Samantha Bee does not apologize. President Trump pardons a drug trafficker at Kim Kardashian s behest. And the Mueller probe befuddles and unfolds. Today's After Show Was Hosted By: Ben Shapiro, Andrew Klavan, Michael Nollis, and Jeremy Boring Special Guest: Samantha Bee Blinds is a company that makes some of the most beautiful things you'll ever see in your home, and they'll make them for you for free. BlindS is also offering a Father's Day Livestream that you can watch on Tuesday, June 12th, at 7 PM ET. You can find our special live stream on Facebook and YouTube here. We'll discuss Fatherhood, immigration, and why fathers matter, even though Michael isn't a father, and we'll discuss why fatherhood will stand up against an increasingly male culture. And if you're a subscriber, you can write questions to us at Dailywire.com/AskBenShapiro and ask them at ben.shapiro@dailywire.co.uk. Ben Shapiro is a writer, comedian, podcaster, and podcaster. His work can be found on all social medias, if you search for him. He is a regular contributor to The Weekly Standard, The Daily Wire, and The New York Times, and has been featured on CNN, NPR, and the New York Post. The New Yorker. and many other publications. His music is also available on SoundCloud. If you like what you hear, please leave us a rating and review us a review on Apple Podcasts, and tell us what you think of our music is up to date. We'll be listening to Ben Shapiro's music is great and what you're listening to in the future. Thank you, Ben Shapiro and I'll be looking out for you in the next episode of The Ben Shapiro Show! Thanks for listening and sharing your thoughts on the Ben Shapiro show! Music: "Goodbye" by Jeff Perla, "Good Morning America" by The Good Morning America, "Outro by Squeals, "Solo, Good Morning, Good Life" by Scentless, Bad Girl (feat. by Fergie) by Jeffree Star, "Thank You, Ben & I'll See You, My Girl" by Eddy, and "I'll See Me Soon" by Cairo Braga
00:00:45.000Jeremy Boring, the Daily Wire God King, will host a roundtable discussion with me, Andrew Klavan, and Michael Nollis.
00:00:50.000We'll sit there and say nothing the whole time but be paid handsomely for it.
00:00:53.000We'll discuss what fatherhood means, even though Michael isn't a father, and we'll discuss why fathers matter, how fatherhood will stand up against an increasingly male culture,
00:01:00.000And if you're a subscriber, you can write questions to us at dailywire.com.
00:01:03.000You go in, you follow, you type it into the chat window, and we'll pick up those questions.
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00:01:09.000You can find our special live stream on Facebook and YouTube, so make sure that you do not miss it.
00:01:15.000Okay, before we get to the news, first I want to say thanks to our sponsors over at blinds.com.
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00:02:34.000Okay, so we begin today with Samantha Bee.
00:02:36.000Samantha Bee, you'll recall, just about a week ago,
00:02:38.000Well, she got herself in hot water because she suggested that Ivanka Trump, the president's daughter, the daughter of the president of the United States, was a feckless C-word.
00:02:47.000Because Ivanka Trump had the temerity, the utter gall, the unmitigated sort of audacity to put up a picture of herself with her kid.
00:02:57.000And in doing so, she then had somehow offended the left because the left was all concerned about children being separated from their parents at the border, which is an operation of law as ruled by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals.
00:03:09.000So, Samantha Bee goes on national TV and she calls Ivanka Trump a feckless seaward, and then she suggests that Ivanka Trump should actually go try to have sex with her father in order to get him to change immigration policy, which is just wonderful.
00:03:20.000Well, Samantha Bee was off for the rest of the week after that.
00:03:23.000Well, she was back last night and she was going to give her apology.
00:03:26.000Now, here's the wonderful thing about apologies from the left.
00:03:28.000If you're on the left, you know, there's that old that old movie love story where the slogan was being in love means never having to say you're sorry.
00:03:36.000Love means never having to say you're sorry.
00:03:38.000OK, well, being on the left means never having to say you're sorry.
00:03:41.000Laura Ingraham had to put out like a full apology for saying that David Hogg, a Parkland survivor, was whiny about his college admissions and she got boycotted for that.
00:03:48.000Samantha Bee called the daughter of the President of the United States a feckless C-word and suggested she should try to dress sexy to seduce her own dad.
00:03:55.000And then she goes on TV and does a, like, seven-minute quasi-apology that is not apology in the slightest.
00:04:00.000And, of course, the media are letting her off the hook.
00:04:02.000And they're saying that she is just an emissary of genius.
00:05:17.000Okay, so here is the exorable Samantha Bee who has, I will say, walked away.
00:05:22.000I've been saying for more than a year now that there is a running gun battle between a series of leftist comedians.
00:05:27.000To be the least funny comedian on the left, and that included Amy Schumer, and that included Lena Dunham, and that included Trevor Noah, and it included Samantha Bee, but Samantha Bee, I mean, she is now Secretary.
00:06:34.000And when she suggests that she's trying to reclaim the c-word, this is the same sort of stupid logic that I hear with regard to people who use the n-word.
00:06:41.000I'm trying to reclaim the n-word, make it a term of empowerment.
00:07:22.000Like, people don't do this on a regular basis because it's idiotic, okay?
00:07:25.000This is just an excuse that she's making for being a nasty person who likes to use the C-word publicly, and then she gets to claim it's all about empowerment.
00:08:56.000I'm offended when somebody uses the n-word because vile, uncivil, disgusting behavior is vile, uncivil, disgusting behavior no matter at whom it is directed.
00:09:04.000I thought that we're supposed to live in a society where if you see somebody use the c-word against somebody inappropriately, we're supposed to step in and say no.
00:11:37.000TBS is allowing her to go on there, and if she wants to say feckless c-word tomorrow, they'll do that too.
00:11:41.000It is worth noting, by the way, that her ratings stink.
00:11:43.000Samantha Bee's ratings stink, as well they should, because she is not good at this job.
00:11:47.000If you look at the posters all around town.
00:11:49.000So I live in LA, which means that you see Emmy posters everywhere all the time, right?
00:11:52.000You're driving around, you see on the bus stop, there's an Emmy poster for Samantha Bee.
00:11:55.000And there is this hilarious thing that's going on right now where Trevor Noah has a bunch of his Emmy posters that are up and it features a quote from Samantha Bee.
00:12:02.000And then Samantha Bee will put her Emmy poster up and it will feature a quote from Trevor Noah.
00:12:05.000And then Jimmy Kimmel will put one up and it features quotes from Samantha Bee and Trevor Noah.
00:12:09.000And they all have quotes about each other because they're all part of this ideological bubble where saying stuff like Samantha Bee says is not offensive in any way.
00:12:17.000The only people who would be offended, of course, are these rubes out in the middle of the country who still think it's bad to say the C-word about people.
00:12:23.000Now again, I'm not gonna do the whataboutism thing and point out here that there are people who said the C-word about Hillary Clinton, which I thought was wrong at the time, on its face.
00:12:31.000But Samantha Bee is a thought leader, and that ought to make some sort of difference.
00:12:35.000It won't, according to the left-wing media.
00:12:38.000I want to talk a little bit about Ben Rhodes, who is out there making some insane claims about how your control of information should be, about how your information that you see can be controlled.
00:12:48.000First, I want to say thanks to our sponsors over at Indochino.
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00:14:14.000We get so much of our information from the media.
00:14:16.000We get so much of what we see from the media.
00:14:19.000And that means that what we see is automatically filtered.
00:14:23.000And Ben Rhodes wants that filter to be even higher.
00:14:26.000So in the aftermath of 2016, when the Democrats were utterly stunned by the victory of President Trump, they suggested that what needs to change is the way that information gets to us.
00:14:35.000The big problem is that we had information that was not filtered by the proper sources.
00:14:39.000So Ben Rhodes, a man who, as the National Security Advisor to the President of the United States, Barack Obama, openly said that he had created an echo chamber for information in which he put out false information about the Iranian regime.
00:14:51.000This guy says the government should ensure that Facebook feeds should be controlled by the government.
00:14:56.000I mean, this is an amazing thing, what Ben Rhodes is about to say.
00:15:00.000And frankly, the government also didn't have a lot of capacity to deal with this.
00:15:04.000You know, we can't edit people's Facebook feeds and say, that's fake news and that's not.
00:15:08.000And what worries me today, Andrea, is that we still don't have a lot of capacity.
00:15:12.000And frankly, our government's probably not doing anything to prevent this.
00:15:15.000And so the likelihood that the Russians are going to do this again in the midterm elections and the next presidential election is very high.
00:15:20.000Okay, so he thinks that the government should now have more control over what it is that we can see.
00:15:25.000This guy who used the power of government to crack down on what the American people could see and lied about it to the effect that now Iran, a terror sponsor, the greatest terror sponsor on planet Earth, has billions of extra dollars to pass around in pursuit of that terrorism, he thinks the government should be in charge of what we see.
00:15:42.000The same people who find Samantha Bee funny want to control what you see.
00:16:20.000Instead, they're picking a few mainstream outlets and they're going to promote those mainstream outlets because Democrats have said that they should do so.
00:16:25.000And then they wonder why we, on the right, are worried about the distribution of information.
00:16:30.000We have a reason to be worried about the distribution of information.
00:16:33.000Now, speaking of the distribution of information, there's a story that's trending on Twitter that I want to talk about briefly.
00:16:37.000So there's a story that was going around today
00:16:40.000And it was it says no gays allowed, right?
00:16:42.000This is what's trending on Twitter is no gays allowed.
00:16:46.000The story is that there was a guy in Tennessee who apparently put up a sign, right?
00:16:50.000He put up a sign that said no gays allowed in his store.
00:16:54.000And he put up this sign after there was the Supreme Court ruling that said that religious bakers no longer have to cater to same sex weddings.
00:17:01.000Or at least this particular religious baker does not have to cater to a same-sex wedding.
00:17:05.000And it was reported by USA Today as though this had just happened.
00:17:08.000The owner of the store is a guy named Jeff Amex, and he said,
00:17:21.000And everybody on the left went off on this.
00:17:23.000First of all, it's not that Jesus was a homophobe per se, but it's not that the New Testament is super pro-homosexuality.
00:17:28.000I mean, Romans is not particularly pro-homosexuality.
00:17:40.000There are various places in the New Testament that demonstrate that they are not pro-homosexuality.
00:17:44.000Peter Dow, who used to work for Hillary Clinton, he says, And then there's another story that came out, right?
00:18:18.000Okay, this guy put up his sign again, apparently this week, but the original sign was put up in 2015.
00:18:24.000So the whole story here is that there's a nutcase in Tennessee who put up a no-gays-allowed sign in 2015 and then took it down within one day, and now he's put it up again, and we're supposed to believe there's a broad swath of Christians across the country who are no longer going to serve gay customers because of all of this.
00:18:39.000Now, I'll be honest with you, I don't know one Christian who owns a store who's not going to serve a gay customer.
00:18:44.000I know a lot of Christians who aren't interested in catering a same-sex wedding or being involved with something they perceive to be a sin, but I don't know any Christians who operate a normal business who do a sex orientation check, a sexual orientation check at the counter.
00:18:58.000But the media are going to focus in on that, because the media want to push a particular narrative, and that narrative is that in the absence of government compulsion, Christians everywhere are going to be putting up no-gays-allowed signs in their stores.
00:19:08.000Again, this story originated three years ago, and it's the same guy doing the same thing, but we're now going to pretend that it's something brand new and shocking, because the media have something to push.
00:19:18.000Because the media have something that they need to show.
00:19:23.000Originally, when we reported the story, we only reported the part about 2015.
00:19:26.000That was a mistake on my behalf over at Daily Wire.
00:19:28.000It's a mistake I made while I was reporting the story.
00:19:30.000We updated the story to correct it and to demonstrate the guy who had put back up the sign.
00:19:34.000But it doesn't undermine the original critique, which is that if you're going to claim that this is happening all over the country, you can't pick the same guy who does this every three years and then say, oh my God, something brand new is happening.
00:19:43.000We see this sort of media coverage, unfortunately, across the board in California.
00:19:47.000There's a guy who's running out here for, I believe it was a state senate seat or the governor's seat, and he was a fellow who was a neo-Nazi, essentially, and there was one outlying poll that showed him at double digits in the outlying polls, and it turned out that he won 1.8% of the total vote.
00:20:05.000But for weeks, all we had was nonstop coverage about how this was the new upswing inside the Republican Party, how this person presented a serious, dire threat to the state of America.
00:20:13.000Now, listen, I think bad people are bad people, and they ought to be called out when they're bad people.
00:20:17.000But to pretend that there is some broad conspiracy, some broad swath of people who are jumping on board here,
00:20:23.000And that all of America's Christians are going to put up No Gays Allowed signs, so that all of America's Republicans are actual secret Nazis.
00:20:30.000There's an agenda that is happening, and that's why when Ben Rhodes says things like, the government ought to control your informational feed, the same people who are fibbing about this stuff, the same people who are exaggerating these cases to make them into a big deal, those same people
00:20:43.000That I find utterly and completely disturbing.
00:20:49.000Now, speaking of things that I find utterly and completely disturbing, in just a second I want to talk about the Kim Kardashian pardon.
00:20:56.000Because I know there are a lot of people on the right who are very fond of this Kim Kardashian pardon.
00:20:59.000It wasn't Kim Kardashian who was pardoned, she didn't commit a crime.
00:21:01.000But, she was involved with a pardon, and I want to explain why I find this somewhat troubling in just a second.
00:21:06.000First, I want to say thanks to our sponsors over at Helix Sleep.
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00:22:19.000Off your mattress order and let them know that we say, OK, so a lot of people are very, very excited because yesterday President Trump commuted the sentence for a woman named Alice Johnson.
00:22:26.000So Alice Johnson is a 63 year old grandmother.
00:22:29.000This is what you will hear in all the headlines.
00:22:30.000She's a 63 year old grandmother and as a 63 year old grandmother, she ought to have been let out of prison.
00:22:38.000So President Trump has been rather inconsistent on the drug war.
00:22:42.000I am somebody who is pretty libertarian on drugs.
00:22:44.000I think that marijuana particularly ought to be decriminalized.
00:22:47.000I don't think you should go to jail for for smoking marijuana or dealing marijuana.
00:22:52.000I am not quite as certain about opioids because opioids actually rob people of their capacity to think in a pretty spectacular way that undermines the very basis of the Republic.
00:23:02.000So I'm a little more torn on harder drugs like opioids or for example cocaine.
00:23:06.000Trump has not been torn on any of this, right?
00:23:08.000Trump has actually said in the past that he wants the death penalty for drug dealers.
00:23:11.000Here's him at a rally like a month and a half ago talking about how he wants the death penalty for drug dealers.
00:23:16.000But if we don't get tough on the drug dealers, we're wasting our time.
00:23:24.000And that toughness includes the death penalty.
00:23:31.000So I'm going to point out here is the inconsistency.
00:23:33.000If you want to actually say that the drug war needs to be taken off the table, we need to change our laws, drug dealers should not go to jail for quite as long.
00:23:39.000Once you hit the age of 60, we should think about releasing, whatever it is.
00:23:42.000If you want to actually make a substantive policy change, that is one thing.
00:23:45.000What actually happened yesterday is that President Trump decided to release a drug dealer, a drug trafficker.
00:23:51.000And Kim Kardashian was, of course, extraordinarily happy about this.
00:23:54.000She tweeted out a bunch of stuff about Alice Johnson, so grateful to Donald Trump.
00:23:58.000Jared Kushner and to everyone who has showed compassion and contributed countless hours to this important moment for Miss Alice Marie Johnson.
00:24:03.000Her commutation is inspirational and gives hope to so many others who are also deserving of a second chance.
00:25:13.000Okay, so here is the issue that I have with this.
00:25:16.000The issue that I have with this is if you had said when President Trump was elected that he was going to go around pardoning drug dealers based on visits from Kim Kardashian, I think a lot of his base would have been unhappy because he was the tough on crime guy.
00:25:26.000Now again, if you want to change overall policy with regard to the drug war, I think that's probably a very good idea.
00:25:30.000The drug war has been a giant fail that has sucked trillions of dollars from the American economy.
00:25:35.000But the notion that President Trump is now going to be granting pardons
00:25:39.000Like he would on The Apprentice, that now we're gonna have the pardon show.
00:25:41.000And that's basically what it's become some nights on Fox, where you have George Papadopoulos' wife going on Fox News and begging President Trump for a pardon, and you have Rod Blagojevich's wife going on Fox News and begging President Trump for a pardon, and now it becomes The Apprentice, where Trump just sits there at the end of a table, and instead of firing people, he pardons people.
00:26:30.000Not the same thing as President Trump basically saying on the one hand let's strengthen the drug war and on the other hand saying let's let a drug trafficker out of prison.
00:26:37.000By the way, this idea that she was uniquely innocent or something is just insane.
00:26:41.000She was sentenced in 1996 to life in prison.
00:26:44.000Because she was leading a multi-million dollar cocaine ring trafficking in 2,000 to 3,000 kilograms in involvement with the deadly Colombian Cali drug cartel.
00:26:53.000The judge in that case, who now, by the way, sits on the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals and was confirmed to that seat by a 95 to nothing vote in the Senate, called Johnson, quote, cocaine trafficking ends with dead people on both ends of the business.
00:27:04.000So we don't know how many people died because this woman trafficked in 2000 to 3000 kilograms of cocaine.
00:27:50.000So all this talk about she's accepted her guilt and all the rest of it, again, maybe you let her out because she's old and she writes plays and she's not likely to go back to drug dealing after all of this.
00:27:58.000But if you're going to make the case that you need to be harsher on drug penalties, then I'm not sure how you make that case simultaneous with, oh, she was a victim.
00:28:16.000I think right now, we're in the midst of something that I think is deeply stupid.
00:28:20.000And that is treating our celebrities like politicians.
00:28:23.000You know, in some cases, maybe that's ended up as a good thing, right?
00:28:26.000President Trump has done some good things as president of the United States.
00:28:30.000But right now we are ignoring actual necessity for expertise in politics on behalf of people who are famous.
00:28:37.000So it's not that President Trump met with a bunch of criminal justice reform advocates.
00:28:41.000And then decided, based on the weight of the evidence, that it was time to release Alice Johnson and restructure criminal justice reform.
00:28:46.000Instead, it was Kim Kardashian came to the White House, he'd seen Kim Kardashian maybe in a sex tape or something, and then he decided, you know what would be great?
00:28:54.000I will let her pick the next person that I pardon.
00:28:57.000And then we also had this week the whole hubbub with the Philadelphia Eagles and Steph Curry and LeBron James talking about politics.
00:29:03.000And then we had that story that I discussed a couple of days ago that Medicare and Social Security are going to be bankrupt in the next 15 years.
00:29:10.000Which one of those stories got the least attention?
00:29:11.000Obviously, it's the one about Social Security.
00:29:21.000I'll explain in a second the science behind all of this and why we as rational human beings need to buck our addiction to celebrity
00:29:27.000Because it's going to have some real ramifications for our politics.
00:29:29.000First, I just want to say thank you to our sponsors over at Legacy Box.
00:29:32.000So, the best Father's Day gift that you can give someone, I really believe this, is to preserve their memories.
00:29:38.000I mean, if you want to make your parents happy, if you want to make yourself happy, preserving your memories is the way to do this.
00:29:43.000And the best way to do this is you need to go into the garage, you need to look at all those films that you got out there, all the VHS tapes and the old audio tapes and all the little camcorder tapes.
00:29:52.000Okay, and the bugs are going to get to them, or there's going to be a flood, you're going to have to run, you're not going to take those with you, and the memories are gone.
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00:30:22.000So I've done Legacy Box with my parents' films, and everything comes back on that thumb drive or that DVD.
00:30:26.000And finally, you're going to watch that stuff.
00:30:28.000All that stuff you thought was going to be imperative for you to watch, you know, back when you filmed it, you can actually see it now.
00:30:53.000So go to LegacyBox.com slash Ben and check it out.
00:30:56.000Okay, so in just a second, I'm gonna give you all the science on why we worship celebrities.
00:30:59.000First, you're gonna have to go over to DailyWire.com.
00:31:00.000For $9.99 a month, you can get the rest of this show live, the rest of Clayton's show live, the rest of Michael Knowles' show live, and be part of our mailbag tomorrow.
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00:31:48.000We have a great Sunday special coming out this Sunday with Jonah Goldberg.
00:31:51.000We have those coming out every Sunday now, and they are just, I think, a lot of fun.
00:32:56.000There's always somebody at the top of the food chain.
00:32:58.000And because we were evolved to live in these small groups, that means that we look at the person at the top of the dominance hierarchy, and we pay special attention to them.
00:33:07.000Because when they give cues, then that may allow us more survival mechanisms.
00:33:11.000If we are nice to the person at the top of the dominance hierarchy, if we imitate the person at the top of the dominance hierarchy, if we pay attention to the person at the top of the dominance hierarchy, well now, take that small-scale social group and expand that out to 300 million people, the dominance hierarchy still exists, but the way that we judge dominance is fame and fortune, right?
00:33:31.000That's how we judge who's at the top of the dominance hierarchy.
00:33:33.000And so without us even really understanding it, we have essentially this vestigial evolutionary overhang, where we still care what people at the top of the so-called dominance hierarchy think and wear, and all of these things, because we were evolved to do that at small group level, and now we do it at large group level, even though Kim Kardashian has no actual impact on our lives, even though LeBron James and Steph Curry have no actual impact on our lives.
00:33:56.000I mean, this is not me suggesting this.
00:33:58.000This is an evolutionary psychologist, Daniel Kruger, at the University of Michigan.
00:34:01.000Well, now that addiction to celebrity has infected our politics because there's another bias that human beings suffer from.
00:34:07.000So we suffer from a bias toward celebrity, a bias toward the person at the top of the dominance hierarchy, and then there's something called the halo effect.
00:34:13.000The halo effect is if I see somebody beautiful, I also tend to think that person is smart.
00:34:16.000If I see somebody beautiful, I think that person is nice.
00:34:19.000If I see somebody rich, that person must be nice and also better looking.
00:34:22.000This is just the way the human brain works.
00:34:24.000We tend to attribute all good qualities to one person to whom we have attributed one good quality.
00:34:29.000So when we look at celebrities, we think, oh, they must know things.
00:34:32.000The line from Fiddler on the Roof is, when you're rich, they think you really know.
00:34:37.000When people are very wealthy or when people are very famous, we tend to think they know what they're talking about.
00:34:41.000And that holds true even when it's pretty obvious they don't actually know what they're talking about.
00:34:45.000So we take Samantha Bee seriously, even though she doesn't know what she's talking about.
00:34:49.000And we treat Roseanne Barr as though she's a political tribal leader, even though Roseanne Barr doesn't know anything about politics and is extraordinarily volatile with a history of mental illness.
00:34:57.000Well, President Trump is sort of a beneficiary of our worship of celebrity, and maybe that's had some good impacts in terms of policy, but it is not good policymaking.
00:35:06.000The reason being that in the end, when you're making policy for 330 million people, when you're trying to determine the best policy with the fewest trade-offs, what you actually need are people who have studied these issues.
00:35:16.000And when you're talking about crucial issues, like bankruptcy of Social Security or Medicare or Medicaid, going to Kim Kardashian for this stuff is not the right way to do it.
00:35:23.000And the same thing holds true on criminal justice reform.
00:35:26.000I'm very interested to hear what people who have studied criminal justice reform from right and left have said about this stuff.
00:35:31.000I'm interested to hear what Heather McDonald has had to say about this sort of issue.
00:35:34.000I'm interested to hear what some of the experts who have been put forward by the Trump administration in favor of criminal justice reform have to say about the issue.
00:35:41.000I think there are good debates to be had about these issues.
00:35:43.000I don't think that those debates can be had at the level of Kim Kardashian said we ought to let a drug trafficker out of prison.
00:35:49.000I don't think that's the way that politics ought to be done.
00:35:52.000But if we pay attention to experts, that's more boring.
00:36:20.000Those were the people who are supposed to be answerable to us.
00:36:23.000So now we've got the worst of both worlds.
00:36:25.000We've got celebrities who we don't elect, who are influencing people that we do elect, who aren't paying attention to the experts, and we have experts that we don't elect that we're not engaging in debate with.
00:36:35.000So what we have is experts completely disconnected from the public, celebrities completely disconnected from the public, and the only people who are connected to the public are then kicking the ball over to either the celebrities or the experts.
00:36:45.000None of this is good for the way that the country works.
00:36:47.000Now, you may like the Alice Johnson pardon.
00:37:21.000Senator Bob Corker, who really is not a fan of the president, and the president is not a fan of his, he's put forward a bill to curtail presidential power
00:38:06.000Now, if you're using tariffs in order to ratchet down Chinese tariffs on American products, that's one thing.
00:38:11.000If you're doing it just because you like tariffs and you think it makes America more competitive and trade wars are easy to win, as the president has suggested, that is another thing entirely.
00:38:20.000Again, just because President Trump is the president doesn't mean he knows what he's talking about when it comes to trade policy.
00:38:26.000This should be kicked back to the Senate.
00:38:28.000The fact that Republican senators are shying away from this shows their absolute cowardice on these issues.
00:38:34.000This is not a presidential prerogative.
00:38:35.000I would be saying this no matter who was president of the United States in any circumstance.
00:38:39.000Okay, so in just a second, I want to give you the update on the Mueller probe because there are a couple of updates that are worth noting here.
00:38:45.000So let's begin with an update on James Comey.
00:38:49.000So James Comey, who is just a self-serving, self-aggrandizing human being.
00:38:52.000I've been very critical of James Comey.
00:38:54.000I think he ought to have been fired by Obama.
00:38:55.000I thought he ought to have been fired by Trump before Trump even came into office.
00:38:59.000Well now, according to ABC News, the Justice Department's internal watchdog has concluded that James Comey defied authority at times during his tenure as FBI director, according to sources familiar with the draft report on the matter.
00:39:17.000Another source agreed with that characterization, but could not confirm the use of the term.
00:39:21.000In the draft report, Inspector General Michael Horowitz, who is an apolitical body, like the IG's portion of the DOJ is not supposed to be political, also rebuked former Attorney General Loretta Lynch.
00:39:32.000For her handling of the federal investigation into Hillary Clinton's personal email server, according to sources.
00:39:37.000On Tuesday morning, President Trump complained of numerous delays in the release of Horowitz's final report, which is expected to run several hundred pages long and be released in the coming days.
00:39:45.000The sources who spoke to ABC News were willing or able to address only a portion of the draft report's complete findings.
00:39:50.000What is taking so long with the inspector general's report on Crooked Hillary and Slippery James Comey, Trump said on Twitter, hope report is not being changed and made weaker.
00:39:57.000Well, there's no indication that the president has seen or will see a draft of the report before it's released, but Horwitz could theoretically revise the report before it is released.
00:40:05.000I'll be obviously very curious to see what the IG report says.
00:40:09.000I'm of the opinion that Comey was a terrible, terrible head of the FBI.
00:40:12.000I don't find any of this particularly shocking.
00:40:14.000You know, with all of that said, the fact is that
00:40:21.000Now, meanwhile, President Trump is very angry, so is a lot of the right wing, over Robert Mueller because Robert Mueller apparently wants to view encrypted messages.
00:40:28.000So, according to CNBC.com, special counsel Robert Mueller's team is requesting that witnesses turn in their personal phones to inspect their encrypted messaging programs and potentially view conversations between associates linked to President Donald Trump.
00:40:40.000These witnesses are cooperating because Mueller does in fact have the subpoena power.
00:41:10.000Sean says, why don't you just bash your phones with a hammer?
00:41:14.000If I advised them to follow Hillary Clinton's lead, delete all your emails, and then acid wash the emails and hard drives on the phones, then take your phones and bash them with a hammer into little itsy bitsy pieces, use bleach bit, remove the SIM cards, and then take the pieces and hand it over to Robert Mueller and say, Hillary Rodham Clinton, this is equal justice under the law.
00:41:38.000Okay, so, you know, people are saying, well, Sean should now be indicted because he's encouraging people to destroy evidence.
00:41:45.000He's pointing out the double standard that exists between the Mueller investigation and the Hillary investigation.
00:41:49.000I agree with that double standard, by the way.
00:41:50.000I think that the Hillary investigation was absolutely botched.
00:41:53.000I think that it was purposefully botched by the FBI.
00:41:56.000I think if you want to talk corruption in the FBI, we should worry a lot less about Spygate until more evidence comes out.
00:42:00.000We should worry a lot more about Hillary Clinton.
00:42:03.000We should worry a lot more about the fact that the FBI was acting to essentially cover for Hillary Clinton
00:42:07.000When she was destroying emails knowing that they were classified, right?
00:42:11.000I don't think Sean is wrong about all of that, but I do not appreciate the double standard.
00:42:16.000I don't think just because Hillary was corrupt, that means that other people should be corrupt also.
00:42:21.000Also, right now, the Spygate is running into some serious resistance from people who've actually seen the documents.
00:42:26.000Now, one of the things that's been really funny about this is a lot of people in the media who are most exercised about so-called Spygate are people who also have not seen the documents, right?
00:42:33.000They've seen the same number of documents that I have.
00:42:35.000Meaning everything that's been publicly revealed.
00:42:36.000But there's an open debate, and isn't much of a debate actually, inside Republican Congress over how much of Spygate is real.
00:42:42.000President Trump thinks Spygate is real, but we now have Devin Nunes who suggested that at best maybe it's real, but he hasn't seen all the documents yet so he doesn't really know.
00:42:50.000We've seen, we've seen, um, Trey Gowdy say that Spygate may not, in fact, be real.
00:42:54.000And we've seen Speaker Ryan say that Spygate may not, in fact, be real.
00:42:57.000So all I've said about Spygate remains.
00:43:00.000As soon as the evidence comes out, happy to jump on board.
00:43:01.000Until the evidence comes out, not gonna jump on board.
00:43:04.000With that said, I would like to see somebody exercise, like, will somebody explain to Robert Mueller what the scope of this investigation is?
00:43:10.000Or can we at least publicly find out what the scope of the investigation is?
00:43:13.000I think that would be helpful because, like everybody else, I'm getting kind of tired of this nonsense.
00:43:17.000Okay, so time for some stuff I like and then some things that I hate.
00:43:22.000As I mentioned a couple of weeks ago, I watched the series from Stars of the White Queen, which is really entertaining, all about the War of the Roses, the very end of the War of the Roses.
00:43:29.000And there's a good book on everything leading up to the War of the Roses for several centuries by Dan Jones called The Plantagenets.
00:43:36.000So if you're interested in British history and you really like this stuff, Dan Jones' book The Plantagenets is well worth reading.
00:43:40.000The warrior kings and queens who made England.
00:43:42.000He also wrote a book on the War of the Roses.
00:43:44.000Dan Jones, very interesting, very good writer.
00:43:46.000So you should check that out if you're into reading history.
00:44:58.000Remember, all these people are on the left.
00:44:59.000While great care has been taken in populating the film with infinitely talented performers, there's been less attention paid to the pros behind the scenes.
00:45:05.000While Ocean's Eleven glided through its many sharp set pieces, Ocean 8's inelegantly plods.
00:45:09.000The smoothness of Soderbergh's concoction, often smug yet mostly rather charming, has been replaced with a bland impersonality and the work of a disinterested hired hand.
00:45:16.000Snappy, playful camera work and a deaf David Holmes score are sorely missed as Ross fills his film with plainly shot montages of superficial luxury that fail to feel quite as sumptuous as they should.
00:45:25.000So that's a nice way of saying this movie is deathly boring and poorly shot.
00:45:28.000And then there's Manohla Dargis of the New York Times.
00:45:30.000So she credits the ensemble cast with keeping the picture afloat.
00:45:33.000She says that Anne Hathaway is comedy gold, and she has fizz and delectable timing.
00:45:49.000So in other words, because it's women, it's important, right?
00:45:51.000It's more important than Ocean's Eleven was.
00:45:52.000Ocean's Eleven wasn't very important because it had men.
00:45:54.000Ocean's Eight is very important because women can be robbers, too.
00:46:10.000Now, you may think to yourself, well, haven't there been movies made about female thieves in the past?
00:46:14.000Wasn't there a movie called Clute about a female thief with Jane Fonda, like, all the way back in the 1970s, in which I believe she was nominated for a Best Supporting Actress Oscar?
00:48:13.000It's like Cate Blanchett and Anne Hathaway.
00:48:15.000Every major actress of the modern era is in this movie, and the movie stinks anyway.
00:48:20.000I mean, if you can't make fun of that, I don't know what you can make fun of.
00:48:22.000It's like making fun of the Los Angeles Lakers back in the early 2000s, when they got Gary Payton, Karl Malone, Shaq, and Kobe, and they somehow lost to the Detroit Pistons.
00:51:00.000Like, you really think Donald Trump, you think really Donald Trump cares about that, like, deeply?
00:51:05.000Donald Trump held up a rainbow flag at one of his rallies in 2016.
00:51:09.000Do you think that Donald Trump, take that, Trump, like, really, if you think that part of the resistance is you effing your husband, like, I just, I'm so confused by this.
00:51:17.000Like, if this is, really, like, do what you want to do, it's a free country, and, like, what?
00:51:22.000Like, wow, you're gay, okay, that changes everything, somehow, but no one explains why, okay, but, what?
00:51:29.000Like, I don't find this, like, who finds this, like, deeply offensive?
00:52:43.000The Office of Career Services told me to take it off my resume.
00:52:45.000As soon as I did, I got two offers within a couple of weeks.
00:52:48.000But, in any case, there was one situation in which I was interviewing at a major American law firm, a major law firm that had an outlet in Los Angeles.
00:52:55.000And they do this thing when they bring you out to interview for your follow-up interview, and that is they fix you up with somebody who they think you'll get along with because they're trying to sell the firm.
00:53:03.000They're trying to show you that the firm's a wonderful place to work, and that when you're working 2,200 billable hours reviewing pagination, that it's just going to be the best time you ever had, right?
00:53:31.000The couple of these Jews from Harvard Law School take me out to lunch, and this is supposed to be welcoming you into the intersectional clique that will be this law firm.
00:53:38.000And it already started off weird because I said I wanted to, I could only eat kosher, so I'm happy to go to a not-kosher restaurant and have like a Coke or something.
00:53:45.000And they're like, no, we have to go to a kosher place.
00:53:49.000There's only one kosher place at that point in downtown Los Angeles, and it is a falafel shop in like a hole in the wall.
00:53:54.000So we're sitting there in our expensive suits, and we're eating falafel at this hole in the wall that is not air-conditioned in the middle of the summer.