Sen. Rand Paul (R-Kentucky) joins Jemele to discuss the Barr hearing, and why he thinks Bill Deaf should have been on the stand. Plus, a story about a woman who bought a cardboard cutout of Jack LaLanne at a wedding.
00:02:03.000I just wanted you to think, if you're watching this in the archive, that you were two-hammered to watch this show, but it's actually just me moving around that way.
00:02:10.000We have Senator Rand Paul on the show today.
00:02:14.000Question of the day, what was your main takeaway from Wednesday's hearing on Barr?
00:02:17.000The highlight, if you will, we're going to be talking about that, Venezuela, and usually I introduce him last, rightfully so, but he is back, G. Morgan Jr., a married man.
00:02:27.000And I will say, I can confirm, I was at the wedding and I was very surprised.
00:02:32.000She was actually just a cardboard cutout of Jack LaLanne.
00:02:53.000I would go shopping and I'd be like, I'd go on Twitter saying, well since I'm still looking for Gerald, the wine of the day, should I pick this cheap red or this cheap white?
00:03:49.000Leading the news, of course, you know, attorney, and we're gonna get into Venezuela, that's the most, we have to talk about Barr because we have to.
00:03:56.000But Venezuela, I think, is a rich country.
00:05:19.000Who had the power to make the decision about whether or not the evidence was sufficient.
00:05:23.000To make a determination of whether there had been an obstruction of justice.
00:05:26.000Prosecution memos go up to the supervisor, in this case it was the Attorney General and the Deputy Attorney General, who decide on the final decision.
00:05:38.000And that is based on the memo as presented by the U.S.
00:06:01.000Frankly, we went back and looked at press usage, and up until all the far outrage a couple of weeks ago, it's commonly used in the press to refer to authorized activities, such as referring to the FISA court as the spy court.
00:06:14.000But it's not commonly used by the department.
00:07:30.000Do you think all of the things that President Trump did are okay?
00:07:35.000This is not a crime, but do you think it's okay for the president to do what he did to fire these special counsels to keep him from investigating?
00:09:58.000If they killed off the show, that'd be okay.
00:10:00.000Yeah, at this point on Team White Walker, where once it seemed like the show had something to say about the topic of immigration, I'm no longer sure it's interested in such heady ideas anymore.
00:11:04.000Tang Haiyan founded the Real Man Training Club to combat China's masculinity crisis, part of the backlash against the makeup and earring-wearing male TV.
00:11:12.000Film and K-pop idols leave it to China.
00:11:16.000And Hyund's methods are actually being called controversial, particularly given his policy of hunting down and executing the entire cast of Glee.
00:11:43.000Yeah, one of the guys was actually quoting, he said 20% of the men were unfit for military service, and he went off to list things that matter, like they couldn't run, they were out of shape, they were watching too many YouTube videos.
00:13:13.000The funny thing is, he's talking about, like, he's drinking, he's doing drugs, he's having sex in tetanus-y bathrooms, so he's doing all of these things and then says that Donald Trump is the bad person in this story.
00:13:23.000You're out doing all these things and Trump's the bad guy?
00:13:35.000Moby, that's the only song anyone remembers from Moby.
00:13:38.000My mom worked with Moby on the French-Canadian Patrice Lecrier show, and he came in, and he was a jerk back then.
00:13:45.000I just find it funny that this is the first time you've heard Moby's name since he got dissed by Eminem in the diss track, and he still is the one who looks like a douche in this situation.
00:13:54.000Which, by the way, not only is that sexual assault, but honestly, I don't really know how it's an insult to the person who is unwilling... He's the only unwilling participant!
00:14:36.000I had somebody try to, like, put, like, if you had your hand on your hip in the locker room or something like that, somebody would come up and, like, do it.
00:14:42.000It'd be funny to their friends, you know what I mean?
00:14:44.000Like, they try to touch you and you're like, oh, get away from me.
00:16:42.000By the way, the winner of last week's trivia contest is Andrew Morales at DJAM32, who knew that Brodigan dressed up as Spider-Man from the Oscars livestream.
00:16:50.000I knew that one too, but I wasn't eligible.
00:18:24.000And I was gonna say, like, the most disturbing thing is, like, what's actually going on in Venezuela now is the stuff that we say sarcastically to socialists in this country that it's gonna turn into.
00:18:35.000And before you say that it's not true socialism, let me walk you through the top lessons we've learned, as to why it is.
00:18:41.000Lesson number five, by the way, is that democratic socialists are going to hate lessons four through one.
00:18:46.000Hit the notification bell, bookmark the page, join up at Mug Club, by the way, because we're hitting, everything's demonetized now versus driving iTunes.
00:18:55.000So, the fourth lesson that I think is most important is that socialism doesn't work.
00:18:58.000And I know a lot of people say, well this isn't... No, no, hold on a second.
00:19:02.000We're not talking about places like Venezuela.
00:19:04.000Actually, do you know how I know you... Bernie Sanders and celebrities have long praised Venezuela and other South American socialist countries.
00:19:12.000They did it when their economies seemed to work.
00:19:15.000Way back in, what was it, 1961, they invaded Cuba.
00:19:18.000And everybody was totally convinced that Castro was the worst guy in the world, that all the Cuban people were gonna rise up in rebellion against Fidel Castro.
00:19:25.000They forgot that he educated their kids, gave them healthcare, totally transformed the society.
00:19:30.000You know, it's funny, sometimes American journalists talk about how bad a country is because people are lining up for food.
00:19:51.000Bernie still has an article on his website today, right now, that claims Venezuelans are living the American dream better than those in the United States.
00:20:00.000And I guarantee you, after this show, they'll probably wait two weeks until this blows over, and then remove it, and then you can time machine go back to today!
00:21:42.000Sorry, leftists, you can't blame this on corrupt leaders when your system, the system of socialism, is what grants them unbridled power in the first place.
00:21:54.000The fact that a socialist turns into a dictator because you created the sole environment where he can become an all-powerful dictator is your fault. Yes. And we already did a video debunking
00:22:05.000John Oliver's lies specifically on Venezuela, why it failed. You can watch it on the channel.
00:22:08.000But let me give you kind of a brief summary for people who understand. They try and say, well,
00:22:26.000They used it to pay for a ton of socialist programs.
00:22:28.000That's why people liked them for a while, creating a bubble that burst when the oil market didn't do that well.
00:22:32.000So when people say it's all about oil, no, no, no!
00:22:34.000What was a road bump for the capitalist economies was an absolute disaster for Venezuela.
00:22:40.000So before these protests, this is what's important to note, right now you see them being run over with tanks and shot by their government, it seems severe, but before this they were starving, they were digging through trash for food.
00:22:50.000Socialism doesn't just kill people by running them down with tanks.
00:23:17.000History has never shown that to be the case.
00:23:19.000Anyone that gets into power and has power like that historically has always, like you said, led to being a dictator and killing their citizens.
00:25:01.000Before we get into the statistics, let me ask you this.
00:25:05.000Do you think it's a better scenario that citizens are being defenselessly run over by tanks from their government as opposed to a civil war scenario where they fight back?
00:25:13.000So because they're completely defenseless right now and they're getting bazooka'd to high heaven, you think they should have no way to defend themselves?
00:25:38.000There's a ground war that needs to be fought.
00:25:40.000And right now they are fighting without guns.
00:25:42.000And the Second Amendment is designed specifically.
00:25:44.000This is where people miss it when they talk about it being hunting.
00:25:47.000I know I sound like a broken record, but it's designed specifically to prevent this kind of government from even attempting this sort of tyranny.
00:26:25.000And if you think, again, you think that genocide is better in Venezuela than a civil war, I need to hear your argument when you say that guns in the hands of civilians wouldn't help.
00:26:37.000You have to have some kind of a protection.
00:26:38.000If these people had guns, Maduro would have stopped a long time ago knowing that they would have come after him if he made those kinds of decisions that led to the conditions they're in now.
00:26:46.000He would have had a check against him, even if it wasn't used.
00:26:49.000Just like we have a historical precedent for all socialist, Marxist, communist governments doing this.
00:26:53.000Do we have any kind of a precedent for armed populations fighting people?
00:26:56.000Well, Switzerland weren't invaded during World War II, and I know some of you will say, well, they had a geographical advantage because of the mountainous regions.
00:27:05.000When they were asked why they didn't invite the United States after Pearl Harbor, said, there would have been a gun behind every blade of grass.
00:28:09.000So we would absolutely... And we can't.
00:28:11.000As a matter of fact, I'm pretty sure we'll talk with Senator Rand Paul after the break and he'll tell us that I know he doesn't think we should still be there because he thinks it's unwinnable.
00:28:17.000If I had to say something about it... That was because I mean... That's a good point.
00:28:19.000I mean, to contradict Joe a little bit, when you think U.S.
00:28:22.000history only started in January 2009, what's in Vietnam?
00:30:19.000So if Russia is this socialist, Marxist, whatever, like the alternative to capitalist society over here that they want to usher in, wouldn't they want Donald Trump to be a stooge of the Russians so that it would happen here?
00:30:30.000Why are they so opposed to the Russia connection if Russia has helped communism spread around the world and socialism by extension?
00:31:21.000For the 20th century, socialist Marxist regimes have killed over 100 million people.
00:31:25.000Tell that to your edgy atheist friend who talks about all religions being fought in the name, all wars being fought in the name of religion.
00:32:37.000Maybe not the next guy, but it could be the next guy, and the next guy, and the next guy, and you're too far in because you're dependent on the government based on these policies because you thought you were getting a gimme.
00:32:47.000Something else here that I think is important to note.
00:37:02.000You might want to get your hands on it.
00:37:03.000Now, I'm not going to lie, I don't mean this in any of the demonic undead sense, but because of the white hair and the lighter eyes, it wouldn't require too creative photoshopping to make you a White Walker.
00:37:43.000Just peripherally, and a lot of people have been talking about it on the floor of the Senate.
00:37:47.000You know, I wasn't part of the hearings, but yeah, I've been hearing from Lindsey Graham and others that it seems like the other side sort of lost it.
00:37:55.000I mean, maybe just went completely bonkers, you know, over Barr, yelling and screaming at him, calling him a liar.
00:38:04.000I guess from my point of view, it sounds like that even Mueller doesn't dispute anything that Barr said.
00:38:12.000He just wanted more released of, I guess, his narrative that he wrote about the whole thing.
00:38:18.000But I guess my point of view on the whole Mueller report, the whole reveal, is that if you're not indicted for something, the government shouldn't release anything.
00:38:26.000You know, I went against the Mueller report, and the same would go for Hillary Clinton.
00:38:30.000I actually think Comey did a disservice to all of us, including the FBI, when he came forward and said, oh, we're not indicting her, but she really seems guilty as hell on these three different things.
00:38:42.000Because think about it from your perspective, or an ordinary citizen's perspective, that if the government accused you of a terrible crime that would make you a pariah in your whole community, but then it turns out you didn't commit it, would you want the government to say, The Democrats did not commit this horrendous crime and yet
00:38:59.000we're going to write a 400 page narrative describing all the things that he might have done
00:39:02.000that we think are kind of shady but he didn't commit the horrendous crime. I wouldn't want the
00:39:06.000government writing a 400 page report on what I've done today before lunch. I'd be incredibly
00:39:11.000embarrassed and I don't think you would appear on this program.
00:39:14.000But that was actually going to be my first question, because you blocked a resolution calling for the release of the Mueller report.
00:39:19.000And listen, you're obviously seen as an advocate for government transparency.
00:39:22.000You're kind of seen as that candidate, the torchbearer, if you will.
00:39:26.000So for those folks not in the know, you explained also, when you blocked this resolution, also that it was important to understand the origins of where the investigation began.
00:39:36.000I'm an advocate for individual liberty, and so I'm an advocate for the individual, and I'm an advocate for government being controlled and restrained from what it can do to individuals.
00:39:53.000So I look at a prosecution, or a prosecution where they do not find something that they can actually There isn't an overriding sort of, oh, we must be transparent about something that could destroy an individual where we didn't actually have proof that they committed a crime.
00:40:13.000So I think in this case, the individual's rights would trump any sort of argument for transparency.
00:40:19.000Now, in general, should the government be transparent?
00:40:41.000But, my advice is that he needs to generalize this and talk about what would happen, for example, if the government could look at all the tax returns of everyone they didn't like.
00:40:53.000So, Republicans get mad, they look at all the Democrats' tax returns.
00:40:57.000Democrats get mad, they look at Republicans.
00:40:59.000Or, what if we had special prosecutors for everybody?
00:41:03.000And so we don't know that there's a crime you've committed, but we say, you know, what we do is we have a person, and we're going to look for wrongdoing.
00:41:10.000That is an injustice, and it's important that people realize and remember that there's a burden on the government to prove guilt, and that's a tough burden.
00:41:20.000We do it intentionally because we want to give any kind of degree of doubt to the individual.
00:41:25.000We want to make the government have a bigger burden.
00:41:30.000And one thing Mueller really screwed up in this report is, Mueller failed in the one sense of understanding that the burden of guilt comes from the government, because he says at one point, oh, but we cannot exonerate the president.
00:41:43.000Well, that's not his business, and it's not the business of government to exonerate.
00:41:48.000The business of government is to overcome a hurdle, and it's his burden of proof to prove someone's guilt.
00:41:54.000Because if we had to prove everyone innocent, it's like, Oh, well, I'm pretty sure Stephen didn't do that, and we're not going to indict you, but I can't absolutely say that Stephen's completely innocent of all crime.
00:42:04.000The innuendo of that, and the government's full force and power, it's a terrible power, and we have to be very careful.
00:42:11.000And I've decided I won't ever vote for a special prosecutor, because I don't think it's the right justice.
00:42:15.000We have grand juries, we have normal prosecutors, but we don't need special prosecutors that go through everybody's life from the beginning of time.
00:43:05.000But there was no crime, and it turns out it was a false allegation.
00:43:08.000So, if you're falsely accused of something, and you try to get the charges dismissed, and you work hard to make sure that whoever's trying to accuse you of the false crimes doesn't succeed, are you obstructing justice, or are you actually helping and abetting justice?
00:43:23.000Or even it gets to the point, you know, where Barr answered a question from, uh, I think it was Kamala Harris.
00:43:30.000She said, uh, have you had, has the president, I want to make sure I get this correct.
00:43:36.000Has the president or anyone else instructed you to investigate anybody?
00:43:43.000And they're trying to act as though that's an own.
00:43:45.000I'm going, wait, and, and, uh, Barr said, uh, uh, I'm grappling with the word anyone else.
00:43:51.000It's like asking, hold on, have you, Senator Rand Paul, or anyone else ever said anything bad about anyone?
00:43:58.000And then if you say, I don't think so, is that obstruction?
00:44:01.000It seems like they're going to more generalized questions.
00:44:04.000If you look at the hearing, it was no longer about legality.
00:44:06.000It was about if he's a nice guy or not.
00:44:09.000Well, I think they're getting at whether the president has asked them to investigate the investigators, the ones who came up with this fake dossier.
00:44:17.000And I think they should, because I think it's very important that we have the head of the CIA, John Brennan, who swore under testimony that he never saw this dossier till January.
00:44:29.000Well, he had a task force for six months looking into this, and had members of the FBI on his team.
00:44:34.000You think he never saw one of those letters from Christopher Steele?
00:44:38.000I think he's parsing words, and this is the kind of stuff that they'll do to you.
00:44:42.000The dossier wasn't a dossier until they put all the letters together.
00:44:45.000Before that, there was 20 individual letters.
00:44:48.000So I think he read the letters, and then when they put together in a folder and called it a dossier, he says, well, I have not seen the dossier.
00:44:57.000Really, so much of this originated in government.
00:45:01.000Government took a dossier that no one would believe, and to get people to believe it, they gave it to people like John McCain, who then gave it back to the government.
00:45:08.000The FBI's like, well, John McCain gave us this dossier.
00:45:11.000Well, we already had it, but he gave it back to us, and now we need to investigate because a senator has given us what we already had that we gave them to begin with.
00:45:20.000Well, look what we found in Senator Rand Paul's recycling bin!
00:45:27.000Let me ask you this, because you've obviously been a critic of President Trump in the past, and I think you've supported, I think you've been very fair.
00:45:33.000What is it like, you said you played golf with him.
00:45:41.000We both love the game of golf, which helps.
00:45:43.000He's very competitive, and so we have a good competitive round usually when we play.
00:45:48.000And really, it doesn't get overly serious.
00:45:50.000But I can tell you through the round, and being around him a long time, and hearing his statements, that I'm very encouraged by some of his sentiments and his instincts.
00:46:07.000None of the Bushes would have ever said that.
00:46:09.000None of the establishment Republicans would have ever said that.
00:46:11.000It takes somebody who hasn't been muddled and drugged down by all of the establishment neoconservative rhetoric to say something like that, but it's exactly what I believe.
00:46:25.000And in private and in public, when I talk to him, he says that he wants to be the president that gets, you know, that ends some of these wars.
00:46:32.000In Afghanistan, we're spending $50 billion a year.
00:46:35.000There's not a general left at the Pentagon who actually believes that there is a military solution in Afghanistan.
00:46:41.000So I don't want to send the last kid or send one of my family members over there to fight in a war where every general is saying there is no military solution.
00:47:30.000But before I get to the penny plan, which is what I want to get to, you mentioned that, so I am curious, how does that go when you speak with the president on Syria, for example?
00:47:40.000Obviously, you've adamantly been calling for withdrawal of troops from Syria.
00:47:45.000You know, I think where there's agreement is that he believes that the Iraq war was a mistake, that toppling the Iraq regime made Iran stronger and made the Middle East, there's more unrest in the Middle East because of the Iraq war.
00:47:59.000I think he thinks that leaving troops in Syria, that Syria is such a mess, will lead to more problems.
00:48:05.000Now, his advisors are neoconservatism people who are the stay forever crowd.
00:48:21.000You know, it happened at the barracks in Beirut.
00:48:23.000Ronald Reagan decided, you know, this place is You know, crazy over there and we're just not staying, and he brought the troops home from Lebanon.
00:48:31.000I think Trump has great instincts on that.
00:48:34.000And even at the very least, if he put them on, you know, I'm not for staying forever in Iraq also, but it'd be better to have them on a military base in Iraq than it would be in the middle of that war in between the Turks, the jihadists, which some on our side call allies.
00:51:10.000In Washington, we were going to increase by $100 billion, so that's a $100 billion cut.
00:51:16.000So we have to explain to people the whole math and the media is so biased in this that it's hard for people to get, but if we can get directly to the people and say, just cut 1%.
00:51:26.000So every day in my office, a half a dozen groups come in with their hands out like this.
00:52:44.000Well, that was going to be my follow-up question because if we're going to talk about the two penny plan, the penny
00:52:48.000plan of 1% or 2%, I was going to ask where do you cut it?
00:52:52.000Because of course, you know, if anyone goes back and watches the West Wing, they make it seem as though Republicans only want to put cuts into health care and Medicare and education, and then the left, they always only want to make cuts in national defense.
00:53:03.000So you're talking about putting that one or two percent cut across the board?
00:53:50.000But the military spending can only go up if you give the Democrats welfare spending so they'll vote for the military spending and vice versa.
00:53:59.000You could actually cut a little bit from everything and actually bring down spending.
00:54:03.000But the opposite compromise, the bipartisan compromise to spend more money has been going on for ever since probably FDR.
00:54:11.000And the thing is, you can find almost all politicians at some point saying, yeah, there is some wasteful government spending, they're just usually attributing it to the other side.
00:54:19.000Or like you said, the left often attributes it to the military, and the right often attributes it to social welfare states.
00:54:23.000So it seems you're saying only 15, 20 Republicans would vote for this.
00:54:27.000So I hate to say it, but you pitch this wonderful plan that to people watching, we say, well, that makes sense.
00:54:49.000Go out there and get better Republicans.
00:54:51.000And so I think the primaries are the place to put your effort.
00:54:56.000Not as many people vote in the primaries, so your vote counts more, your money counts more.
00:55:00.000So I would go out there and try to get better people to represent you.
00:55:04.000And I think the louder people are, the better.
00:55:06.000The other thing is, is by my having the vote, even though I know I won't win, because I know these people, I'm around them all the time, I know no Democrat will vote to cut the deficit, and I know half the Republicans won't.
00:55:17.000But by forcing them to vote, it embarrasses them, and it puts them on record, and maybe one of them goes home and has a strong primary challenge that says, why didn't you vote for the penny plan?
00:55:27.000So it has the potential to actually upset the apple cart and get new people up here.
00:55:34.000They don't want to let me have the vote.
00:55:36.000I will only get a vote if I force them to, which is what we're craftily, very secretly, and I can't tell you all the secret tricks we're using to force a vote, but we think we will get a vote in the next week or two.
00:55:48.000Well, see, that's the problem, is then you force the vote and you radicalize young youth into cutting 1% spending.
00:55:54.000I don't know who you think you are, Senator Rand Paul, but you're out with the White Walkers.
01:00:04.000So we're moving all of the edit bay, green screen where we tape all that's going to a new space, and then the next phase is going to be this actual studio moving to that space as well so that we don't miss like two weeks of shows.
01:00:15.000You were just telling me something, you and Too Cute Maddie, something, you were mad about Burger King?
01:00:18.000Yeah, so Burger King just released this idiotic ad today.
01:01:43.000He's gone home, and when I was looking it up, I was like, well, man, this can be pretty severe, and because I didn't want to upset my wife, and there's nothing we can do because we're in another state.
01:01:49.000So one of the things I got talked about is, man, sometimes you don't lie to your wife.
01:01:56.000But the truth is, it's really tough, can cause a lot of organ damage.
01:01:58.000Anyone who has a, and he does seem to be doing well, but anyone who has info on that would appreciate it, maybe you send me some, because we'll take all the help we can get.
01:02:07.000And my wife and I, it was pretty tough, had to come through this week.
01:02:11.000And you know, I really, I just, there's nothing, people often say, oh, you're saying that because, I love my wife, I love my father-in-law, I'm really fortunate, I love my mother-in-law, I love my father-in-law, I love my mother and my father, my wife, and we really, we all get along pretty well.
01:02:23.000But I will say this, my wife and I have had conflicts quite a bit.
01:02:49.000We have an entire generation of people, kind of like you're talking about with Burger King, who believe that conflict in and of itself is immoral or even impolite.
01:03:58.000And this is a part of the leftist worldview which, ironically, is rooted in absolutism.
01:04:03.000In trying to be staunchly opposed to moral absolutism, one of the only absolutes that many leftists, but many progressives, believe is that conflict is wrong.
01:04:13.000Or that violence is wrong, but we're not even talking about that today.
01:04:15.000You know what happens in a war scenario without conflict?
01:04:35.000Conflict is uncomfortable, as it's easy to sell people a worldview or a political ideology that tells them their discomfort is unnecessary, unwarranted, or it's out of their control, and it promises to end all conflicts for them.
01:04:48.000I'm telling you right now that conflict is unavoidable.
01:04:51.000You can live your whole life trying to be Mr. Nice Guy, Mr. Milk Toast, avoid discussing religion and politics, avoid standing up for anything, try to fly under the radar.
01:04:58.000Conflict at some point will find you, period.
01:05:02.000And that's why I think it's important for everyone else too, but I accept conflict as a fact of life.
01:05:06.000And rather than avoid it, I want to see more people learn conflict resolution.
01:05:11.000Rather than learn how to not fight in a marriage, I want to... No one's going to learn how to not fight in a marriage.
01:05:18.000No one's going to learn how to be comfortable their whole life.
01:05:20.000No one's going to learn how to be happy their whole life.
01:05:22.000But you can learn to find resolutions through the conflict.
01:05:26.000Do you find yourself avoiding conflict?
01:06:14.000But you often make up for time on the other side.
01:06:17.000That difficult initial climb—and it sucks, don't get me wrong—makes the rest of the ride easier, more efficient.
01:06:23.000And I don't want you to mistake this, what I'm talking about right here.
01:06:27.000I don't want you to mistake it with advising you to live a caustic life or to be one of those unbearable people looking for a fight when there needn't be one.
01:07:00.000I want you to think about this for a second.
01:07:02.000Is there a conflict that maybe you've been avoiding in your life that you've been putting off because you know it's hard and it's uncomfortable but it's necessary?
01:07:20.000But if you avoid the fight your whole life, I guarantee you that you'll find yourself in a prison of your own making, haunted for the rest of your life by the idea of what could have been.