The Democratic debate exposes the field s weaknesses, President Trump struggles with the fallout from Rudy Giuliani s incompetence, and Trump hurts Erdogan on Syria. Ben Shapiro's show is sponsored by ExpressVPN. Protect your online privacy today, like right now, by becoming a supporter of ExpressVPN, like today, and get 20% off your first month with discount code: PGPUNIVERSAL. Use the promo code: "ProtectYourOnline Privacy" to receive $10 and contribute $10 to Protect Your Online Privacy, and a free e-cigarette with purchase of a carton of Caff Monster Energy drinks. The show is also available on most major podcast directories, including Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Pocketcasts, and Stitcher. Subscribe to The Ben Shapiro Show wherever you get your shows, and don't forget to give us your rating and review! It helps spread the word about the show and keep us in touch with our listeners! Thanks to our sponsors ExpressVPN! The biggest sponsor is ExpressVPN and they are making safe, secure, reliable and secure connections easier for you to access the best of the best in the best VPNs, the fastest growing and most reliable VPNs around the world. Have a question or would you like to support the show? Call them at 800-273-8255-2782 or visit ExpressVPN? and they'll get a shoutout on the next episode of the show on their website? The average American adult listening to the show will get 10% off the entire month of episodes, plus an ad-free version of the first week of the new episodes throughout the month, plus a free for the rest of the coming in the coming months, and all the weekends, through the coming up in the next week, full of special offer throughout the world, plus all the options available in the world discount offers, plus early ad-only shipping and all other options available throughout the entire world, including VIPs worldwide, including the UK and the UK, including Canada and the Caribbean, and much more! If you get a discount code, you get $10% off of the second half of the US, you'll get $5,000 off the second week of VIPs get $50 off the next month, and I'll get full access to the second-place deal, and there's a special offer, and the third week gets $50% off, and they get an ad discount, too!
00:00:00.000The big democratic debate exposes the field's weaknesses, President Trump struggles with the fallout from Rudy Giuliani's incompetence, and Trump hurts Erdogan on Syria.
00:00:10.000The Ben Shapiro Show is sponsored by ExpressVPN Podcasts.
00:00:18.000Protect your online privacy today, like right now, at expressvpn.com slash ben.
00:00:24.000Okay, well we got a ton to get to today.
00:00:26.000We will get to the recap of the Democratic 2020 debate and the fallout therefrom.
00:00:30.000It appears that There is some roiling tension inside that Democratic field.
00:00:34.000People are not satisfied with the field they have.
00:00:37.000Honestly, if Hillary Clinton were to make her grand re-entrance, now would be about the time she should do it.
00:00:41.000Because the fact is, a lot of people are dissatisfied with Biden, a lot of people are dissatisfied with Warren, and Hillary is an enormous name.
00:00:47.000If she were to jump in right now, I think there's a pretty good shot she wins the nomination.
00:00:50.000Now, is she actually going to do that?
00:00:53.000And that means the Democratic field is pretty extraordinarily weak.
00:00:56.000So we'll get to that in just a little bit.
00:00:58.000But we begin today with updates on impeachment day 2019.
00:01:03.000So, according to the New York Times, President Trump's impeachment blockade has now crumbled as witnesses agree to talk.
00:01:10.000So the White House had said to the House that we are not providing witnesses to you.
00:01:13.000And witnesses are showing up anyway because They don't really need the White House's permission to show up as long as they're not testifying to anything that is privileged material.
00:01:22.000A week after President Trump's lawyer, Pat Cipollone, sent a letter to the House Democrats saying we're not cooperating, according to the New York Times, it has become clear that President Trump's attempts to stonewall the Democrat-led inquiry that has imperiled his presidency and ensnared much of his inner circle are crumbling.
00:01:37.000One by one, a parade of Trump administration career diplomats and senior officials has offered a cascade of revelations.
00:01:54.000And it is not necessarily irrelevant, but it's certainly not dispositive.
00:01:58.000This is not material where you have a bunch of people from the State Department having inside information.
00:02:03.000It's mostly those people saying, I was cut out of the process, and I'm really pissed about that, and I wish I hadn't been cut out of the process, and this shows that Trump is corrupt.
00:02:10.000Well, it could just show that President Trump doesn't trust you, doesn't trust the State Department, and runs a very, very closed ship with people that he does trust.
00:02:20.000I mean, that is what Trump has been doing since day one, to the chagrin of many in the media, and to the chagrin of many who are sort of professional politicos.
00:02:28.000President Trump has surrounded himself with family members, with immediate friends, and this has not worked out well for him, see Michael Cohen in some ways, but in other ways it has at least kept the circle small.
00:02:38.000I mean, it's been an incredibly leaky administration.
00:02:40.000There are a lot of people in the administration who have been serving from before this administration who don't like Trump, and that's been perfectly obvious from the leaks.
00:02:47.000It's been perfectly obvious from the text messages that we have seen from members of the Trump intelligence community texting each other.
00:02:54.000I'm speaking here specifically of Peter Strzok and Lisa Page.
00:02:58.000Trump, in other words, has some fairly decent reasons to be pretty suspicious of the people who were in government before he was.
00:03:07.000And so him cutting State Department officials out of the loop isn't necessarily proof of corruption.
00:03:12.000It could just be proof that Trump doesn't trust any of these people.
00:03:14.000Again, my going theory on virtually everything political is that you must attribute to stupidity More than you attribute to malice.
00:03:22.000That you only attribute something to malice when you can't attribute it to stupidity.
00:03:26.000And when it comes to President Trump's dealings with Ukraine, that one looks a lot more, to me, yeah, could be wrong, we'll see what the evidence says, it looks more to me like President Trump fumbling around in Ukraine based on bad information fed to him by Rudy Giuliani than it does like President Trump specifically attempting to leverage Ukraine into quote-unquote getting Joe Biden.
00:03:45.000In any case, According to the New York Times, these accounts from various career diplomats and senior officials have corroborated and expanded upon key aspects of the whistleblower complaint that spawned the impeachment inquiry into whether the president abused his power to enlist Ukraine to help him in the 2020 presidential election.
00:04:01.000The latest disclosures came on Wednesday when a former top aide to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo offered an inside account of what he said was a demoralized State Department where career diplomats were sidelined and others apparently were pressed to use their posts to advance domestic political objectives.
00:04:14.000In six hours of voluntary testimony, the former aide Michael McKinley told impeachment investigators that he quit his post as Mr. Pompeo's senior advisor amid mounting frustrations over the Trump administration's treatment of diplomats and its failure to support them in the face of the impeachment inquiry, according to a copy of his opening remarks.
00:04:31.000Now, again, people frustrated at the State Department, That's sort of the byword of virtually every Republican administration.
00:04:37.000It's worse under this administration, but sometimes that is fully justified.
00:04:41.000I mean, I know, for example, the State Department, I'm over here in Israel, the State Department was supremely unhappy with President Trump's decision to move the embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to the capital, the eternal capital of Israel, Jerusalem.
00:05:22.000In any case, Democrats on Thursday are set to hear from Gordon Sumlin, the U.S.
00:05:26.000ambassador to the European Union, a central figure in the president's pressure campaign on Ukraine.
00:05:32.000He is expected to testify that he learned that Mr. Trump did not intend to invite President Zelensky of Ukraine to a meeting in the Oval Office until Zelensky pledged to open an investigation that could benefit Trump's political fortunes, bolstering a central allegation in the inquiry that the president steered foreign policy for political gain.
00:05:48.000Now remember, This has morphed a little bit.
00:05:49.000Originally it was that he was withholding military aid in order to pressure Ukraine.
00:05:53.000Now they're making the claim that he was withholding a meeting with Zelensky in order to pressure Ukraine to go get Biden.
00:05:58.000It is unclear whether he wanted to quote-unquote target corruption in Ukraine and he misperceived that as including Biden.
00:06:06.000Or whether he specifically meant to get Biden.
00:06:07.000That last question is the one that only Rudy Giuliani basically can answer, which is why Rudy's going to be dragged up before a House committee.
00:06:14.000Democratic lawmakers, according to the New York Times, have directed William Taylor, one of the top American diplomats in Ukraine, to appear before their committees next Tuesday, according to an official familiar with the investigation.
00:06:24.000Text messages produced as part of the inquiry suggest that Taylor was deeply uneasy about what he saw as an effort by Trump aides to use a $391 million package of security assistance as leverage over Ukraine for political favors, calling the notion crazy.
00:06:37.000Well, of course they want to call him.
00:06:38.000If you read his text messages, he's parroting basically everything that Democrats are suggesting happened over in Ukraine.
00:06:45.000The White House has successfully blocked a lot of the documents tied to the case, but the president and his lawyers had hoped to use the power of his office to muzzle current and former diplomats and White House aides, arguing in presidential tweets and a lengthy letter to Democratic lawmakers on October 8th that their subpoenas are invalid and unenforceable.
00:07:01.000Patrick Malone, of course, as I mentioned, wrote, President Trump cannot permit his administration to participate in this partisan inquiry under these circumstances, but a bunch of officials have testified for apparently something like 36 total hours.
00:07:14.000So does that mean that they actually have the goods on Trump?
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00:08:40.000Okay, so Lindsey Graham is responding to all of this with what I think is a really foolish idea of...
00:08:47.000Apparently he has a plan to send a letter to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi warning that the Senate Republican caucus will not remove President Trump from office.
00:08:55.000This is just foolhardy in the extreme.
00:08:58.000So the letter, according to Graham's description, would warn Pelosi that Senate Republicans will not vote to remove President Trump from office because of a phone call where he asked the Ukrainian government to look into former Vice President Joe Biden and his son Hunter Biden.
00:09:10.000The reason this is a stupid, stupid idea by Lindsey Graham is twofold.
00:09:13.000One, how many Republicans are actually going to sign it?
00:09:15.000If it's not all the Republicans, then Trump looks weak.
00:09:17.000It looks like there are a bunch of Republicans who are wavering on impeachment, when in reality, they're just waiting for more information, which is what all rational people should be doing at this point.
00:09:26.000The fact is that we don't know what happened with regard to Ukraine.
00:09:46.000The last thing you want to do as a Republican senator is put yourself out there before all the evidence is out, because you don't know where this thing is going.
00:09:53.000Now, you can express publicly that the evidence on the table does not justify impeachment.
00:09:58.000The evidence on the table does not justify impeachment.
00:10:01.000But to forecast in a letter that you are never going to support impeachment, no matter what the circumstance, would be a foolish move.
00:10:09.000And to not sign the letter would also be a foolish political move, because then it looks as though you're not supporting the president in the face of a partisan-driven impeachment inquiry.
00:10:16.000So, Graham, like, what is the point of this?
00:10:32.000Kennedy acknowledged there's a risk that if the letter doesn't get enough signatures, that puts the GOP in a tough spot.
00:10:37.000He says, the fact that some senators may not sign the letter doesn't indicate they don't support the president.
00:10:41.000They just want to hear more, and I don't think that's fair to them.
00:10:44.000I worry Americans will look at it and some less enlightened members of the press will look at it and say, okay, this is what the vote will be among the Republicans.
00:10:54.000So Graham, look, my guess is probably that Graham is doing this at Trump's behest.
00:10:59.000That probably Trump called up Graham and said to him, I want a letter.
00:11:03.000And Graham, because he's trying to do his best to defend the president and has been sycophantic toward President Trump, to say the least, my guess is that Lindsey Graham was like, OK, I can do that.
00:11:14.000And then he just went ahead and did it.
00:11:16.000But the fact is, it is a very, very bad idea.
00:11:19.000Another GOP senator said he's trying to help, but it's going to backfire.
00:11:22.000If there aren't enough signatures, the president is going to look really weak.
00:11:27.000Now, in other impeachment-grade developments, the House Oversight Committee is now asking a federal appeals court to expedite the enforcement of a subpoena for President Trump's financial records.
00:11:37.000So if you thought that this whole thing seems like it's just a fishing expedition, at this point a deep sea fishing expedition, that's right.
00:11:45.000Originally we were told that this impeachment inquiry was going to be focused, laser focused, honing in directly on the Ukraine stuff.
00:11:53.000And now we have the House Oversight Committee who is delving into President Trump's tax returns, which Last I checked, those returns precede his term in office.
00:12:03.000The ones that they are really looking for.
00:12:05.000So not sure what exactly they think they're going to find there that the IRS hasn't already seen.
00:12:09.000The motion comes just days after the U.S.
00:12:13.000Circuit upheld the Oversight Committee subpoena of the financial firm Mazars in a sweeping victory for the House Democrats.
00:12:18.000The subpoena was issued earlier this year prior to the launch of the impeachment inquiry.
00:12:22.000A three-judge panel on the Circuit Court ruled Friday that Mazars would have to turn over eight years worth of Trump's financial records to the House Committee Trump's lawyers said this is a phishing expedition, we shouldn't have to turn it over.
00:12:32.000Now they have appealed this to the full court on the DC Circuit Court of Appeals.
00:12:35.000This probably, probably ends up at the Supreme Court level, where we find out whether the House does in fact have plenary power over subpoenaing any documents it could possibly want, including confidential proprietary business information, without any evidence of underlying criminal activity.
00:12:53.000You know, as I say, a lot of this is going to come down to Rudy Giuliani.
00:12:57.000And according to CNN, investigators are now looking into Rudy Giuliani in a counterintelligence probe.
00:13:01.000Now, this should make all of us a little suspicious.
00:13:07.000Well, because the Trump-Russia investigation was launched under counterintelligence auspices.
00:13:12.000Eventually it turned into a criminal investigation of President Trump and his team.
00:13:16.000But it was launched under counterintelligence auspices, meaning that it was designed to look into whether the Russian government was interfering with the US elections.
00:13:23.000And then it quickly turned into Trump obstruction, stuff that had nothing to do with Russia per se.
00:13:29.000Well, now you have a counterintelligence investigation that has been opened into Rudy Giuliani.
00:13:33.000This is going to lead President Trump to believe more and more that the quote-unquote deep state is out to get him and his team because Rudy Giuliani is his personal lawyer.
00:13:40.000We'll get to more of that in just one second.
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00:14:46.000Okay, so according to CNN, For months, investigators looking into Rudy Giuliani's business dealings in Ukraine have dug into everything from possible financial entanglements with alleged corrupt Ukrainian figures to counterintelligence concerns raised by some of those business ties, according to people briefed on the matter.
00:15:02.000The counterintelligence part of the investigation indicates that FBI and criminal prosecutors in Manhattan are looking at a broader set of issues related to Giuliani, President Trump's personal attorney, than has been previously reported.
00:15:13.000Kenneth McCallion, a New York attorney, says that investigators first approached him earlier this year to ask about Giuliani's ties to Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman, two Giuliani associates indicted last week on campaign finance-related charges.
00:15:25.000These guys were apparently some of the people who were feeding Giuliani information on corruption in Ukraine.
00:15:29.000McCallion says that FBI counterintelligence agents in February or March asked questions about some of Giuliani's Ukrainian business dealings.
00:15:37.000The counterintelligence probe hinges in part on whether a foreign influence operation was trying to take advantage of Giuliani's business ties in Ukraine and with wealthy foreigners to make inroads with the White House, according to one person briefed on the matter.
00:15:50.000McCallion says, I was just asked whether I or any of my clients knew of any dealings these two guys had with Giuliani.
00:15:55.000They were on the radar with regard to possible counterintelligence issues.
00:16:00.000Some of the FBI agents and prosecutors handling the case come from the same public corruption unit that targeted Michael Cohen.
00:16:05.000So, from the frying pan to the fire with the personal lawyering for President Trump, the investigators in the Southern District of New York appear to have largely operated separately from what Trump appointees at the Justice Department headquarters in D.C.
00:16:18.000The investigation dates back far longer than what's previously been reported because Giuliani has longstanding relationships in Ukraine, and Ukraine, of course, is the Wild West when it comes to Everybody in American politics getting, apparently there's a lot of money to be made if you sort of pad the right pockets and all the rest of this.
00:16:34.000Justice Department officials said last month that criminal division prosecutors in Washington had examined Trump's July call with the Ukrainian president only for that narrow issue of potential campaign finance violations and determined this was not a campaign finance violation, but the issue was far from close.
00:16:49.000Meanwhile, federal prosecutors in New York are aggressively pursuing broader issues related to Ukraine matters.
00:16:55.000And of course they are now prosecuting four Giuliani associates.
00:16:59.000So Giuliani may be entangled in all of this.
00:17:02.000Apparently former Texas Republican Representative Pete Sessions has been issued a subpoena by prosecutors.
00:17:10.000Sessions wrote a letter to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo to raise concerns about the then U.S.
00:17:13.000ambassador to Ukraine, who was later removed by President Trump following complaints by Giuliani and others.
00:17:18.000So one of the questions here is whether Giuliani and Sessions were being paid by these Ukrainian guys at the same time they were pushing Trump to remove Marie Yovanovitch, who was the U.S.
00:17:28.000So now it's possible this starts to look less like Trump corruptly going after Joe Biden and more like Rudy Giuliani Corruptly, maybe.
00:17:36.000Corruptly feeding Trump bad information, or at the very least being bamboozled while being paid at the same time to feed Trump bad information that he was then using to impact policy in Ukraine.
00:17:47.000John Bolton saw a lot of this coming, apparently.
00:17:50.000Just a few days ago, the New York Times reported that John Bolton got into a tense exchange on July 10th with Gordon Sondland, the Trump donor turned ambassador to the EU, who was working with Giuliani to press Ukraine to investigate Democrats, according to three people who heard the testimony.
00:18:03.000Bolton's aide, Fiona Hill, testified that Bolton told her to notify the chief lawyer for the National Security Council about a rogue effort by Sunland, Giuliani, and Mick Mulvaney, the acting White House chief of staff, according to people familiar with the testimony.
00:18:15.000Bolton, the ill-trained lawyer, apparently told Hill to tell White House lawyers, quote, I'm not part of whatever drug deal Sunland and Mulvaney are cooking up, which always sounds great.
00:18:24.000It was not the first time that Bolton had expressed grave concerns to Hill about the campaign being run by Giuliani.
00:18:29.000Giuliani's a hand grenade who's gonna blow everybody up, Hill quoted Bolton as saying during an earlier conversation.
00:18:35.000So again, as I've been saying literally for weeks at this point, this whole thing is going to come down to Rudy Giuliani.
00:18:41.000Meanwhile, Gordon Sondland is set to testify, and people believe that Sondland was basically Trump's lackey in Europe.
00:18:49.000According to a former top White House foreign policy advisor, he told House impeachment investigators this week she viewed Gordon Sumlin as totally unprepared for his job.
00:18:58.000That would be Fiona Hill, the same aide that we were talking about with regard to John Bolton.
00:19:03.000She described Sumlin a hotelier and Trump donor turned ambassador as metaphorically driving in an unfamiliar place with no guardrails and no GPS, according to people who are not Authorized to publicly discuss that deposition that took place behind closed doors.
00:19:15.000Someone is set to testify this week and we'll find out exactly what he has to say.
00:19:19.000One of the things he is expected to talk about is the text exchange that he had with Bill Taylor, another official over in Ukraine.
00:19:29.000So, none of this is really wonderful-looking for President Trump.
00:19:33.000John Bolton is likely to be subpoenaed.
00:19:35.000and Sondland tweeted back, texted back to him, this isn't a quid pro quo, he's expected to say, Trump told me to say that, that it wasn't a quid pro quo, that it wasn't his own independent opinion, it wasn't a quid pro quo.
00:19:44.000Trump told me it's not a quid pro quo, and I'm telling you, it's not a quid pro quo.
00:19:49.000So none of this is really wonderful looking for President Trump.
00:19:53.000John Bolton is likely to be subpoenaed.
00:19:56.000Again, it's going to come down to Giuliani, right?
00:19:58.000John Bolton is increasingly likely to show up for testimony, but what's he going to say that is, that is new.
00:20:06.000What's he going to say that we don't already know from these press reports?
00:20:50.000I think it's very important for this country to see the server.
00:20:54.000Okay, so the reason that he wants to see the server, supposedly, is because there is this theory that's going through the CrowdStrike, which was the firm that was brought in to analyze the hack on the DNC servers.
00:21:03.000Actually was covering for the fact it was a Ukrainian hack, not a Russian hack.
00:21:07.000Trump wants to believe that because obviously he doesn't like the idea that Russian interference in the election shaped his election in any way.
00:21:13.000But there is not good information that the DNC servers are in Ukraine or really have anything to do with Ukraine.
00:21:24.000We talked about this on the show a while back.
00:21:27.000Again, you know, the, I think, most realistic possibility with regard to what we know so far is that President Trump was misinformed by people who should know better, but President Trump himself didn't necessarily know better, and that is why President Trump was acting in a way that he thought that there would be information behind these various rocks, and there was no information behind the various rocks.
00:21:47.000And so, there's an appearance of corruption without actual corruption.
00:22:40.000Basically had Erdogan saying to him, I wish you would pull out of this area so we can attack the Kurds, because the Kurds are a bunch of terrorists.
00:22:49.000And then Trump is like, well, I wish they hadn't done that.
00:22:52.000And now we're going to try and do sanctions.
00:22:54.000This policy was so bad that the House voted yesterday to rebuke President Trump over his decision to withdraw those troops from northern Syria.
00:23:07.000All 60 votes against the resolution came from Republicans, but the majority of the Republican caucus actually voted in favor of the motion, including the top three House Republicans.
00:23:16.000The resolution was sponsored by the House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Elliot Engel and the panel's top Republican Representative Michael McCaul of Texas and opposes the decision to end certain U.S.
00:23:25.000efforts to prevent Turkish military operations against Syrian Kurdish forces in Northeast Syria.
00:23:31.000As we were reporting yesterday, the fact is that the Kurds are now joining forces with Bashar Assad in order to avoid annihilation at the hands of the Turks.
00:23:39.000Meanwhile, ISIS fighters are being freed because there's no one there to watch them because no one frankly cares about the ISIS fighters except for the United States.
00:23:47.000Now all of this, all of this, this entire phone call was apparently pre-sage by a letter that President Trump sent to Erdogan on October 9th, about a week before this phone call.
00:23:58.000And I have to read you this letter because...
00:24:01.000I mean, if you love Trump, this is what makes you love Trump.
00:24:04.000If you are lukewarm on Trump, then yeeeeee.
00:24:14.000You don't want to be responsible for slaughtering thousands of people, and I don't want to be responsible for destroying the Turkish economy.
00:25:05.000So, presumably, he sent this letter to Trish Regan because he thought it made him look good.
00:25:08.000It made him look tough on Erdogan, except that he issued all of these empty, bloviating threats, and then he immediately pulled out, and Erdogan just ran right over the guards.
00:25:16.000I mean, that is... Let's work out a good deal.
00:25:36.000Well, all of this resulted in a blow-up at the White House yesterday because the Democrats showed up at the White House and they had this meeting.
00:25:50.000We have dueling meltdown statements here.
00:25:53.000Democratic congressional leaders, according to CNBC.com, said they walked out of a White House meeting Wednesday on Syria after what House Speaker Nancy Pelosi called a meltdown.
00:26:02.000After top Democrats left the bipartisan meeting with Trump, Pelosi told reporters the president appeared shaken up by a House vote condemning his decision to remove U.S. forces from northern Syria.
00:26:11.000That's why we couldn't continue in the meeting because he was just not relating to the reality of it, Pelosi said outside the White House.
00:26:17.000Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer described the meeting as more of a nasty diatribe than a dialogue.
00:26:22.000He said that Trump called Pelosi a third-grade politician, though Pelosi later clarified the president used the term third-grade politician.
00:26:29.000House Majority Leader, just anywhere, Democrat of Maryland, added he had never seen a president treat so disrespectfully a co-equal branch of government.
00:26:39.000Well, I mean, Barack Obama used to do that pretty routinely, but not like calling people third-grade politicians or third-grade politicians or any of that.
00:26:46.000Barack Obama just used to basically call his political opponents Tea Party terrorists.
00:26:50.000In any case, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, A Republican who voted for the House measure to oppose pulling out of northern Syria told reporters that Pelosi stormed out of the meeting.
00:26:58.000He called her behavior unbecoming and argued that Pelosi tried to make the gathering unproductive.
00:27:03.000The White House declined to comment on Trump's third-rate politician comment.
00:27:07.000Yeah, I'm pretty sure that James Mattis doesn't have to prove his bona fides in the toughness category.
00:27:11.000day, Schumer brought up former Defense Secretary James Mattis' recent comment that ISIS will resurge in Syria.
00:27:17.000Trump then called the former U.S. Marine Corps general, quote, the world's most overrated general, saying he wasn't tough enough, according to NBC.
00:27:25.000Yeah, I'm pretty sure that James Mattis doesn't have to prove his bona fides in the toughness category.
00:27:31.000Schumer urged the Senate to take up the resolution as well.
00:27:37.000President Trump also then tweeted out about the Democrats.
00:27:41.000So he tweeted a picture of Nancy Pelosi standing there and lecturing him.
00:27:46.000And he tweeted out, nervous Nancy's unhinged meltdown.
00:27:50.000And then he tweeted another picture of Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi and Steine Hoyer all looking shell-shocked.
00:27:57.000And he tweeted out, do you think they like me?
00:29:21.000That if we left our soldiers there, they wouldn't be getting slaughtered.
00:29:24.000And then Trump came out and he said that the PKK, which is a communistic Kurdish terror group that is on Turkey's border, is worse than ISIS.
00:30:34.000Again, a majority of the Republican caucus in the House just voted to condemn Trump over it.
00:30:38.000Lindsey Graham put out a statement talking about President Trump's Syria remarks.
00:30:43.000He said, Well, this of course prompted President Trump to then fire on Lindsey Graham.
00:30:45.000radical Islam, ISIS will reemerge, and Iran's rise in Syria will become a nightmare for Israel.
00:30:49.000I fear this is a complete and utter national security disaster in the making, and I hope President Trump will adjust his thinking.
00:30:55.000Well, this, of course, prompted President Trump to then fire on Lindsey Graham, and he told Lindsey Graham to stick to judges.
00:31:00.000It's just, it's a bad policy decision, it's a bad move by President Trump, and now he's doubling down on it, which is an even worse move.
00:31:09.000Okay, well, all of this would be bad news for Trump, except for the fact that the Democratic field is a complete mess.
00:31:15.000The Democratic field continues to be a complete mess, and President Trump has some systemic advantages, which we'll discuss in just a second, coming up to 2020.
00:31:23.000But first, let's talk about your sleep quality.
00:31:26.000So I'm on the road, that means I'm not sleeping all that well.
00:31:28.000One of the reasons I'm not sleeping all that well, I don't have my Helix Sleep mattress.
00:31:31.000It was personalized for me, customized for me, and it's back in the United States while I'm in Israel, so I missed that mattress.
00:31:36.000It takes just two minutes to complete.
00:31:38.000It matches your body type and sleep preferences to the perfect mattress for you.
00:31:41.000No matter how you sleep, on your side, on your back, hot sleeper, whatever, Helix can make what your body needs.
00:31:47.000Just go to HelixSleep.com slash Ben, take their two-minute sleep quiz.
00:31:50.000They will match you to a customized mattress that will give you the best sleep of For couples, Helix can even split that mattress down the middle, providing individual support needs and feel preferences for each side.
00:33:46.000So President Trump does have some systemic advantages going into 2020.
00:33:50.000Thomas Edsel, who always writes interesting stuff over the New York Times, he has a piece today called Trump is winning the online war.
00:33:57.000He says the technical superiority and sophistication of the president's digital campaign is a hidden advantage of incumbency.
00:34:03.000Under the management of Brad Parscale, the Trump re-elect machine has devoted millions more than any individual Democrat to increasingly sophisticated micro-targeting techniques.
00:34:11.000The accompanying chart compiled by the Wesleyan Media Project describes the partisan gulf in political spending through September 19th on Facebook and Google by leading presidential candidates.
00:34:20.000Trump's $16 million is more than the $15.5 million spent by the top three Democratic candidates combined.
00:34:26.000By the way, the top spender in terms of online media, Tom Steyer, who spent $6.6 million.
00:34:31.000So that is money that he just flushed directly down the toilet.
00:34:35.000These figures substantially understate how far Democrats are behind.
00:34:38.000Trump's operatives have been working since 2016 to develop and test techniques to identify voters, determine message effectiveness, and develop tools of electronic communication.
00:34:46.000Daniel Kreis is a professor at University of North Carolina Chapel Hill School of Journalism and Mass Communication.
00:34:52.000He said the fact is that Trump is an incumbent without a significant primary challenger.
00:34:55.000That means that he and his team and the Republican National Committee have had three years to build tools, collect data, test models and messaging, and mobilize supporters.
00:35:04.000The political director of the AFL-CIO, Michael Podhorser, is deeply worried that Democrats have fallen behind.
00:35:11.000Apparently, the Republican Party has developed some technology called mobile advertising IDs, and the use of mobile advertising IDs that allow political campaigns to basically track the unique identifiers of voters' phones, and then connect the information known about the voter to messaging that they would like to see.
00:35:30.000All of this means that Trump does have some endemic qualities here that are going to help him going into 2020.
00:35:38.000The thing that's going to help him the most is the fact that the Democratic field is exceedingly weak.
00:35:44.000Now, Elizabeth Warren is the purported frontrunner in this race.
00:35:47.000Joe Biden went at her hammer and tongs yesterday after the debate.
00:35:50.000So the debate happens, and Biden knocks her, and Buttigieg knocks her, and Klobuchar knocks her, and all of them knock her for good reason.
00:35:56.000Joe Biden went after her hard yesterday.
00:35:58.000Here was Joe Biden going after both Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, saying that they are trying to con people, which of course is true.
00:36:04.000I don't want to pick on Elizabeth Warren, but this is ridiculous.
00:37:03.000And if I'm not mistaken, and I did not coordinate any of this with my son.
00:37:07.000I didn't even know he was having these long discussions for some time with ABC.
00:37:12.000But he pointed out the reason why he regrets it is he didn't anticipate that thugs like Giuliani would use it to, in fact, try to embarrass his father.
00:37:25.000And the reason why I am setting up the idea that I've laid out has nothing to do with Hunter.
00:37:31.000Okay, well, the idea that he has laid out, by the way, and that makes things awkward for him, is that relatives of presidential candidates and people who are in powers, in office, in public office, that their relatives shouldn't benefit from foreign connections like this.
00:37:44.000Yeah, that's kind of awkward, because your son did.
00:37:49.000Buttigieg is experiencing a little bit of a media boomlet again after the last debate performance because Buttigieg appeared to be more rational than Elizabeth Warren.
00:37:58.000Warren, again, yesterday I talked about on the show, she kept throwing out all sorts of radical plans and then having no way of defending them.
00:38:06.000Buttigieg just dumped all over her yesterday on the national media.
00:38:11.000Not only is it important to have yes or no answers to yes or no questions at a time when people are so frustrated with Washington speak, but also there's still been no explanation for a multi-trillion dollar hole in this plan.
00:38:25.000I have a lot of respect for Senator Warren, but last night she was more specific and forthcoming about the number of selfies she's taken than about how this plan is going to be funded.
00:38:35.000And that's a real problem, especially when there's a better way to deliver health care coverage to everybody.
00:38:40.000Okay, Buttigieg is getting a lot of plaudits again.
00:38:43.000The media are taking a second look at Buttigieg.
00:38:44.000Once you start seeing people doing, why not second look at X?
00:38:49.000I remember in 2012 there was this thing that happened inside the Republican field where everybody sort of took a first look at candidates like Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum and they were like, And then they came around to Romney and there was like, how about a second look at Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum?
00:39:05.000And by the time the primaries were over, it was pretty obvious that Mitt Romney was not world's strongest candidate.
00:39:10.000Well, Democrats are starting to have exactly those same sort of stomach churning, pepto bismal needing feelings right now because the stomach acid has to be given them some sort of ulcer looking at this field.
00:39:20.000The budding impression of Elizabeth Warren is that she's dishonest.
00:39:32.000She's going to stand up for the people.
00:39:33.000She's not some Ivy League professor who's sort of parachuting in last minute, stealing Bernie's agenda and pretending to care about the people while being worth $10 million.
00:39:41.000No, she is a true heart-of-the-people lady.
00:39:45.000This is a woman who really understands the problems of down-home folks, right?
00:39:55.000So she lies about her Medicare-for-all plan, at least Sanders is honest.
00:39:58.000And she has now gone back and deleted her tweet about Native American DNA.
00:40:02.000So there was a post made one year ago Tuesday.
00:40:04.000It had over 56,000 likes and it read, My family, including Fox News watchers, sat together and talked about what they think of Donald Trump's attacks on our heritage.
00:40:12.000And yes, a famous geneticist analyzed my DNA and concluded that it contains Native American ancestry.
00:40:47.000Yesterday, she was on CNN, and she started talking about how taxes, she refused to admit that taxes would go up.
00:40:56.000She said that Medicare for All would reduce costs for middle class families, which is actually not true.
00:41:01.000And then, She told the story of a guy who she says was refused insurance or was dumped from his insurance after he was diagnosed with MS.
00:41:09.000Here's the story she told and then I'll tell you what the actual story is.
00:41:11.000I had a young man stand up at a town hall and explain that he'd been diagnosed with MS and his insurance company refused to pay for one of his treatments.
00:41:23.000He'd started down the treatment line and his explanation of it was that here he was, he had insurance, he fights with his insurance company, No, no, no, no, no.
00:41:34.000Until he finally ends up in the public system.
00:41:43.000Tommy Christopher points out that we actually have tape of the guy talking.
00:41:46.000And his story is basically the opposite of the story that she was telling.
00:41:50.000His name was Dylan, and he said this, quote, you say that you support Medicare for all, which does have a transition through to get everyone covered on that.
00:41:57.000I'm someone who really relies on my health insurance a lot more than most people.
00:42:00.000I live with an invisible illness, multiple sclerosis.
00:42:02.000I've been denied disability, basically, because in their words, they don't think I'm disabled enough.
00:42:06.000Because of this, I basically have to constantly fight to keep my health insurance.
00:42:10.000Over the summer, I was kicked off, not my mistake, but I had to pay for it.
00:42:13.000In about three months of me trying to get my insurance back, I was delayed from my disease-modified therapy, which now resulted in a new centimeter-sized lesion that's gonna follow me for life because someone tried to save a few bucks.
00:42:22.000So my question is, during the transition, it says over the first year, people with disabilities will be covered.
00:42:26.000Will it be easier than the current disability standards and basically make it easier?
00:42:30.000So that is a lot more complicated, as Tommy Christopher over at Mediaite points out, than insurance companies bad.
00:42:39.000He says that insurance companies frequently are, and while Dylan didn't go into detail about the reason for the lapse, it sounds like that could have been the case here.
00:42:49.000Maybe it was a paperwork snafu or a dispute over payment.
00:42:52.000He says it wasn't because of his condition.
00:42:56.000Obamacare makes it illegal to kick you off because of your condition.
00:42:58.000She says that he was kicked off because of his condition.
00:43:00.000No, his insurance lapped because he was unemployed.
00:43:04.000And by the way, Medicare is, as Tommy Christopher, I am shocked Tommy Christopher wrote something this rational, he says that Medicare is just as devoted to saving money as insurance companies and denies claims at a higher rate than private insurers.
00:43:16.000It was the government that tried to save a few bucks by denying Dylan's disability in the first place.
00:43:21.000This, of course, is exactly right, but Elizabeth Warren fibs a lot.
00:43:24.000The good news is she has her defenders who will defend her no matter what.
00:43:27.000One journalism professor actually tweeted out that we need to stop asking her about her tax increases.
00:43:35.000Jay Rosen, journalism-ing professor over at NYU, he says, to make Elizabeth Warren say she would raise taxes on a middle-class question should be a credibility killer for the journalists who keep asking it.
00:43:46.000Isn't that like a very, very obvious question that she refuses to answer?
00:43:52.000And meanwhile, the most humorous development of the entire political day, Barack Obama has finally weighed in with an endorsement in Canada.
00:44:01.000If you're Joe Biden, you're like, oh my god, Barack, oh, oh.
00:44:13.000I'm going to endorse another black man, Justin Trudeau.
00:44:17.000Oh no, that's just Justin Trudeau in blackface, sorry.
00:44:19.000In any case, he has now waded into the Canadian election.
00:44:23.000By the way, no foreign interference in elections unless Barack Obama is endorsing Benjamin Netanyahu's opponents in Israel or Justin Trudeau in Canada.
00:44:47.000He spent the last eight years basically massaging Barack Obama's shoulders and telling him how wonderful he was, and Barack Obama's like, I've got a big announcement today, got a big endorsement, and a big 2020 race.
00:45:21.000It is the site where Abraham bought land for the grave of his wife, Sarah, at Marat HaMachpelah, also known as the Cave of the Patriarchs.
00:45:28.000It really should be called the Caves of the Patriarchs and the Matriarchs, considering that buried at this site, according to Jewish tradition, and now according to Muslim and Christian tradition as well, are Abraham and Sarah, Isaac and Rebekah, and Jacob and Leah.
00:45:44.000Rachel is buried on the road because she died on the road to Hebron.
00:45:58.000About 160,000 of those Palestinians live under what is called Area C rule, which would be the areas that are governed by the Palestinian authority, which means that if you are a Jew and you walk in those areas, you will be killed.
00:46:10.000I mean, there are giant red signs on the side of the road that say, if you are an Israeli citizen, do not walk into the city.
00:47:14.000The people in Hebron, if they could live in an open city, and not in this tiny little ghetto in the middle of Hebron, you think they wouldn't?
00:47:21.000You think they wouldn't like to interact with their Arab neighbors?
00:47:23.000And in fact, some of their Arab neighbors, tribal leaders who are not under the governance of the Palestinian Authority, do interact with them and do events with them.
00:47:29.000But the fact is that the Israeli government, there's all sorts of myth-making about Hebron.
00:47:33.000The Israeli government, for literally a one-block stretch that we walked down yesterday, had to shut down some Arab shops specifically because of security concerns.
00:48:25.000The second holiest site is the Cave of the Patriarchs, Mount Atah Machpelah.
00:48:29.000When the Muslims were in charge of it from 1267 to about 1967, when the Jews freed it in the Six-Day War, when they liberated it in the Six-Day War, for 700 years, Jews were not allowed to enter the holy site.
00:48:41.000Even after that happened, even after the Jews took over, Hebron.
00:48:46.000Even after the Jews took over Ma'ar HaMachpelah, they still allowed the Muslims to basically retain almost sole control of the larger part of Ma'ar HaMachpelah, this nearly 4,000-year-old site.
00:48:58.000The site is split sort of 80-20 between the Arabs and the Jews.
00:49:01.000The Jews have like a small little synagogue, and the Arabs... I mean, it's kind of amazing.
00:49:06.000The Muslims actually have control of the area of Ma'ar HaMachpelah that houses Isaac and Rebekah.
00:49:12.000Which makes absolutely no sense, because in the Koran, Isaac and Rebekah are not important.
00:49:18.000Isaac and Rebekah are not important at all.
00:49:20.000But the Muslims get the bigger area there because it's the bigger area.
00:49:23.000The Jews are relegated to the smaller area with the graves of Abraham and Sarah and Jacob and Leah.
00:49:28.000In any case, it's an incredible experience.
00:49:32.000You see what the people who are living there are undergoing.
00:49:36.000For those who don't understand the conflict, it's sort of necessary to go there and to understand also the thriving nature of the economy that is not in the immediate area.
00:49:43.000What you usually see is left-wing NGOs who walk down the street and say, why aren't there any Arabs here?
00:49:48.000Why aren't there any Arabs allowed in here?
00:49:51.000It's like, well, because when they, when the Arab shops were open right there, and by the way, there are Arabs who live, like, right there.
00:49:56.000They said when, when the Arabs had shops there, there were routine attacks on Jews.
00:50:15.000Why is it that 20% of the population of Israel is Arab and Muslim, and why is it that 0% of the population of the Palestinian Authority-run areas is Jewish?
00:50:22.000That is not because the Jews are not interested in living in places like Hebron.
00:50:26.000It's because the Jews will be murdered if they live there.
00:50:29.000Yeah, that's why they have giant red signs that say, if you go here and you're an Israeli citizen, there's a high likelihood you will die.
00:50:54.000Every year, around the biblical reading of Chayi Sarah, which is the portion of the Bible, In which Sarah dies and Abraham buys that specific plot where this is, again, 4,000 years ago, which is unbelievable, that about 50,000 Jews come and actually, like, they'll stay in their cars because there's no space.
00:51:15.000They will literally come and they will disconnect the battery in their car so they're not violating the Sabbath, and they will sleep in their car so that they can stay in the area for Chayesarah.
00:51:24.000It's a pretty amazing experience, and Until you have actually walked it and been there.
00:51:30.000And by the way, Palestinian tour guides will not take you to the prosperous areas of Hebron.
00:51:33.000What they like to suggest is that this 1,000 small area of Jews, that that is what's keeping the area poor.
00:51:40.000Hebron, again, is a very wealthy city by Palestinian-Arab standards.
00:51:43.000They won't take you to the actual wealthy areas of Hebron because that would give the lie to the whole thing.
00:51:48.000In any case, It's necessary to see this to understand the nature of the conflict, to understand the historic nature of the conflict, and to understand that the historic center of the Jewish people, which predates Islam by approximately 3,000 years, is here, right, is in Hebron, and yet the Palestinians, who basically run the UN World Heritage Organization, the World Heritage Commission declared this historic site a Palestinian historic site.
00:52:16.000A Palestinian historic, not a Jewish historic site.
00:52:19.000And they've tried to do the same thing to the Temple Mount.
00:52:21.000Obviously, the Obama administration was helpful in that latter area.
00:52:26.000To misunderstand the history that badly takes a certain level of skill and or antisemitism or both.
00:52:32.000Alrighty, you know, we'll skip things I hate today because that is both a thing I like and a thing I hate, I think.
00:52:36.000And we will be back here a little bit later today for two additional hours of content.
00:52:39.000I'm Ben Shapiro, you're listening to The Ben Shapiro Show.
00:52:45.000The Ben Shapiro Show is produced by Robert Sterling.