overstated.
00:20:27.000Now, speaking of media stupidity, I'm going to come to the defense of a woman named Barry Weiss.
00:20:32.000He writes for The New York Times, and she was shellacked.
00:20:34.000She's an opinion writer and staff editor.
00:20:36.000She was shellacked because she did something terrible.
00:20:39.000The NBC Olympics covered a woman named Marai—I haven't been watching any of this, so I'm going to mispronounce all the names—Marai Nagasu, who is an American ice skater, an American figure skater, who was the first American woman to land a triple axel in competition.
00:20:55.000And Barry Weiss tweeted out, immigrants, they got the job done.
00:20:57.000And now she knows that Mariah Nagasu is the daughter of immigrants.
00:21:20.000The level of anger, the level of disdain for anyone suggesting that perhaps a child of immigrants is successful in the United States is just insane, right?
00:21:25.000Ishan Tharoor said, so she's not white, so she has to be an immigrant?
00:21:49.000I mean, and Barry White tweeted back, Well, yes.
00:21:51.000Perhaps you'd be more comfortable with an outlet like ThinkProgress making the same point.
00:22:01.000I mean, this is—it's all true, but people are so oversensitive now, people are so crazy, that they decide that Barry Weiss is the person who has to pay the price for all of this.
00:22:08.000How dare Barry Weiss make a point about the children of immigrants doing really well in the United States?
00:22:13.000I mean, this is how far left everybody's moved.
00:22:17.000OK, in just a few minutes, in just a few seconds, I'm going to talk about the continuing fallout from the Rob Porter scandal and what's going on inside the White House.
00:22:25.000We're going to talk a little bit about—and then we'll talk a little bit about Black Panther.
00:22:30.000I want to say thank you to our sponsors over at Dollar Shave Club.
00:22:34.000So Dollar Shave Club is going to give you everything you need to look, feel, and smell your best.
00:23:53.000The fallout continues over at the White House over Rob Porter.
00:23:56.000And you can see that the media are all over this, largely because they think that this is a way to get Trump.
00:24:02.000They think that if they can get Trump to acknowledge that Rob Porter is probably guilty, then they can get Trump to acknowledge that Trump is probably guilty of sexual harassment and sexual assault.
00:24:10.000Now, what's the difference between Rob Porter and Donald Trump?
00:24:12.000The difference is that everybody knew about all the allegations against Trump when he was elected.
00:24:16.000I said this with regard to Roy Moore, because people were comparing the two.
00:24:19.000The difference here is that the allegations against Trump had been widely aired by the time of the election.
00:24:34.000Rob Porter was supposed to be this clean-cut guy that everybody in the White House liked and trusted, and then it comes out that he allegedly beat two of his ex-wives.
00:24:42.000That comes out, and now people are suggesting that that's akin to Trump.
00:24:45.000Well, whatever you think of Trump, the American public have already judged whether they think Trump is guilty or innocent on the basis of the allegations that have already been aired.
00:24:52.000If they're new allegations, maybe that changes the math a little bit.
00:24:54.000But the media are attempting to use Rob Porter to ensnare Trump.
00:24:57.000Jim Acosta trying to do that on CNN last night.
00:25:01.000It seems like the President was believing Mr. Porter as opposed to his alleged victims.
00:25:08.000Why did the President tweet that over the weekend?
00:25:10.000Why is he seemingly defending Mr. Porter publicly?
00:25:13.000Is it because he has faced his own allegations?
00:25:19.000Look, as I just said, and I'll repeat it again, the President and the entire administration take domestic violence very seriously and believe all allegations need to be investigated thoroughly.
00:25:30.000He certainly supports the victims of domestic violence above all else and believes that everyone should be treated fairly and with due process.
00:25:37.000The President is simply saying that there should be a due process that should be followed and looked at.
00:25:50.000Okay, so there's Acosta trying to grill Sarah Huckabee Sanders, and the entire media was doing this yesterday, doing the work of the Democrats as well.
00:26:02.000Terry McAuliffe, who obviously wants to run for president, the governor of Virginia, he said that President Trump has no sympathy for victims of abuse, obviously.
00:26:11.000This president has more sympathy for domestic abusers than the victims of domestic abuse.
00:26:30.000Okay, bringing on Terry McAuliffe to talk about this is just absurd.
00:26:32.000Terry McAuliffe was one of the Clinton's biggest supporters and he was perfectly fine with everything Bill Clinton was doing to women and was alleged to have done to women.
00:26:39.000Again, Democrats are using this as a club against Trump.
00:26:42.000This is really less about protecting victims of domestic violence because we're not even talking about Rob Porter anymore, are we?
00:26:47.000We're not even talking about what happens to Rob Porter.
00:26:54.000He's been gone for several days at this point.
00:26:56.000But Rob Porter has faded into the background.
00:26:58.000Now we're going to talk about Trump, because this is a way to get Trump.
00:27:00.000Bring on Terry McAuliffe to talk about this is obviously a partisan exercise by members of the media.
00:27:06.000Kirsten Gillibrand doing the same thing.
00:27:07.000She says we should force Trump to resign.
00:27:10.000And if not, then Congress should hold him accountable on all this domestic violence.
00:27:13.000Again, not the allegations that Trump himself was involved in domestic violence, but the allegations that his own staff didn't tell him that Rob Porter was alleged to have been involved in domestic violence.
00:27:22.000You know, it's not clear that goes all the way up to the chain of Trump.
00:27:24.000From what I hear, it absolutely does not.
00:27:26.000Anyway, here's Kirsten Gillibrand, the senator from New York, a woman who spent most of her career defending Hillary Clinton and Bill Clinton.
00:27:31.000Once President Trump was elected, I think something changed, and I think it changed for women.
00:27:36.000Do you think he'll be held accountable in any way?
00:27:38.000Well, I think he should resign, and if he's unwilling to do that, which is what I assume, then Congress should hold him accountable.
00:27:47.000I mean, this is the same woman who Meghan McCain took apart in two questions on The View simply by saying the name Clinton and Kirsten Gillibrand ran for the hills.
00:27:55.000If Democrats are hoping that they're going to be able to win Congress, win the Senate, win the presidency simply by being anti-Trump, I don't think that's going to work.
00:28:20.000But our mistake, I think, you cannot just run against Donald Trump.
00:28:25.000And it is the job of we Democrats to put together a strong, cohesive, economic,
00:28:33.000Okay, but they're lazy, so they're not going to do that, okay?
00:28:39.000And they're even being encouraged by their own people that they need to get away from bashing Trump full-time.
00:28:43.000According to McClatchy today, a leading Democratic group, Priorities USA, which is a vile group, right?
00:28:49.000They are warning party leaders they could squander a strong political climate in 2018 if they don't start to emphasize pocketbook issues over loose and unfocused critiques of Donald Trump.
00:28:57.000According to internal polling by the Super PAC,
00:28:59.000President Trump's approval rating climbed to 44% in the first week of February, compared to 53% who disapproved.
00:29:04.000That mirrors Trump's improving position in public polls.
00:29:07.000In November, the same survey found his approval rating at 40% with 54% disapproving.
00:29:11.000The group's survey also showed the Democratic Party's generic ballot advantage had shrunk, with 46% preferring Democrats to 42% for Republicans.
00:29:19.000That's not going to be enough for Democrats to win back the House.
00:29:21.000They need about a 7 to 10 point ballot advantage in the generic ballot if they even hope to win back the House.
00:29:26.000The memo says that a broad range of metrics show the political climate is still favorable for Democrats, but it also makes an unambiguous diagnosis for Trump's recent rise.
00:29:34.000Democrats this year have stopped focusing on economic and health care issues, topics that demonstrably hurt his approval during his first year in office.
00:29:40.000Priorities polling found that while people in November readily mentioned Trump's health care and tax reform measures, by February they were instead more cognizant of his tweets.
00:29:47.000Well, one of the reasons for that is because Democrats can't argue health care.
00:29:51.000The economy is doing well, and millions of people are not dying because of the reforms to Obamacare.
00:29:56.000So all of the talk about that has gone by the wayside, and they've fallen back on their secondary argument, which is that President Trump is a garbage person, right?
00:30:02.000This is why they're going after the Rob Porter scandal with Alacrity.
00:30:05.000What they should remember is that every time they attempt to get Trump with one of these sorts of scandals, it fails.
00:30:10.000Alright, Bleepholegate was three weeks ago.
00:30:16.000Stormy Daniels was like two weeks ago, right?
00:30:18.000The allegation the President of the United States had nailed a porn star and then paid her off to shut up about it during the election cycle?
00:30:23.000That lasted for like five minutes in the media.
00:30:26.000And the idea that Democrats are going to win back the House of Representatives simply by bashing Trump about Rob Porter is inane.
00:30:31.000Now, does that excuse the behavior of the White House on Rob Porter?
00:30:34.000I spent a lot of this week bashing, and last week, bashing the White House over their treatment of the Rob Porter situation.
00:30:40.000Obviously, no one who is alleged to have done that stuff and was forbidden FBI clearance because of it should have been anywhere close to the Oval Office.
00:30:48.000But if Democrats are hoping that they're just going to be able to rail against Trump and this is somehow going to drive people out to the polls, not so much.
00:30:57.000The memo, according to Priorities USA, they say there's no question Trump benefits when a critique of his tax and health care policies is not front and center, especially when voters are hearing Trump's side of the story on the economy.
00:32:20.000So the way LegacyBox works is they send you a box.
00:32:22.000You take all those old films and you take all those old pictures and you put them in the box.
00:32:26.000They put labels there for you to put all of your, to label all of your items with barcode so you can trace it through the process.
00:32:31.000Then you send that box back to LegacyBox and the good folks over at LegacyBox take all that stuff and they put it on a DVD or a thumb drive.
00:32:38.000All of your family memories are no longer stacked up in the garage on waterlogged boxes that are collapsing in on themselves.
00:32:44.000Instead, they're sitting in your library, next to your DVD player, in the thumb drive that's on your keychain.
00:32:50.000You can always have those memories available to you at all times, and you no longer have to worry about passing them down generation to generation and ensuring that future generations remember you, and that you remember your own childhood, that you remember all the good memories that you have with your kids.
00:33:06.000Legacy Box is making sure that these irreplaceable memories don't have to be replaced.
00:33:10.000Make 2018 the year you preserve your family's legacy.
00:33:54.000Everyone in the media is talking about the most important thing that has ever happened in the history of humanity, or at least since Caitlyn Jenner became a woman, a transgender woman.
00:34:03.000And that, of course, is the release of Black Panther.
00:34:08.000We've heard it's deeply important to millions of black Americans who, after all, were not
00:34:12.000Liberated from slavery 200 years ago and liberated by the civil rights movement with federal legislation and not been gradually restored to what always should have been full civil rights in the United States.
00:34:24.000None of that has mattered up till they made a Marvel movie about a superhero who is black in a country filled with black people.
00:35:13.000I think it's incredibly stupid because, again, I grew up as an Orthodox Jewish kid where no American president has been Jewish.
00:35:21.000No American president has been an Orthodox Jew.
00:35:23.000And yet, I grew up on 1776, essentially worshiping the Founding Fathers, none of whom were Jewish.
00:35:30.000And yesterday, my daughter—actually, it was on Shabbat.
00:35:33.000I was sitting around with my daughter, and my daughter was talking about how—she was talking about the presidents, because she was learning about the presidents in preschool.
00:35:40.000She's very politically active, my daughter.
00:35:41.000She's four years old, and she knows many of the presidents.
00:35:43.000She is familiar with the life stories of Abraham Lincoln and George Washington.
00:35:46.000And she said, Daddy, was George Washington Jewish?
00:35:56.000And she said, Why haven't any of the presidents been Jewish?
00:35:59.000And she's four, so I didn't go into the full explanation, but what I said is, you know, they just haven't been, but maybe there'll be a Jewish president in the future.
00:36:05.000Would you like to be president one day?
00:36:28.000And yet, all we hear now is that America is deeply racist, and black people are still systemically discriminated against, and that black people are still victims in American society.
00:36:36.000So it turned out it didn't mean anything.
00:36:37.000When Obama was president, we were told it meant everything.
00:36:40.000And then he was president for two terms, right?
00:36:43.000And then it turns out it didn't mean anything because we needed Chadwick Boseman to somehow make sure that black people felt accepted in American society because a bunch of white executives at Marvel greenlit a film about black people in a fictional country in Africa.
00:36:57.000The insanity that has attended Black Panther, it's crazy.
00:37:23.000So I carefully did not buy Black Panther tickets for opening weekend because I did not want to be the white person sucking black joy out of the theater.
00:37:29.000What's the appropriate date for me to buy tickets?
00:37:51.000Like, how derogatorily do you have to think of black people to think that if you're in a theater with a bunch of black people, they're going to think, that white person, sitting here in a theater, watching a movie, talking about how black people are awesome.
00:38:13.000That the sensitivity police have gone so far that we now have to have fully segregated theaters to make sure that black people are not offended by the presence of white people, according to Emily Lakdawalla?
00:38:22.000No, we actually have to segregate the theaters.
00:38:26.000We did the converse for a couple hundred years in this country, right?
00:38:29.000The converse was black people won't be allowed into white people theaters because that will offend the white people and ruin their white joy.
00:39:44.000But I do love this idea that, you know, this is some sort of amazing moment.
00:39:49.000Not since Spike Lee's Malcolm X has there been so much hype and hope for a movie among African-American audiences.
00:39:54.000From special group outings planned by excited fans to crowdfunding campaigns to ensure children can see it, Black Panther is shaping up to be a phenomenon.
00:40:01.000In December, a viral video of two African-American men excited to see the movie's poster with its all-star black cast
00:40:05.000This is what white people get to feel like all the time, one man wrote on Twitter.
00:40:09.000Seemed to capture the anticipation, garnering more than 2.5 million views.
00:40:30.000And if you think like this, I would suggest that you might need to start thinking less tribally.
00:40:34.000If you spend your life going around thinking, oh my god, I'll bet white people feel just like this every time they see Tom Cruise in a movie.
00:40:40.000First of all, do black people feel like that when they go see Denzel Washington in a movie?
00:41:18.000In our fight against colonialism and imperial control of black land and black people by white people, said Deirdre Holman, a founder of the annual Black Comic Book Festival at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture in Harlem, to the black imagination that means everything.
00:41:32.000And through a major motion picture, it's even more tangibly and artistically a reality we can explore for ourselves.
00:41:36.000There's so much power that's drawn from the notion there was a community, a nation that resisted colonization and infiltration and subjugation.
00:41:52.000Number two, this idea that it's a fight against colonialism and imperial control, here is the reason why so many people are going crazy over this.
00:41:59.000So one of the reasons people are going crazy over this is that supposedly the Wakanda, the country of Wakanda in the movie, I haven't seen the movie yet, so this is speculation based on all of the news reports,
00:42:11.000The country of Wakanda has basically been separated from society for a long time.
00:42:15.000So it's sort of like 17th century Imperial Japan.
00:42:18.000It's been separated from the rest of the world for a long time.
00:42:22.000There's been no trade with the outside world except through a vibranium, which I guess is some material, some alien material that landed there and is extraordinarily valuable and is used in weaponry like Captain America's shield.
00:43:02.000Ethiopia was conquered twice by the Italians, but was never colonized in the formal sense of colonies being placed there with Italian folks who then ruled the roost for a long period of time.
00:43:12.000was originally founded by the United States, which granted sovereignty to the local black population.
00:43:18.000And the idea was that a lot of black slaves in America who had been shipped here against their will would be shipped back to Liberia.
00:43:24.000It was never really colonized in the technical sense.
00:43:27.000Both of those places have severe problems.
00:43:40.000This policy—North Korea is completely isolated from different countries.
00:43:43.000The idea that trade, isolation, racial unity, that these are the things you should be aiming for in a country, is a really bizarre idea in a liberal order, in a new order where free movement of trade and population and money is considered a generally good thing and is better than life all around the world.
00:44:01.000If you actually founded a country on the basis that it wouldn't trade with outsiders, that there wouldn't be any cultural exchanges, and that you would actually produce all you needed in-house, it wouldn't be utopia.
00:44:29.000I am saying that if your idea of a utopia is a place where there is no quote-unquote white influence, I'd like to see a place on the planet where that's a good thing.
00:44:39.000Just as I think I'd like to see a place on the planet where a white-only country has been a good thing with no cross-cultural pollination.
00:44:47.000The whole reason that cultures survive and thrive is because they adapt and advance thanks to technological advances they bring in from the outside.
00:44:55.000And yet this is being seen as sort of a model.
00:44:57.000And the problem is that if you're creating a racial separatist model, and I haven't seen the movie yet, but if the worship of Wakanda seems to be this, if the worship of Wakanda is that a racial separatist model is good and that all of the evils that have been suffered by folks on the continent of Africa have been suffered because of colonialism and imperialism, that is historically inaccurate.
00:45:15.000There are a lot of reasons that countries in Africa have suffered tremendously over time.
00:45:19.000They were suffering tremendously, by the way, before white folks ever got there.
00:45:24.000There was tremendous tribal antipathy.
00:45:32.000The closest that we've come to utopia is a place like the United States where people of any race, any color, any background, any ethnicity can live in freedom together while respecting each other's civil rights.
00:45:42.000That's the closest we've gotten to utopia.
00:45:43.000And trying to build an alternative fictional utopia and then suggesting that we wish that this were a model for a country on planet Earth is silly and counterproductive.
00:46:13.000It's a Malcolm X point rather than a Martin Luther King point, and I think that that's a problem.
00:46:17.000Okay, so we're going to get to some things I like and some things I hate now.
00:46:20.000But first, you're going to have to go over to dailywire.com and subscribe.
00:46:23.000So, for $9.99 a month, you can get a subscription to dailywire.com for $9.99 a month.
00:46:29.000And when you do, you get the rest of this show live, you get the rest of the Andrew Klavan show live, the rest of the ex-Gribble Michael Knowles show live.
00:46:45.000Eastern, the lonely and desperate Michael Mowles will pathetically be waiting for your questions and your attention in our next episode of The Conversation.
00:46:53.000Michael's pathetic, hopeless pleas for attention will stream live on Facebook, YouTube, and The Daily Wire website.
00:47:04.000Go over to dailywire.com, head over to the conversation page and watch the live stream.
00:47:07.000After that, just start typing into the Daily Wire chat box and Michael will answer live questions as they come in for an entire hour.
00:47:13.000Once again, subscribe to get your questions answered by the just intellectually deficient Michael Knowles this Valentine's Day on Wednesday, February 14th, 5 p.m.
00:48:49.000Instead what they do is they help to ensure that people who have escaped North Korea are able to make passage to the West, particularly to South Korea where they get automatic citizenship.
00:49:17.000Okay, so thing number one that I hate is everybody's going crazy because Boston Dynamics is a company that makes machines, and they decided that they were apparently going to make machines that are from Black Mirror, because there's an exact episode of Black Mirror where these machine-like dogs are basically murdering humans.
00:49:33.000Here's what it looked like from Boston Dynamics.
00:49:39.000So that's the last sound you hear before you die, apparently.
00:49:48.000Apparently it signaled to the other crazy robot dog, and the crazy robot dog has a giant arm attached, and it's now going to open a door, because this is one of the problems that it had, it wasn't able to open the door.
00:49:58.000So now it's able to open the unlocked door.
00:50:01.000So while you and your children are hiding in the closet screaming, this machine can open the door and then these robot dogs can come and kill you.
00:50:09.000So everybody's going crazy about these robot dogs.
00:50:11.000Oh my god, we're all going to die from the robot dogs.
00:50:13.000I don't think we're all going to die from the robot dogs.
00:50:15.000They have made these dogs capable of running incredibly fast and jumping and all of this sort of thing.
00:50:20.000I don't think we're looking at Fahrenheit 451 with the hound.
00:50:23.000The reason I don't think that is because my guess is that you could probably just hit it and then the battery would die.
00:50:29.000One of the things that this is good for, people are asking, why are you making these things?
00:50:33.000If you actually need to open up a place where, for example, you think there's an IED, better to send in a machine that can open the door and get itself blown up rather than a human.
00:51:05.000I don't hate Valentine's Day per se, although if your spouse or significant other tells you they don't want to do anything for Valentine's Day, in the words of Admiral Ackbar, it's a trap!
00:51:18.000So yesterday, President Obama and Michelle Obama had their portraits unveiled at the National Portrait Gallery.
00:51:23.000We talked about it and made fun of it yesterday.
00:51:26.000The President of the United States praised Michelle's portrait.
00:51:28.000He said it makes her look hot, which is sort of weird because she looks like Kerry Washington in the picture, not Michelle Obama.
00:51:33.000But here is Barack Obama talking about it.
00:51:35.000Amy, I want to thank you for so spectacularly capturing the grace and beauty and intelligence and charm and hotness of the woman that I love.
00:51:52.000Okay, so number one, I'd just like to point something out.
00:51:55.000When a man talks about a woman's hotness, even if it's his wife, I do it all the time about my wife, but I don't care about politically correct scruples.
00:52:02.000It is funny that if, let's say, Donald Trump said this about Melania, the entire left would lose its freaking gourd.
00:52:08.000If he said, my wife Melania, so unbelievably hot.
00:52:12.000Right, if he had said that, the left would go utterly insane.
00:52:16.000Barack Obama's allowed to because he's a good family man.
00:52:18.000So, President Trump continues to maintain this idiotic
00:53:11.000So we're going to be doing very much a reciprocal tax, and you'll be hearing about it.
00:53:16.000OK, we should not be having reciprocal taxes on trade.
00:53:18.000The idea of a reciprocal tax on trade is economically illiterate.
00:53:21.000The idea that if you go to the grocery store and they hike the prices on you, therefore, when somebody who works at the grocery store comes to you, you should hike the prices on them is foolish.
00:53:30.000They will just go to another place to get their stuff.
00:53:33.000Okay, the idea here is that if you are going to... It's so dumb.
00:53:38.000The idea that if you trade and somebody puts a tax on the good that is entering their country, making it more expensive, that you should therefore buy from them at a more expensive price by taxing yourself is just insipid.
00:53:49.000But this is because people don't understand trade, and people who critique free trade don't know anything about how the global economy actually works.
00:53:55.000Here's a great chart on what they call neoliberalism.
00:53:57.000Neoliberalism means freedom of trade, free movement of labor and cash.
00:54:04.000This is what Oxfam, which is a lefty organization, calls the era of neoliberalism, where so much suffering has gone on.