The Ben Shapiro Show - Biden’s Worst Nightmare Is Now Coming True

00:00:00.000 So, if you are up for an election, like a presidential election, about which presidential candidate the American public consider to be more of a legal problem, well, get ready because, boy, have I got an election coming for you.

00:00:10.000 Because that's essentially what this election is now going to be.

00:00:12.000 It's not going to be an election about the issues.

00:00:14.000 It may not even be an election about the economy.

00:00:16.000 If Joe Biden is indeed the nominee, if he survives to actually be the nominee, which, you know, he's not looking great, and if Donald Trump on the other side is the nominee, it's just going to be Democrats accusing Republicans of being lawbreakers and Republicans accusing Democrats of being lawbreakers, because here is the deal.

00:00:29.000 Joe Biden's squeaky clean, I'm above board image, whatever image existed, for those who weren't watching closely for the last 30 years of Joe Biden's political career, that image is now crumbling.

00:00:38.000 And that is a massive problem for him, as I said yesterday.

00:00:41.000 Whatever mud you throw at Donald Trump has no effect.

00:00:42.000 The man is made of mud.

00:00:43.000 When you throw mud at Joe Biden, it has a significant effect on his poll numbers.

00:00:48.000 And so his worst nightmare is now coming true because all of the Hunter Biden stuff is now breaking wide out into the open.

00:00:54.000 So, to understand exactly what's happening here, you have to begin with Joe Biden's claims over the past several years.

00:00:59.000 So, here is a montage of Joe Biden explaining his relationship to Hunter Biden's businesses.

00:01:04.000 Have you ever spoken to your son about his overseas business dealings?

00:01:06.000 I've never spoken to my son about his overseas business dealings.

00:01:08.000 He knew nothing, nothing, he knew nothing.

00:01:11.000 Here's Joe Biden explaining this, four years on end.

00:01:13.000 Have you ever spoken to your son about his overseas business dealings?

00:01:17.000 I've never spoken to my son about his overseas business dealings.

00:01:20.000 What's your understanding of what your son was doing for an extraordinary amount of money?

00:01:24.000 I don't know what he was doing.

00:01:26.000 I know he was on the board.

00:01:27.000 I found out he was on the board after he was on the board.

00:01:30.000 And that was it.

00:01:31.000 Well, you've had a lot of time.

00:01:33.000 Isn't this something you want to get to the bottom of?

00:01:35.000 No, because I trust my son.

00:01:37.000 I have not taken a penny from any foreign source ever in my life.

00:01:42.000 We learned that this president paid 50 times the tax in China, has a secret bank account with China, does business in China, and in fact is talking about me taking money?

00:01:55.000 I have not taken a single penny from any country whatsoever, ever.

00:01:59.000 My son has not made money.

00:02:02.000 In terms of this thing about... What are you talking about?

00:02:05.000 China.

00:02:06.000 I have not had... The only guy who made money from China is this guy.

00:02:10.000 He's the only one.

00:02:12.000 Nobody else has made money from China.

00:02:14.000 That's a lie.

00:02:15.000 And it turns out pretty much all of this is lies.

00:02:17.000 In fact, when confronted about Hunter Biden's business activities, Joe Biden tends to get very, very angry.

00:02:22.000 And that, by the way, is what they call the tell.

00:02:24.000 When Joe Biden gets very, very angry, when he gets very in a huff about a thing, it's likely because he did the thing.

00:02:30.000 So here's Peter Doocy asking Biden a question and Biden being a querulous old man.

00:02:35.000 Here's what I know.

00:02:36.000 I know Trump deserves to be investigated.

00:02:39.000 He is violating every basic norm of a president.

00:02:43.000 You should be asking him the question, why is he on the phone with a foreign leader, trying to intimidate a foreign leader, if that's what happened.

00:02:51.000 That appears what happened.

00:02:53.000 You should be looking at Trump.

00:02:55.000 Trump's doing this because he knows I'll beat him like a drum.

00:02:58.000 And he's using the abuse of power and every element of the presidency to try to do something to smear me.

00:03:07.000 Everybody looked at this and everybody's looked at it and said there's nothing there.

00:03:11.000 Ask the right question. 0.95

00:03:14.000 Yeah, fat.

00:03:15.000 So whenever Joe Biden gets false angry like that and then he kind of whips himself up into actual rage, it's because he probably did the things.

00:03:22.000 Well, Devin Archer, who was Hunter Biden's business partner for a significant period of time when tens of millions of dollars were moving through various different accounts associated with Hunter Biden, he testified in front of Congress yesterday.

00:03:34.000 And James Comer, who is the chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Accountability, put together a statement following a four-hour transcribed interview with the committee.

00:03:42.000 And here's what he says, quote, Devon Archer's testimony today confirms Joe Biden lied to

00:03:45.000 the American people when he said he had no knowledge about his son's business

00:03:48.000 dealings and was not involved.

00:03:49.000 Joe Biden was the brand his son sold around the world to enrich the Biden family.

00:03:53.000 When Joe Biden was vice president of the United States, he joined Hunter Biden for dinner with

00:03:58.000 his foreign business associates in person or by speakerphone over 20 times.

00:04:01.000 When Burisma's owner was facing pressure from the Ukrainian prosecutor investigating the company for corruption, Archer testified that Burisma executives asked Hunter to call D.C.

00:04:09.000 after a Burisma board meeting in Dubai.

00:04:12.000 By the way, that meshes very closely with the whistleblower account to the FBI,

00:04:16.000 the confidential human source account to the FBI that suggested that the head of Burisma had said

00:04:23.000 that he had paid money to Joe and Hunter in order to get Viktor Shokin,

00:04:26.000 the prosecutor in Ukraine, fired so that he would stop looking into Burisma.

00:04:31.000 Now, by the way, it could be that the head of Burisma said that because Hunter had told him that

00:04:35.000 and that Hunter didn't actually achieve that, but it doesn't matter because the bottom line is

00:04:39.000 that Joe was deeply involved, at least to the extent that he knew what was going on

00:04:43.000 with pretty much all of this.

00:04:44.000 Commer says, why did Joe Biden lie to the American people about his family's business dealings and his involvement?

00:04:48.000 It begs the question, what else he's hiding from the American people?

00:04:51.000 The House Committee on Oversight and Accountability will continue to follow the Biden's money trail and interview witnesses to determine whether foreign actors targeted the Bidens. 0.89

00:04:57.000 President Biden is compromised and corrupt.

00:04:58.000 International security is threatened. 0.70

00:05:00.000 So here are the key takeaways.

00:05:02.000 1.

00:05:02.000 Devin Archer testified that the value of adding Hunter Biden to Burisma's board was the brand and confirmed that then-Vice Presidential Biden was the brand.

00:05:10.000 And by the way, Hunter has openly said this.

00:05:12.000 Hunter was asked, why are we getting paid tons of money to be on Burisma's board?

00:05:15.000 He said, because my last name is Biden.

00:05:17.000 Archer admitted that Burisma would have gone out of business if the brand had not been attached to it.

00:05:21.000 He believed that Hunter Biden being on the board and the Biden brand contributed to Burisma's longevity.

00:05:25.000 People would have been intimidated to mess with Burisma legally because of the Biden brand.

00:05:28.000 He testified.

00:05:30.000 In December of 2015, Mykola Zlochevsky, owner of Burisma, and Vadim Porzharsky, an executive of Burisma, placed constant pressure on Hunter Biden to get help from D.C.

00:05:39.000 regarding Ukrainian prosecutor Viktor Shokin.

00:05:41.000 Shokin was investigating Burisma for corruption.

00:05:43.000 Hunter, along with Zlochevsky and Porzharsky, called D.C.

00:05:46.000 to discuss the matter.

00:05:47.000 Biden, Zlochevsky, and Porzharsky stepped away to make the call.

00:05:49.000 This raises concerns that Hunter was in violation of the Foreign Agents Registration Act.

00:05:53.000 Well, I mean, clearly he was.

00:05:54.000 I mean, let's be real about this.

00:05:55.000 The guy was working on a foreign board on American policy to benefit a foreign company.

00:06:01.000 This is like textbook FARA violations.

00:06:03.000 Devin Archer testified that Hunter Biden put then-Vice President Joe Biden on the speakerphone during business meetings over 20 times.

00:06:09.000 Apparently, Archer testified that Joe Biden was put on the phone to sell the brand.

00:06:12.000 Those phone calls included a dinner in Paris with a French energy company and in China with Jonathan Lee, the CEO of BHR.

00:06:17.000 Archer acknowledged then-Vice President Biden had coffee with Jonathan Lee, CEO of BHR, in Beijing.

00:06:22.000 Then-Vice President Biden even wrote a letter of recommendation for college for Lee's daughter.

00:06:27.000 Archer confirmed Joe Biden was referred to as my guy by Hunter Biden.

00:06:30.000 Like, the big guy.

00:06:31.000 In spring of 2014, then-VP Biden attended a business dinner with his son Hunter and his associates at Cafe Milano in Washington, D.C.

00:06:38.000 Elena Baterina, a Russian oligarch who was the widow of the former mayor of Moscow, attended the dinner.

00:06:42.000 Notably, the Biden administration's public sanctions list for Russian oligarchs does not contain Baterina.

00:06:46.000 And there's more there, as we'll get to in just one moment.

00:06:49.000 All of this is very bad news for Joe Biden because you heard the clips of him.

00:06:51.000 I knew nothing about the businesses.

00:06:52.000 I wasn't involved in the businesses.

00:06:54.000 Whatever Hunter was doing, he was on the phone.

00:06:58.000 He was on the phone for all of this sort of stuff.

00:07:01.000 And of course, Joe openly bragged about getting Victor Shokin fired, which just happened to merge with exactly what his son was lobbying for.

00:07:07.000 His son wanted Victor Shokin fired.

00:07:09.000 And then Biden bragged about getting Victor Shokin fired.

00:07:11.000 Now, he's making the case.

00:07:14.000 That everybody wanted Victor Shokin fired because Shokin was corrupt.

00:07:17.000 Welcome to Ukraine. 0.93

00:07:18.000 I mean, seriously, like everyone in Ukraine is corrupt when it comes to the government.

00:07:21.000 Everybody's known this for decades.

00:07:23.000 But only Shokin was worthy of Joe Biden calling up and threatening to withdraw a billion dollars in aid from Ukraine unless they pulled Victor Shokin.

00:07:33.000 Here was Biden bragging about it.

00:07:35.000 I remember going over convincing our team or others to convincing that we should be providing for Loan guarantees.

00:07:43.000 And I went over, I guess, the 12th, 13th time to Kiev, and I was supposed to announce that there was another billion-dollar loan guarantee.

00:07:54.000 And I had gotten a commitment from Poroshenko and from Yatsenyuk that they would take action against the state prosecutor, and they didn't.

00:08:03.000 So they said they were walking out to the press conference and said, no, we're not going to give you the billion dollars.

00:08:10.000 They said, you have no authority.

00:08:11.000 You're not the president.

00:08:12.000 The president said, I said, call him.

00:08:15.000 I said, I'm telling you, you're not getting a billion dollars.

00:08:18.000 I said, you're not getting a billion.

00:08:19.000 I'm going to be leaving here.

00:08:20.000 I think it was, what, six hours.

00:08:21.000 I look, I said, I'm leaving in six hours.

00:08:23.000 If the prosecutor is not fired, you're not getting the money. 1.00

00:08:26.000 Oh, son of a bitch. 1.00

00:08:29.000 Got fired. 1.00

00:08:30.000 And they put in place someone who was solid.

00:08:35.000 Okay, by the way, if you don't think that Joe Biden is the kind of pathological liar who would have the gall to tell a story about how he was rooting out corruption while being corrupt, you haven't been watching Joe Biden for 35 years.

00:08:44.000 Okay, Joe Biden is exactly that kind of person.

00:08:47.000 This is a guy who shamelessly lied about every element of his career for the first 15 years of his career, so much so he had to drop out of a presidential race for being a plagiarist.

00:08:55.000 And for lying about his college record and for lying about everything else.

00:08:57.000 Joe Biden is the kind of person who lies about the circumstances of his former wife's death in a car crash by openly lying about the other person involved in the car crash, suggesting for years that the guy was driving drunk and essentially ruining his life. 0.54

00:09:10.000 Joe Biden is a very bad person.

00:09:12.000 Okay, Joe Biden is not an aboveboard, honest fellow.

00:09:16.000 And so if you think that he doesn't have the gall or the temerity to do this sort of stuff while openly bragging about how he's fighting corruption, again, you ain't been watching Biden for very long.

00:09:23.000 We'll get to more on this in just one second.

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00:10:33.000 The level of corruption here is obviously very high.

00:10:36.000 That coffee with the Russian oligarch in spring of 2014, Elena Baterina.

00:10:41.000 Well, the New York Post reported way back in October of last year that a real estate company with ties to first son Hunter Biden received more than $100 million.

00:10:51.000 From a Russian billionaire for property investments across the United States dating back a decade.

00:10:55.000 The hefty cash injections into Rosemont Realty came from, wait for it, Alina Baterino, one of Russia's wealthiest women. 1.00

00:11:01.000 The widow of the former mayor of Moscow and a close ally of Moscow tyrant Vladimir Putin, according to sources.

00:11:07.000 So, Joe Biden just happens to be meeting with everybody who could possibly help out his son.

00:11:10.000 Weird how that works.

00:11:11.000 Super duper weird.

00:11:14.000 So, the White House is now responding to all of these allegations, and they're saying, ah, there's nothing here, nothing to see here.

00:11:18.000 So notice how the goalposts, they started off moving, and then as Molly Hemingway, the Federalist, points out, they've now been kicked into the ocean.

00:11:23.000 I mean, they're like in the middle of deep sea right now.

00:11:27.000 And they're next to that sunken Titanic.

00:11:30.000 According to the White House, quote, it appears the House Republicans own much-hyped witness today testified he had never heard of President Biden discussing business with his son or his son's associates or doing anything wrong.

00:11:39.000 Or doing anything wrong, okay? 0.82

00:11:42.000 I'll explain in a second why this is so ridiculous. 0.86

00:11:43.000 House Republicans keep promising bombshell evidence to support their ridiculous attacks against the president, but time after time, they keep failing to produce any. 0.70

00:11:49.000 In fact, even their own witnesses appear to be debunking their allegations. 0.99

00:11:52.000 Instead of continuing to waste time and resources on this evidence-free wild goose chase, House Republicans should drop these stunts and work with the president on the issues that actually impact- Okay, so, here is the reason this is so insanely stupid. 0.53

00:12:03.000 The claim of the White House is that because Devin Archer testified, That Joe Biden did not openly discuss every aspect of business with the people that Hunter would get Joe on the phone with?

00:12:14.000 That means that Joe was not involved in the business. 0.99

00:12:16.000 That's the stupidest thing I've ever heard in my life. 0.98

00:12:18.000 If you're influence peddling, the entire operation is based on plausible deniability. 1.00

00:12:23.000 What, he's going to openly influence Petal?

00:12:24.000 Then you can get Joe on the phone and she's going to be like, Oh, what does it take to get Victor's show?

00:12:29.000 Can you give my son like, you know, an 800, like hundreds of thousands of dollars and I'll fire?

00:12:35.000 Like, do you think he's going to say that?

00:12:37.000 Or is the conversation going to go something like this?

00:12:39.000 Hunter walks in the room, he says, I want 83 grand a month and I'll get daddy on the phone.

00:12:43.000 You know, I got my dad.

00:12:44.000 We'll have conversations. 0.97

00:12:45.000 We won't do it over the phone because we're not totally stupid. 0.99

00:12:47.000 He'll do it via text on WhatsApp because he's a moron, but we won't do it. 0.99

00:12:50.000 We won't do any of that. 0.99

00:12:51.000 We'll have conversations.

00:12:52.000 And what you need to get done, you'll get done.

00:12:54.000 And as proof that me and my dad are tight, let me get him on the phone right now.

00:12:58.000 Click.

00:12:59.000 Here's the phone.

00:13:00.000 Joe gets on.

00:13:00.000 Hi, how's the weather over there in Ukraine?

00:13:04.000 That's how this stuff works, obviously.

00:13:06.000 So believe it or not, the slim read that Democrats are relying upon here to protect Joe Biden is the idea that when Joe Biden gets on the phone during business meetings with Hunter, is that Joe actually just likes discussing weather with people randomly.

00:13:20.000 That's actually what this is.

00:13:22.000 That Joe randomly allows Hunter to call him with just randos on the beach.

00:13:25.000 And then they just talk about the weather.

00:13:26.000 It just happens like all the time.

00:13:28.000 And sure, I mean, he does it with like Russian oligarchs who give a hundred million dollars to different firms with which Hunter Biden is an associate, and sure he does it with like Burisma, and sure he does it with wide varieties of foreign companies, including like Chinese companies, and sure he writes letters for the heads of those companies, like kids, to get into college.

00:13:45.000 He does all of those things.

00:13:47.000 He does all of that just because dude likes talking about the weather.

00:13:51.000 Now, I don't know how much you like talking about the weather.

00:13:53.000 I will tell you this.

00:13:55.000 I don't randomly call people or take calls from people to talk about the weather.

00:13:57.000 It's not a thing I do.

00:14:00.000 If somebody calls me, Yeah, Hunter, it's me.

00:14:03.000 And here I am.

00:14:03.000 talking about, they're not talking about the weather, obviously.

00:14:06.000 The whole point is I can get my daddy, the vice president of the United States,

00:14:10.000 on the phone at any moment.

00:14:12.000 Dad, is that you?

00:14:14.000 Yeah, Hunter, it's me.

00:14:15.000 And here I am.

00:14:16.000 Everything.

00:14:17.000 Click. See, I get my dad on the phone at any time.

00:14:20.000 We'll solve the problem for you.

00:14:22.000 That's how the and then magically it turns out that some of the problems actually get

00:14:26.000 solved. Like Victor Shoken, the guy goes away and then Joe Biden brags about how he's

00:14:30.000 an anti-corruption fighter.

00:14:32.000 Well, his son is bagging hundreds of thousands of dollars, promising that that's exactly what would happen.

00:14:37.000 Is that just a giant coincidence, by the way?

00:14:39.000 That's really what we're being asked to believe, that it's all a coincidence.

00:14:41.000 We're asked to believe that Hunter went on the board of Burisma, promising access to Joe Biden, and promising that the Biden last name would shield Burisma, and that he promised everybody at Burisma that he would work on getting Shokin fired, and that just coincidentally, his daddy got Shokin fired. 0.53

00:14:55.000 That's what we're, like, no relation, Chinese wall of separation, nobody knows who's talking to whom, I mean, sure, they had phone calls and everything, but no. 0.55

00:15:03.000 No.

00:15:04.000 That's what we're being asked to believe.

00:15:05.000 And Democrats are saying that if you ask questions about this, that's because you're the problem.

00:15:09.000 You're pouncing. 1.00

00:15:10.000 You're corrupt. 0.99

00:15:11.000 Actually, there's nothing to see here. 0.99

00:15:13.000 There's absolutely nothing to see here. 0.92

00:15:15.000 Now, after five long years of stupid jabber from Democrats about how there was a smoking gun, that Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump were working together, and they were rigging the election on behalf of Donald Trump, and using Facebook because Donald Trump really needed Vladimir Putin to input on Facebook, that it was all corrupt, and the smoking gun was around the corner. 0.99

00:15:35.000 It turned out all of it was lies. 0.97

00:15:36.000 After five years of that, we're being told by the same exact people there is nothing to see here?

00:15:41.000 No one believes this.

00:15:43.000 No one believes this.

00:15:44.000 Again, it is impossible to look at the juxtaposition of Hunter's business activities and now what Hunter's business... Again, this is not the first Hunter Biden business partner to say this.

00:15:52.000 Tony Bobulinski said the exact same thing.

00:15:54.000 Tony Bobulinski said years ago that Joe Biden was stopping by business meetings and like hanging out with people.

00:16:00.000 He said this.

00:16:01.000 Again, Hunter texted his own daughter saying he pays dad's bills.

00:16:04.000 I don't know what you need other than like an actual bank account wire showing money moving from Hunter to Joe.

00:16:10.000 But here's the thing, he doesn't even have to do that.

00:16:12.000 Because I don't know how it works with your parents.

00:16:14.000 If I go out to dinner with my parents, I just pay for dinner.

00:16:17.000 I don't wire money to my parents' bank account to pay for dinner.

00:16:20.000 If Hunter wants to pay Joe's expenses, he'll just pay Joe's expenses.

00:16:24.000 Like, the money doesn't actually have to- That's the beauty of being a member of a family.

00:16:29.000 This is why family corruption is so common, by the way. 1.00

00:16:32.000 We'll get to more of this in just one second, because what you're being asked to believe is the dumbest crap imaginable. 0.98

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00:17:56.000 Okay, so again, what you're being asked to believe is like the dumbest crap imaginable. 1.00

00:18:00.000 And naturally, Democrats are trotting out. 1.00

00:18:02.000 When people talk about the double standard here, it's really quite insane.

00:18:05.000 Remember, Donald Trump was impeached the first time.

00:18:08.000 He was impeached twice.

00:18:09.000 He was impeached the first time by the House over a phone call with the President of Ukraine, Vladimir Zelensky, telling him that he might withhold military aid if they didn't dig up dirt on Hunter Biden.

00:18:20.000 Meanwhile, the accusation here, which appears to be fairly well founded, is that Joe Biden openly threatened Ukraine that he would withdraw $1 billion in aid unless they fired a prosecutor who just so happened to be looking into his son's company.

00:18:34.000 That's the, it's amazing.

00:18:35.000 And the same people who prosecuted Impeachment 1 against Trump, those exact same people are now rushing to Joe Biden's defense, which just shows you the politics is a game of, it's a game of partisanship, purely and simply.

00:18:48.000 It's either wrong in both cases or it's wrong in either case, but this is really amazing stuff.

00:18:52.000 So Representative Dan Goldman, again, he's one of the impeachment prosecutors.

00:18:56.000 Watch how far these goalposts have moved.

00:18:58.000 He now says it is a preposterous premise to say that Joe should not be talking with Hunter's business associates.

00:19:03.000 Why is that preposterous?

00:19:05.000 He was the vice president of the United States.

00:19:06.000 Shouldn't he be above board and clean as the driven snow?

00:19:08.000 Doesn't it contradict the president's statement saying that he never talked to any of Hunter Biden's business associates?

00:19:15.000 Clearly he talked, whether or not the weather or whatever, but he said specifically that he's never talked to them.

00:19:20.000 Does this contradict me?

00:19:21.000 Yes, he did.

00:19:21.000 No.

00:19:21.000 I don't know what his comment is and if we're gonna...

00:19:25.000 Well, I don't think that's what he said.

00:19:28.000 He never said that he has never spoken to anyone.

00:19:33.000 He said that he had nothing to do with Hunter Biden's business dealings.

00:19:37.000 If he says hello to someone that he sees his son with, is he supposed to say...

00:19:43.000 Hi, son.

00:19:44.000 No, I'm not going to say hello to the other people at the table or the other people on the phone.

00:19:48.000 It's kind of a preposterous premise to think that a father should not say hello to people that the son is at dinner with.

00:19:57.000 And that is literally all the evidence is.

00:20:01.000 No, that is not all the evidence is.

00:20:02.000 The evidence is that Hunter called Daddy on the phone 20 times with different business partners.

00:20:08.000 The evidence is that Joe wrote letters of recommendation for people with whom Hunter Biden was in business.

00:20:13.000 The evidence is that Joe stopped by dinners and like sat down and talked to people.

00:20:18.000 That's what influence peddling is. 1.00

00:20:19.000 They're asking you to be a moron. 1.00

00:20:21.000 They believe you're stupid. 1.00

00:20:22.000 That's all. 1.00

00:20:23.000 It's very obvious they believe that they can just gaslight you into thinking nothing untoward happened here when every indicator is that something untoward happened here.

00:20:30.000 We'll get to more on this in just one second.

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00:21:42.000 Okay, so.

00:21:43.000 Again, the line from the Democrats, believe it or not, is nothing to see here, everything is fine.

00:21:48.000 So Dan Goldman, again, one of the impeachment prosecutors, he says it's a preposterous premise to say that Joe shouldn't be talking with Hunter's business associates.

00:21:54.000 This is after Joe has spent years saying he knew nothing about the businesses, that he never, like literally nothing, that he never heard anything.

00:22:03.000 They keep moving the goalposts.

00:22:04.000 And then, Dan Goldman emphasizes that sure, Hunter put Joe on speakerphone, but they were just talking about the weather. 1.00

00:22:10.000 Again, they're asking you to be such a moron here. 0.99

00:22:12.000 They were just talking about... He's looking real sweaty here, because it turns out that this is not a good defense. 1.00

00:22:16.000 They were just talking about the weather.

00:22:19.000 It is impossible to describe what a weak defense this is.

00:22:23.000 If you were prosecuting, let's say, a RICO case against the Mafia, and a low-level hitman told you, I talk routinely with the head of the Mafia, I would get him on the phone, and I would use him.

00:22:34.000 I'd walk into a bar, and I would say to the bartender, I need you to give me 10 grand, or I'm going to shut down your bar.

00:22:43.000 You don't believe that I'm a connected guy?

00:22:45.000 Listen to this.

00:22:45.000 Picks up the phone, calls the mob boss.

00:22:47.000 The mob boss goes, is it sunny outside or is it raining outside?

00:22:51.000 They're talking about the weather.

00:22:53.000 Is that a conversation about the weather or is that not a conversation?

00:22:55.000 That is not a conversation about the weather.

00:22:57.000 That's showing that the influence peddling is in operation.

00:23:00.000 That's the entire purpose.

00:23:02.000 But here's Dan Goldman.

00:23:03.000 Well, probably they were just talking about the weather.

00:23:05.000 Probably.

00:23:06.000 Joe Biden really just wanted to know how the weather was over in Kiev.

00:23:11.000 So to confirm, you're saying that the speakerphone conversations, they don't seem concerning to you because there is no specifics about business?

00:23:17.000 And it just seemed like it was clear that it was clear that it was part of the daily conversations that Hunter Biden had with his father.

00:23:27.000 And it was and and sounds like most of the time.

00:23:33.000 Now President Biden didn't even know who the people he was at dinner.

00:23:37.000 He was just asked to say hello.

00:23:39.000 And he would, you know, talk about the way he described it several times.

00:23:43.000 They asked over and over and over.

00:23:44.000 He described what the weather was, how, what's going on on your end.

00:23:51.000 The witness was very, very consistent that none of those conversations ever had to do with any business dealings or transactions.

00:24:03.000 Of course they didn't!

00:24:04.000 Because the minute you say the business, you are now in clear violation of federal law.

00:24:09.000 Of course!

00:24:10.000 Duh! 1.00

00:24:12.000 Again, let me just ask you this.

00:24:13.000 You have parents, right?

00:24:14.000 You've been to a business dinner, correct?

00:24:16.000 Your parents sometimes call you during the business dinner.

00:24:17.000 This happens to me all the time.

00:24:18.000 You know, I'm very close with my parents.

00:24:20.000 Sometimes they call me on the phone.

00:24:22.000 Sometimes I don't pick up because I'm in the middle of a business dinner.

00:24:24.000 And sometimes, if I feel like a surgeon, I do pick up.

00:24:26.000 And you know what I do?

00:24:27.000 I say, excuse me, folks, and I get up and I go outside to talk to my parents because it's not relevant to the rest of the conversation that my dad's on the phone. 0.99

00:24:35.000 This is the stupidest defense I've ever heard. 0.97

00:24:37.000 The defense is, do you do that? 1.00

00:24:39.000 Like, your parent calls you at a business dinner, you're like, hold on, my dad's on the phone, I'm putting him on speaker.

00:24:43.000 He just wants to say hello and talk about the weather.

00:24:46.000 Yeah, dad, how's the dog doing?

00:24:47.000 Do you do that?

00:24:48.000 Have you ever done that?

00:24:49.000 Why would you do such a thing?

00:24:51.000 Let me ask you that.

00:24:51.000 Under what circumstances would you do this thing?

00:24:54.000 There is only one reason, because you want everybody at the table to know about the relationship that you have.

00:24:58.000 With your dad.

00:24:59.000 Because it's relevant in some way to the generalized conversation that is happening at the table.

00:25:04.000 It's an influence peddling operation.

00:25:06.000 Clearly.

00:25:07.000 Openly.

00:25:08.000 Everyone knows it.

00:25:09.000 They've known it since Tony Bobulinski.

00:25:10.000 They've known it since the Hunter Biden laptop.

00:25:12.000 And now, they're studiously trying to avoid the consequences of this.

00:25:15.000 So, Democrats have now moved to the next step of the defense.

00:25:17.000 Because this is not going to last.

00:25:19.000 The next step of the defense is, there's no proof that Hunter ever did anything that benefited Joe.

00:25:23.000 There's no proof.

00:25:24.000 And not only that, we should stop looking, probably.

00:25:26.000 We shouldn't, like, look at any of the IRS.

00:25:29.000 We shouldn't look at any of the bank account records.

00:25:31.000 We shouldn't try to pierce any corporate veils.

00:25:33.000 We shouldn't try to figure out exactly how the money moved.

00:25:35.000 We shouldn't even look at who paid Joe's expenses, because Joe has reported way more wealth than his income would actually suggest.

00:25:43.000 There's like several million unexplained dollars in Joe Biden's wealth that no one knows where it came from.

00:25:48.000 And it's kind of weird.

00:25:50.000 So here are Democrats now claiming we don't need to know.

00:25:52.000 We don't need to know.

00:25:53.000 It's probably fine, guys.

00:25:54.000 It's probably above board and totally fine.

00:25:57.000 Here are Democrats saying there's no evidence Joe ever benefited from any of this.

00:26:01.000 It was all a clinky dink.

00:26:02.000 He never benefited.

00:26:03.000 By the way, it is in fact a benefit when your children benefit from this.

00:26:07.000 Just to point this out, Joe would not have to directly benefit in order for this to be bribery.

00:26:14.000 If somebody said to Joe, Hunter is getting paid a lot of money.

00:26:19.000 He's getting paid a lot of money in order to achieve X. Can you help X happen and you are a public official?

00:26:25.000 He doesn't need to see money hit his own bank account to benefit him.

00:26:28.000 As a parent, I care very much about my children.

00:26:31.000 I assume that Joe cares very much about Hunter and who pays Hunter's bills for his crack.

00:26:35.000 So presumably that money was either coming from Joe or from someone else in the family or from some outside oligarchs. 0.99

00:26:40.000 And we know for a fact that business associates of Joe have been paying hundreds of business bills, like his legal bills, them buying his crap paintings, his garbage paintings. 0.98

00:26:47.000 They've been paying like half a million dollars. 0.97

00:26:49.000 So it's perfectly in line for Joe Biden to have outside sources paying his son and his son benefiting from that and that acting as a form of bribery.

00:26:57.000 If your entire family benefits from the bribery, and you're over here, like, living your life, but you're the one who's actually brokering the thing, yeah, that's still bribery, okay?

00:27:05.000 It doesn't actually have to hit his bank account, but that's gonna be the next offense.

00:27:08.000 Well, you can actually show a formal dollar being moved from this Chinese CEFC fund into Joe Biden's personal bank account.

00:27:15.000 This is the next line they're going to use.

00:27:18.000 So far, they have been not able to prove any evidence here of wrongdoing.

00:27:22.000 House GOP members continue to try and link Hunter's business dealings to the president, though they have yet to produce any concrete evidence.

00:27:29.000 Now, it is important to keep in mind, while Republicans believe that there is a tie between Hunter Biden's business dealings and the president himself, they have yet to provide any hard evidence that the president himself has done anything wrong.

00:27:41.000 House Republicans are going to accuse him.

00:27:42.000 They are.

00:27:43.000 They're going to make the accusation.

00:27:44.000 They're going to accuse him of all sorts of stuff.

00:27:45.000 Whether they have the evidence or not.

00:27:47.000 Correct.

00:27:47.000 Republicans have not tied the President, Joe Biden, to profiteering from them.

00:27:53.000 They didn't have the evidence yet.

00:27:54.000 Where's the evidence?

00:27:56.000 There is no evidence of any wrongdoing by the President.

00:28:00.000 There is today zero evidence, zero evidence that Joe Biden, the President of the United States, knew about what his son was doing.

00:28:07.000 Okay, first of all, lots of evidence that he knew exactly what his son was doing.

00:28:11.000 Literally, we have a WhatsApp message from Hunter Biden to a foreign oligarch in China saying, my daddy is sitting next to me right at this moment.

00:28:19.000 According to Dan Goldman, probably they were just sitting there talking about the weather or something, probably.

00:28:24.000 By the way, it's worth noting, UK Daily Mail, 2022, Joe Biden agreed to pay son Hunter's legal fees for his deal with the Chinese government-controlled company, emails reveal.

00:28:32.000 The revelation ties the president even closer to Hunter's overseas business dealings and makes his previous claims he never discussed them with his son even less plausible.

00:28:39.000 Joe was able to pay those bills after earning millions of bucks through his and his wife's companies after he left office as VP.

00:28:45.000 Some of the wave of cash came from their book deals and speaking engagements, but the president's financial filings reveal he declared almost $7 million more on his tax returns than he did on his government transparency reports.

00:28:55.000 Some of that difference can be accounted for with salaries earned by the first lady, Joe Biden, and other sums not required on his reports. 0.99

00:29:00.000 But that leaves $5.2 million earned by Joe's company not listed on his transparency reports.

00:29:06.000 Those are missing millions.

00:29:08.000 So where did those come from?

00:29:10.000 So first of all, you don't actually need to prove that the money hit Joe Biden's bank account.

00:29:14.000 All you need to prove is that the money hit Hunter Biden's bank account because that benefits Joe, quite obviously.

00:29:19.000 But where'd that money come from?

00:29:21.000 Does anyone even care?

00:29:23.000 Or is the media just going to continue to run interference?

00:29:25.000 Apparently, they're going to start by running interference because they've been doing it the whole time.

00:29:28.000 Here with CNN yesterday saying, you know, guys, really, I'm not sure why this is a big deal.

00:29:31.000 They never talk business.

00:29:32.000 They were just talking about the weather.

00:29:34.000 This is literally it's it's legitimately one of the worst excuses for corruption I've ever heard.

00:29:37.000 They were talking about the weather is like this one's up there with Hillary Clinton saying wiped like with a cloth.

00:29:43.000 Yes, they were talking about the weather, because I routinely get my father on the phone during my business dealings to discuss the weather.

00:29:48.000 For no reason.

00:29:50.000 So Goldman's sort of explaining that Archer qualified the topics of discussion on these phone calls as niceties, that Biden sometimes didn't even know who was on the other line with his son Hunter, and sources in the room telling CNN now that Archer did not point the finger directly at any sort of a connection between Joe Biden and his son's foreign business dealings, and rather said that Hunter Biden was selling the illusion of said access.

00:30:15.000 Boris, really a stunning development, Zach, when you consider that Republicans were selling this as a breakthrough that would link Hunter's business dealings with his father.

00:30:23.000 Instead, business was apparently never discussed, according to Devin Archer.

00:30:29.000 See, the bombshell is that nothing happened.

00:30:31.000 They were just talking about the weather.

00:30:32.000 This is so insane.

00:30:33.000 This is so insane.

00:30:35.000 He was selling the illusion of access.

00:30:37.000 The illusion.

00:30:38.000 What was the illusion?

00:30:39.000 The illusion is that he had access to the president.

00:30:42.000 And, uh, to the Vice President.

00:30:43.000 And he was selling that illusion by having access to the Vice President.

00:30:48.000 That's not an illusion, that's called access.

00:30:50.000 If I say, you know, I, here at Daily Wire, I have access to multiple Senators.

00:30:56.000 I have access to them.

00:30:58.000 Let me call up a Senator right now and get them on the phone.

00:31:00.000 And then I call up a Senator and get them on the phone.

00:31:02.000 That is not an illusion of access, that's access.

00:31:06.000 In Illusion of Access, he calls his friend, who is pretending to be Joe Biden, and then his friend gets on the phone and goes, and then he hangs up.

00:31:13.000 That's the illusion of access.

00:31:14.000 Actual access is when he's your father and you call him on the phone, he's the vice president of the United States, and he is squiring you around on Air Force suits to pick up bags of cash in China, and also is in charge of Ukrainian policy, overseeing the prosecutor who is prosecuting your son's company.

00:31:27.000 That is not the illusion of access.

00:31:29.000 That's access, clearly.

00:31:31.000 This is so insane.

00:31:32.000 And the media like, well, clearly the bombshell blew up.

00:31:35.000 Clearly something.

00:31:36.000 You guys can happy talk yourselves and pretend that nothing is happening here.

00:31:39.000 Something is happening here.

00:31:40.000 And here's the reason that you know this.

00:31:41.000 Because Joe Biden, he is really turning up the, I'm just an old family man. 0.99

00:31:47.000 He's turning that crap up to 11. 0.97

00:31:48.000 He's really turning that stuff up. 0.98

00:31:50.000 Because the way that he's in the end going to defend all of this, here's going to be the final defense.

00:31:53.000 The final defense is going to be, Yes, of course.

00:31:57.000 I was allowing my son to sell access to me.

00:31:59.000 Of course I knew about it.

00:32:01.000 Of course.

00:32:01.000 Would you expect me not to?

00:32:02.000 He was a crack addict and I love my son and I want to make sure that he's taken care of.

00:32:07.000 That's just what a nice family man.

00:32:08.000 My corruption was mandated by the fact that I love my family.

00:32:12.000 And so Joe Biden is really turning this stuff up, right?

00:32:14.000 This is why he's now acknowledging grandchildren he never acknowledged until five seconds ago.

00:32:18.000 This is why he's doing interviews talking about what a wonderful family man he is.

00:32:21.000 So he did an interview yesterday.

00:32:23.000 I have seven grandkids, four of them old, five of them old enough to talk on the phone.

00:32:28.000 full decrepitude.

00:32:43.000 Well, he doesn't text or call maybe Joan or her mom, but he acknowledged them over the weekend.

00:32:48.000 A first.

00:32:48.000 I wonder why he would do that.

00:32:49.000 Why would he do that?

00:32:50.000 Did maybe he do that because otherwise it looks really cynical?

00:32:54.000 See, it turns out it looks really cynical.

00:32:56.000 If you say, I'm a big family man.

00:32:57.000 I love all of my kids and my grandkids, except for that one.

00:33:01.000 That one who hurts Hunter and may hurt me politically, who I won't acknowledge.

00:33:04.000 That one, the four-year-old.

00:33:06.000 It looks real bad.

00:33:07.000 It looks kind of like if you're in the club, you're in the club.

00:33:09.000 But if you're not in the club, he's not going to let you in the club to use the Biden name again.

00:33:12.000 I'm not I'm never going to get over the fact that the actual settlement, the actual paternity settlement with Hunter.

00:33:19.000 Disallows Navy Joan from using the last name Biden.

00:33:23.000 The only thing that the Biden family has traded on for decades.

00:33:27.000 That is what is being denied to the granddaughter. 0.99

00:33:28.000 But now Joe says, well, I know I have seven grandkids and I love them very much.

00:33:32.000 Well, you didn't love them last week.

00:33:33.000 I noticed.

00:33:34.000 I noticed one you didn't love last week, but now all of a sudden you're really doing the family man routine, aren't you?

00:33:38.000 Like really, really doing it.

00:33:40.000 I wonder why. 1.00

00:33:41.000 Maybe it's so that you can claim, well, yeah, you know, Hunter called me on the phone, and I picked up because I love my crack-addled son, who's screwing prostitutes. 1.00

00:33:49.000 I love that guy. 1.00

00:33:52.000 But it's insane, right?

00:33:54.000 And then you talked more about, my family tapes me when they want to get to me.

00:33:56.000 They tape messages on my mirror because we're all, oh, what an, oh.

00:34:02.000 My family, when they want to get an important message to me, they tape it on the mirror in the bathroom.

00:34:09.000 I'm serious.

00:34:10.000 So you wake up in the morning and... No, it's on the mirror.

00:34:14.000 I guess I was down early on, ten years ago, I was down or something.

00:34:21.000 And my daughter Ashley taped on my, she's a social worker, taped on my mirror.

00:34:28.000 Happiness is something to do, someone to love, and someone to look forward to.

00:34:33.000 And Dad, you have all those things.

00:34:37.000 Well, now they take messages on his mirror like memento, like, you're the president of the United States.

00:34:42.000 But again, the reason that he's playing this stuff up is because the closer he appears, the more he's a family man, the more family corruption just appears to be an act of love.

00:34:49.000 And that is where this is going to go.

00:34:52.000 It's a more related to Joe Biden in just one second, because that dude is extraordinarily vulnerable in a presidential election.

00:34:57.000 We'll get to that in one second.

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00:36:56.000 Okay, meanwhile, Okay, so all of this makes Joe Biden very, very, very vulnerable.

00:37:00.000 Why?

00:37:01.000 Not because it means that he is open to attack from Republicans, though he certainly is, but because the only way that Joe Biden wins is, again, with high voter turnout.

00:37:08.000 So Joe Biden benefited from unprecedented voter turnout in 2020.

00:37:11.000 The jump in voting numbers between 2020 and 2016 is massive.

00:37:17.000 The total number of votes in 2016 was Something like 127 million voters.

00:37:23.000 128 million voters.

00:37:24.000 128 million voters.

00:37:26.000 The total number in 2020 was something more like 155 million voters, which is a massive jump.

00:37:36.000 129 to 155.

00:37:37.000 You're talking about the biggest jump in voter turnout in modern American history.

00:37:42.000 And the reason for that is because Democrats blew out the early voting.

00:37:45.000 They changed all the rules, so everybody mailed in their ballots.

00:37:48.000 And meanwhile, Donald Trump was out there telling his base not to do early voting for some odd reason that no one can quite comprehend.

00:37:53.000 But that massive bump in voter turnout is what boosted Joe Biden.

00:37:57.000 Because, of course, Donald Trump won more votes than he won in 2016 and 2020.

00:38:01.000 But this huge expansion of the voter base meant that Joe Biden won.

00:38:06.000 Well, what does that mean?

00:38:07.000 It means that Joe Biden needs to replicate high voter turnout.

00:38:09.000 If he gets low voter turnout in 2024, he's extremely vulnerable.

00:38:12.000 And this is what the Washington Post is pointing out today.

00:38:15.000 Democrats are currently worried that black voters are not going to turn out en masse for Joe Biden.

00:38:21.000 They turned out en masse in 2020, in large part because the Democrats decided to make Black Lives Matter the centerpiece of the campaign.

00:38:28.000 They decided that the Black Lives Matter George Floyd hubbub was going to be the central pitch that they made.

00:38:35.000 Equity in all things.

00:38:37.000 Kamala Harris as vice president.

00:38:38.000 We will put on the court a black female justice and all of this sort of stuff. 1.00

00:38:42.000 And now it turns out that Joe Biden is a corrupt old white politician, kind of like all the other corrupt old white politicians. 0.98

00:38:46.000 So it's quite possible now that a lot of young black voters are just not going to turn up. 0.99

00:38:50.000 He ain't Barack Obama. 0.96

00:38:51.000 You don't have the charm.

00:38:52.000 It's the same sort of thing with Hillary Clinton. 1.00

00:38:54.000 Black voters were the margin of victory for Barack Obama in 2012.

00:38:58.000 They were the margin of loss for Hillary Clinton in 2016. 0.97

00:39:01.000 They were the margin of victory for Joe Biden in 2020.

00:39:03.000 What's going to happen with them in 2024?

00:39:05.000 It's not about whether Republicans win 15% of the black vote or something.

00:39:08.000 The real question is, how many black people are going to vote in swing states?

00:39:13.000 Because they vote disproportionately Democrat, you need high voter turnout.

00:39:16.000 This is how Barack Obama won Ohio in 2012, for example.

00:39:19.000 Well, according to the Washington Post, Democrats are really worried about this.

00:39:22.000 They're worried about a potential drop next year in turnout among black voters, the party's most loyal constituency.

00:39:27.000 Their concern stems from a 10-percentage-point decline in Black voter turnout in last year's midterms compared with 2018, a bigger drop than among almost any other racial or ethnic group, according to a Washington Post analysis of the Census Bureau's turnout survey.

00:39:38.000 Such warning signals were initially papered over by other Democrat successes in 2022 because they picked up a seat in Pennsylvania and Warnock won re-election in Georgia, but in key states like Georgia, Turnout in last year's midterms was much lower among younger and male black voters, according to internal party analysis.

00:39:54.000 The drop in black turnout has become a focus for Democratic leaders as the party reorients to next year's presidential contest.

00:40:00.000 And again, remember, in Georgia, the same year that Raphael Warnock won his reelect effort, Brian Kemp won an election running away in Georgia.

00:40:07.000 That was not a close election against Stacey Abrams.

00:40:11.000 So it's quite possible that Donald Trump is able to benefit from low voter turnout in places like Georgia.

00:40:17.000 Biden's election in 2020, as the Washington Post points out, hinged on narrow victories in states like Georgia, Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania that former President Trump won in 2016.

00:40:25.000 Democrat activists are cautioning the party cannot afford to let support from black voters slip.

00:40:30.000 Well, I mean, that's correct. 0.86

00:40:33.000 And they should be worried because Joe Biden is not exactly an attractive candidate to young people of any sort, let alone young black voters who may not be all that interested in a corrupt old white man whose son was clearing a buttload of money and avoiding jail while committing obvious crimes. 0.95

00:40:48.000 That's gonna be a problem. 0.72

00:40:48.000 And let me tell you, Joe Biden's image is not what the media think Joe Biden's image is. 0.72

00:40:51.000 I mean, there's a photo that emerged from Joe Biden in Delaware, Rehoboth Beach, Delaware, violating the prescriptions for avoiding skin cancer in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware.

00:41:01.000 And the media tried to play this as like a big W for Joe Biden.

00:41:03.000 I'm just wondering how.

00:41:05.000 For those who can't see the photo, this is Joe Biden shirtless in a bathing suit, staring out at somebody with a camera, wearing sunglasses and a backwards baseball cap.

00:41:15.000 It is not a good look.

00:41:16.000 It is nothing that you want to see.

00:41:17.000 Is this going to draw in the young voters by the bushel over here?

00:41:21.000 This thing?

00:41:22.000 This is what, the ET over here?

00:41:25.000 Um, no.

00:41:26.000 The answer is no.

00:41:27.000 And again, you know, physical attractiveness of candidates doesn't matter?

00:41:30.000 Well, it didn't for Barack Obama.

00:41:32.000 You will recall that back in 2008, there was a famous photo of Barack Obama merging shirtless from the ocean and the media going gaga over all of that.

00:41:38.000 Did that matter?

00:41:39.000 Yeah, I mean, that sort of stuff kind of does matter, which is why Joe Biden, being a decrepit elderly person who obviously is involved in corruption schemes with his son, is not exactly a voter turnout Jogger.

00:41:50.000 I mean, it's not going to jog or increase voter turnout for Democrats, which is why they're freaking out at this point.

00:41:56.000 You know who knows this is Donald Trump.

00:41:57.000 It's also the reason why Donald Trump is at this point the most likely candidate to be the Republican nominee.

00:42:03.000 The reason is because the man's just a battering ram.

00:42:04.000 And so Republicans are thinking about Joe Biden, the same thing they thought about Hillary, which is, is Donald Trump going to throw the kitchen sink at Joe Biden?

00:42:10.000 Because he has no limits.

00:42:12.000 The fun of watching Donald Trump come in off the top rope against Joe Biden again, but this time actually directed against Joe Biden's corruption, And directed in a more meticulous way, perhaps, is quite real.

00:42:23.000 This is what the polls are showing right now.

00:42:25.000 So Donald Trump understands it again.

00:42:26.000 The man has an innate understanding of the id of the Republican Party.

00:42:29.000 And so here was yesterday going after Joe Biden.

00:42:31.000 So in 2016, you very famously branded Hillary Clinton as Crooked Hillary.

00:42:37.000 Yeah.

00:42:38.000 Who's worse?

00:42:39.000 Joe Biden?

00:42:39.000 Hillary Clinton?

00:42:40.000 Well, I took the name off crooked.

00:42:42.000 We call her beautiful Hillary now because, you know, that one's over with. 1.00

00:42:46.000 And the word crooked was very pertinent, I think.

00:42:49.000 It was a very good word for Biden.

00:42:51.000 No, he's crooked. 0.99

00:42:52.000 He's a crooked. 1.00

00:42:52.000 He's the most corrupt president we've ever had. 1.00

00:42:55.000 And he's also the worst president we've ever had. 0.94

00:42:57.000 You look at what happened in Afghanistan, you look at what happened with inflation, look at the economy, look what's going on.

00:43:03.000 No, he's the worst president we've ever had.

00:43:06.000 If Donald Trump could stick to this message, a lot of Republicans believe this could be a winning message.

00:43:10.000 And again, there's an element of fun to Trump that doesn't exist for the other candidates.

00:43:13.000 So right now, what the polls show is that Donald Trump is in a historically strong position to return to the White House according to CNN's Harry Enten.

00:43:20.000 He broke down the numbers according to mediaite behind the current state of play in the GOP presidential primary.

00:43:23.000 He said, quote, Trump is not only in a historically strong position for a non-incumbent to win the Republican nomination, he's in a better position to win the general than at any point during the 2020 cycle and at almost any point during the 2016 cycle.

00:43:35.000 He says no one in Trump's current polling position in the modern era has lost an open presidential primary that didn't feature an incumbent.

00:43:40.000 He's pulling in more than 50% in the national primary polls, more than all of his competitors combined.

00:43:44.000 Three prior candidates in open primaries were pulling in more than half the vote in primary surveys in the second half of the calendar year before election.

00:43:51.000 Al Gore and Bush in 2000, and Hillary Clinton in 2016.

00:43:55.000 Enten also notes that Trump is in pretty good shape in a general.

00:44:00.000 He says Trump was up on Biden by one point in the Quinnipiac poll, a result within the margin of error, but nevertheless a remarkable achievement for the former president.

00:44:07.000 He says one giant warning sign for Democrats was that poll, because that poll is from Pennsylvania.

00:44:10.000 That's not a national poll.

00:44:11.000 It's in Pennsylvania.

00:44:13.000 A low voter turnout could actually stop Joe Biden from beating Donald Trump.

00:44:19.000 Well, Republican voters are obviously trending toward Donald Trump at this point.

00:44:24.000 There's a New York Times Siena College poll that came out yesterday, and it shows that if the only two choices in the primary were Trump or DeSantis, right now Trump would win 62 to 31.

00:44:34.000 And you can see the breakdown here.

00:44:35.000 It's kind of fascinating.

00:44:36.000 So, when asked who is a strong leader, this, by the way, demonstrates that politics is now the art of affect.

00:44:43.000 It's performance art.

00:44:43.000 It is not actual policy, because when it comes to policy, there is no question that DeSantis is a much stronger leader than Trump, just in terms of what he's been able to get done in the state of Florida versus what Trump was able to get done nationally.

00:44:53.000 Trump was hampered by his own executive branch.

00:44:56.000 Clearly, in a variety of ways, ranging from the riots to Fauci to the investigations into him by his own executive branch, his own policies were thwarted at every turn.

00:45:05.000 I mean, we know all this, right?

00:45:06.000 This is stuff that Trump himself complains about in terms of who is a strong leader.

00:45:10.000 Nonetheless, 69% of Republicans say that Trump is a strong leader, versus 22% of Republicans who say DeSantis is a stronger leader.

00:45:18.000 When it comes to who is more moral, 36% say Trump, 46% say DeSantis.

00:45:23.000 So people understand that DeSantis is a significantly more moral person than Trump, just on any sort of basic level.

00:45:29.000 They don't care.

00:45:30.000 Fascinatingly enough, when asked who is more likable, 45% of Republican voters actually say DeSantis, compared to 43% of Republican voters who say Trump.

00:45:39.000 So it's not that they think that Trump is likable.

00:45:41.000 It's not that they think that Trump is moral.

00:45:42.000 It's that they think Trump is strong.

00:45:44.000 They think that Trump is able to beat Joe Biden, 58 to 28, they believe that Trump is better to beat Joe Biden, which is kind of fascinating.

00:45:53.000 When it comes to getting things done, which clearly the answer is DeSantis got a lot more things done in Florida than Trump has gotten done nationally, but it doesn't matter because it's about affect.

00:46:00.000 Trump is winning 67 to 22 in that same poll.

00:46:04.000 When asked who is more fun, and this is a big one, when asked who is more fun, 53% of Republicans say that Donald Trump is more fun.

00:46:14.000 Only 16% say DeSantis.

00:46:16.000 So again, a lot of this is affect.

00:46:17.000 A lot of this is the imagining of a 2024 race in which Donald Trump is throwing the kitchen sink at Joe Biden.

00:46:24.000 And so that's likely what we are going to get here.

00:46:28.000 Trump knows this, which is why he probably is not going to participate in the debates at this point, because why would he?

00:46:34.000 He's 30 points up in the polls right now.

00:46:35.000 Now, again, it's an open primary.

00:46:37.000 So, you know, it seems to me that he should debate because in an open primary, it behooves Republicans to be able to decide between candidates.

00:46:44.000 But Trump put out on Truth Social last night, let them debate so I can see who I might consider for vice president.

00:46:50.000 And it's sort of hard to see at this point how Trump is clawed down.

00:46:56.000 Because this is really not about any of the other Republican candidates being able to overcome Trump.

00:47:01.000 Trump is going to have to fall in the polls in order for any of the other Republicans to win.

00:47:05.000 So what exactly could bring Trump down in the polls?

00:47:07.000 Certainly not policy.

00:47:08.000 There are other Republicans who are attacking him on policy.

00:47:10.000 Ron DeSantis yesterday, for example, went after him about Anthony Fauci.

00:47:12.000 He's right, but it doesn't matter.

00:47:14.000 There are other Republicans, like Chris Christie, who have been going after Trump.

00:47:17.000 It's not affecting his poll numbers at all.

00:47:19.000 Basically, the only thing that could theoretically take Trump down at this point is an outside indictment.

00:47:23.000 Which, by the way, benefits Trump because that means that every time there's an indictment that comes down, there's probably going to be another one this week, he can say with plausibility, literally the only thing that can stop me at this point is Democrats indicting me.

00:47:35.000 Now, as I've said before, two things can be true at once.

00:47:36.000 He may be guilty, facially, of crimes like mishandling of classified documents.

00:47:40.000 It can also be true That Democrats have a very strong interest in indicting him to stop him from beating Joe Biden, right?

00:47:46.000 That's a plausible argument.

00:47:48.000 Again, one of the things that I pointed out about Ron DeSantis' candidacy, and again, I think DeSantis is a better candidate than Trump.

00:47:53.000 I think that DeSantis is a stronger governor than Trump was a president.

00:47:55.000 I think he'd make a better president than Trump.

00:47:57.000 I've not been shy about any of this, but the big problem for Ron DeSantis is that Trump sucks all of the air out of the room.

00:48:04.000 And not only that, Joe Biden is running really, really poorly at this point.

00:48:07.000 If Joe Biden were running at 49-41 against Trump, then there'd be a case for DeSantis.

00:48:12.000 But it's very hard for Republicans to make that case in favor of DeSantis when they're basically running even against Joe Biden because Biden's just such an unbelievably weak candidate.

00:48:20.000 So speaking of these indictments, Donald Trump came out yesterday and he suggested that he is going to be indicted soon.

00:48:27.000 He said on Truth Social, I assume an indictment from deranged Jack Smith and his highly partisan gang of thugs pertaining to my peacefully and patriotically speech will be coming out any day now as yet another attempt to cover up all this bad news about bribes, payoffs and extortion coming from the Biden camp.

00:48:39.000 This seems to be the way that they do it.

00:48:41.000 And now Atlanta is bracing for possible indictments, according to the Washington Post.

00:48:45.000 For more than two years, people here and across the country have watched and waited for clues.

00:48:48.000 The high-profile Georgia investigation into whether former President Trump and his allies broke the law in their attempts to overturn his 2020 election loss in the state was winding to an end.

00:48:56.000 That speculation hit fever pitch in recent days with the installation of orange security barriers near the main entrance of the Fulton County Courthouse in downtown Atlanta.

00:49:04.000 Simultaneous with them setting up all of that security was an appeal by Donald Trump to the court to basically rule out Fulton County District Attorney Fannie Willis's investigation.

00:49:14.000 A judge, Fulton County Superior Court Judge Robert McBurney, who oversaw the special grand jury investigation in this particular case, basically slapped down Donald Trump's legal efforts to stop all of that, so it's very likely that that case is going to go forward in the near future.

00:49:28.000 Meanwhile, Adam Schiff continues to be out there treated as a credible source after lying for years about the Russia-Trump stuff.

00:49:33.000 He says there could still be more charges against Trump on January 6th.

00:49:38.000 You've prosecuted cases.

00:49:39.000 Do you expect that they will come out with an indictment before that, or do they need that in order to make the strongest case?

00:49:46.000 You know, we're all a bit blind here because we haven't seen the body of evidence that the special counsel has.

00:49:52.000 But I would imagine, you know, if the target letter went out, if they're having these, you know, last-minute conversations, that Smith is ready to indict.

00:50:00.000 And he may just want to dot an I and cross a T by bringing Carrick in.

00:50:04.000 He may not expect to get a lot of valuable information, but he wants to make sure at least he knows if the other side called Carrick, what would he have to say.

00:50:11.000 So I don't think it's necessary that the investigation would wait until then.

00:50:16.000 And as we saw in Florida, if the special counsel gets new information, there can always be a superseding indictment on these January 6 charges.

00:50:25.000 So again, Democrats are going to go after Trump.

00:50:27.000 And again, all of that benefits Trump in the primary.

00:50:28.000 So what does that mean for the other candidates?

00:50:30.000 Well, as I've said before, they're not going to win this race against Trump by actually going up directly against Trump.

00:50:35.000 It's not possible.

00:50:36.000 He has too much strength inside the Republican Party, which means they need to orient At the media.

00:50:42.000 I've been encouraging Ron DeSantis' campaign.

00:50:43.000 Again, he's the only viable competitor to Trump at this point by the polling data.

00:50:46.000 There is no third place in this race right now.

00:50:49.000 If you look at the New York Times, Siena College Poll.

00:50:52.000 The same one that shows Trump up by leaps and bounds over the rest of the field.

00:50:55.000 It's got DeSantis at 17 and everybody else at less than 3%.

00:50:57.000 So it really is DeSantis or bust for anybody who wants DeSantis to overcome anybody to be the not-Trump candidate.

00:51:05.000 Which means there needs to be a consolidation of the field.

00:51:07.000 That's only going to happen if DeSantis steps into unfriendly territory.

00:51:11.000 The DeSantis campaign is rolling out a bunch of proposals.

00:51:13.000 They rolled out an economic policy speech.

00:51:15.000 You know who did a lot of policy?

00:51:16.000 Elizabeth Warren.

00:51:17.000 You know who doesn't care about policy?

00:51:18.000 Anyone.

00:51:19.000 I hate to break it to everyone in political sphere, but here's the reality.

00:51:23.000 You care about policy.

00:51:24.000 I care about policy.

00:51:25.000 The vast majority of voters do not care about policy.

00:51:26.000 They care about personality, which is why Donald Trump became president of the United States.

00:51:30.000 It's also, by the way, why Barack Obama became president of the United States without any sort of political experience in actually promoting policy before he became president.

00:51:38.000 So, what does that mean?

00:51:39.000 It means that DeSantis is going to have to step into unfriendly territory and he's going to have to throw a few punches.

00:51:44.000 That's the only way he's going to regain any sort of momentum in the race at this point.

00:51:48.000 Okay, time for a couple... a thing I like and then some things that I hate.

00:51:51.000 So...

00:51:53.000 Things I like today.

00:51:54.000 So yeah, I told you last week that I saw Oppenheimer, but I didn't really review it because I had a 43-minute review of Barbie, which became like the most viral thing on the internet for a bit.

00:52:03.000 And so here's my actual review of Oppenheimer.

00:52:06.000 So it's a brilliant film because Christopher Nolan is just amazing.

00:52:09.000 Christopher Nolan is the best living director.

00:52:11.000 There is not a question about this.

00:52:14.000 And how you turn a three-hour biopic about a nuclear physicist Into a blockbuster movie that involves essentially one big explosion.

00:52:27.000 is kind of a masterclass.

00:52:28.000 It really is.

00:52:29.000 I mean, just on a filmmaking level, the thing is beautiful to watch.

00:52:31.000 The first hour is so compelling.

00:52:33.000 It's the best sort of biopic about science ever by a pretty long margin here.

00:52:40.000 The performances are universally fantastic.

00:52:42.000 There are tons of cameos by people who you're going to recognize.

00:52:45.000 Aside from Kelly Murphy, it turns into a great performance.

00:52:47.000 Obviously, Matt Damon is terrific in this film.

00:52:49.000 It's a really, really, really good movie.

00:52:53.000 What's fascinating about it from a sort of historical point of view is the way that the movie is done.

00:52:57.000 So the movie is essentially two tracks.

00:53:00.000 What Nolan calls fission and fusion.

00:53:03.000 So the fission side is performed by Robert Downey Jr.

00:53:09.000 Robert Downey Jr.

00:53:12.000 is playing the guy who's the head of the Princeton physics program who originally got Oppenheimer to come over there.

00:53:19.000 And who is Essentially up for a position as the head of the Department of Commerce under Dwight Eisenhower.

00:53:26.000 At one point, actually, he was offered to be—this is a real-life story—he was actually offered to be chief of staff for Dwight Eisenhower.

00:53:32.000 Louis Strauss.

00:53:33.000 So Louis Strauss knew Oppenheimer.

00:53:36.000 The movie sort of implies that he was jealous of Oppenheimer and that's the reason why he was implacably opposed to Oppenheimer.

00:53:41.000 So the basic thrust of the Oppenheimer story, and this is true in real life, is that Oppenheimer was a communist fellow traveler in the 1930s.

00:53:47.000 There's some good evidence that he was actively being used by the Soviets in like the early 1940s, even during the Manhattan Project.

00:53:56.000 In order to sort of facilitate transfer of information, there's a fairly famous letter from a Soviet agent in the United States to Lorenzi Beria, who is the head of the KGB.

00:54:06.000 It wasn't called the KGB at the time, but the KGB.

00:54:09.000 And about Oppenheimer, implying that Oppenheimer was in fact being used to funnel information.

00:54:15.000 to the Soviet Union or at least hooking people up.

00:54:17.000 There's a lot of controversy about his Soviet ties.

00:54:19.000 The man was like deeply embedded with tons of communists all around him.

00:54:23.000 There were a bunch of people who actually were active Soviet spies who were present at Los Alamos during this period.

00:54:28.000 So basically the story of Oppenheimer, just on a historical level, is that he was granted a security clearance in order to help produce the bomb.

00:54:33.000 There were serious security problems with him leading up to that and everybody was worried about it.

00:54:37.000 But they really had no choice because all the best nuclear scientists We're all in bed with communists.

00:54:42.000 Including, by the way, Albert Einstein.

00:54:44.000 Albert Einstein, quite famously, was kind of a fan of Lenin.

00:54:47.000 He literally said about Lenin, quote, That is what Albert Einstein had to say about Vladimir Lenin.

00:54:50.000 So, I mean, a lot of these people were communist fellow travelers.

00:54:51.000 energy to the realization of social justice. I do not consider his methods practical, but

00:54:55.000 one thing is certain, men of his type are the guardians and restorers of humanity."

00:54:58.000 Right? That is what Albert Einstein had to say about Vladimir Lenin. So, I mean, a lot

00:55:04.000 of these people were communist fellow travelers. One reason for that is because most of Europe 0.99

00:55:10.000 at this point was divided between sort of fascists and communists, right? This is exactly

00:55:13.000 what happened in pre-war Germany, is that there was a divide between the communists

00:55:19.000 in Germany and the fascists in Germany, and the right sided with the fascists in order

00:55:23.000 to stop the communists, right? That's the story of the early 1930s and late 1920s in

00:55:27.000 Germany, and obviously the Nazis end up rising to power. A lot of people who oppose the Nazis

00:55:30.000 then fall into the communist camp because the communists very often would promise sort

00:55:35.000 of equality of man and brotherhood. So for a lot of Jewish expatriates, they were

00:55:38.000 So, Oppenheimer is brought into Los Alamos.

00:55:41.000 There are serious suspicions about his security, even at the time.

00:55:44.000 He's given security clearance to get the bomb done.

00:55:46.000 toward the communist camp. This is why in intellectual Jewish circles communism was 0.94

00:55:50.000 very popular in the 1930s and 1940s as sort of an anti-racist routine despite its evils.

00:55:55.000 Okay so Oppenheimer is brought into Los Alamos. There are serious suspicions about his security

00:56:00.000 even at the time. He's given security clearance to get the bomb done. After the war he becomes a big

00:56:05.000 and ardent opponent of the development of the hydrogen bomb.

00:56:10.000 He speaks publicly about how the hydrogen bomb should not be developed because it'll lead to

00:56:13.000 an arms race. Instead maybe we should share technology with the Russians and there'll be 0.97

00:56:16.000 mutually assured destruction and then we'll all go weapons down. And there are two ways to

00:56:20.000 read that. One is...

00:56:21.000 as Oppenheimer's fans would read it, which is that he was so stunned by the power of the bomb

00:56:25.000 that now he turns against the use of nuclear weapons and the possibility of nuclear weapons

00:56:30.000 themselves, right? I'm the destroyer of all man and the all of the quotes about him being, you

00:56:36.000 know, death. And the other read on this is that he was perfectly fine using the bomb on Japan when 0.84

00:56:43.000 the Soviets wanted the bomb to be used on Japan.

00:56:45.000 But then as soon as the war was over, he didn't want the United States leaping way, way, way ahead of the Russians in terms of nuclear technology.

00:56:51.000 And so he wanted to stop the development of the hydrogen bomb.

00:56:53.000 And it was these suspicions that led Louis Strauss to testify, to essentially organize A removal of Oppenheimer's security clearance in the early 1950s.

00:57:02.000 So in the movie, this is played as sort of McCarthyite scare.

00:57:05.000 Like everybody is it's overwrought.

00:57:07.000 It's Red Scare kind of stuff.

00:57:09.000 But again, there's pretty good material suggesting that Oppenheimer probably should not have had security clearance in the aftermath of the war because he was given security clearance as like an emergency measure.

00:57:20.000 But he was a serious, I mean, like literally every woman he ever slept with was a communist.

00:57:24.000 All of his friends were communists.

00:57:25.000 He he gave money to communist causes.

00:57:29.000 He was cited in a letter that's now been uncovered to Laurenti Beria as a person who was used as a funnel.

00:57:35.000 Now, maybe that's false.

00:57:35.000 Maybe it's not true.

00:57:36.000 But is that enough questions to remove a security clearance?

00:57:39.000 It for sure is.

00:57:39.000 The movie plays it as though Oppenheimer is clearly not in that camp and that the real reason that he's sort of going through this process and respecting the process is because he wants to do repentance for having created the nuclear bomb.

00:57:50.000 The real problem with the movie is the time in which the movie is made.

00:57:53.000 So the entire premise of the movie is that Oppenheimer has created a means for the world to destroy itself and he can't actually deal with that.

00:57:59.000 And so that's the entire plotline of the movie.

00:58:00.000 And all the counter-arguments to him.

00:58:02.000 Mutually assured destruction. 0.98

00:58:04.000 We have to bomb Japan because a million men will die on the beaches of Japan if we don't. 0.99

00:58:08.000 The notion that we have to beat the Soviets.

00:58:09.000 All these are treated as sort of bad concerns.

00:58:13.000 The problem is that history proved all of Oppenheimer's critics basically right.

00:58:17.000 The reality is that nuclear power has been one of the greatest achievements in the history of science.

00:58:21.000 Maybe the greatest achievement in the history of science.

00:58:23.000 Why?

00:58:23.000 Not only because of the development of nuclear energy, which is essentially endless and clean, but also because the development of the nuclear bomb itself has made wartime death extraordinarily less of a mathematical issue.

00:58:39.000 Meaning that, let's take a quick example.

00:58:41.000 The number of American soldiers who were killed in World War II was 405,000.

00:58:50.000 405,000 Americans died in World War II.

00:58:52.000 116,000 Americans died in World War I.

00:58:56.000 The nuclear bomb is developed.

00:58:58.000 And here are the casualty lists, okay?

00:59:00.000 Here are the deaths by war of the United States for every subsequent war.

00:59:04.000 36,000 in the Korean War.

00:59:06.000 Less than one-third of the total of World War I, and less than one-tenth the total of World War II.

00:59:10.000 58,000 in Vietnam War.

00:59:11.000 These are bloody long wars, by the way.

00:59:14.000 Really bloody, really long.

00:59:15.000 The Vietnam War is 1963 to 1975.

00:59:17.000 It's a 12-year war.

00:59:19.000 58,000 people dead.

00:59:20.000 Again, less than one-seventh the number of people dead in World War II.

00:59:25.000 The Persian Gulf War, 382.

00:59:26.000 The Iraq operations, 4,600.

00:59:27.000 Iraq operations 4,600. The Afghanistan operations 2,456.

00:59:32.000 And the number of wartime deaths on planet Earth goes down dramatically in the aftermath

00:59:37.000 of the development of the bomb.

00:59:38.000 Why?

00:59:38.000 Because if you're gonna fight a proxy war, those proxy wars better not escalate into anything that approaches a nuclear exchange.

00:59:43.000 So all of the, so some of the people who are played as villains in the film, and I won't say that they're played as outright villains.

00:59:49.000 The only person who's played sort of as an outright villain is Strauss by Robert Downey Jr.

00:59:53.000 But all of his concerns about Oppenheimer are correct.

00:59:56.000 Oppenheimer was a wild egotist. 0.87

00:59:57.000 He was a womanizer. 0.96

00:59:58.000 He was a person who was deeply involved with himself. 0.92

01:00:02.000 And there's a pretty good argument to be made that his sort of narcissism led him to make some of the arguments that he was making.

01:00:08.000 There's a scene that's sort of played for almost like Truman is the villain in which Oppenheimer, and this is a real story from American Prometheus, the biography upon which the film is based, There's a scene in the movie where Oppenheimer goes to visit Truman, and he is telling him he doesn't want to do the hydrogen bomb, and that he's very concerned about the casualties, and he says that he is disturbed, but that he's the person who created the bomb.

01:00:31.000 And Truman looks at him, and he says, you didn't drop it.

01:00:34.000 I dropped it.

01:00:34.000 Nobody's gonna remember you for dropping it.

01:00:35.000 They're gonna remember you for the science.

01:00:36.000 They're gonna remember me for dropping the bomb. 0.92

01:00:38.000 And he says, get this crybaby out of my office. 0.99

01:00:41.000 Truman was right. 0.90

01:00:43.000 Truman was right, okay?

01:00:45.000 The fact is, nobody remembers Oppenheimer for being the guy who dropped the bomb because he didn't drop the bomb.

01:00:49.000 And this is sort of the outcome of the movie that's sort of weird.

01:00:52.000 So, the movie seems to suggest that the scientists have some sort of special viewpoint into humanity because they developed the science.

01:01:01.000 That the politicians are sort of venal and corrupt and they have all these worldly concerns, but the scientists are operating on sort of a spiritual plane.

01:01:09.000 The cult of scientific expertise probably went out of fashion with Oppenheimer, and it's a good thing that it did.

01:01:14.000 Because the reality is that just because a scientist is great at science does not mean they know jack bleep about politics or about human nature.

01:01:21.000 Again, Albert Einstein, most brilliant scientist who ever lived, was a fan of Lenin.

01:01:26.000 Oppenheimer was a communist fellow traveler.

01:01:30.000 The fact is that Anthony Fauci does not know about human nature.

01:01:33.000 Anthony Fauci does not know what sort of decisions should be made to balance all the interests of human beings.

01:01:37.000 This is why we elect politicians.

01:01:39.000 This is why we don't have scientific god kings.

01:01:42.000 And so there are a couple of messages that come away from the film that are sort of in conflict.

01:01:46.000 One is that it's kind of bad that the scientists, you know, didn't get to run things because the politicians were so venal and all of this. 0.93

01:01:51.000 But the other one is that the scientists are really kind of screwed up because they're screwed up just like all other human beings. 0.96

01:01:56.000 They're not a class apart from all other human beings. 0.96

01:01:58.000 They are not wiser or more brilliant, except in the fields in which they are wiser and more brilliant, which includes nuclear physics, but does not include politics.

01:02:05.000 And so in any case, the fact that, you know, it takes on all of these issues and does so in a blockbuster fashion, a three hour long movie about issues like politics, science, about the interplay of the two, about communism versus freedom of speech and all that like the fact that you do

01:02:20.000 that in a three-hour film and it's going to make hundreds of millions of dollars is testament to uh

01:02:23.000 what Christopher Nolan is capable of in terms of where this ranks among Nolan's films it's it's a

01:02:28.000 different kind of Nolan film Nolan's films that you think of are like the Dark Knight or Interstellar

01:02:33.000 or Inception you know these vast sort of these vast visual feasts

01:02:39.000 That's not really what Oppenheimer is.

01:02:41.000 It's more along the lines of, say, There Will Be Blood than it is along the lines of his prior work.

01:02:46.000 As I say, it's the best scientific biopic ever made.

01:02:48.000 In terms of where I put it in sort of the Nolan pantheon, it's kind of strange to put it in the Nolan pantheon because, again, it's such a different type of film.

01:02:55.000 But I will say that I was pleasantly surprised by the fact that it's better than his last two films.

01:03:00.000 So I wanted to love Dunkirk, instead I kind of liked Dunkirk.

01:03:04.000 And I didn't like Tenet.

01:03:06.000 I thought Tenet was a mess.

01:03:08.000 This one is... It's such a good film.

01:03:11.000 It's a film I will watch twice.

01:03:12.000 And that's saying a lot because it's three hours long.

01:03:15.000 Okay, so that's the thing that I like today.

01:03:17.000 Time for a quick thing that I hate.

01:03:23.000 Okay, so my friend Matt Walsh, he believes that he has now won the greatest of all arguments, the argument over UFOs.

01:03:31.000 He thinks that not only do aliens exist, that they are here on this planet. 0.99

01:03:37.000 And so he was very upset with me yesterday when I said that this is stupid. 0.98

01:03:39.000 He was very mad, and he had basically two main arguments in which he quote-unquote destroyed me using facts and logic, which, dude, I've got that branded. 0.96

01:03:46.000 I'm sorry.

01:03:47.000 It's copyrighted over at the Library of Congress already, so I'm gonna sue Matt for copyright violation.

01:03:52.000 Of course, I'd then be suing myself, but that's okay.

01:03:54.000 In any case, Matt says he has two arguments.

01:03:57.000 One is, I'm not even open to the possibility there are aliens on Earth.

01:04:01.000 And two is, there is actual proof that there have been aliens on Earth.

01:04:03.000 Let's hear Matt articulate these arguments as he does so brilliantly, being a lumberjack and all.

01:04:09.000 Admitting the preconceived biases up front.

01:04:13.000 Admitting that he rules out the possibility that any aliens could have visited Earth before looking at the evidence.

01:04:22.000 What does that mean?

01:04:22.000 It means that there's no evidence at all that could possibly convince him.

01:04:27.000 So then, what credibility does his point of view have on this subject?

01:04:32.000 If you are saying from the beginning, you know, if I come to you and I say, I have evidence That aliens have visited Earth.

01:04:41.000 I have evidence.

01:04:42.000 And you say to me, doesn't matter what your evidence is, I don't believe it.

01:04:45.000 I already don't believe it.

01:04:47.000 Well, okay.

01:04:48.000 See, when I show you the evidence, and then you say, yeah, that's not convincing.

01:04:52.000 Well, you were already committed to that response.

01:04:55.000 You were openly committed to that response before you looked at it.

01:05:01.000 Okay, so that's argument number one, right?

01:05:03.000 No evidence could convince me that aliens are on Earth.

01:05:06.000 That's not what I said.

01:05:07.000 But the burden of proof?

01:05:08.000 Super high.

01:05:09.000 Because that's a big claim.

01:05:10.000 That alien species are now active on Earth.

01:05:12.000 That they're flying their little planes around on Earth.

01:05:15.000 That they somehow conquered the distances of interstellar travel. 0.99

01:05:19.000 And then came to Earth, and according to witness testimony, then like morons, crashed into a tree. 0.99

01:05:26.000 Their bodies were available for us to peruse. 0.99

01:05:29.000 Which is some pretty bad piloting, but that's the claim.

01:05:33.000 Okay, so should I be skeptical of that claim?

01:05:37.000 I feel like, yeah.

01:05:38.000 The more outlandish the claim, the more evidence must be provided to support the claim.

01:05:42.000 So if you were going to claim that a giant green monster the size of a dragon emerged from your toilet and then proceeded to burn down your local city, and I said, I'm gonna need to see some evidence of that.

01:05:54.000 And you're like, well, one time a guy took a shadowy photo on his radar I might be like, well, that's a big claim and it is not supported by the evidence you have thus far presented.

01:06:04.000 So could you present me with evidence that aliens have been here?

01:06:06.000 Sure. 0.93

01:06:07.000 In fact, I think the government sucks at pretty much everything.

01:06:10.000 So it seems to me quite plausible that if the evidence existed, that not only would we know about it, we'd see a lot of it and it would be pretty credible, which brought us to Matt's second argument, which is there is evidence.

01:06:20.000 How dare you?

01:06:20.000 Because again, I'm not saying that you couldn't show me evidence to convince me that alien life is on earth and is zipping around like you could.

01:06:27.000 But I'd need an awful lot of it, and it would need to be super credible, and there are several plausible explanations.

01:06:32.000 I say, let's take this logically for just a moment to destroy Matt with facts and logic.

01:06:36.000 So, if I say to Matt, there's a bunch of dirty dishes in the kitchen.

01:06:40.000 I leave them in the sink.

01:06:41.000 Well, I won't even tell you if I left them in the sink.

01:06:43.000 They're just a bunch of dirty dishes in the kitchen sink.

01:06:46.000 My wife walks in in the morning, she goes, why are all these dirty dishes in the sink? 1.00

01:06:49.000 And I say, an alien put them there.

01:06:52.000 And she says, well, I don't believe you.

01:06:54.000 And I say, well, look, here's a photo of an alien ship present on Earth.

01:07:00.000 And I can't tell you whether an alien came in here.

01:07:03.000 I can't.

01:07:04.000 I'm just going to say that it's possible.

01:07:06.000 Is it not?

01:07:07.000 It's possible.

01:07:08.000 And she's going to say, it is possible.

01:07:09.000 Also, wash the dishes.

01:07:11.000 You made a mess.

01:07:12.000 Because on the list of possibilities, this one ranks rather low.

01:07:15.000 So, when I see some of the evidence that Matt is going to talk about in a second, the possibility that this is alien life is like 10th on the list of probabilities.

01:07:24.000 Is it possible?

01:07:25.000 Sure, pretty much anything is possible.

01:07:27.000 Is it probable?

01:07:29.000 I think at best it is extraordinarily highly unlikely, but here's Matt explaining that no, no, no, it's highly likely.

01:07:35.000 But with the UFO, blink and you miss it.

01:07:39.000 And so most of the time, there's not enough time to even pull your phone out because the thing's traveling so fast.

01:07:44.000 And yet, in spite of those obstacles, still we have hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of photographs, footage that we've seen since the 50s.

01:07:54.000 I mean, there are compelling UFO photos back in the 50s that still have not been debunked.

01:07:59.000 People want to say that they're hoaxes, but many of them still.

01:08:01.000 People have been, you know, experts have been looking at them for decades and haven't been able to debunk them.

01:08:08.000 And so what do you expect?

01:08:08.000 You expect that if UFOs have visited, you would expect that in, you know, back in the mid 20th century when there was, there's photographic technology, but not like it is today, that every once in a while you'd see a good photograph.

01:08:20.000 And then you would expect that today there'd be a lot more.

01:08:22.000 And that's exactly what we see.

01:08:26.000 Okay, so, um, here is the thing.

01:08:29.000 That's true for pretty much everything.

01:08:31.000 So, the records, contemporaneous records have gotten more plentiful because we have better technology to document those things.

01:08:36.000 What he's saying is that because we now have, you know, more photos or more things, things that we can't explain, that means aliens.

01:08:42.000 So I'm saying we can't explain them.

01:08:44.000 I don't know if they're aliens.

01:08:45.000 In fact, I think it's quite unlikely that they're aliens.

01:08:47.000 What he is saying is that when a magician makes a ball disappear, the ball did disappear.

01:08:53.000 You don't see it.

01:08:55.000 Maybe it's sleight of hand, but the high probabilities he made the ball disappear.

01:08:58.000 Now, maybe he did.

01:08:59.000 Maybe he violated the laws of physics, but how do I know that the magician didn't actually just violate the laws of physics?

01:09:03.000 Because, well, number one, because I think the laws of physics are real.

01:09:08.000 And number two, because I think it's much more likely that the magician is using sleight of hand.

01:09:12.000 So when Matt says, you know, they see objects in the sky that seem to defy the laws of physics.

01:09:16.000 So first of all, right away, I'm going to go skeptical.

01:09:19.000 Why?

01:09:20.000 Because I think the laws of physics are things that exist, and they exist here on Earth.

01:09:23.000 And that means that if something is defying the laws of physics, it is more likely that my eyes are deceiving me than that the laws of physics are being violated.

01:09:30.000 Right?

01:09:31.000 Because they're laws.

01:09:33.000 If you tell me that you saw a cup floating in the middle of the air, If I told you this, right?

01:09:39.000 I walked in this morning, there's just a cup floating in the middle of the air in our office.

01:09:44.000 And here are a few possibilities.

01:09:46.000 One, somebody has rigged the thing to look like a cup is floating in the middle of the air.

01:09:48.000 And two, it's defying the laws of physics.

01:09:51.000 Which one do you think is more likely?

01:09:53.000 Probably one, right?

01:09:53.000 Because you believe in the laws of physics.

01:09:55.000 So, when something comes into conflict with the laws of physics, one of two things has to be true. 0.99

01:09:58.000 Either you're now claiming that not only did aliens come to Earth, they also defy the laws of physics and are stupid enough to get caught on camera. 0.53

01:10:06.000 Or alternatively, it's an optical illusion and your eyes are playing tricks on you or the radar is malfunctioning. 0.99

01:10:11.000 By the way, I mean, I'll take an example.

01:10:14.000 The Independent Rampage just Earlier this year, talking about unidentified aerial phenomenon in the United States, they say some of these highly maneuverable UFOs seem to defy physics.

01:10:25.000 Researchers, including those from the Pentagon's All Domain Anomaly Resolution Office, say these UFOs do not show the telltale signs that normally appear when objects moving at such speeds experience friction with air.

01:10:35.000 The new study, which remains to be peer-reviewed, did not delve into more philosophical questions, such as proof of intelligent lifeforms on other planets, but from the UAP observations, the researchers said the friction of UAP with the surrounding air or water is expected to generate a bright optical fireball ionization shall entail implying radio signatures.

01:10:50.000 For an object observed to be moving in such fashion at high speeds, scientists say ionization and associated radio frequency signatures are expected as they move through the atmosphere, in addition to the thermal shock and associated optical signatures.

01:11:01.000 But in reports of such highly maneuverable UAPs, there are no signs of these signatures.

01:11:06.000 Scientists speculate the lack of these signatures could be due to more mundane reasons, including that human instruments may not be sensitive enough to record these changes.

01:11:14.000 The lack of these signatures could imply inaccurate distance measurements for single-site sensors without a range gate capability, say researchers.

01:11:20.000 Typical UAP sightings are too far away to get a highly resolved image of the object, and determination of the object's motion is limited by lack of range data.

01:11:28.000 So, this could be a sensor-induced optical illusion.

01:11:30.000 So, those are the possibilities.

01:11:33.000 Either there is indeed a ship violating the laws of physics, which are laws because they're, you know, real.

01:11:38.000 Or, it could be that the sensor data is malfunctioning.

01:11:42.000 So, if you step on your scale this morning and it says that you are 100,000 pounds, one of two things is happening.

01:11:50.000 Either you are violating the laws of biology because you as a human being cannot actually live being 100,000 pounds, or your scale is malfunctioning.

01:11:57.000 Which one do you think is more likely?

01:12:00.000 Again, this is a question of likelihoods, Matt.

01:12:02.000 It's not a question of for-sures, because I don't know for sure.

01:12:05.000 All I'm saying is that the evidence you're presenting me is going to have to be better than a guy saw a shadowy image that appeared to defy the laws of physics.

01:12:12.000 Probably it's aliens.

01:12:16.000 Maybe it's demons, as Michael says.

01:12:17.000 By the way, at 7 p.m.

01:12:18.000 Eastern, if you wish to see me destroy Matt Walsh live to his own face, check out backstage.

01:12:23.000 Alrighty, folks, the show continues right now.

01:12:24.000 You're not going to miss us discussing the state of the economy, which, again, I am not so sanguine about.

01:12:30.000 If you're not a member, become a member.

01:12:31.000 Use code SHAPIRO at checkout for two months free on all annual plans.

The Ben Shapiro Show - August 01, 2023

Biden’s Worst Nightmare Is Now Coming True

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