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00:00:22.000And I promise you the next few weeks leading up to Christmas are going to be insane because every day since, I don't know, like four years ago has been crazy.
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00:02:15.000All right, so, suffice it to say that the last 72 hours have not been kind to President Trump.
00:02:20.000There have been a number of news items, and I'm going to try and break them all down for you today in a comprehensible fashion, because there's been so much news breaking with regard to the Mueller investigation that it's hard to keep on top of it, and I know that you're hearing two competing narratives.
00:03:06.000Claim from the right, from people I respect, is that this is basically Robert Mueller in over his head, that he's come up with no actual evidence of criminality, and so he is now trying to create the illusion of collusion on various other matters.
00:03:19.000So there's no actual criminal activity that took place, and thus all of these ancillary topics really have very little to do with the central contention of the investigation, that they oversold this investigation, and now Mueller is struggling to put together two and two to make it equal five.
00:03:34.000Well, I think there is some truth to both of these and a lot of falsehood to both of these.
00:03:41.000My general take is that the evidence is worse for Team Trump than it was a week ago with regard to their relations with Russia.
00:03:48.000It looks like President Trump may have lied more than he did a week ago.
00:03:52.000It looks like more members of his orbit have been complicit in working with Russian sources.
00:03:59.000At the same time, the idea that charges of criminality are on their way, actual criminal collusion, criminal conspiracy, that still seems incredibly far-fetched to me.
00:04:09.000So it could be ancillary charges of suborning perjury.
00:04:12.000It could be ancillary charges of obstruction of justice.
00:04:15.000But the central contention still has been not based in reality.
00:04:20.000And I'm just going to show you the level of enthusiasm for folks on the left for charges that have not yet been proved.
00:04:25.000And then we'll get to the actual charges.
00:04:27.000So you can see Rachel Maddow yesterday on MSNBC.
00:04:30.000She called into MSNBC and she said that because Michael Cohen, the president's personal lawyer, had pled guilty to a charge of lying to Congress, that this was the beginning of the end for little Trump.
00:04:39.000Is Robert Mueller somehow throttled compared to how he used to be able to conduct his investigation and pursue prosecutions related to this matter?
00:04:48.000Is he unable to bring new indictments because Matt Whitaker won't approve them?
00:04:53.000If what you're saying is true and the investigation continues to be overseen by Rosenstein, it just puts a very different cast on this and I think it makes it It actually makes me feel like this must be a much more ominous moment for the White House.
00:05:06.000Okay, so she doesn't know anything that makes it seem like a much more ominous moment, but it's ominous.
00:05:10.000Joy Behar, who of course is kind of the stupid version of everyone on the left, just sort of shouts at things.
00:05:15.000So here's Joy Behar shouting that Trump should resign.
00:05:40.000I struggled to name a day that Joy Behar doesn't think would be a good day for Donald Trump to resign.
00:05:45.000So let's try and separate out all of the various strands here.
00:05:49.000So over the past 72 hours, there have been a bunch of things that have happened.
00:05:54.000The first thing that happened, Michael Cohen pled guilty to lying to Congress about a Trump Organization Russian business deal.
00:05:59.000So on Thursday, Cohen pled guilty to lying to Congress, we talked about this yesterday, about the Russian investigation in a plea deal with Robert Mueller.
00:06:06.000Cohen already pled guilty in a Southern District of New York case regarding alleged campaign finance violations in making payments to former Trump paramour Stormy Daniels earlier this year.
00:06:15.000The allegation is that President Trump had basically funneled personal funds via Michael Cohen to Stormy Daniels, but he didn't use his own money.
00:06:21.000He had Michael Cohen make an in-kind contribution in order to stop Stormy Daniels from coming clean, and this was somehow a campaign finance violation.
00:06:28.000Maybe, maybe not, but that's what happened earlier this year.
00:06:31.000Now, Cohen admitted he lied to Congress when he said that the Trump organization's attempt to set up a Trump Tower in Moscow ended in January 2016.
00:06:39.000So he had testified that in January 2016, Trump stopped talking about the Trump Tower in Moscow before the end of the primaries.
00:06:45.000And before the general election, Trump himself had tweeted in the middle of 2016 that he had no business relationships in Russia.
00:06:51.000Now, the language could be true, even if he was in negotiations for those business relationships at the time, and even if he had negotiated with the Russians regarding a Trump Tower in Moscow, like, up to five minutes ago.
00:07:05.000Ironically enough, that tweet that people are citing, the one where Trump says, I have no business relationships in Russia, that tweet could be I think escaped by President Trump in the exact same way that Bill Clinton tried to escape a perjury charge when he said that he had not had sex with that woman, Monica Lewinsky.
00:07:23.000If you recall, his claim was that in present tense, he was not having sex with Monica Lewinsky.
00:07:29.000And then he was asked, well, you did in the past.
00:07:31.000And he said, right, but it depends on the definition of is.
00:07:36.000You could have President Trump saying, right, I don't, I said, I don't have relationships with business in Russia.
00:07:42.000Meaning like right now, but five minutes ago, I did.
00:07:44.000In any case, Cohen apparently lied to Congress.
00:07:47.000He says that he made the false statements to be consistent with individual one's political messaging and to be loyal to individual one.
00:07:53.000Now, what this, what this plea deal by Cohen does not state is that President Trump instructed him to do all of this.
00:08:00.000President Trump could have been out there saying, listen, I have no business relationships in Russia, and Cohen, in order to cover President Trump's ass, basically took matters into his own hands, and he said, yeah, yeah, yeah, this all ended back in January, without Trump actually informing him that he should lie to Congress.
00:08:14.000This does make a difference, because if you are suborning perjury, that was one of the charges that was brought against Richard Nixon in his impeachment case.
00:08:20.000It was one of the charges brought against Bill Clinton in his impeachment case, is what David French and I were talking about before the show.
00:08:26.000This morning, David, of course, writes for National Review.
00:08:28.000Cohen also admitted that the Moscow project was discussed all the way through June 2016 and that he communicated directly with the office of Vladimir Putin in January 2016.
00:08:36.000In September 2017, Cohen had explained that he had nothing to do with any Russian involvement in our electoral process and never saw anything, not a hint of anything, that demonstrated Trump's involvement in Russian interference in our election or any other form of Russian collusion.
00:08:50.000Now, again, those two statements could still be true.
00:08:52.000It could be that he was doing business with Russia.
00:08:54.000And that that does not involve collusion.
00:08:56.000Because I guess the theory of the case here is that somehow, if Trump was doing business in Russia, that this was a quid pro quo, and that Putin wanted to help him because he was doing business in Russia, none of that has been proved at this point, like, at all.
00:09:09.000Trump, for his part, denies working on the Moscow deal.
00:09:12.000He says, that was a project that we didn't do.
00:09:14.000It was a project that wasn't done for a lot of reasons.
00:09:16.000I was focused on running for president.
00:09:18.000I wanted that to be my primary focus, not running or building a building.
00:09:22.000His ongoing business relationship with Russia, again, would not actively amount to criminal activity.
00:09:28.000This is what Jake Tapper on CNN pointed out to a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Jerry Nadler, yesterday on CNN, and that Democrat could not explain how the Trump Tower attempts to be built in Moscow had anything to do with electoral hacking or electioneering.
00:09:44.000I look at these documents and I don't see any evidence of conspiracy between members of the Trump team and members of the Russian government to interfere in the election.
00:09:55.000He's mixing his personal business profits with respect and perhaps putting them over the interest of the United States and lying to the electorate about it.
00:10:12.000You can say that President Trump You know, signing business deals with Russia, or trying to do so in the middle of an election where he's praising Vladimir Putin that it smells to high heaven in the same way that it smelled to high heaven when the Clinton Foundation was taking all sorts of donations from various and sundry foreign nations who are suddenly getting special treatment from the Hillary Clinton State Department.
00:10:30.000You can say it stinks in the same way that Barack Obama's administration stunk in terms of Joe Biden and his family making a big deal with the Chinese government while Biden was vice president, according to Peter Schweitzer.
00:10:47.000Now, President Trump went on Twitter this morning and he said, Oh, I get it.
00:10:50.000I'm a very good developer, happily living my life.
00:10:52.000When I see our country is going in the wrong direction, to put it mildly, against all odds, I decide to run for president and continue to run my business.
00:11:12.000And so this is the way that he is spinning this.
00:11:14.000Again, that's a little bit different from, I didn't have any relationships in Russia, I didn't do business in Russia, nothing is happening here.
00:11:21.000That seems to be a bit of an exaggeration, at the very least, or a lie at the very most, but that, again, is not perjury because he has not testified to any of that.
00:11:30.000Okay, so that was story number one, the Michael Cohen pleading guilty and saying that he perjured himself in front of Congress about the involvement of the Trump family and Trump organization in a business deal in Russia.
00:11:43.000Again, that does not amount to electoral collusion.
00:11:45.000It does not amount to election hacking.
00:11:48.000It doesn't amount to any of those things.
00:11:49.000It amounts to an ancillary crime that took place after the campaign.
00:11:54.000When Michael Cohen was testifying before Congress and it has a lot of people on the right asking, OK, well, we know James Clapper lied in front of Congress.
00:12:00.000We know Eric Holder was held in contempt of Congress.
00:12:02.000We know that a bunch of officials from the Obama days lied in front of Congress.
00:12:06.000Hillary Clinton lied in front of Congress on Benghazi for that matter.
00:12:08.000We know all of those things, but none of those people were prosecuted.
00:12:11.000So is this just an attempt by Robert Mueller to cram down a crime on Michael Cohen to get him to flip on Trump?
00:13:12.000Because Mrs. Fields is now a sponsor on this program.
00:13:14.000I cannot be more excited about this, okay?
00:13:16.000Mrs. Fields is a sponsor on this program.
00:13:18.000For over 40 years, they've made delicious treats like their signature chocolate chip cookies, which are delicious, handcrafted, frosted favorites, melt-in-your-mouth brownies.
00:13:24.000Mrs. Fields, many of their products are kosher.
00:13:26.000This is why I'm so excited to talk about Mrs. Fields.
00:13:28.000I remember There was a time when my wife and I were in Buffalo, New York, and we did not have any food in Buffalo, New York.
00:13:35.000And by the time we got to the airport, we were starving.
00:14:36.000So, revelation number one was Michael Cohen's testimony.
00:14:39.000He pled guilty to lying to Congress about the Trump Tower in Moscow, which apparently was still being negotiated by members of Team Trump, up to and including possibly Donald Trump Jr., all the way up to June 2016.
00:14:49.000Two, Mueller's team is now looking into President Trump's phone calls with Roger Stone, right?
00:14:54.000This is another revelation we talked about earlier this week.
00:14:58.000There is a chain of gossip that goes from WikiLeaks to Jerome Corsi, a conspiracy theorist, to Roger Stone, another top political operative slash conspiracy theorist, to President Trump.
00:15:09.000And Trump is calling Stone, who's getting information from Corsi, who's getting information from WikiLeaks.
00:15:13.000And basically, via this process, Trump is saying to Stone something like, you know, what are you hearing?
00:15:19.000And Stone's saying, well, I'm hearing from my good friend Jerry Corsi that WikiLeaks is going to dump some stuff on Hillary's health.
00:15:25.000Maybe she should talk about Hillary's health.
00:15:45.000Hillary Clinton actually did do the exact same thing during the 2016 election with regard to the Ukrainian government, which was providing her dirt on Trump at the same time that was reported by Politico at the time.
00:15:55.000Stone denies any of his email conversations with Corsi came up with Trump.
00:15:58.000He says, I didn't actually talk with Trump about the WikiLeaks stuff at all.
00:16:05.000OK, number three, Paul Manafort had a plea deal that fell apart this week.
00:16:09.000OK, that plea deal basically suggested he was going to turn on Trump He says he's no longer going to do that.
00:16:14.000Mueller accused him of lying to him and voided his plea arrangement.
00:16:18.000And Mueller found out that Manafort's lawyers have been coordinated with President Trump's lawyers.
00:16:23.000Now that could actually be a problem for Trump because if Manafort's plea agreement voided the joint defense agreement between Trump And Manafort, then all of those negotiations, all of the information that passed hands, if Trump was telling Manafort to fib to Mueller, for example, if any of that happened, that could now be subject to Mueller scrutiny.
00:16:42.000In a second, I want to tell you about the consequences of this, give you the latest updates.
00:16:45.000So here are the latest updates that we have over the last 24 hours.
00:16:49.000According to Axios, they're reporting what they think is going to come next.
00:16:54.000Garrett Graff writes a piece for Axios talking about what he thinks is going to happen now.
00:16:58.000Now, he says, Michael Cohen's lies to Congress fit an odd pattern.
00:17:01.000Multiple people in Trump's orbit have outright lied or forgotten about a whole variety of contacts with Russian officials, developers, oligarchs, and emissaries.
00:17:08.000It's a uniquely consistent problem across many top aides that only seems to occur when the subject is Russia.
00:17:13.000And he says, remember, Michael Cohen's two major revelations so far have come in just two fairly limited specific episodes, both of which investigative reporters have unearthed ahead of time Stormy Daniels' hushed money payments and the Moscow Trump Tower project.
00:17:28.000Prosecutors ethically can't let a witness testify or plead if things they don't believe are true.
00:17:32.000So everything Cohen is saying in court, for all the talk about they're making Cohen lie, Mueller would then have to be violating basic legal conduct.
00:17:42.000Every twist of the investigation shows that Mueller knows far more than we thought he did, according to Axios.
00:17:47.000Cohen's plea deal shows he has phone records.
00:17:49.000The aborted Jerome Corsi plea agreement shows Mueller has emails.
00:17:51.000The fact that Mueller knows Paul Manafort was lying to him likely indicates heretofore unseen corroborating witnesses, documents, and more.
00:17:59.000So, you know, it's worthwhile waiting at this point.
00:18:03.000Next in the crosshairs probably, probably, is Donald Trump Jr.
00:18:08.000This is the latest, this is sort of the latest spin on this.
00:18:12.000According to ABC News, The admission by President Trump's longtime personal attorney, Michael Cohen, that he lied to Congress about the Trump Organization's plans to build a Trump-branded skyscraper in Moscow, which, by the way, was supposed to have included, like, a $50 million penthouse for Vladimir Putin, has brought new scrutiny upon the sworn testimony of other Trump associates, including his oldest son.
00:18:31.000Representative Adam Schiff, the ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, has called on the committee's Republican leadership to accelerate the release of transcripts from interviews they conducted behind closed doors to the special counsel.
00:18:42.000And the public so they could be analyzed for misleading statements.
00:18:44.000So it looks now like Schiff is going to start targeting Democrats are going to start targeting everybody else in Trump's orbit, hoping that those people will eventually flip on Trump or Trump will be forced to pardon them.
00:18:54.000Or that if Trump does pardon them, then they will charge him with obstruction for trying to prevent them from testifying about him.
00:18:59.000Here's Adam Schiff, who, again, has a pup tent set up at both MSNBC and CNN and doesn't actually work for a living.
00:19:09.000We are going through the witness transcripts right now, looking at Donald Trump Jr.' 's testimony, looking at Jared Kushner's testimony, looking at the testimony of Felix Sater and others to determine, okay, what does this tell us about their truthfulness?
00:19:25.000What missing pieces does this fill in?
00:19:27.000Mark Warner, who's a senator from Virginia, he says, let's face it, you've got all these close associates of the president, one after another, pleading guilty, often pleading guilty about their ties to Russia and Russians.
00:19:36.000He said, what are they covering up for?
00:19:39.000could be in the crosshairs is because during his appearance before the Senate Judiciary Committee in September 2017, he was asked about efforts to build Trump Tower projects in Moscow.
00:19:49.000And at that time, he was asked specifically about the deal.
00:20:10.000said he knew very little about the proposal.
00:20:12.000Court filings, however, suggest members of Trump's family were looped into discussions about the proposed deal, referred to Trump as individual one.
00:20:19.000But that still doesn't answer How much Trump Jr.
00:20:22.000If he said he knew very little about the proposal other than he thought that Trump had signed a letter of intent to pursue it, that may not in fact be lying.
00:20:31.000All of which is to say, we still don't know what Mueller knows.
00:20:36.000What we do know is that the original claim In all of this, the original claim, the powerful claim, from the very beginning, is that President Trump was colluding with the Russians to hack the election.
00:20:45.000And the idea of hacking the election meant that there was an attempt by Trump to actively collude with the Russians to weaponize information Hacking Hillary Clinton's emails, that his people were working with the Russians to hack Hillary Clinton's emails, or that there was a quid pro quo and Trump was going to give the Russians something in exchange for going after Hillary Clinton or something like that.
00:21:06.000So, there are only a couple of paths that seem quote-unquote impeachable.
00:21:10.000Path number one, Trump suborning perjury.
00:21:12.000He told Michael Cohen, I need you to go out, I need you to lie to the American people, I need you to lie to Congress, I need you to actually commit a crime.
00:21:20.000Suborning perjury is in fact a federal crime.
00:21:22.000That would probably be an impeachable offense given the precedent of Bill Clinton and Richard Nixon.
00:21:28.000Precedent number two for impeachment would be if Trump actually participated in some sort of quid pro quo.
00:21:33.000The soft and maybe most plausible scenario is that Trump had heard about all of this stuff and that he was fibbing about having heard about all of this stuff.
00:21:46.000It's certainly not good for Trump 2020.
00:21:48.000But again, We have yet to see the other shoe drop, and I'm happy to wait until the other shoe drops because all of the information will be forthcoming.
00:21:55.000This is not me kicking the can down the road.
00:21:56.000It's just we don't have enough information yet.
00:21:58.000So I'm not going to jump to conclusions.
00:22:00.000OK, in just a second, I want to talk about this horrifying report about U.S.
00:22:04.000life expectancy plus I want to get to Mark Lamont Hill, who was fired from CNN yesterday.
00:22:10.000First, let's talk about how you defend yourself.
00:22:13.000When the founders crafted the Constitution, the first thing they did was make sacred the rights of the individual.
00:22:17.000The second thing they did was make sure that you had a gun so you could protect those rights.
00:22:20.000You know how strongly I believe in the Bill of Rights and the Constitution?
00:22:24.000You should too, and you know who does?
00:22:26.000It was started in a garage by a Marine veteran more than two decades ago to build a professional-grade product that meets combat standards.
00:22:32.000BCM believes the same level of protection should be provided to every American regardless of whether they're a private citizen or a professional.
00:23:33.000Because he went in front of the UN, in front of a bunch of genocidal, anti-Jewish, anti-Semitic countries, and he said, from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free.
00:24:04.000That's why you, in front of the UN, justified terrorism against Israelis?
00:24:07.000I mean, he literally did this, and then he went out and spouted a slogan that received wild applause from the Iranians, from the Palestinians, from everyone who wants to see the Juden pushed into the sea.
00:24:20.000So, Hill did all of this, and it sparked immediate backlash.
00:24:26.000So CNN eventually, so Lamont Hill then tweeted out, he's not anti-semitic, he said, I do not support anti-semitism, killing Jewish people or any of the other things attributed to my speech.
00:24:35.000We didn't attribute it to your speech.
00:24:41.000And he said, what I meant by river to the sea was not a call to destroy anything or anyone.
00:24:45.000It was a call for justice, both in Israel and in the West Bank, Gaza.
00:24:48.000The speech very clearly and specifically said those things.
00:24:50.000Actually, the speech did not clearly and specifically say any of those things.
00:24:53.000This is just a blatant attempt to rewrite all of this stuff.
00:24:57.000I mean, this is what he actually said at the UN.
00:24:59.000Contrary to Western mythology, black resistance to American apartheid did not come purely through Ghandian nonviolence.
00:25:05.000Rather, slave revolts and self-defense and tactics otherwise divergent from Dr. King or Mahatma Gandhi were equally important to preserving safety and attaining freedom.
00:25:11.000If we are to operate in true solidarity with the Palestinian people, we must allow the Palestinian people the same range of opportunity and political possibility.
00:25:18.000So he's talking about slave revolts and he's comparing that to Palestinians committing acts of terror and defending it.
00:25:25.000So all of this is just a lie and so CNN fired him.
00:25:29.000Now this raised a lot of questions from people about whether he ought to be fired.
00:25:32.000Here is the rule on whether you ought to be fired because we've had several situations in which commentators have said things or tweeted things and then they were fired.
00:25:40.000The reason I defended the Roseanne firing at the time is because I said that NBC Did not have evidence that she was a quote-unquote racist.
00:25:49.000And then she said something about Valerie Jarrett that was on its face racist.
00:26:34.000Private companies, first of all, have a right to do whatever they want.
00:26:37.000Number two, if you threaten the brand of the company, the company has a responsibility to its shareholders to take you out.
00:26:45.000Number three, the question is whether a new piece of information has been emergent or whether this is just ginned up outrage about a piece of old Twittery.
00:26:55.000Okay, Mark Lamont Hill did something new.
00:26:57.000We knew that Mark Lamont Hill did all this stuff years ago.
00:26:58.000If, for example, people said, you know, Mark Lamont Hill, back in 2008, defended Louis Farrakhan, he should be fired.
00:27:11.000So CNN, not only had every right to fire him, this was a piece of open antisemitism.
00:27:15.000Now, I have to tell you, it's unbelievable, UNBELIEVABLE, how exactly the folks on the left have covered the Mark Lamont Hill statements.
00:27:25.000And it just demonstrates that for the left, as long as you say anti-Semitic things about Israel, we pretend that it's not anti-Semitic.
00:27:31.000Okay, the actual headline from the Washington Post was this, CNN fires Mark Lamont Hill in wake of remarks criticizing Israel and calling for a free Palestine.
00:28:20.000So he's talking about the complete destruction of the state of Israel.
00:28:22.000That's a blatantly anti-Semitic statement.
00:28:25.000And the Washington Post covers it as though it's just controversial.
00:28:29.000Mostly just controversial, you know, not anti-Semitic per se, come on!
00:28:32.000And The Hill does the exact same thing.
00:28:34.000So The Hill's headline was suggested something like... Suggested exactly the same thing, that it was just a controversial statement that Marc Lamont Hill hadn't done anything truly terrible.
00:28:50.000Again, the willingness of so many on the left to overlook anti-Semitism coming from the left by saying, well, it's not anti-Semitic, it's just anti-Israel.
00:28:58.000It just shows you that when people say, I'm not anti-Semitic, I'm just anti-Israel, maybe that's true.
00:29:03.000But there has not yet been an anti-Semite who is not anti-Israel.
00:29:07.000I mean, here's the headline from The Hill.
00:29:11.000CNN cuts ties with Marc Lamont Hill after Israel comments.
00:29:14.000They didn't... People make comments on Israel all the time on CNN.
00:29:46.000Their only proof is an article from BuzzFeed talking about how the Daily Stormer, which is a neo-Nazi website run by a piece of crap named Andrew Anglin, featured articles about Tucker Carlson like 265 times.
00:29:56.000"265 times." Wemple said, "or as a host like Hannity, for example, "forever parrots Trump's talking points, "Carlson has consistently pursued storylines "and polemical themes that please racists." Carlson hypes alleged crimes and dislocation caused by immigration.
00:30:12.000He circulates bogus material about South Africa's alleged injustices against white farmers.
00:30:16.000And he cheers Trump's hard-line immigration policies.
00:30:19.000Okay, how any of those things are neo-Nazi material is beyond me, but that didn't stop Eric Wemple from basically labeling Tucker Carlson complicit and working with neo-Nazis for saying things that are basically conservative slash populist, and then lumping him in with the neo-Nazis.
00:30:36.000Marc Lamont Hill says the Jews should be killed between the river and the sea.
00:30:39.000When you say pre-Palestine, from the river to the sea, you're talking about a Judenrein area called Palestine where no Jews live, and the destruction of the Jewish state as an entity.
00:30:48.000That, according to the Washington Post, is just controversial anti-Israeli commentary.
00:30:52.000Tucker Carlson, however, for saying that he disapproves of illegal immigration and wonders whether diversity is in fact strength or whether we have to have some common set of shared values, that makes him a neo-Nazi.
00:31:03.000The media bias when it comes to the accounts of particular viewpoints is truly astonishing.
00:31:10.000Okay, in just a second, I want to talk about a couple of controversies with regard to Twitter, and then the worst story of the day.
00:31:19.000But first, let's talk about how you can save on your healthcare coverage.
00:31:24.000Did you ever make a change and wonder to yourself, why didn't I do this a long time ago?
00:31:26.000That's what's happening with thousands of people with regard to their healthcare.
00:31:29.000They're joining MediShare, and they're asking themselves, why didn't I do this earlier?
00:31:33.000MediShare is based on the biblical principles of caring for and sharing in one another's needs.
00:31:37.000As such, MediShare is more than healthcare.
00:31:39.000It's a community of believers who share one another's healthcare costs and even pray for each other.
00:31:45.000MediShare is exactly what I've always talked about when you talk about the formation of community and social fabric to take care of one another.
00:31:51.000This is what MediShare does in a way that saves you money.
00:32:04.000Well, basically, they're making sure that if, God forbid, something catastrophic happens to you in terms of health, that you are now covered and that that cost is shared among this community of believers.
00:32:15.000And again, every time you have a health care problem, you legitimately have people writing to you if you're a member of MediShare and talking about how they're praying for you.
00:32:22.000Seeing what they can do for you on a charitable basis as well.
00:32:25.000Since its inception in 1993, members have shared more than 1.9 billion dollars in medical expenses.
00:32:56.000I can't recommend Metashare highly enough to people who are Christian believers.
00:33:00.000If you are a Christian and you are looking for healthcare coverage, and you are looking for a community and a social fabric to pick you up, And you want to save money on your health insurance?
00:34:46.000The leftist here's hot or cold tumbler.
00:34:49.000Cast your eyes upon the glory of this vessel and know that you could be enjoying this if only, if only you could scrape together the measly $99 to get our annual subscription, which comes with all those great benefits and you get to sip these leftist tears every single day.
00:35:13.000And all we ask is that you spend money on us.
00:35:15.000And treat us well, like you would a spouse, and that you commit to us for the long term, and that you leave us a nice review and give us compliments, you know, the way that you would a spouse.
00:35:25.000That's all we ask of you, really not much when you think about it.
00:35:27.000We are the largest, fastest-growing conservative podcast in the nation.
00:35:29.000So yesterday, in other news, Laura Loomer, she'd been banned from Twitter.
00:35:39.000The reason that she'd been banned from Twitter is because she tweeted something out about the evils of radical Islam.
00:35:45.000And she did something that I thought was actually quite good, for the most part, and then she blew it with some of her publicity ploy.
00:35:52.000So she chained herself to the Twitter headquarters to draw publicity.
00:35:59.000And she pasted, above the Twitter doorway, a couple of competing tweets.
00:36:04.000One, from Louis Farrakhan, which has not gotten Louis Farrakhan banned.
00:36:07.000It says, I'm not an anti-Semite, I'm anti-termite from Louis Farrakhan.
00:36:11.000And she juxtaposed that with her own tweet, which said something like, isn't it ironic how the Twitter moment used to celebrate women, LGBTQ, and minorities is a picture of Ilhan Omar.
00:36:23.000Ilhan Omar is the Minnesota representative who is pro-BDS.
00:36:28.000She says she is a pro-Sharia and she is pro-FGM, female genital mutilation.
00:36:33.000The reason she says that is because Ilhan Omar is one of the four members of the Minnesota legislature who voted against a bill banning female genital mutilation in the state of Minnesota.
00:36:41.000Under Sharia, homosexuals are oppressed and killed, women are abused and forced to wear the hijab, and Ilhan is anti-Jewish.
00:37:26.000And this is part of the problem, is that how you get out your message is just as important as the message, in many ways more important than the message.
00:38:17.000government report said Thursday the drug overdose rate rose 9.6 percent compared to 2016.
00:38:22.000Suicides climbed 3.7 percent, according to the U.S.
00:38:24.000Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's National Center for Health Statistics.
00:38:29.000As a result, the average lifespan in America dropped to 78.6 years, a decrease of 0.1 year from 2016.
00:38:35.000This is the second straight year in which life expectancy in the United States has dropped after rising consistently for legitimately 100 years.
00:38:43.000This is a serious crisis, but it is not an economic crisis.
00:38:47.000What I'm seeing from a lot of folks is, well, this is because they're the economically dispossessed.
00:39:08.000The life expectancy did not drop in 2008, 2009.
00:39:12.000And the fact that life expectancy has dropped yet again is an indicator that there is something missing in the American soul, that we have destroyed our own social fabric, that we have atomized ourselves into these little, not even groups.
00:39:25.000Into basically polarized marbles walking around the world, suspicious of everybody around us.
00:39:29.000They have no values that we hold in common, that we feel threatened, that we feel empty, that we're looking for something.
00:39:35.000If we don't have shared values, if we don't have social fabric, if we don't have community, if we don't know what America is about or what we're doing in the world, if we don't have purpose and meaning, it makes it almost impossible to live a fulfilled life.
00:39:46.000I say this because I have a new book that's coming out, and I'm not just pitching the book.
00:39:50.000I have a new book coming out next year that is specifically about this.
00:39:52.000What were the shared values of the West that built the West, and how have we lost those things?
00:39:56.000We live in a time of unprecedented material prosperity, in a time of unprecedented personal freedom, and yet, life expectancy is dropping in the United States.
00:40:04.000That is happening because there is a God-shaped hole in the American heart.
00:40:07.000There is a crisis of what you're supposed to do when you get up in the morning.
00:40:11.000You know, we've been promoting empty nostrums, like, go make the world a better place.
00:40:16.000Okay, this presupposes a couple of things.
00:40:20.000Two, that you have the capacity to make the world a better place.
00:40:22.000But at the same time, we've been telling people, you don't actually have the capacity to make the world a better place.
00:40:27.000You're nothing more than a ball of meat wandering around aimlessly in the universe without free will.
00:40:31.000And also, social forces are organized against you.
00:40:34.000So why in the world should you go out there and try?
00:40:36.000And two, we've not defined what better looks like.
00:40:38.000Okay, if better just means material prosperity, then why are the suicide rates going up?
00:40:44.000Better always meant spiritual fulfillment, but we don't have spiritual fulfillment in a time when we have cast the spirit out.
00:40:50.000We have no spiritual fulfillment in a time when we have decided that God, family, community, the very basics, the very basics of what it means to be a fulfilled human being over the course of human history, All those things are irrelevant.
00:41:02.000The only thing that matters is virtue signaling, politics, rage, showing other people how much you care about things, and despair.
00:41:12.000Despair, because obviously you're not in control of your own life.
00:41:14.000This is why, you know, so much of my message is concentrated around what can you do in your life to make your life better.
00:41:22.000And if there's an obstacle, then let's talk about the obstacle.
00:41:24.000But if you are spending all your life focused on everything around you and why it's bad, and you're doing that because you lack a sense of purpose, you're not going to be happy.
00:41:49.000Okay, let's do a little bit of the mailbag.
00:41:51.000John says, Hey Ben, I want to ask you to elaborate on why you think Marbury was wrongly decided and judicial review is not the role of the Supreme Court.
00:41:58.000I'm not too knowledgeable in this area, but I've never heard this argument before and it seems pretty interesting.
00:42:02.000So, the basic idea here is that if you read the Federalist Papers, as we do every week, what the founders envisioned is that all of the branches would check one another.
00:42:10.000The judiciary would check the executive, the executive would check the legislative, the legislative would check the judiciary, and all of the rest.
00:42:16.000Making the Supreme Court the final purview of constitutional adjudication prevents a final check from taking place.
00:42:23.000It means that only the Supreme Court has the purview of interpreting what the Constitution means.
00:42:28.000The very oaths that people take upon taking office in the United States Congress or upon taking office in the presidency is to uphold, protect, defend the Constitution of the United States.
00:42:38.000Their interpretations matter just as much as the judiciary's interpretation of the Constitution.
00:42:43.000So the idea that the judiciary can say what the Constitution is, and use that to strike down laws, seems to me a wild misrepresentation of what the judiciary was meant to do.
00:42:54.000There's nothing in the Constitution itself that says that the judiciary gets to take a law from the legislature, hold it up against the Constitution of the United States, or an action of the executives, in the case of Marbury v. Madison, and then strike down that action.
00:43:08.000It actually takes power away from the American people, and it removes responsibility from the American people to vote for politicians who will uphold the Constitution.
00:43:15.000Instead, we sort of outsource it to the judiciary, and then pretend that the judiciary is a non-political implement.
00:43:21.000Now, the case against me is that in Federalist 78, Alexander Hamilton talks about judicial review a little bit.
00:43:27.000He talks about the idea that the judiciary is there to interpret the law, and should the judiciary become a political body rather than anything else, then it would stop Okay, but that's exactly what it's done.
00:43:40.000Because the judiciary has been given the power to interpret the Constitution, it's become a political tool.
00:43:44.000Sole power means authoritarianism from any branch.
00:43:47.000Jacob says, "Dear future Chief Justice Shapiro, "I'm proposing to my girlfriend, "who I've known for 10 years next Saturday.
00:43:52.000"Any words of wisdom on how not to screw it up?" How not to screw it up?
00:43:57.000Well, first of all, when you say you're proposing to your girlfriend, we have to determine which sort of proposal we're talking about.
00:44:43.000I want to give you the rest of my life and I want to partner with you in this journey.
00:44:47.000You're the person that I choose to be my partner in this journey to create a family, to create the fundamental building block of society, share values.
00:44:54.000To be with until I die because, you know, things are going to be great and things are going to be tough.
00:44:59.000But because we believe in the same things and we share the same soul, then we should be together.
00:45:04.000So just transcribe that and then say it to her.
00:45:06.000Andrew says, Hey, Ben, I used to disagree with you about my parents, about parents staying together for the sake of the children, even if they want a divorce.
00:45:12.000My parents are still together for 33 years.
00:45:14.000But it's clear they are deeply unhappy.
00:45:16.000In any event, I have a friend who has had six children and eight years with his wife.
00:45:19.000Now he's talking about leaving, even though he said he'd still take care of his kids.
00:45:22.000I told him it was too late to back out now.
00:45:24.000He disagreed, so we had a friendly argument.
00:45:26.000By the end, I was fully advocating and agreeing with your position on the subject.
00:45:30.000I was surprised to see how quickly my thoughts on the subject changed through the course of a single conversation.
00:45:34.000Have you had an experience where your mind was rapidly and unexpectedly changed on a subject?
00:45:38.000If not, what has been the fastest amount of time you've changed your mind on something?
00:45:42.000Well, new evidence tends to change my mind.
00:45:45.000And usually, changing your mind, I think that even in the course of this conversation, Andrew, it wasn't the conversation that changed your mind.
00:45:52.000I think that you had heard this opinion Articulated many times, the one you ended up at.
00:45:56.000Many times, and this was the final straw that broke the camel's back.
00:45:59.000The art of persuasion is not trying to convince someone in one conversation.
00:46:02.000It's building up a case, a case, a case, and then finally there's a piece of evidence that breaks the camel's back, and that's how you end up at that position.
00:46:08.000That happens to me on a fairly frequent basis.
00:46:10.000My guess is that that's what happened to you here.
00:46:11.000Kevin says, what are we going to do about the robots?
00:46:14.000Automation, lethal autonomous weapons, drones, machine learning, taking jobs, etc.
00:46:21.000My basic thing is, I think that we are the ones who set the parameters for the machines.
00:46:25.000If we are not setting parameters on lethal weaponry with self-learning capacity, then we don't, we wouldn't like Skynet.
00:46:31.000But I'm really not that worried about technology taking jobs, because every technology ever created has created more prosperity and more jobs over the course of time.
00:48:17.000I'm not a big fan of this idea because now you're getting into basic eugenics.
00:48:21.000However, if we're talking about, if you could just tweak the genetic code and prevent Tay-Sachs, for example, to prevent suffering, then I think that that would be something worthwhile.
00:48:30.000It's the difference between sort of optional surgery and non-optional surgery in the post-birth world.
00:48:36.000I'm generally not a huge fan of non-optional surgery.
00:48:40.000You know, if you're just getting a surgery because you want your tummy to look a little bit better, I don't think that it's, like, tremendously immoral, but I don't think it's good.
00:48:46.000When you're talking about actively changing how someone's entire life will go, I think that you're looking at immorality and handing a power to a doctor that that doctor should not have.
00:48:54.000But if you're talking about a cancer surgery, obviously that's necessary.
00:48:57.000If you're talking about preventing cancer in a baby, that's necessary.
00:48:59.000Getting rid of a BRCA gene or something.
00:49:02.000If you're talking about the possibility of changing the eye color of a kid, this gets into, I think, really dangerous territory where you're genetically engineering kids to create some sort of master race.
00:49:14.000Brad says, "Hi Ben, are Dineshra Seuss's books "like The Big Lie or Death of a Nation historically accurate?" Parts yes, part no, I would say.
00:49:23.000I think that Dinesh... I'm trying... So, Death of a Nation, I have read.
00:49:30.000So, Death of a Nation, there's a lot there that is historically accurate.
00:49:33.000I think that Dinesh overshoots his case a little bit in some of these books.
00:49:37.000I think that he uses an exaggerated form of the case, like the idea that the Nazis learned everything they needed to know about eugenics from the Democrats.
00:49:45.000It was a worldwide eugenic movement, and the Democrats were part of it, and so were the Nazis.
00:49:49.000I think the idea that Democrats are the greatest force against human freedom, and that all the other bad guys learn from the Democrats.
00:49:59.000I think you can argue that the Democrats were a force against human freedom and for eugenics and for human rights violations in the 19, 1900s, 1910s, 1920s, 1930s.
00:50:06.000I think all of that's true, but I think exaggerating the case is not.
00:50:18.000In my discussions with pro-choice individuals, the question that I always seem to get hung up on is what about the aftercare of women who no longer have abortions?
00:50:24.000If we managed to sway the country to where abortions no longer happen, what would you recommend or what are your thoughts on how we would take care of the women that are no longer having abortions and may very well be single parents?
00:50:33.000I really enjoy your opinions and podcasts.
00:51:01.000Taking an adopted kid is basically the greatest thing that you can do in this life, I think.
00:51:05.000And beyond that, I think that a mother who has the courage to see that her child needs a mother and a father, and is willing to make the emotional sacrifice of giving up her own child to a better situation, knowing that a better situation exists, that's an act of courage as well.
00:51:18.000And women who do that, instead of killing the baby in the womb, those women should absolutely be celebrated.
00:51:23.000Okay, time for some things I like, and then some things that I hate.
00:52:09.000of $3,000, one shopper spent $640 for a pair of boots, which represented an $1,800, an 1,800% markup.
00:52:17.000Payless returned their money and let them keep the shoes, Payless said the influencers were paid a small stipend to attend.
00:52:24.000So Payless said that this social experiment was meant to remind shoppers that Payless's affordable shoes are fashionable as well.
00:52:30.000What it actually reminds people is there's a lot of social science research to back this up.
00:52:34.000People don't just buy things because they think that those things are nicer so they pay a more expensive price.
00:52:39.000People on the upper end buy things that are expensive because they think that the price itself dictates the quality of the product.
00:52:46.000They think that a product that is identical but costs more must be nicer because we've all learned that if people are willing to pay more for something, that means that it's nicer.
00:52:54.000So you will see retailers who will actually retail things for an extraordinary markup.
00:53:00.000Particularly in the fashion industry, where taste is subjective.
00:53:03.000And then, because it's really expensive, people think that it's better.
00:53:17.000Because what would have happened over time?
00:53:18.000What would have happened over time is somebody would have bought a Payless pair of shoes for $20.
00:53:21.000And then, Presumably, after three weeks, when the Payless pair of shoes starts to fall apart, for example, when these boots don't hold up the way an actual $640 pair of boots hold up, then the reviews start coming in on Paylessy.com and on Amazon.com, and people begin to realize that these boots are not worth it, and the place goes out of business.
00:53:40.000This is why people misunderstand fraud in capitalism.
00:53:43.000They're like, well, you know, capitalism, it leads to fraud.
00:53:47.000Capitalism is a repeat iteration game.
00:53:52.000There are many iterations in capitalism.
00:53:54.000It's true, you can be defrauded if you're buying a singular thing one time.
00:53:57.000But if you have lots of people over time buying lots of things, then eventually people start to actually critique, particularly in an area where social media is active.
00:54:05.000People can actually critique the product over time and realize that these boots are actually not as nice as the boots that are more expensive.
00:55:28.000Scientists and engineers launched InSight from Earth, a moving platform, across 300 million miles to arrive where Mars, a moving target, will be seven months later, landing safely to do geophysics at the Martian equator.
00:55:39.000And you have a problem listening to us about climate change?
00:56:05.000Should we trust those people with climate change?
00:56:08.000Because you are competent at this thing does not mean that you are competent at this thing, particularly when they are in separate areas of science.
00:56:17.000It's not quite the same thing as climate physics or climatology, which has a lot of factors, the modeling has not been proper, and all the rest.
00:56:25.000The idea that because I have a problem with your solutions on climate change, I therefore have a problem with your science on climate change is nonsense.
00:56:34.000Everything I've ever said about climate change is cribbed from the IPCC reports.
00:56:38.000When I talk about the range of variability of the climate over the next hundred years, when I talk about the levels of certainty of that variability, I'm quoting from the reports that Neil deGrasse Tyson likes.
00:56:50.000When I talked earlier this week about the 10% reduction in GDP that's supposed to happen over the next 100 years, and I pointed out that that was double the RCP 8.5, the highest risk scenario.
00:57:01.000When I said that, that is from the report.
00:57:05.000But Neil deGrasse Tyson basically says you should listen to me on everything because some other scientist who is not me did something that is not climate science.
00:57:18.000Really, really stupid stuff from Neil deGrasse Tyson, but again, I don't, it's, stupidity, just because you're a scientist doesn't mean you don't say dumb things from time to time, and Neil deGrasse Tyson's Twitter account is filled with some dumb things.