A major shift in U.S. foreign policy. President Trump may have abandoned Syria to the Turks, but not without a few parting shots. Plus, Elizabeth Warren takes command of the 2020 Democratic race. This is The Ben Shapiro Show, sponsored by ExpressVPN. Protect your online privacy today at ExpressVpn.org/ProtectYourOnline Privacy. Ben Shapiro is a writer and editor at large for The Weekly Standard and The Daily Wire. He is a frequent contributor to the New York Times, CNN, and the Wall Street Journal. His work has been featured on CNN, NPR, CBS News, ABC News, CBS, NBC News, and other media outlets. You can reach Ben Shapiro at Ben Shapiro: Ben.Shapiro@crone.co.nz. Thanks to our sponsor ExpressVPN for sponsoring the show. If you like what you hear, please HIT SUBSCRIBE and become a supporter of the show on Apple Podcasts and other major podcasting platforms wherever you get your news and information. Subscribe to Ben Shapiro's newest podcast, "The Weekly Standard." Subscribe and comment to get notified when new episodes are available. Learn more about your ad choices. The opinions expressed in this podcast are those of Ben Shapiro and other prominent conservative publications. Leave us a rating and review our work. We post polls, questions and thoughts on our social media platforms! We look out there! in the comments section. Send us your thoughts on the show and comments on the latest episode of "The Ben Shapiro Podcasts! and we'll get them on the next week's "Most Influencials" in next Tuesday's "Best of the Week" issue out on The FiveThirtyEight podcast! Thanks for listening to "Ben Shapiro's Top 5 Podcasts of the past week? and "Your Thoughts on the week's Most Powerful Podcast Episodes of the week! " on Six Things I'm listening to Ben's Top Five Podcasts? and other things you've Gave Me a Reviewed in your feed? on Podchronicity? Subscribe on iTunes or Streamed by You're a Review or Reviewed by Someone else's Story of a Podcast Reviewed It's Story by You'll Think I'm Gotta Have It Out & Reviewed Them Out on It's Better than That's Best of Ben's Story or You're Gotta Go Out & More?
00:00:00.000President Trump maybe abandoned Syria to the Turks, but not without a few parting Twitter shots.
00:00:05.000Courts debate whether to force the release of President Trump's tax returns, and Elizabeth Warren takes command of the 2020 Democratic race.
00:00:12.000This is The Ben Shapiro Show, sponsored by ExpressVPN.
00:00:15.000Protect your online privacy today at expressvpn.com slash Ben.
00:00:19.000Oh man, there's a lot to get to today.
00:00:38.000In a remarkable announcement late on Sunday night, the White House said that the United States forces in northern Syria would move aside in advance of a planned Turkish military offensive.
00:00:48.000foreign policy, effectively gives Turkey the green light to attack U.S.-backed Kurdish forces, which would make, in just the latest time that we have betrayed the Kurds, obviously the United States has repeatedly told the Kurds that they were our allies and that we were working with them, only to put them in a situation where they were basically screwed.
00:01:05.000That happened during the Gulf War in 1991, when George H.W.
00:01:09.000Bush called for the Iraqi military and Iraqi people to throw out Saddam Hussein, and the Iraqi Kurds in northern Iraq then actually stood up and tried to do that.
00:01:17.000At which point, Saddam Hussein basically gassed them and mowed them down, and the United States did nearly nothing about any of that.
00:01:24.000During the late 1990s, during the Clinton administration, the Clinton administration basically armed the Turks so that they could go ahead and kill a bunch of the Kurds on the Turkish border.
00:01:33.000During the Iraq war in 2003, There were moves to help the Kurds and then the Kurds were basically left to their own devices.
00:01:43.000So this is just the latest iteration of a common pattern which is that we all sound off when it's time to help the Kurds and then the minute that it becomes not time to help the Kurds everybody runs screaming for the exits and that's just horrible every way you slice it.
00:01:56.000There is no rationale not only for not actually allowing the Kurds to defend themselves here and providing them the resources to do so considering they have been Our most consistent ally in that region of the world fighting against ISIS, fighting against Saddam Hussein, fighting against the Iranian Shia militias.
00:02:12.000Not only that, but helping out the Turks is a horrible idea because the Turkish government right now is run by Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who happens to be a dictator, and an incredibly repressive dictator at that, who has jailed hundreds of thousands of political opponents, who has made clear his desire to act brutally and violently toward the Kurds.
00:02:33.000But President Trump has been taken in by Erdogan before.
00:02:36.000He's had these sort of warm relations with Erdogan in terms of phone calls at the very least.
00:02:40.000According to CNN, following a phone call between U.S.
00:02:44.000President Donald Trump and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the White House said that Turkey would soon begin a military offensive and U.S.
00:02:50.000forces would not be involved in the operation.
00:02:53.000Turkey will soon be moving forward with its long-planned operation into northern Syria, a statement said.
00:02:58.000armed forces will not support or be involved in the operation, and U.S.
00:03:01.000forces, having defeated the ISIS territorial caliphate, will no longer be in the immediate area.
00:03:06.000Now, this is exactly the sort of foreign policy that there are some on the right who definitely want to see pursued.
00:03:10.000And there are some people who are on the right who tend to be in the more sort of Pat Buchanan, isolationist camp, who basically suggest the U.S.
00:03:16.000has no business in that part Well, that's all fun and games until it turns out that you're allowing the Turks and the Turkish government to slaughter the Kurds who have allied with the United States to take on a common foe in ISIS.
00:03:28.000The White House added that Turkey would now be responsible for all captured ISIS fighters who are currently being held by U.S.-backed Kurdish forces in northern Syria.
00:03:35.000In other words, they're fine with the Turks going in.
00:03:39.000Presumably wiping out the Kurds, or at least attacking the Kurds, and then taking control of ISIS prisoners.
00:03:44.000But, as we've been saying for years on this program, there are very few forces in the region that actually had an interest in seeing ISIS completely wiped out.
00:03:53.000The Turks wanted ISIS there so that they could use it as an excuse to cross over into Syria.
00:03:57.000The Syrian government wanted ISIS there so they could use it as an excuse as to why they should remain in power.
00:04:01.000The Iranians wanted ISIS there for the same reason as the Syrians.
00:04:05.000Only the Kurds, really, and freedom-fighting Syrians were anti-ISIS, and yet now we, I guess, are handing leadership role over to Erdogan as though he's a good faith actor in all of this, and is not simply seeking to wipe out the Kurds and create a quote-unquote buffer zone for Turkey?
00:04:23.000The White House added that as of last month, 1,000 U.S.
00:04:26.000troops were operating in northeastern Syria, so there was just this small trigger force, and that was preventing all of this from happening.
00:04:32.000Presumably, that is no longer going to be the case.
00:04:34.000Sunday's statement did not specify if this constituted a full withdrawal of personnel from the country.
00:04:39.000Erdogan confirmed on Monday, according to CNN, that U.S.
00:04:42.000troops had begun withdrawing from northeastern Syria.
00:04:44.000He announced on Saturday that Turkey had, quote, completed our preparations and action plan and was ready to launch a ground and air operation east of the Euphrates River with the goal of establishing, quote unquote, peace by clearing the region of terrorists.
00:04:56.000Turkey's operation is aimed at clearing the U.S.-backed Kurdish militia, the People's Protection Unit, away from Turkey's border, because presumably an attempt to broaden Kurdistan would include some sort of incursions into Turkish territory that would be a part of the region.
00:05:11.000There have been long-standing territorial and border disputes between the Kurds and the Turks.
00:05:15.000Ankara, which is the capital of Turkey, regards the YPG as a terrorist group affiliated with the Kurdistan Workers' Party, which has fought the Turkish state for more than three decades, but the U.S.
00:05:24.000backs the YPG and credits the Kurds for helping to defeat ISIS in Syria.
00:05:27.000So this one is, thanks for all the help with ISIS, guys.
00:05:29.000Also, we're gonna let the Kurds come in and wipe you out now.
00:05:34.000to establish safe zones that run along the Turkey-Syria border, but Anadolu reports that while Turkey welcomes the joint patrols, it has also said the U.S.
00:05:41.000is not doing enough to set up the safe zone properly.
00:05:43.000Presumably, the safe zones will be for Syrian refugees who have been swamping Turkey.
00:05:48.000More than a million Syrian refugees during the Syrian Civil War have moved into Turkey.
00:05:53.000Erdogan expressed frustration with President Trump and the U.S.
00:05:57.000military's failure to implement an agreement between the two nations, according to a readout of a call released by the Turkish presidency, and the two leaders agreed to meet in Washington next month at Trump's invitation.
00:06:06.000Now, you remember last time Erdogan showed up, his thugs ended up beating up a bunch of anti-regime protesters in Washington, D.C., and it created an actual international incident.
00:06:17.000calls it a security mechanism, would be part of a bid to prevent a military incursion into the area that would target Syrian Kurdish groups.
00:06:24.000So presumably the United States is saying, okay, we'll set up these safe zones, but we don't have enough troops to prevent the Turks from actually going in and doing what it is they see fit to do.
00:06:33.000According to CNN, Trump's decision to allow Erdogan to move forward with the operation and to move U.S.
00:06:37.000forces out of the area goes against U.S.
00:06:40.000Their efforts to dissuade Turkey from carrying out a military intervention.
00:06:44.000A Pentagon spokesman named Sean Robertson said, quote, any uncoordinated military operation by Turkey would be of grave concern.
00:06:50.000It would undermine our shared interest of a secure northeast Syria and the enduring defeat of ISIS.
00:06:55.000On Monday, a Pentagon spokesperson said the Department of Defense actually did not even endorse the planned operations.
00:07:01.000So Trump is overruling his own defense department here.
00:07:04.000The Department of Defense made clear to Turkey, as did the president, we do not endorse a Turkish operation in northern Syria.
00:07:09.000So apparently Trump has said he doesn't want it.
00:07:10.000But what's actually going to stop the Turks, really?
00:07:13.000Does anybody actually think the United States is going to do anything to prevent all of this?
00:07:17.000On Saturday, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo told reporters, quote, we've made clear this conflict should not be militarized.
00:07:22.000But a U.S. official familiar with operations in Syria told CNN it is, quote unquote, very likely that Turkey will try something soon.
00:07:29.000They said that Ankara, the capital of Turkey, will start with a limited incursion to establish Turkish patrol bases on the Syrian side of the border.
00:07:38.000And then eventually, when the world's attention turns away from this issue, then they will launch into trying to clean up, meaning clean out and kill members of the PKK.
00:07:48.000In a second, we'll get to the fact that this has actually created some blowback on the right side of the aisle, as well it should, because frankly, it's terrible, terrible, horrible, not moral policy.
00:08:43.000As a subscriber, you have a special offer on a Ring welcome kit available right this moment at ring.com slash ben.
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00:09:03.000Okay, so Senator Lindsey Graham has tweeted, The decision to abandon our Kurdish allies and turn Syria over to Russia, Iran, and Turkey It's a shot in the arm to the bad guys.
00:09:35.000under Trump, reiterated on Twitter that Kurdish fighters were, quote, instrumental in our successful fight against ISIS in Syria and added that the U.S.
00:09:42.000must always have the back of our allies if we expect them to have our back.
00:09:46.000And obviously the Kurds are not exactly sanguine about all of this.
00:09:52.000They are very upset because they are seeing the possibility of actual violence done to them by the Turks with the United States backing off of all of this.
00:10:01.000The Kurds, of course, are telling the Pentagon that this is insanity.
00:10:05.000That this is just... that there's no rationale for it.
00:10:09.000Because, frankly, there is no rationale for it other than the general isolationist rationale of the United States should not be involved anywhere around the world even to help people who helped us wipe out people who are trying to murder Americans and Westerners around the world.
00:10:23.000Well, this has prompted Mitch McConnell to sound off.
00:10:26.000Again, you know things are bad when the Republican Party starts to tell President Trump that he needs to cut this nonsense out.
00:10:34.000He said, In January, a supermajority of the U.S.
00:10:36.000Senate voted for an amendment that expressed bipartisan concern about the continuing threat posed by ISIS and Al Qaeda in Syria, appreciation of the long-term American security interests in Syria and the region, and support for a continued military presence in northeastern Syria.
00:10:50.000The conditions that produced this bipartisan vote still exist today.
00:10:52.000While the physical caliphate has been removed, ISIS and Al Qaeda remain dangerous forces in Syria and the ongoing Syrian civil war...
00:11:02.000Now I will note that all the members of the media who are ripping on Trump over this, they seemed a lot more sanguine when Barack Obama was creating fake red lines about gassing Syrians and then he proceeded to pull out from Syria and hand the whole thing over to the Russians.
00:11:22.000With that said, is it any better if Trump is doing something similar?
00:11:25.000It would increase the risk that ISIS and other terrorist groups regroup.
00:11:28.000According to McConnell, I urge the president to exercise American leadership, to keep together our multinational coalition to defeat ISIS, and prevent significant conflict between our NATO ally Turkey and our local Syrian counterterrorism partners.
00:11:39.000Major new conflict between Turkey and our partners in Syria would seriously risk damaging Turkey's ties to the U.S., and causing greater isolation for Turkey on the world stage.
00:12:01.000They have attempted to wipe out allies of the United States.
00:12:05.000The fact that President Trump is Apparently, caving before Erdogan is frankly pathetic.
00:12:12.000McConnell says, Apparently, the concerns about an ISIS comeback are quite serious, especially because one of the things that would happen if the Kurds were to withdraw is who exactly is going to be running the prisons that are holding tens of thousands of ISIS fighters?
00:12:51.000It presages another humanitarian disaster.
00:12:54.000So when you've got McConnell and Romney on the same page, it is fair to say that there is pretty solid opposition to President Trump's move right here.
00:13:02.000At the State Department, a senior official authorized to brief reporters on the condition of anonymity denied suggestions that Trump had endorsed a Turkish incursion.
00:13:10.000He said, we do not support this operation in any way, shape, or form, but the timing of the Turks basically announcing an incursion and the timing of President Trump announcing we're going to pull out is obviously not a giant coincidence.
00:13:20.000There's been a lot of talk about President Trump ramping up trade with Turkey and friendliness between the United States and Turkey.
00:13:28.000According to a State Department official, the original call between Trump and Erdogan originated as a conversation about the air defense issue and economic cooperation, and then Erdogan raised going into northeastern Syria, claiming that the safe zone mechanism that was set up and was being executed was not meeting his needs and that he wanted to do a unilateral operation. claiming that the safe zone mechanism that was set up Thank you.
00:13:48.000But apparently, according to the State Department official, there was no specific indication that he would push the button.
00:13:53.000We still don't know in the end what he's going to do.
00:13:55.000Okay, but if you don't know what he's going to do, and then you signal that we're going to pull out, obviously that signal is going to be taken as a sign of weakness by Erdogan.
00:14:07.000Now, President Trump seems to be backing off of the policy.
00:14:09.000So this is the thing that I don't really understand about the perspective on President Trump that suggests that criticizing President Trump weakens President Trump.
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00:15:52.000Many people on the right are very upset about this.
00:15:55.000Obviously, you're starting to see some on the right defend President Trump.
00:16:00.000President Trump then sent out a bizarre series of tweets walking this thing back.
00:16:05.000And again, this is just proof, positive, that when Trump does something wrong and you call him out on it, he is capable of hearing it and changing in the most bizarre possible way, apparently.
00:16:13.000So President Trump tweeted this one out, and this is This is a classic Trump tweet.
00:17:07.000President Trump then said this is all part of America first foreign policy says we'll fight where it is to our benefit and only fight to win.
00:17:13.000Okay, but there's also a point of American foreign policy and that's called deterrence.
00:17:18.000And one of the reasons that we keep, for example, a trigger force in South Korea is to deter the North Koreans from invading South Korea.
00:17:29.000We have an interest in there not being a hot war between North Korea and South Korea that draws in China and then forces the intervention of other powers, including the United States.
00:17:38.000See, sometimes an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of brutality on the other end.
00:17:44.000And pulling out and signaling to the Turks that you're going to do so It's obviously not good policy.
00:17:49.000You do have to love the snidely whiplash sort of language right there from President Trump in his great and unmatched wisdom.
00:18:13.000I mean, it is true that he has obviously had significant impact on the economy of Iran, so presumably he's threatening sanctions on Turkey five minutes after telling Turkey that he would like for them to enter that buffer zone and then...
00:18:31.000Now look, when it comes to President Trump and his sort of fly-by-the-seat-of-his-pants policy, I've generally not been supremely critical.
00:18:39.000The reason being, I don't think that you necessarily have to have a plan.
00:18:42.000I think that the constitutional checks and boundaries prevent an impulsive president from doing too much damage.
00:18:48.000That is not nearly as true when it comes to foreign policy.
00:18:50.000The reason it's not as true when it comes to foreign policy is because an impulse can sometimes create a similarly countervailing impulse on the other side.
00:18:58.000A weakness can sometimes be taken as a measure that somebody should do something to you.
00:19:03.000I take it as an example of the first Gulf War.
00:19:07.000There were high-ranking negotiating officials inside the H.W.
00:19:09.000Bush administration who allegedly signaled to the Saddam Hussein regime that if Hussein were to walk into Kuwait, the United States would basically do nothing, at which point Hussein said, okay, fine, so I'll walk into Kuwait, and then the United States was at war.
00:19:23.000I'm glad that President Trump walked it back within 24 hours, and this is why people should criticize him when he deserves the critique.
00:19:29.000There's, again, this bizarre belief that you can never criticize President Trump, that he can't take it.
00:19:35.000You may have noticed he's taken an awful amount of abuse and crap over the last several years.
00:19:39.000I think he can handle some people saying that his Turkish policy is a bad idea, especially when he is kowtowing to one of the worst dictators I mean, Erdogan really is terrible.
00:19:49.000He really has taken Turkey from what was a burgeoning Western country back into an Islamist country run by a regime that does not care about human rights or freedom and threatens its neighbors.
00:20:03.000So I'm glad that President Trump seems to be walking this thing back, at least.
00:20:07.000But that sort of temporary boo-boo has raised hackles everywhere.
00:20:11.000And I will point out that when it comes to people on the left who are suddenly finding their spine when it comes to criticizing American foreign policy in Syria, welcome to the club.
00:20:21.000I'm so glad that you could finally make it after years of you pretending that Barack Obama's foreign policy in Syria was a symptom of great genius, that his fly-by-the-seat-of-his-pants foreign policy, handing over power in Syria to Vladimir Putin and the Iranians, that that was actually a measure of his broad-heartedness and genius.
00:20:37.000Glad to welcome you to the club where it turns out that a predictable American foreign policy is useful in this arena of the world.
00:20:45.000I welcome people like Thomas Friedman and Paul Krugman.
00:20:48.000Paul Krugman tweeted out, there are only a few reasons why Trump would do this.
00:20:51.000One would be he's trying to kowtow to Russia.
00:20:54.000Okay, yeah, it's funny how Paul Krugman didn't have all that much to say when Barack Obama was drawing fake red lines about the use of chemical weapons against Syrian citizens and then immediately went silent when that red line disappeared and Barack Obama was like, hey, what if we just give this thing over to my good friend Vlad?
00:21:08.000Give him some flexibility and now he'll help me in Syria.
00:21:11.000And shortly thereafter, the rise of ISIS began.
00:21:16.000That's not a defense of Trumpian policy.
00:21:19.000It is to point out the hypocrisy of the left that apparently does not care about this stuff unless there's an R next to the name of the person who is running the executive branch of the United States government.
00:21:32.000The impeachment stuff continues to burgeon.
00:21:34.000The Democrats have a new angle because every 30 seconds or so they have to come up with a new angle because it seems like the angles they've taken so far are insufficient.
00:21:42.000So now they're going after President Trump's taxes.
00:22:47.000Okay, meanwhile, in other news, President Trump's taxes are apparently now the subject of a massive legal dispute.
00:22:55.000According to the New York Times yesterday, a federal judge on Monday rejected President Trump's efforts to shield his tax returns from Manhattan state prosecutors, calling the president's argument that he was immune from criminal investigation, quote, repugnant to the nation's governmental structure and constitutional values.
00:23:11.000I mean, I thought that we had already litigated whether the president is immune from criminal proceedings.
00:23:18.000President Clinton was brought up, well he wasn't brought up criminally, he was brought up civilly I suppose.
00:23:34.000office of legal counsel opinion that sort of suggested that you can't prosecute the president federally while he is sitting and it would be kind of bizarre if state governments could prosecute the president of the united states because then presumably they could they'd always have this sort of check on the presidential power but if the president were to hit somebody with his car could he be prosecuted in the state of new york if he actually shot somebody on fifth avenue could he be prosecuted in the state of new york it'd be sort of weird to argue that he couldn't be prosecuted in the state of new york if he just shot somebody on the street
00:24:03.000The decision from Judge Victor Morero of Federal District Court in Manhattan was the first significant ruling in a case that could require Trump to hand over his tax returns and ultimately test the limits of presidential power.
00:24:13.000The judge dismissed a lawsuit that had been filed by Trump.
00:24:15.000He was seeking to block a subpoena for eight years of his personal and corporate tax returns.
00:24:19.000Now, listen, is this a fishing expedition?
00:24:23.000There's no question it is a fishing expedition.
00:24:25.000The Attorney General of the State of New York openly made clear the day that she was elected that she had the Trump Organization and President Trump in her sights, which is horrible prosecutorial behavior.
00:24:47.000It's so funny, all the same people who are saying that it is selective and malicious for President Trump to ask the Ukrainians to look into Joe Biden, despite widespread allegations, at least allegations, whether they're verified or not, of corruption by Joe Biden and Hunter Biden, his son, in Ukraine.
00:25:04.000The same people are saying, well, that's a targeted prosecution.
00:25:06.000They are totally fine with a targeted prosecution when the target of the prosecution happens to have a name rhyming with Donald Trump.
00:25:15.000The Manhattan District Attorney demanded the records in late August as part of an investigation into hush money payments made in the run-up to the 2016 presidential elections.
00:25:24.000Now that, of course, has been the culmination of a years-long effort to get President Trump's tax returns.
00:25:30.000For the moment, his tax returns remain protected.
00:25:32.000His lawyers quickly appealed to the Second Circuit Court of Appeals in Manhattan.
00:25:35.000They agreed to temporarily delay enforcement of the subpoena while considering arguments in the case.
00:25:41.000Judge Marrero systematically dismantled the president's arguments.
00:25:45.000that investigating a sitting president was unconstitutional, according to the New York Times.
00:25:48.000The judge said Mr. Trump's lawyers were, in essence, arguing that the president, along with his family, associates, and companies, were above the law.
00:25:56.000He says this court finds aspects of such a doctrine repugnant to the nation's governmental structure and constitutional values.
00:26:01.000This, of course, would be a Bill Clinton-appointed judge.
00:26:04.000The dispute pits the Manhattan District Attorney, Cyrus Vance, against the president and his DOJ, and has raised a host of issues that have not been tested in the courts.
00:26:12.000The Constitution does not actually say whether presidents can be charged with a crime while in office.
00:26:17.000The Supreme Court has not, in fact, ruled on the issue.
00:26:20.000So, this is certainly not going to be the last word in the case.
00:26:26.000Look, I think President Trump should have revealed his tax returns way back during the 2016 campaign.
00:26:32.000I have no real rationale as to why he didn't do that.
00:26:35.000With that said, is the insane focus on Trump's tax returns something that behooves prosecutorial authorities?
00:26:46.000Meanwhile, in other impeachment news, I just have to point out the irony of Hillary Clinton.
00:26:50.000So Hillary Clinton, who is still wandering the woods of Upstate New York, sadly, pretending that she is the president of the United States, like Miss Haversham, walking around in her old wedding dress.
00:27:02.000Hillary Clinton, she was on the TVs yesterday, and she suggested that calling on foreign adversaries for assistance in campaigns goes to the heart of our sovereignty.
00:27:13.000Here is the illustrious non-president Hillary Clinton.
00:27:16.000When you have a president calling on foreign adversaries for assistance in his political campaigns, which he did in 2016, and which he is doing again, that goes right to the heart of our sovereignty as a nation, to our national security, in a way that is almost unimaginable.
00:27:39.000I cannot imagine any other president ever even thinking about this.
00:27:45.000Could you imagine a president, say, appealing to Chinese donors in the 1996 election and declassifying a bunch of nuclear secrets at the same time?
00:27:55.000Could you imagine a presidential candidate maybe coordinating with the Ukrainian embassy to dig up dirt on the opponent?
00:28:02.000Could you maybe imagine like a presidential candidate coordinating with foreign resources, including a former British spy who is apparently being fed intel from Russian governmental sources about their political opponents and then, you know, funneling that to your old administration and your buddies in the DOJ and the FBI?
00:28:19.000I seem to be able to imagine something like that because it happened.
00:28:22.000The gaslighting of this is what makes it so difficult.
00:28:26.000As I said yesterday, as I talked about yesterday, when it comes to impeachment, one of the standards for impeachment is that it has to be clearly above and beyond other things that were not impeached before.
00:28:34.000And the fact that Democrats seem to want to set a new standard that only applies to people who are not Democrats is pretty astonishing.
00:28:44.000By the way, when it comes to impeachment, just to point out some of the media coverage, Brian Stalter over at CNN, he has a Reliable Sources newsletter, and he points out the country's leading news outlets are laying the groundwork for long-term coverage of the impeachment inquiry and all the potential fallout.
00:28:57.000It is amazing how the media have resonated to any anti-Trump narrative they can find, whether you are talking about Dean Beckett of the New York Times openly acknowledging that the Trump-Russia thing was the focus of their last couple of years, And then stating that they were going to move into covering Trump racism, and now they're just moving straight on to impeachment.
00:29:14.000Now you have Brian Stelter pointing out that all of these newspapers and all these organizations are hiring up and staffing up on the impeachment stuff.
00:29:21.000So basically, as soon as the Democrats throw out a narrative, it is time to staff up on the reporting side to do all of their oppo research for them.
00:29:28.000One of the convenient things about being a Democratic opposition researcher is you never actually have to work.
00:29:32.000You can just read the front page of the New York Times, which will dig up whether Mitt Romney cut a gay kid's hair back in 1952.
00:29:50.000First, let's talk about gun ownership.
00:29:52.000So as you know, I'm a big fan of gun ownership.
00:29:54.000This is not only because I've had personal safety issues.
00:29:57.000It is also because you should exercise your Second Amendment rights.
00:30:01.000Your Second Amendment rights are what protect your First Amendment rights and all of your other rights that are guaranteed by the Bill of Rights.
00:30:08.000Every year in America, guns are used, apparently, over 2 million times in self-defense, according to certain studies.
00:30:12.000The average self-defense legal case costs between $50,000 and $70,000 for the victim.
00:30:17.000Which can be shocking, especially when you consider that these Americans were just defending themselves and their loved ones like you or I would.
00:30:23.000Now, you think, okay, somebody comes in my house and I shoot them, that's the end of the story?
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00:31:15.000Okay, we're gonna get to More on Impeachment Gate 2019 in just one second.
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00:32:24.000Michael Gerhart, a CNN legal analyst and the author of several books, including The Federal Impeachment Process, A Constitutional and Historical Analysis, and a regular on CNN during the Clinton impeachment.
00:32:35.000Ross Garber, a CNN legal analyst who represents four governors facing impeachment proceedings.
00:32:40.000Everybody else is staffing up on the impeachment stuff as well.
00:32:42.000Security analyst who's been part of the Post team breaking big stories about the whistleblower complained.
00:32:47.000Everybody else is staffing up on the impeachment stuff as well.
00:33:21.000But in other breaking impeachment-related news, the House has now allegedly subpoenaed White House budget office and Pentagon documents.
00:33:30.000Now, whether those are formal subpoenas is unclear.
00:33:33.000So as Andy McCarthy has pointed out in the last couple of weeks, the fact is that Democrats have been basically issuing requests to executive branch agencies for documents and then not issuing formal subpoenas.
00:33:45.000A formal subpoena actually carries with it the threat of contempt.
00:33:48.000A non-formal subpoena does not carry that.
00:33:50.000It's basically just them pretending that they've subpoenaed something and then they can complain that it's being obstructed, even though usually you subpoena a document.
00:33:57.000And then there's a negotiation that takes place over what exactly the documents are that are to be turned over.
00:34:01.000So the House has now expanded its sprawling impeachment inquiry They've issued subpoenas to the Defense Department and OMB for documents that could solve lingering mysteries about whether Trump's decision to withhold security aid for Ukraine was tied to his efforts to pressure the government there to investigate his political rivals.
00:34:17.000Now, in all likelihood, by the way, those documents are likely to show that the military aid was in fact tied to corruption concerns.
00:34:25.000I mean, by the way, if they come with a smoking gun here, They come with a smoking gun.
00:34:29.000I just have my serious doubt that the Trump administration was sending notes to the Defense Department saying, go get Joe Biden or cut the aid.
00:34:37.000I really don't think that, sign Donald J. Trump, I don't think that's where this is going.
00:34:43.000Two senior American diplomats caught up in the scandal are scheduled to speak to investigators before the week is through.
00:34:48.000A third, who is scheduled to be deposed on Monday, didn't show up.
00:35:09.000The answer is presumably nothing, but this person will also probably demonstrate that they are a partisan Democrat, because in fact, it appears they're probably a partisan Democrat.
00:35:19.000Now, does that actually undermine the validity of the complaint?
00:35:28.000President Trump said, people understand it's a fraud, it's a scam, it's a witch hunt.
00:35:31.000All we do is keep fighting for the American people because that's all I do.
00:35:35.000And then he calls his own actions very terrific.
00:35:38.000President Trump, I wish he'd been sometimes a Broadway producer because his raves for his own shows would have just been spectacular.
00:35:44.000Senator Rob Portman, Republican of Ohio, chastised President Trump.
00:35:49.000Trump, he said the president should not have raised the Biden issue on that call, period.
00:35:52.000It's not appropriate for a president to engage a foreign government in an investigation of a political opponent.
00:35:57.000Now, I tend to agree with that, although Rudy Giuliani's general point, which is, okay, well, what if that general political opponent happens to have committed a crime, right, that That's a real question.
00:36:10.000The problem is that there may in fact be a disconnect between what Giuliani thought was happening in Ukraine and what Trump thought was happening in Ukraine and what was actually happening in Ukraine.
00:36:19.000So Trump very well could have thought that there was corruption.
00:36:21.000It's almost a mirror image of the Mueller report.
00:36:23.000So, on the one hand, what you see in Mueller report land is a dual narrative.
00:36:28.000The narrative of the left is that there is a good reason for opening the Mueller report, that there are serious suspicions about Trump and Russia, and just because the goods were not fully delivered does not mean that there is not accuracy to the suspicions in the first place.
00:36:41.000On the right, people say, no, no, no, this thing was launched in bad faith.
00:36:44.000It was obviously meant to go after Trump.
00:36:46.000It was broadened out from Manafort to include President Trump.
00:36:48.000The whole thing was a gotcha from the beginning.
00:36:51.000Well, now we are seeing the exact same logic applied in reverse with regards to Ukraine and Biden.
00:36:55.000Some people on the right, including the president, are saying, listen, I was interested in Ukrainian corruption and Joe Biden's name was obviously part of the story here.
00:37:04.000Glenn Beck actually did an entire show about the timeline in Ukraine, and it is kind of suspicious.
00:37:10.000I mean, when Biden got involved versus when his son was made the A member of the board of Burisma?
00:37:18.000I mean, that timeline does look suspicious.
00:37:20.000So Republicans are like, well, this thing was launched in good faith, and even if it comes up with nothing, that doesn't mean it was launched in bad faith.
00:37:25.000Democrats are saying, no, no, no, it was totally launched in bad faith because Joe Biden is President Trump's political rival.
00:37:31.000And the answer is, we'll have to wait and see in both cases.
00:37:34.000We're still awaiting the Inspector General report on the origins of the Trump-Russia probe.
00:37:37.000And we're going to have to see whether the Biden thing was caught up in a generalized corruption investigation by the administration, or whether it was just a political attempt to target Biden that was sort of papered over with the facade of concern about corruption.
00:37:52.000The new subpoenas were issued by the Democrat-controlled House Intelligence Committee, and they follow similar demands for documents from the State Department and the White House made in recent days.
00:37:59.000But those were not actually subpoenas, as I was pointing out.
00:38:02.000Subpoenas come with legal consequences.
00:38:05.000They gave the agencies until October 15th to hand over notes, memos, and communications and communications related to the aid deliberation over its delivery within the government and possible conversations with Ukrainian officials about it.
00:38:19.000Democrats leading the impeachment inquiry suspect that obviously military aid was withheld in order to pressure Joe Biden.
00:38:25.000The Defense Department had been anticipating the subpoena last week.
00:38:28.000The Pentagon's General Counsel directed all department heads to collect and turn in all documents and material related to military aid to Ukraine.
00:38:34.000So once again, this doesn't look like an act of obstruction.
00:38:37.000One of the funny things about this particular impeachment inquiry is that it's actually a lot easier to prove a cover-up than it is to prove a crime.
00:38:45.000There still is not solid evidence that President Nixon explicitly ordered anyone to go break into the Watergate Hotel.
00:38:51.000There is explicit evidence that he ordered the cover-up.
00:38:54.000It's easier to prove the cover-up because there are a lot more people involved in the cover-up than the crime.
00:38:58.000Usually gonna use a go-between for the crime anyway.
00:39:00.000Okay, well in this particular case if there's no cover-up, how do you prove the crime?
00:39:04.000Particularly because you have to show intent.
00:39:06.000It's not just enough to show that President Trump set up a quid pro quo with regard to corruption because Joe Biden did that.
00:39:14.000You actually have to show that his intent was to get Biden and not to target corruption at all.
00:39:20.000Rudy Giuliani, meanwhile, says that he is thinking of suing Adam Schiff.
00:39:25.000He said he's working with outside lawyers to prepare lawsuits against Schiff as well as Representative Rashida Tlaib of Michigan.
00:39:31.000He said that those legal plans were made over the weekend in a series of calls with Yahoo News amid cable news appearances in which he aggressively defended President Trump.
00:39:40.000Apparently Giuliani has dismissed at least one critic of such a lawsuit as a nitwit, arguing there are no constitutional constraints on bringing such litigation against sitting members of Congress.
00:39:50.000He says that Schiff is seeking to inhibit me in my ability to defend Trump by criticizing him.
00:39:56.000He says that they are attempting to deprive him of civil rights and engaging in a conspiracy to remove the president at all costs.
00:40:01.000I'm not sure that's suable, even if it is troubling.
00:40:04.000And even if you agree with the characterization, not everything that is troubling is suable.
00:40:07.000Okay, meanwhile, in the 2020 race, Joe Biden is all but dead.
00:40:11.000Elizabeth Warren has now taken a narrow lead over Joe Biden in the race for the Democratic presidential nomination, according to a new October IBD Investor Business Daily TIPP poll.
00:40:20.000Both candidates continue to lead in head-to-head matchups against Trump.
00:40:23.000Although Biden has a more comfortable lead, Warren is only leading very narrowly, according to this polling data.
00:40:31.000The poll shows Warren at 27 and Biden at 26, but he has been sliding quickly.
00:40:35.000He is now second in the vast majority of the new polls.
00:40:38.000Bernie Sanders has completely fallen out of the race.
00:41:18.000And Elizabeth Warren is ripe for the picking, not only on the Pocahontas kind of stuff, but also because she's kind of dishonest about her own policies.
00:41:25.000I mean, I've talked about this on the show.
00:41:26.000Elizabeth Warren used to be an interesting human, and now she's a full-scale Bernie-ite progressive who refuses to answer straight questions about whether she's going to raise your taxes.
00:41:36.000Trump should have a lot of material to work with.
00:42:06.000However, If Elizabeth Warren is perceived as an anti-corruption fighter, if she is pure as the driven snow, if the hem of her skirt has never been muddied, President Trump is a mud monster.
00:42:18.000He embraces other candidates and they walk away covered in mud.
00:42:22.000That is what President Trump does best.
00:42:23.000So, if Elizabeth Warren is riding at 48% right now, and Trump is riding at 46% in that poll, Elizabeth Warren might actually be in some trouble.
00:42:31.000Because again, she has not had one iota of negative press attention since that ridiculous DNA test that she took at the beginning of this year.
00:42:38.000Since then, it has been nothing but glowing reports written by her sycophants in the media who are carrying around drool cups for her.
00:42:45.000I mean, they are literally drooling into cups over Elizabeth Warren.
00:42:54.000This lends credence to all the folks who have been claiming that President Trump and the Ukraine stuff, it's all about taking down Joe Biden so that he can run against Elizabeth Warren again.
00:43:01.000I think that accident and stupidity is much more a motivating force in human affairs than is detailed planning.
00:43:08.000But I guess if you want to make the case, like some folks do, that Trump 40 chested this thing out and that he was talking with Ukraine because he knew that Ukraine was eventually going to spill its beans and that eventually all this was going to come out and it would sink Joe Biden, I guess you can make that case.
00:43:21.000Although the reality is, of course, that Joe Biden was sliding in the polls at least a month and a half, two months ago.
00:43:27.000So the Ukraine thing is just the final nail in his political coffin.
00:43:31.000This new poll, by the way, shows that Warren has now displaced Sanders as the candidate of the far left.
00:43:36.000She now has the support of 38% of self-described liberals.
00:43:43.000Among white voters, Warren is ahead of Biden 33 to 20.
00:43:46.000Biden is still ahead 44 to 16 among black and Hispanic voters.
00:43:49.000But that could obviously change over time.
00:43:52.000Among Democratic investors, 31% backed Elizabeth Warren versus 23% for Joe Biden, which just goes to show you that a lot of Democrats who invest their money apparently care about their money a lot less than they care about politics.
00:44:05.000I guess they're putting their money where their mouth is.
00:44:06.000They're also putting your money where their mouth is, which is far less exciting.
00:44:11.000Now, one wrinkle that may throw a serious wrinkle into the next election cycle is this new story that Justice Clarence Thomas is absent due to illness from the Supreme Court.
00:44:24.000Obviously, the justices of the Supreme Court are getting up there in terms of age.
00:44:29.000There are some of them that are really getting up there.
00:44:31.000Ruth Bader Ginsburg, of course, is 86 years old.
00:44:34.000If, God forbid, something were to happen to Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Then, presumably, I mean, it would just throw a wrench, like a massive wrench, into the 2020 election campaign.
00:44:45.000If Justice Scalia had not died in 2016, there's a good shot Trump doesn't win that election.
00:44:49.000Clarence Thomas is only 71 years old, but he is sick to start the term.
00:44:54.000Stephen Breyer is 81 years old, which everybody is ignoring.
00:45:48.000The entire country shuts down to Colton's great horror and shock because Colton will not be able... It's like Christmas Day in the United States where you can't actually go out to a Rite Aid and just buy anything.
00:46:23.000It is the day when everybody is supposed to pour out their sins before God, and they're supposed to engage in teshuvah, tefillah, and tzedakah.
00:46:31.000That would be repentance, and prayer, and charity giving, and it's Frankly, it's a pretty amazing thing.
00:46:39.000Spiritually speaking, it's a pretty amazing thing.
00:46:41.000The opportunity, the kindness of, if you're a believer in God, the kindness of a God who will forgive your sins is an incredible thing.
00:46:50.000I think people get the wrong impression of Judaism and forgiveness.
00:46:52.000Like, we were big on this for a long time before the other major world religions were out there on it.
00:46:57.000So, Yom Kippur, it's a pretty special day.
00:46:59.000Okay, time for a quick thing that I hate.
00:47:16.000So he says that this is because they are paying lower effective tax rates than other groups because they're paying lower rates in terms of because they have capital gains and many other groups do not have capital gains.
00:47:46.000Then there are a lot of people inside the 1%, which is a lot bigger than 400 households, who are paying insane, insane income tax.
00:47:53.000Effective income tax rates in some states like California, if you combine the federal income tax rate and the effective income tax rate in the state of California, and then you include things like sales tax and property tax, people are paying over 50% of what they make to the federal and state government.
00:48:07.000That's not happening at the lower end of the tax bracket.
00:48:09.000But David Leonhardt, I mean, talk about lying with statistics.
00:48:12.000The overall tax rate on the richest 400 households last year was only 23%, meaning that their combined tax payments equaled less than one quarter of their total income.
00:48:20.000This overall rate was 70% in 1950 and 47% in 1980.
00:48:24.000Yes, and people paid the same effective tax rate because they engaged in what we call tax avoidance.
00:48:29.000For middle class and poor families, the picture is different.
00:48:32.000Federal income taxes have declined modestly for these families over the years, but they haven't benefited much, if at all, from the decline in corporate tax or estate tax.
00:48:39.000Yes, because if you're poor, you don't have that much to hand on in estate tax.
00:48:44.000And you also don't own a corporation, so you also don't make money in corporate tax.
00:48:48.000Like, yes, that's true, but you are probably engaged by a corporation, and probably the people who hired you, who already paid tax, by the way, on the money that they want to hand on to their kids, They're the ones who are paying you.
00:49:03.000The estate tax, by the way, is utterly immoral.
00:49:05.000I earn money over the course of my life and I pay taxes all the way along.
00:49:08.000Every dollar I own, I have paid taxes on.
00:49:11.000One of the goals of me earning money is to pass it on to my kids.
00:49:13.000The government grave-robbing me by coming in and grabbing my money after I am dead because they believe that they have a right to my money a second time over is complete abject moral crap.
00:49:23.000But this kind of stuff is absolute nonsense.