Blow's latest piece in the New York Times is one of the worst anti-Trump op-eds I've ever seen, and it's written by a guy who would not pass a freshman seminar at a public college. Ben Shapiro breaks it down, and explains why it's so bad, and how it reveals the left's blind spot when it comes to President Trump. Plus, Ben explains why Charles Blow is a shoddy writer, and why he thinks Trump isn't Hitler, except for the mustache. Ben Shapiro is the host of The Ben Shapiro Show on Fox News Radio and host of the conservative podcast The Weekly Standard, and is a regular contributor to The Daily Wire. He's also a frequent contributor to the Weekly Standard and has been featured in The Daily Caller, The Daily Beast, and The Huffington Post, among other publications. He's a frequent guest on CNN, NPR, and CBS Radio, and he's a regular guest on the conservative radio show Morning Joe, where he's known as "The Average Joe" and hosts his thoughts on current events, including the Iran sanctions scandal, the Iran hostage crisis, and the Iran nuclear deal, as well as his opinions on the Trump administration and its impact on the Iran deal, and much, much more. You won't want to miss this! Learn more about him and his work at his new book, "Hitler Isn't Hitler: How Hitler Wasn't Hitler," out now, out now. If you haven't read it yet, you'll have to listen to it on Amazon Prime Video and subscribe to his channel on Audible, iTunes, Podcharts, Podcoin, or wherever else you're listening to the podcast, and you'll get a copy of the book on the book, Too Stupid to Read It? You'll get the book out in paperback, too! Subscribe to Ben Shapiro's newest novel, "How Hitler Is Hitler: The Real Hitler Is Not Hitler?" by clicking here. Subscribe on Apple Podcasts and subscribe on iTunes, too? Subscribe on Podchaser, wherever you get your own copy of The Daily Mail Online, and other good stuff like it's best listening advice, and more, like Ben Shapiro on the internet, too, you won't be disappointed by Ben Shapiro, Ben Shapiro will be notified when he posts it on his podcast, too. That's right, it'll be the first to know who's getting the best of it all?
00:00:00.000Our President Trump's wounds self-inflicted, the continuing controversy over whether he's treating the Gold Star families properly, plus questions about Niger, and the worst anti-Trump op-ed in the New York Times I have ever seen.
00:00:21.000So I do have to say, this Charles Blow op-ed in the New York Times is not just one of the worst op-eds about Trump I've ever seen, it's one of the worst written op-eds about Trump I've ever seen.
00:00:29.000I want to go through it at length because I think that it reveals something about where the blind spot is for the left with regard to President Trump.
00:00:36.000But first, I want to say thank you to our sponsors over at Wink.
00:00:43.000But you have to go over to somebody's house for dinner, and you want to bring a good bottle of wine that isn't going to cost you a fortune.
00:00:48.000This is why you need to go over to my friends at Wink.
00:00:51.000They make it easy to discover great wine.
00:00:53.000That's because they have wine experts who select wines matched to your taste, personalized for you, shipped right to your door, starting just 13 bucks a bottle.
00:01:00.000There is nothing like coming home to a delicious box of Wink wine selected just for you.
00:01:06.000If you want a bottle of wine that's curated to your taste, or to the taste of the people you bring the bottle of wine over to, then you need to go over there and you need to take their personalized survey.
00:01:14.000It asks you what foods you like, and asks what your palate is like, and then it personalizes a wine recommendation just for you.
00:01:45.000That's $20 off your first shipment, which means basically you're gonna get at least one bottle of wine without paying for it, since each bottle of wine is about $13.
00:01:52.000So that means try wink.com slash ben to get $20 off your first shipment.
00:02:30.000So he isn't like Hitler, but he's kind of like him except for the mustache.
00:02:36.000That's pretty much where Charles Blow over at the New York Times is going.
00:02:39.000Now what's astonishing about Charles Blow is not just that he's a bad thinker.
00:02:42.000The New York Times op-ed page, as Andrew Klavan is fond of saying, a former newspaper, their op-ed page, as we have criticized in the last week, is full of people who are shoddy thinkers.
00:02:51.000The real problem with the New York Times op-ed page with Charles Blow is that Charles Blow is a shoddy writer.
00:02:57.000I'm going to read you some of the stuff from this column, and you're going to see, this is stuff that would not pass you through freshman seminar at a public college.
00:03:04.000I mean, this is really not high-level stuff.
00:03:07.000Charles Blow begins, It is a commonly accepted rule among those who are in the business of argument, especially online, that he or she who invokes Adolf Hitler, either in oratory or essays, automatically forfeits the argument.
00:03:19.000But don't worry, he's gonna do it anyway.
00:03:21.000Since the reference is deemed far too extreme, too explosive, too far beyond rational correlation.
00:03:26.000No matter how bad a present-day politician, not one of them has charted or is charting a course to exterminate millions of innocent people as an act of ethnic cleansing.
00:03:33.000Hitler stands alone in this regard, but, but,
00:03:36.000There are strategies that Hitler used to secure power and rise, things that allowed his murderous reign, that can teach us about political theory and practice.
00:03:44.000And very reasonable and sage comparisons can be drawn between Hitler's strategies and those of others.
00:03:49.000So now he's going to make a reasonable and sage comparison.
00:03:52.000What exactly is his reasonable and sage comparison?
00:03:55.000It's that Hitler was a liar, and so is Donald J. Adolf Trump.
00:04:01.000He says, Now, it's always weird to use Hitler as an example of anything other than mass murder.
00:04:15.000Like, I actually am not somebody who believes you can never make Hitler comparisons.
00:04:18.000I agree, actually, with Charles Blow that it is sometimes worthwhile to look at how dictators rise to power, not using Hitler as the only example, looking at people like Mussolini or looking at people like Franco.
00:04:27.000Looking at the various dictators around the world and saying, how did they rise to power?
00:04:31.000Hitler's a particularly instructive example because he rose to power in a democracy, right?
00:04:35.000He was actually elected to his position as chancellor, essentially.
00:04:39.000And it's fascinating to see what he did in order to get there.
00:04:42.000That's why he's such an interesting character historically, at least with regard to these sorts of comparisons.
00:04:48.000But to boil Hitler down to the liar is, again, historically ignorant.
00:04:52.000This idea that Hitler was the ultimate liar or that Hitler teaches us all how lies work in politics ignores that lies have worked in politics for pretty much every politician ever.
00:05:57.000It is the lie that is really a factor of the person lying having more information but not telling the truth than you, and you don't have enough information to determine whether it's the truth or a lie.
00:06:08.000That's the lie that's successful, and the more it's repeated, the better it does.
00:06:11.000But what people on the left can't stand about Trump is that, well, one of the things, one of many things, is that Trump lies audaciously and says things that aren't true all the time, and people don't seem to care.
00:06:21.000And the left doesn't understand why that is.
00:06:22.000The left says, well, why can't anyone just acknowledge he's a liar?
00:06:25.000Okay, I cut a video during the primaries in last year's election cycle in which I explicitly said Donald Trump is a liar.
00:06:55.000There is not a single poll that has shown that Americans think Trump is trustworthy.
00:06:58.000In fact, there are polls showing that people think CNN is more trustworthy than Trump.
00:07:02.000The exit polls from 2016, an election that Trump won, show that 64% of Americans thought Trump was neither honest nor trustworthy.
00:07:10.000The same polls, of course, showed that about the same number of people thought Hitler, not Hitler, thought that Hillary was neither honest nor trustworthy.
00:07:17.000So that is the real problem for the left.
00:07:19.000Not that Trump lies and he gets away with it, but that they lie too, and the American public identify all the lies, and then they prefer the lies of Donald Trump to the lies of Hillary Clinton.
00:07:28.000That's what's actually going on in American politics.
00:07:30.000Not that Trump lies and everybody goes, he's telling the truth.
00:07:33.000There's 30% of the population that does that, okay?
00:07:35.000There are 30% of people who will do that.
00:07:37.000There's the Bill Mitchells of the world who say that everything Trump says is gospel truth, it is coming down on high from Sinai, it is absolutely 100% real.
00:07:46.000But most people, most Americans look at Trump and they say sometimes he tells the truth, and sometimes he tells truths that are really necessary, and sometimes he just lies because he says crap.
00:07:54.000As I've said many times on this show, sometimes he just says crap.
00:07:57.000But Charles Blow thinks that the real reason Trump is winning is because he is just such a skilled, exact, razor-sharp liar.
00:08:07.000He has figured out the Hitlerian tool.
00:08:10.000So he writes, Trump is no Hitler, but the way he has manipulated the American people with outrageous lies stacked one on top of the other has an eerie historical resonance.
00:08:22.000Okay, what I would like to know are what were the outrageous lies that he stabbed one on top of another.
00:08:27.000The ones that he said during the campaign, the talking points he said during the campaign that won him victory, were actually mostly true, right?
00:08:33.000When he talked about how Hillary Clinton was a criminal.
00:08:47.000I may not have believed them, but they were true.
00:08:49.000I mean, I didn't believe the one about the court, because I have other issues with the court, but I think what he was saying was, at least at root, had an element of truth to it, for sure.
00:08:58.000The stuff that he said that wasn't true during the campaign, the stuff about Ted Cruz's father killing John F. Kennedy and such, you know, that kind of stuff, people just went, meh, whatever.
00:09:06.000They were willing to overlook that because they felt like all politicians lie.
00:09:09.000Now, that is, I think, the biggest lie that has been promulgated, and that's not
00:10:56.000I mean that writing is- that should be in like the purple writing competition that they have every year where they do like the worst sex scenes.
00:11:38.000The reason that I point this out today is because Trump is under assault.
00:11:41.000And one of the questions we have to ask ourselves, to be honest observers of the situation, is whether Trump's current political position, he's in a bad political position right now, how much of that is self-inflicted and how much of that is because the media are out to get him.
00:11:55.000And I think it's a combination of both.
00:11:57.000He has a penchant for shooting himself in both feet and then taking a knife and stabbing himself in both feet and then taking a sledgehammer and bashing himself in both feet and then he hobbles around complaining about the media.
00:12:08.000I think the media are more than happy to join in on the fun.
00:12:11.000I think the media are looking for opportunities to do this.
00:12:14.000So today's case in point is the situation over in Niger.
00:12:19.000If you missed what actually happened, it was easy to miss it because the media didn't even cover it.
00:12:22.000So on October 4th, there was an ISIS, apparently ISIS, attack in Niger, okay?
00:12:27.000And this ISIS attack in Niger killed four Americans and, uh, I'm sorry, it killed four Americans and wounded another two.
00:12:36.000To hear Mr. Trump's verbiage to the wife
00:12:58.000I want to know from Mr. Trump, what happened to LeDavid in Nigeria?
00:14:38.000And then we were told in the aftermath of all of this that everything had gone swimmingly, and that Hillary Clinton had done her job, and all the rest.
00:14:45.000So there are a bunch of different issues that happened in Benghazi that didn't necessarily happen in Niger.
00:14:50.000The Democrats are constantly looking for something to be Trump's ex, right?
00:15:14.000Now, before I go any further and ask the questions about Niger, I first want to stop and say thank you to our sponsors over at Beachbody On Demand.
00:16:24.000It already has over a million members.
00:16:26.000Your listeners right now can claim a free trial membership, right?
00:16:29.000Ben Shapiro listeners, we can claim a free trial membership.
00:16:32.000Text Shapiro to 30 30 30, Shapiro to 30 30 30, and get full access to the entire platform for free.
00:16:38.000So go to your phone right now, I mean while you're listening, and just...
00:16:42.000Text the number 30 30 30 and text the text Shapiro there and you get a full trial access a free trial membership to Beachbody on-demand again that gives you access to all of these workouts 600 different workouts all the best workouts all the ones that you see people on TV raving about you get all of that and get to try it for free and see whether you like it I promise you will Beachbody on-demand text Shapiro to 30 30 30 again Shapiro to 30 30 30
00:17:07.000Okay, so it is important at this point, I think, to take a look at what was happening in Niger.
00:17:13.000So, over in Niger, a group of American soldiers was reportedly ambushed by 50 ISIS-affiliated fighters.
00:18:18.000So one of the problems here is that about 30 minutes after this attack started, there were planes that arrived, but they didn't have permission to drop bombs.
00:18:25.000They were just doing flyovers of terrorists, which is insane.
00:18:50.000ISIS is extraordinarily active in Africa, both Northern Africa and Sub-Saharan Africa, and they use Niger as a thoroughfare to move from Northern Africa to Sub-Saharan Africa.
00:19:00.000The Pentagon is still trying to figure out why we didn't know that this ambush was going to take place.
00:19:05.000Apparently, a bunch of our soldiers were there for a meeting.
00:19:07.000Half of them were by the Humvees, and half of them were at the meeting.
00:19:10.000On the way out of the meeting is when the ambush took place.
00:19:14.000This does raise the question, if it was an ISIS attack, why the administration has not openly acknowledged that it was an ISIS attack?
00:19:20.000That seems to me a real question, considering we're wondering why didn't the Obama administration acknowledge that Al Qaeda was behind the Benghazi attack?
00:19:27.000The third question is, what exactly happened to Sergeant Johnson?
00:19:30.000So according to CNN, quote, which is just astonishing.
00:19:48.000His body was eventually found in a nearby area, but military investigators do not know why he was left behind during the French-led evacuation, and if he was alive even for a short period of time, U.S.
00:20:01.000There's going to have to be an investigation there.
00:20:03.000We need to know why help didn't arrive sooner.
00:20:05.000Why didn't the air cover arrive sooner?
00:20:08.000There was apparently a 30-minute delay.
00:20:09.000And why did it take Trump 12 days to acknowledge the death?
00:20:12.000So, even though this took place on October 4th, and even though the Pentagon had a statement drafted that day, Trump didn't say anything.
00:20:18.000On October 5th, White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said something in a press conference, but Trump himself didn't say anything until last Monday.
00:20:26.000It was last Monday that Trump got himself in hot water.
00:20:28.000So, is this a case of the media being out to get Trump?
00:20:31.000Or is this a case of a self-inflicted wound?
00:20:34.000And the answer is a little bit of both.
00:20:36.000Trump should have acknowledged this earlier.
00:20:37.000Trump should have been forthcoming about this.
00:20:39.000I do not, for the life of me, understand why any president isn't forthcoming about the bad things that happen.
00:20:45.000are very forgiving when bad things happen and presidents tell the truth.
00:20:48.000They're very unforgiving when bad things happen and presidents lie to them.
00:20:53.000Trump didn't lie here, but Trump should have acknowledged this earlier, obviously.
00:20:56.000And then Trump, because he's defensive, because he's a defensive fellow who feels insulted all the time, instead of him saying, listen, we're working on speaking with all the families.
00:21:04.000That's something that's got to be done through proper channels.
00:21:06.000Instead, he said, we've called everybody and I don't think former presidents have called everybody.
00:21:10.000And that, of course, is what launched the second firestorm.
00:21:13.000And this, again, is half Trump and half the media.
00:21:15.000It's Trump's fault for launching a thousand ships here.
00:21:18.000It's Trump's fault for saying that Obama or Bush weren't proper in their respect for the troops.
00:21:41.000The idea that Bush or Obama were disrespectful to the families of fallen troops, that is not true.
00:21:47.000But what the media did is instead of just saying, that's not true, as I've been saying for two days, or three days, the media has decided instead it is necessary and vital for them to go out and say that Donald Trump actively does not care about the troops.
00:21:59.000And so what they did is they decided to go and track down every family of every troop who's been killed while Trump has been president.
00:22:05.000And then they decide that they're going to make Trump look bad.
00:22:07.000So there's a gold star widow who was on CNN saying, you know, Trump said he called everybody.
00:22:14.000At the Dignified Transfer in Dover, I was extremely honored to have had Vice President Pence there.
00:22:19.000He spent a great deal of time talking to me, and it wasn't—it wasn't an uncomfortable type of thing.
00:22:25.000He really was just a very genuine human being, and he shared his condolences, and he talked to me like he knew me forever.
00:22:31.000So it meant a lot for me to have him there.
00:22:37.000Maybe it was—it was around the same time.
00:22:39.000I know that I was meeting with my casualty officer, and he received a call from the White House.
00:22:45.000I'm not exactly sure who, but he was told that I needed to be by my phone for the next few days because the president would be calling me to express his condolences on behalf of the nation.
00:22:55.000And I just—I never received the phone call.
00:22:59.000So the media, of course, tracking all of these things down now.
00:23:11.000It's actually not really our business whether Trump calls these troops families or not, at least not until the troops' families come out and speak about it openly and ask Trump to do so.
00:23:20.000There's another story that came out from CNN.
00:24:24.000You are sleeping on those things every night.
00:24:25.000Bull and branch sheets, they're breathable, they are comfortable, most comfortable sheets you have ever slept on.
00:24:30.000They're the right sheets that can take your sleep and your style to the next level.
00:24:33.000There are three ex-presidents, and Bill Clinton's lovers if he's one of them, who sleep on bull and branch sheets.
00:24:38.000Bull and branch sheets are worth every penny.
00:24:40.000What makes them unique is that each sheet is crafted from 100% organic cotton, which means they not only feel incredible, they also look amazing.
00:24:47.000You know, again, I'm not any sort of connoisseur when it comes to sheets.
00:24:50.000All I can tell you is what feels good to me, and bull and branch is fantastic.
00:24:53.000And since they sell exclusively online, you don't pay the expensive retail markups.
00:24:57.000That's half the price, twice the quality.
00:24:59.000You will love them, and you can try them risk-free.
00:25:01.00030 nights, see for yourself, if you don't like them, return them for a full refund.
00:25:05.000And the reason they can afford to do that is because everybody likes the sheets.
00:25:07.000Go to bullandbranch.com today, you will get $50 off your first set of sheets, plus free shipping when you use that promo code BEN.
00:25:14.000So go to bullandbranch, B-O-L-L, and branch.com, use promo code BEN, $50 off, plus free shipping right now, bullandbranch.com, again,
00:25:23.000Okay, so, again, the question that we've been asking all podcast long is whether this is Trump's fault, the current onslaught against Trump is Trump's fault, or whether it's the media's fault.
00:25:35.000And again, the answer is that it's mostly the media, but Trump has to not hit the trigger wire.
00:25:39.000Okay, the media basically are like a landmine.
00:25:43.000And Trump has to avoid stepping on as many landmines as possible.
00:25:46.000Instead, Trump has a bad habit of seeing a landmine, grinning, and then jumping with both feet on top of it.
00:25:51.000And so the media have, of course, jumped on top of him with both feet.
00:25:55.000So, Rob Reiner, you know, just another example.
00:25:58.000He comes out yesterday and he says, well, Trump is a sociopath.
00:26:01.000He's a sociopath when it comes to the treatment of our troops.
00:26:27.000I mean, it's just a part of everything that he's done.
00:26:32.000Oh yeah, it's just a part of everything he's done, and of course the media love it, they lap it up, the view, there's big cheers from the crowd, and then they wonder why Trump thinks that the media's out to get him, because the media are out to get him.
00:26:42.000Now again, some of this is Trump's fault.
00:26:44.000Sarah Huckabee Sanders came out today, and she said that General Kelly, General John Kelly, was disgusted by the way all of this had been politicized.
00:26:53.000We'll play Sanders, and then I'll explain why Sanders is not completely correct to do what she's doing here.
00:26:59.000I think that General Kelly is disgusted by the way that this has been politicized and that the focus has become on the process and not the fact that American lives were lost.
00:27:10.000I think he's disgusted and frustrated by that.
00:27:12.000If he has any anger, it's towards that.
00:27:16.000Okay, so, again, she's saying now that General Kelly is upset about it.
00:27:19.000The fact is, General Kelly would not even be part of this story, except for the fact that the White House trotted out General Kelly as evidence that Obama didn't call every soldier, even though Obama sat next to General Kelly in 2011 and 2012, after the death of his son.
00:27:34.000This is why I say, a lot of it's the media.
00:27:57.000These autoplay videos are just terrible.
00:28:00.000Two top officials behind the Fusion GPS dossier alleging various Russian connections to President Trump's campaign invoked their Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination before the House Intelligence Committee on Wednesday.
00:28:12.000Fusion GPS co-founder Peter Fritsch, top lieutenant Thomas Kattan, were subpoenaed to appear before the committee in a closed-door session.
00:28:20.000In a closed door session on Wednesday, but asserted their right not to testify, a source close to the matter told Fox News.
00:28:26.000Frisch and Katan took the fifth on every question posed by committee members.
00:28:29.000Another co-founder, Glenn Simpson, is under subpoena for a later date.
00:28:36.000The backstory is, you remember there was this dossier, right, a Fusion GPS dossier compiled from a spy named Christopher Steele over in Britain.
00:28:43.000Fusion GPS is a democratic research firm.
00:28:46.000And they compiled this dossier, which ends up in the hands of the FBI.
00:28:49.000And very early in the Trump presidency, there's a story from BuzzFeed leaking this dossier to the press.
00:28:54.000The dossier had all of these weird allegations about Trump.
00:28:57.000Some have been substantiated, some have not.
00:28:59.000The ones that have not are the most ludicrous ones, the ones about him being peed on by Russian prostitutes and all of this kind of weird stuff.
00:29:47.000This is an example of how a story that is obviously good for Trump, Democrats probably targeting President Trump through Fusion GPS, coming up with bad data, and then submitting it to the FBI, how President Trump is capable of turning that into a story not about what the story is about.
00:30:02.000So Trump tweets out something about the Fusion GPS story, and what he tweets out is this.
00:30:08.000He tweets out that, quote, workers of firm involved with the discredited and fake dossier take the fifth.
00:30:20.000Well, you know, once you include the FBI and Russia in there, particularly, you're now basically accusing the FBI of being traitors, and that's not exactly the tack you want to take.
00:30:29.000Now, to be fair to President Trump, there have been reports that the FBI wanted to pay Christopher Steele to compile a dossier in the past, but they wouldn't use Fusion GPS to do it, presumably.
00:30:40.000I'm not aware that the FBI has ever used Fusion GPS as a thoroughfare to pay some spy to come up with a dossier.
00:30:45.000If they want to pay somebody, they just pay somebody.
00:30:47.000But, you know, now it's President Trump challenging his own FBI.
00:31:09.000And this is where Trump's Twitter feed could be a force for good, right?
00:31:11.000He can actually put a spotlight, but you have to put the spotlight in the right place.
00:31:15.000Now, that tweet right there, Trump allowed that to be overshadowed by his other activities.
00:31:35.000If Trump could pick the right spot, if Trump could use the knife where the knife is necessary, instead of just kind of waving it around like a crazy person in an airport, then his bully pulpit, the fact that he has this massive Twitter following, the fact that he can shift the media's attention like that on a dime, it would actually be quite powerful.
00:31:52.000Imagine if Trump tweeted one-tenth as much, but ten times as specifically.
00:31:57.000How much more effective would he be as president?
00:32:00.000I'm not saying get rid of the Twitter.
00:32:21.000The State Department probably knew about it.
00:32:22.000The State Department greenlit the deal anyway, even as Russia, and especially as Russia was pouring money into the Clinton Foundation coffers, Eric Holder, who was the head of that DOJ, he's now coming out saying he's a member of the resistance.
00:32:33.000And then we're supposed to wonder that Eric Holder is involved in corrupt activities with other Democrats?
00:32:40.000It's been a difficult thing to watch and it means that I think I have to be a part of the resistance and to try to save as much of the great work I think that we did as is possible and to try to ensure that we put in place leadership in 2018 and 2020 that will be supportive of the positive things that we did.
00:33:06.000You know, I'm a progressive Democrat, committed to the ideals of my party, and proud of the work that I did as Attorney General.
00:33:13.000Well, as Attorney General, you did the work of a hack.
00:33:16.000And he demonstrates that full well, and I'll show you in just a second.
00:33:19.000But first, I want to say thank you to our sponsors over at Quip.
00:33:22.000So, there are a lot of recent studies that say that if you do not brush your teeth properly, if your teeth are not properly cleaned, then it is linked to things like heart disease.
00:33:29.000Okay, this is why you need to clean your teeth.
00:33:31.000Plus, I mean, you just, it looks horrible if you got broccoli in there.
00:33:58.000You can subscribe right now to receive new brush heads on a dentist-recommended three-month plan for just five bucks, including free shipping.
00:34:05.000Right now, go to getquip.com slash Shapiro.
00:34:11.000Okay so it's much less expensive than the ones that you get over at the at the Rite Aid or the CVS and it is also much better than those ones because you can travel with it because it is super slim it's a nice looking toothbrush and you can subscribe so that the heads are replaced every so often.
00:34:26.000Right now go to getquip.com slash Shapiro to get that first refill pack free with the Quip electric toothbrush
00:34:32.000That is your first refill pack absolutely free at getquip.com slash Shapiro.
00:34:36.000Again, that's G-E-T-Q-U-I-P dot com slash Shapiro.
00:35:01.000James Comey, months before the investigation had closed, was already getting ready to exonerate Hillary Clinton.
00:35:05.000Eric Holder, of course, thinks that's hunky-dory.
00:35:09.000I've been critical of Jim Comey, but I've also known Jim Comey for, you know, 20, 30 years.
00:35:15.000He's an honest guy, and the determination that he made, and I think inappropriately announced, I think is based on the facts, based on his interpretation of the law, and there was nothing more than that.
00:35:28.000It was a good faith assessment by a person who I think has done a lot for this country.
00:35:33.000Well, I'm so glad that the partisan hack that is Eric Holder thinks that a good-faith assessment was done.
00:35:38.000Eric Holder should be called before Congress.
00:35:40.000He should be asked to answer questions as to why a uranium deal was allowed to go through with Hillary Clinton's foundation receiving money at the exact time he was head of the DOJ.
00:35:48.000That seems to me a major scandal that the media are completely ignoring.
00:35:52.000Okay, so last night, there was a big debate between Bernie Sanders and Ted Cruz.
00:35:55.000I also want to do things I like and things I hate.
00:35:57.000But first, we have to say goodbye to our friends over at Facebook.
00:36:00.000If you want to subscribe, then you can see the rest of the show live, which is just the best thing that you could possibly do.
00:36:05.000$9.99 a month, get you a subscription to dailywire.com.
00:36:17.000You get to be part of our mailbags when we do conversations, live question conversations.
00:36:21.000We'll answer your questions and make your life better.
00:36:23.000Plus, you get the website all ad-free, banner ad-free.
00:36:27.000And so, you get all those things for $9.99 a month.
00:36:29.000For $99 a year, you get the annual subscription, which comes along with the world-famous, never duplicated, never defeated Tumblr, the leftist-tears-hot-or-cold Tumblr.
00:36:38.000I don't even bring it on the road because it is that valuable.
00:36:40.000If the Eric lines were to lose it, then half of my net worth would be gone.
00:37:28.000The meaning of life and why I think our lack of meaning is leading us down a dark path in the United States where we are just clubbing the living crap out of each other on a daily basis.
00:37:36.000Two people who are clubbing the living crap out of each other on a daily basis.
00:37:39.000Ted Cruz using his Zodiac Killer knife and Bernie Sanders using his walker.
00:37:44.000They were doing it last night on CNN on taxes.
00:37:46.000It was about how you would expect it to go.
00:37:48.000I want to show you one clip of a guy stumping Bernie Sanders on taxes and doing something I wish Ted Cruz had done but didn't last night.
00:37:57.000Here is this questioner stumping Bernie Sanders on taxes.
00:38:01.000Senator Sanders, over my lifetime, all we've seen is more government and more expenses.
00:38:07.000Cutting taxes from top to bottom or bottom to top, however you view it, then will give some relief to the burdensome expenses all Americans face.
00:38:16.000Why would you not want a tax cut across the board for all Americans?
00:38:20.000Well, I do want a tax cut for the middle class and working families, but the Koch brothers should get a tax break of up to $30 billion.
00:38:49.000The reason that I think Republicans do this wrong is because I think that if you watched Ted Cruz last night, he too was focusing on the middle class and the lower classes need more tax cuts.
00:39:00.000The people who need the tax cuts the most in order to generate wealth in the economy are the people who are paying the taxes.
00:39:06.000That is disproportionately people at the top.
00:39:08.000It is very hard to give tax relief to people who are paying very little in taxes.
00:39:11.000I've done this tax breakdown before, so I don't see the need to do it again.
00:39:15.000The bottom line is that if you are in the lowest quintile of income earners in the United States, you're essentially paying zero taxes.
00:39:21.000When it comes to net taxes in the United States, meaning the benefits you get back from government, basically the only people paying taxes in the United States, net taxes in the United States, are people in the top 10% of income earners.
00:39:32.000Those are the people who are actually generating the jobs.
00:39:35.000There's a weird misconception about the economy, and that is that every dollar that is spent is equally helpful to the generation of a healthy economy.
00:39:43.000If I spend a dollar on a hamburger, that is not nearly as helpful to the generation of a stronger economy than if I spend that dollar investing in hiring somebody to grow Daily Wire.
00:39:54.000The reason for that is because I'm inventing new products and services over at Daily Wire.
00:39:58.000The reason that your life is better now than it was 20 years ago, the reason you have cool new stuff, the reason you can go on a computer and you can hit a button and stuff arrives at your door,
00:40:05.000The reason you can go to all of our advertisers online and order things that arrive at your door right now is because people were innovative.
00:40:12.000Because people created new products and services.
00:40:15.000It's not the amount of money passing through the economy that matters.
00:40:18.000It's the products that are being generated by the passage of that money.
00:40:22.000Income is a passive byproduct to the generation of new products and services.
00:40:27.000Like, presumably you're happier right now because you're watching this show.
00:40:30.000If we didn't have somebody investing in the show, namely you, and also people who are very wealthy who invested in the creation of Daily Wire, you wouldn't have that.
00:40:37.000And this is true of every product you own.
00:40:39.000This is true of every product you own.
00:40:41.000Bill Gates has done more to alleviate poverty than the federal government.
00:41:15.000Amazon is a better service for shopping than going to your local grocery store very often.
00:41:20.000It's particularly true if you're in a place like Manhattan where it's hard to schlep groceries around.
00:41:23.000The fact is that if you actually want a better world, you're going to have to allow people who generate new things to keep their money and generate more new things.
00:41:32.000Because it turns out that a lot of the people who generate new things, people like Elon Musk, they generate lots of new things.
00:41:36.000It's not they generate one new thing and now they're done.
00:41:39.000It's they generate lots of new things with that money.
00:42:15.000But in any case, the things that I like.
00:42:16.000Okay, so yesterday, Ben Sass was in a meeting with Ted Cruz.
00:42:21.000And Ben Sass decided that it was worthwhile to spill a Dr. Pepper on Ted Cruz.
00:42:26.000And this became kind of a viral thing.
00:42:28.000And then Ben Sass tweeted something at Ted Cruz about the idea that Ted Cruz, his father had killed JFK.
00:42:36.000So Ted Cruz then sent back this tweet, which is just awesome.
00:42:39.000Right, so Ben Sasse says, full disclosure, I was wearing my Lee Harvey Oswald was framed t-shirt, and then Ted Cruz tweeted back the Zodiac Killer note, which set the internet aflame.
00:42:49.000Right, it was like 79,000 likes, 47,000 retweets.
00:42:58.000It is also possible it was an assistant, but whatever it is, it's really, really funny.
00:43:02.000You know, this is why politicians ought to embrace
00:43:04.000Some of the memery on the internet because some of it's really funny.
00:43:06.000Speaking of memery on the internet, I did have to laugh yesterday because one of the things that was being passed around the internet was a conspiracy theory regarding Melania Trump.
00:43:14.000No, not that she's some sort of Russian spy.
00:43:16.000The conspiracy theory is that Melania Trump has a body double.
00:44:04.000The truth is that we know that it was Melania Trump because she does have a body double, but the body double was eating at Comet Ping Pong Pizza yesterday, so it couldn't have been her over there with Trump.
00:44:21.000It's been obliterated by all of the stupid news that we have to cover, but after ISIS was defeated in Raqqa, this is video of one of the women who was oppressed under ISIS.
00:44:37.000She was forced to wear that headscarf and she took it off and she threw it down.
00:44:55.000Okay, the liberation of human beings is something the American military is quite grand at and something the left should acknowledge because, you know, while they'd say that President Trump disrespects the military, it's the American left that's wanted to slash the military and suggest that the American military is a force for evil around the world for decades now.
00:45:10.000Okay, time for a couple of quick things that I hate.
00:45:17.000So first of all, Chelsea Handler-Man, I don't know why she thinks she's funny.
00:45:23.000I mean, I guess because she's very wealthy.
00:45:25.000Apparently somebody thinks she's funny, so I guess I'm in the minority here, or at least I'm part of a silent majority.
00:45:31.000But she cancelled her Netflix talk show because no one is watching it because it was crap.
00:45:35.000And instead she says she's now going to focus on... wait for it...
00:45:40.000Oh yeah, so she wrote this on Twitter.
00:45:42.000Like so many across the country, the past presidential election and the countless events that have unfolded since have galvanized me.
00:45:48.000From the national level down to the grassroots, it's clear our decisions at the ballot box next year will mark a defining moment for our nation.
00:45:54.000For these reasons, I've decided not to return for another season of Chelsea and instead to vote as much time as I can to becoming a more knowledgeable and engaged citizen and to focus on projects that may have significance to me.
00:46:04.000So first of all, I would recommend that you learn to read.
00:46:07.000The Cat in the Hat is always a great starter book.
00:47:10.000So Mayim Bialik, the star of the Big Bang Theory, one of the stars of the Big Bang Theory, long history in Hollywood, she wrote a piece about sexual harassment in the New York Times, and she just got an enormous amount of crap for it.
00:47:25.000Because she suggested that if you want to minimize the chances that you will be sexually harassed personally, then you might want to consider dressing more modestly.
00:47:34.000Okay, this is what she actually wrote.
00:47:36.000What she wrote is... Let me find the exact section.
00:47:51.000I've experienced the upside of not being a perfect 10.
00:47:53.000As a proud feminist with little desire to diet, get plastic surgery, or hire a personal trainer, I have almost no personal experience with men asking to meet me in their hotel rooms.
00:48:01.000Those of us in Hollywood who don't represent an impossible standard of beauty have luxury of being overlooked and in many cases ignored by men in power unless we can make the money.
00:48:39.000Nothing, absolutely nothing, excuses men for assaulting or abusing women.
00:48:42.000But we can't be naive about the culture we live in.
00:48:44.000I believe we can change our culture, but it won't be something that happens overnight.
00:48:48.000We live in a society that has treated women as disposable playmates for far longer than Mr. Weinstein has been meeting ingenues in luxury hotel rooms.
00:48:55.000So, I don't see what's wrong with anything that she's writing here.
00:48:59.000She's not saying that you bear the responsibility for sexual harassment or sexual assault if you don't dress modestly and a guy does something evil to you.
00:49:56.000The whole point here is to have rules that help minimize these situations.
00:50:00.000So yes, men should be the ones who have the burden of having the rules for the most part.
00:50:04.000But is it stupid to recognize the reality that if you are dressed in a more provocative fashion and you are openly flirting with a bunch of guys, it is more likely that somebody is going to sexually harass you?
00:50:16.000That doesn't, again, justify the sexual harassment.
00:50:34.000I can't—she says it herself in this piece.
00:50:36.000So the feminist movement comes out, oh, so terrible, Mayan Bialik, justifying sexual harassment, making—saying that women's are really—the victims are the provocateurs.
00:51:13.000That's all that Mayim Bialik is saying.
00:51:15.000And the fact that things like modesty are considered not preventative, the fact that things like taking sex seriously as opposed to just treating sex as a throwaway disposable object, that that may actually minimize chances of sexual assault and sexual harassment, I mean, isn't this, like, just obvious?
00:51:34.000If a woman decides to go up to a hotel room with a man, and then the man rapes her, the rape is a rape, and the guy should go to jail, be castrated, or killed.
00:51:44.000However, as a matter of practicality, would it not be smarter for the woman not to go up to the hotel room with the man in the first place if she can avoid it?
00:51:52.000Is it bad advice to say, listen, you can do whatever you want.
00:51:56.000It doesn't remove the moral responsibility from the man or add moral responsibility to you.
00:52:00.000But, just to be smart, wouldn't you want some risk mitigation here?
00:52:04.000Our entire life is about risk mitigation, and pretending that it's not is just blinding yourself to reality.
00:52:09.000It's really sickening to me what they're doing to Mayim Bialik.
00:52:21.000The Independent ran a piece like three days ago saying that Islam was the solution to sexual harassment.
00:52:26.000And Mayim Bialik basically says that simple Judeo-Christian modesty might be a way of minimizing opportunities for bad men to sexually harass you, and she's the one raked over the coals.
00:52:36.000Okay, so I was gonna do the big idea today, but I think that we may have run out of time, so we'll do it instead tomorrow, maybe with the mailbag.
00:52:43.000We'll be back home tomorrow, so less technical difficulties.
00:52:45.000We apologize for any technical difficulties you experience, but we will be back home from Tennessee tomorrow.