Donald Trump Jr. has been accused of colluding with the Russian government. Is this a big deal or not? Is this excuse-making for bad behavior? Or is it a reminder that politics is a dirty game, and we don t get to choose the rules of engagement? What aboutism has become the all-purpose alibi for Republican malfeasance. Some call it whataboutism, and it s become a powerful tool for delegitimizing the other side. But what aboutism is actually a form of "whataboutism" that has been around for a long time, and has been used to justify leftist dishonesty and cover up for the sins of the left. In this episode, Alex Blumberg explains how the right uses it, and why it s a dangerous tool for leftist hypocrisy and moral relativism, as well as how it can be used to delegitimize the rule of engagement and make excuses for other side s bad behavior. The problem is that this invites an obvious temptation: if you can turn other side into Hitler, few are willing to honestly assess the moral quality of their opposition. It s far more profitable to define all political enemies as Nazis, and then suggest it s okay to demonize them. This is just as true for the left as it is for the right. And if you could win without siding with Stalin, you can even demonize Stalin, so you don t need to be careful about how you could even if you do so. What do you need to do about Stalin? We don t even need to win against Stalin, do we need to have a plan to win with Stalin? We could even be a punch against Stalin? How do you know Stalin, even if we don't need to sided with him? What about it? We could be careful with Stalin with Stalin so we can be careful How do we know Stalin? It's easier to win without having a plan against Hitler? How much do you do that? - How much better than Stalin, right? -- What do we really know about Stalin, does it really matter? -- What about that? -- Is it possible to be a better enemy than Hitler, right or not ? -- well, we might have a better than Hitler? -- We don't even have to choose a side with Stalin to defeat Hitler? We might have to side with Hitler to defeat Stalin, but he did it too? --
00:00:47.000When Trump tweets out that Hillary Clinton may have gotten away with bad behavior, he's at least partially reminding the media and the Democrats that they were fine with Hillary's bad behavior.
00:00:55.000When conservatives spent much of yesterday reminding the media that Barack Obama pledged flexibility to the Russians in exchange for them backing off their aggression in the final days of the 2012 election, they were doing so in order to point out the media's obvious leftist bias.
00:01:07.000That's important and it's worthwhile, but it should be made explicit.
00:01:10.000Second, whataboutism can be a reminder of proportionality.
00:01:13.000Sometimes, whataboutism takes the form of reminding people that something isn't that big a deal.
00:01:18.000Seemingly, the entire left went ballistic this week when it first heard about a House rule that forbade bear arms in the Capitol.
00:01:23.000The right promptly recommended, reminded the left, that this rule existed under Nancy Pelosi, too.
00:01:28.000It wasn't a big deal then, it's not a big deal now.
00:01:50.000The right now engages in a fantasy whereby the left's dishonesty somehow justifies conservative dishonesty.
00:01:55.000Hey, if Hillary's corrupt, what's the big problem with the Trump campaign soliciting information from the Russian government?
00:02:01.000In this case, whataboutism is itself dishonesty.
00:02:04.000It's pretending to care about the sins of the left,
00:02:06.000In order to justify the sins of the right.
00:02:08.000It actually throws into sharp relief the hypocrisy of the right.
00:02:10.000We complained endlessly and justifiably about Loretta Lynch meeting secretly with Bill Clinton, but we're fine with Donald Trump Jr.
00:02:15.000meeting secretly with Natalia Veselnitskaya and we're supposed to believe everything he says about it.
00:02:20.000We ripped President Obama's flexibility hot mic moment, but we're fine with President Trump saying that America has killed people just like Putin.
00:02:26.000We correctly targeted Clinton over Chinagate, but now we're happy to use Chinagate as an excuse to avoid talking about Russiagate.
00:02:41.000The right often embraces this form of whataboutism because many people believe that fighting the left requires tossing out morality of means in favor of morality of ends.
00:02:51.000Since that was the animating principle behind a lot of conservative support for the Trump campaign, this form of whataboutism has also become the most common form.
00:02:57.000Many on the right say this isn't actually moral relativism.
00:03:00.000Relativism implies there's no moral answer to any given question, whereas situational morality says there is a moral answer, but it changes based on the fact pattern.
00:03:08.000Therefore, it might normally be wrong to collude with Russia, for example, but it's a moral imperative to do so to stop Hillary Clinton, after all.
00:03:14.000Well, we had to side with Stalin to defeat Hitler.
00:03:16.000We might have to side with Putin to stop ISIS.
00:03:18.000The problem is that this invites an obvious temptation.
00:03:20.000If you can turn the other side into Hitler, you can make excuses for siding with Stalin.
00:03:24.000In the game of politics, few are willing to honestly assess the moral quality of their opposition and the rules of engagement.
00:03:31.000It's far more politically profitable to define all political enemies as Nazis,
00:03:34.000And then suggest it's okay to punch them.
00:03:36.000This is just as true for the left as it is for the right.
00:03:40.000It's always easier to win if you side with Stalin, even if you could win without siding with Stalin.
00:03:44.000The temptation, therefore, is to demonize the other side so you can side with Stalin even if you don't need to.
00:03:49.000We ought to be careful about how we use Whataboutism.
00:03:52.000The goal should be to reinforce moral standards, not to undermine them.
00:03:56.000But that goal seems to be receding into the distance as we use Whataboutism as a club directed at destroying principle rather than a shield for defending it.
00:04:03.000I'm Ben Shapiro, this is The Ben Shapiro Show.
00:04:09.000Okay, we are going to fully analyze everything having to do with Trump Jr.
00:04:36.000Completely losing their minds over this as they have lost their mind over everything so far We'll go through all of that.
00:04:41.000But before we do that, I want to say thank you to our sponsors over at Helix sleep So you are a unique human being you don't walk like everybody else.
00:04:48.000You don't talk like everybody else Why should you sleep like everybody else your mattress should be custom-made?
00:05:09.000And then we got our Helix Sleep mattress.
00:05:10.000We took that other mattress, we put it in the other room, because our Helix Sleep mattress is so good.
00:05:14.000You can even get a Helix Sleep mattress that has two separate sides to it, so if you and your spouse have different preferences in mattress, then you can still share one mattress, but the two sides sleep a little bit differently.
00:05:24.000They send it to your house, you take it out of the box, it inflates right away because it's a foam mattress, and you can just use it.
00:06:24.000Okay, but it turns out the reason that he revealed the emails was because eight minutes later the New York Times ran a story on the email, so he knew the New York Times was going to reveal the story, so he threw the emails out there.
00:06:33.000The problem is that the email said explicitly that Rob Goldstone, who is that weirdo who we played on the show yesterday, this publicist weirdo who talks about Andy's Arby or whatever it is, that guy brokered a meeting between Trump Jr.
00:06:48.000and a Russian-connected lawyer whom he said was a Russian government lawyer
00:06:52.000And he also said, this is part of Russia's effort to support Mr. Trump.
00:06:56.000This is a direct quote from the email, quote, part of Russia and its government support for Mr. Trump.
00:07:00.000So, the left immediately jumped to, this is the collusion.
00:07:06.000saw this, and he said he loved it, and then he brought in Manafort, and he brought in Kushner, and this is where the collusion began.
00:07:12.000The evil planning in the back rooms to decide how to militarize all of Hillary Clinton's seized emails from WikiLeaks, and John Podesta's seized emails from WikiLeaks.
00:08:03.000But what the Democrats were saying is that this was the beginning of actual collusion.
00:08:07.000This is where they started coordinating.
00:08:09.000Okay, well there's no proof that actual coordination actually happened, because all of the people in the meeting came out and said, that was worthless.
00:08:15.000The lady didn't even have any information.
00:08:17.000There are a couple of threats that exist, even if the information was worthless.
00:08:20.000Threat number one was that this was sort of the opener.
00:08:23.000That the Russian government now knew that the Trump campaign was willing to hear more stuff, and so maybe there'll be collusion down the road, but we haven't found any evidence of that.
00:08:30.000Threat number two is that now that there's been this meeting, they can hold that over Trump's head.
00:08:35.000They could—the Russians could hold this over Trump's head, and they could say, anytime we want, we can drop the information that you were quasi-colluding with us, or trying to collude with us, and destroy your presidency.
00:08:44.000But now the information's been dropped, so the threat is a little bit gone, unless there are more shoes to drop.
00:08:49.000But there are some outstanding questions that I want to go through about this particular meeting.
00:08:53.000And I think they actually do require answers now, because they are things that Trump is going to be asked, and the Trump administration are going to be asked.
00:09:00.000So, number one, did any information actually pass hand?
00:09:03.000So, everybody at the meeting, as I say, Kushner, Paul Manafort, the then-campaign manager, Trump Jr., Vesel Nitskaya,
00:09:13.000Natasha, Natalia, whatever her name is.
00:09:26.000Veselnitskaya would have to then admit that she was basically an agent of the Russian government, and the other three people in the room would actually be in danger of prosecution if the information was illegally obtained.
00:09:35.000So none of them are actually going to say it, and they all have a little bit of a history of dishonesty with this particular matter.
00:09:40.000Manafort has been a Kremlin stooge for years.
00:09:45.000I mean, like going back to 2012, there's a guy who approached me about working with Manafort and was basically posing him as a stooge of the Ukrainian government at the time.
00:09:55.000So this is not any sort of great shock.
00:09:57.000At that time, the Ukrainian government was in league with Vladimir Putin.
00:10:02.000Then he said it did take place, but we talked adoption.
00:10:04.000And then finally he admitted what the meeting was about.
00:10:07.000Kushner did not put on his forms that this meeting ever took place.
00:10:10.000So maybe that was oversight, maybe it was dishonesty, but it at least calls trust into question.
00:10:14.000And we have no idea who this Veselnutskaya lady is, right?
00:10:16.000I mean, she says she's not a Russian agent, but there's evidence to suggest that she is a Russian what they call a cutout, which is to say somebody who works for the Russian government but has plausible deniability.
00:10:24.000So we just don't know if any information was passed in this meeting.
00:10:27.000And the reason that I say this is because
00:10:38.000Did you tell your father anything about this?
00:10:55.000I mean, like, he looks like he's telling the truth here, but I will just remind you that Hillary Clinton said this about Loretta Lynch's meeting with Bill Clinton.
00:11:03.000They talked about grandkids, which is very much on our minds these days.
00:11:11.000Okay, so I'm not suggesting that Donald Trump Jr.
00:11:25.000is definitely lying, because I don't know whether he's lying or not.
00:11:28.000What I will say is that if Hillary Clinton had done the exact same thing, we would have said, there's no way she's telling the truth, right?
00:11:33.000Bill Clinton and Loretta Lynch don't get together in a room.
00:11:36.000In the middle of the campaign to talk about grandkids, right?
00:11:40.000And it turns out that it did compromise the investigation in such a way that James Comey felt the necessity to actually get himself involved in the investigation where he had no place.
00:11:49.000If we're gonna hold the standard that we don't know what happens behind closed doors and we have to be suspicious, my feeling is that we have to be pretty consistent about this.
00:12:39.000We primarily discussed a program about the adoption of Russian children that was active and popular with American families years ago.
00:12:45.000And was since ended by the Russian government, but it was not a campaign issue at the time, and there was no follow-up.
00:12:50.000I was asked to attend the meeting by an acquaintance, but was not told the name of the person I would be meeting with beforehand.
00:12:54.000So, all of this is technically true, right?
00:12:57.000All of that's technically true, but it misses the two main points, which is the meeting was specifically held to pass on dirt about Hillary Clinton, and second, Trump Jr.
00:13:03.000fully expected that he was going to be meeting a Russian government lawyer.
00:13:06.000He didn't know her name, but it said right in the email that this is going to be a Russian government lawyer.
00:13:10.000So, the problem is, the New York Times is reporting that the White House pre-approved Trump Jr.'
00:13:14.000's statement on Saturday, which looks more like a cover-up than it does like an attempt to be transparent.
00:13:19.000had just released the statement, that'd be one thing, but for the White House to approve a statement that it knew was false and was going to be debunked within 72 hours, not a good look for the White House.
00:13:28.000Okay, and then there's the biggest question of all, which is, did Trump himself know about the meeting?
00:13:40.000It's a little hard for me to believe that Trump was completely out of the loop, given the fact that, again, all of his top campaign officials were in a room with this lady for half an hour, two days after he had secured the nomination.
00:14:02.000On June 7th, that's when Donald Trump Jr.
00:14:04.000confirmed the meeting with the Russian official, Sor, supposedly.
00:14:08.000I am going to give a major speech on probably Monday of next week and we're going to be discussing all of the things that have taken place with the Clintons.
00:14:15.000I think you're going to find it very informative and very, very interesting.
00:14:35.000Okay, so there are a lot of people saying he never gave this speech, right?
00:14:38.000Everybody, I remember when he said this, everybody was expecting him to give this big barn burner of a speech where he tore down Hillary Clinton, he never gave it, so people were suggesting that maybe what happened here is that Jared and Trump Jr.
00:14:50.000We're going to get some information, and you're going to want to hear this information.
00:14:54.000And Trump got out in front of himself.
00:14:55.000That's definitely a possibility, but that's correlation, not causation.
00:14:58.000Again, no proof that Trump knew about what was going on here.
00:15:01.000Okay, this brings into question, this is the fourth question about this, and that is, why did Trump fire Comey?
00:15:05.000So, my theory, my working theory, it's still my working theory, is that Trump fired Comey because he knows that he's innocent.
00:15:11.000And he's ticked off that James Comey wouldn't say that he was innocent, even though privately James Comey was saying he wasn't under investigation.
00:15:17.000Because of this email, there's another plausible theory that's now gaining ground, because the counter-theory to that was Trump fired Comey because he was getting too close.
00:15:24.000I never believed that because there was no there there.
00:15:27.000It's hard to believe that Trump was going to fire him over a big nothing.
00:15:45.000No, I don't think there's enough evidence for that theory at all, but I'm just informing you of what the left's theory with regard to Comey would be.
00:15:54.000That Trump wanted Comey to announce that he wasn't under FBI investigation, except that maybe he was scared that it was going to get close to Donald Jr.
00:16:00.000Okay, final question, and this one is the most interesting, I think, is who leaked the news of this meeting in the first place?
00:16:07.000So, this meeting only had four people in it, right?
00:16:09.000It had the Russian, and then it had three of Trump's campaign officials, all of whom are still working for Trump.
00:16:14.000So, Manafort isn't, but he has no interest in revealing this meeting because it cuts against
00:16:18.000His attempts to distance himself from his Russian connections.
00:16:21.000So, who actually leaked the news of the meeting to the New York Times?
00:16:25.000Apparently they've been working on this for months.
00:17:33.000Because instead of treating this as the first step, or treating this as a case of we now have motive but we don't have means or opportunity yet, the media is treating this as the smoking gun, right?
00:18:05.000So everybody's story sort of ends with, and that's when I shot the guy coming through my front door, but the reality is the police will then come and they will probably arrest you, right?
00:18:11.000They will take you away, at the very least they'll question you, it will eat up years of your life, it'll cost you...
00:19:22.000Right now and again USCCA is just a fantastic group.
00:19:25.000You should definitely be involved with them Okay, so let's go through what Trump jr.
00:19:28.000Actually said so he's on Hannity Hannity is is the friendly press outlet that the Trump administration goes to When they have a problem because they know they're not gonna get a lot of hard balls, which is fine I mean Obama did the same thing with CNN and MSNBC for legitimately years.
00:19:58.000They had something, you know, maybe concrete evidence to all the stories I'd been hearing about, but they were probably under-reported for, you know, years, not just during the campaign.
00:20:06.000So, I think I wanted to hear it out, but really, it went nowhere, and it was apparent that that wasn't what the meeting was actually about.
00:20:12.000Okay, so basically, here he is just Joe Bluth, right?
00:20:43.000then says, if there had been anything illegal, I would have gone to the authorities right away.
00:20:48.000I said it earlier, a hundred percent I would bring it to the proper authorities.
00:20:51.000There's nothing that I would do to ever endanger this country.
00:20:53.000I think the reason we fought so hard during this campaign, whether it was my father and the work that he put into it, whether it was the rest of our family and the efforts that we put into it, and you know those efforts well, it's because we'd do anything for this country, so we're never going to put that in jeopardy, ever.
00:21:07.000I'm your older brother, Mike, and I was stepped over!
00:21:39.000So yeah, it hasn't been a good 24 hours for Don Jr.
00:21:44.000So now I want to go to what the Democrats are saying about all of this, because what the Democrats are saying about all of this is full-scale nutty.
00:21:50.000So as I say, I think that there's a little more nuance than the Democrats are saying.
00:21:53.000Number one, it is attempted collusion, okay?
00:21:55.000I'm talking about whether that's moral or not in a second, whether that's okay or not in a few minutes, because that is the lurking question underneath all of this, is how far is the right willing to go
00:22:14.000to defeat Hillary Clinton and the Democrats.
00:22:36.000We'll talk about that in just a second.
00:22:38.000But the Democrats are, of course, doing what they always do, which is blowing this way out of proportion
00:22:43.000It's one of the reasons why Americans can't take all of this super seriously because they're not waiting for the evidence.
00:22:48.000So Tim Kaine, as you recall, the vice presidential candidate, one of the most quickly forgotten vice presidential candidates in human history, actually.
00:22:55.000You recall that he ran against Hillary, he ran with Hillary Clinton, and it was basically Hillary Clinton and this bag of white paint.
00:23:03.000And so that was the bag of white paint being Tim Kaine.
00:23:05.000Here is Tim Kaine talking about how this is treason!
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00:25:33.000So, now is of course a perfect time for the right-to-virtue signal.
00:25:37.000So, there are a bunch of people on the right who have decided that now is the time to virtue signal.
00:25:42.000Okay, listen, I'm one of the people who is very, to put it mildly, I was rather Trump-skeptical during the election cycle, if you recall all the way back then.
00:25:49.000But I don't think this is an I-told-you-so moment.
00:25:51.000I don't think this isn't a, you know, I'll be people who voted for Trump, you are so wrong to see what he's doing now.
00:25:56.000No, I think everybody who voted for Trump basically knew what they were getting, and what they were getting was a guy who was this, right?
00:26:01.000I don't think this is a huge, enormous shock.
00:26:04.000I think that, you know, this is basically you bought what you paid for, and maybe it was better than Hillary Clinton, but it comes along with some baggage, and you have to recognize that.
00:26:14.000One of the great ironies is Joe Scarborough over on MSNBC.
00:26:17.000He says that he is done with the Republican Party.
00:26:21.000Mika was never a member of the Republican Party, but he's on with Stephen Colbert, one of the great schmucks in Showtime.
00:26:26.000And here is Joe Scarborough, who apparently decided to copy the hairstyle of Andrew Garfield from any number of movies, and or to simply get out of the shower, rub his hair with a towel,
00:26:41.000What do you think is happening with your own party?
00:27:29.000So, as I say, everyone knew what they were getting.
00:27:33.000There are very few surprises in politics.
00:27:35.000If you are surprised by anything that is currently going on with the Trump White House, let me suggest that you were blinding yourself to reality before you did any of this stuff.
00:27:42.000And the same is true for Joe Scarborough.
00:27:44.000But I thought Donald Trump was my best friend.
00:27:52.000But here's Joe Scarborough, a three-term congressperson who's made a fortune being an iconoclast, and here he is talking about how he's gonna leave the Republican Party.
00:28:01.000Maybe he'll start his own party, the Joe and Mika Wedding Party.
00:29:11.000My goal is to make Trump a better president at this point.
00:29:14.000My goal is to make the conservative movement a better conservative movement at this point.
00:29:18.000It isn't to leave and dump all over the movement because I have to signal to everybody what a swell guy I am.
00:29:24.000The left keeps saying, well, if you really want to resist Trump, why don't you resist his agenda?
00:29:28.000Well, when his agenda is wrong, I will resist it, but if you think that I'm going to want to raise taxes and increase Medicaid spending because I think that Trump is sometimes a jerk, and I think Trump may sometimes be corrupt, if you think that that, like, I just want to know, when was the last time a Democrat left Bill Clinton's agenda behind because Bill Clinton was a sleazy scumbag?
00:29:48.000Like, when was the last time the Democrats decided, you know what, I can't take all these lies from Obama, I'm becoming a Republican.
00:30:25.000How serious is this, these emails, from a legal perspective?
00:30:29.000It's certainly very, very serious, but it's also important to say, you know, there is a long way to go, and these emails in and of themselves are not proof of any crimes.
00:31:10.000to uh... when he filled out his form applying for a security clearance if he intentionally left it off that's a crime it's not a crime if he simply forgot or made a mistake this meeting though certainly seems pretty dramatic even in the context of a dramatic campaign the idea that he simply forgot about it strikes me as probably a little hard to believe.
00:31:33.000Okay fine, so he's going after Jared but Donald Trump Jr.
00:31:36.000didn't break any laws as far as we know even Jeffrey Toobin's admitting that so
00:31:40.000This defense that it's not illegal is correct.
00:31:43.000I point out once again, illegal does not mean moral, okay?
00:31:46.000So if it's not illegal, that doesn't mean that he did something good, and it also doesn't mean he didn't do something that could get his dad impeached.
00:31:52.000So Democrats were gonna try to impeach Trump no matter what, but this does not help.
00:31:55.000Okay, approach number two is the what about is what I talked about at the top of the show, and that is the what about Obama, right?
00:32:52.000That is the kindergarten version that when your kid comes home and it turns out that they did something bad, they say, well, Billy did it too.
00:32:58.000And you say, well, I don't care what Billy did.
00:33:31.000Now there's one distinction, which is that the Ukrainian government is not adversarial to the United States the way the Russian government is.
00:33:37.000And the Russian government was indeed trying to intervene in the election, even in ways the Ukrainian government was not.
00:33:45.000So Sebastian Gorka, who's a White House foreign policy advisor, he says, why aren't we talking about, like, a huge news story that happened yesterday, which is the defeat of ISIS in Mosul?
00:33:54.000Don't you think it's time the American people were served by the media justly, and you get to national security issues like Mosul?
00:34:01.000We're going to get to Mosul in one minute.
00:34:28.000Now, look at all this magnificent stuff I'm doing.
00:34:30.000Instead, what Trump does is he unleashes a tweet storm about the investigation, and then, at the end, he tacks on, and why don't you focus on Mosul?
00:34:41.000If he is hiding in the White House for the past three days, he hasn't done any public events, instead of out there on the trail talking about Mosul, how are we supposed to know about Mosul?
00:35:29.000Now we published Nolte over at Daily Wire.
00:35:31.000One of the reasons I like publishing Nolte, even though we have almost polar opposite opinions on these issues, is because Nolte is very clear about what he wants, right?
00:35:48.000Nolte's piece today on this on this story So he says the worst the Donald Trump jr.
00:35:53.000Scandal gets the more I know Republican voters chose the right guy to run against Hillary Clinton in 2016 at first It looked as though the meeting in the question was something over to over something touchy-feely like adoption upon hearing that my first thought was wait You've just secured the nomination and the first thing you do is pull the campaign manager and Donald whisperer into a meeting about adoption Are you insane?
00:36:12.000Hey, when the future of the country is at stake, and you are up against the unholy trinity of the Clinton machine, the entire mainstream media complex, and their butthurt allies in NeverTrump, there is no time to waste.
00:36:22.000We learned that the meeting was set up in the hopes of receiving information from the Russian government that would ensure Hillary Clinton never, ever, ever became president, and my faith in the epic badassery of Team Trump was restored, maybe even bolstered.
00:36:39.000So a lot of people on the right will deny that this is what they think, but what John says is actually indicative of a large percentage of what Republicans think.
00:36:45.000He says, Trump world is populated with people who will do anything, anything to win, and as long as it remains legal, those are my kind of Republicans.
00:36:54.000I understand there are a lot of people who listen to the show who agree with this perspective.
00:36:57.000The reason I disagree with this perspective is because I think that it does walk into dicey moral territory, and I'm sorry to bring up things like principles and morality in the context of this, but I thought that politics was about upholding principle.
00:37:08.000Now, you can say my chief principle is beating Hillary Clinton, but there are still rules of engagement.
00:37:13.000So, for example, I assume that John would not be in favor of somebody walking into Hillary Clinton's office and shooting her to stop her from becoming president.
00:37:20.000Even if she's the existential threat John thinks she was to the country, I'm fairly certain that John is not in favor of the use of violence.
00:37:27.000My guess is that there would be other things that John would not be in favor of, like if you were going to set Hillary Clinton up in some sort of sexual peccadillo sting, you're going to entice her into something.
00:37:38.000But I think that we need to know what the rules of engagement are because otherwise we're going to get into some pretty dicey territory.
00:37:44.000However evil you say your opponent is,
00:37:47.000However destructive you say your opponent is, that helps justify whatever action you take.
00:37:51.000What makes a person immoral is when your means are not geared to your end.
00:37:55.000So, someone cuts you off in traffic, you get out of your car, and you beat them to death with a baseball bat.
00:37:59.000This makes you an immoral, evil person because the consequence did not meet the bad act, right?
00:38:05.000Someone cut you off in traffic does not merit being beaten to death with a baseball bat.
00:38:08.000Now, someone attempts to kill your child, that merits you beating them to death with a baseball bat, right?
00:38:13.000So the same act can be moral or immoral based on what it is done in response to.
00:38:19.000The problem is that in politics we are now reaching the point where the most political benefit can be gained if you say, my political enemy is Hitler.
00:38:28.000My political enemy is the worst person ever.
00:38:30.000But that also means that you're going to be using outsized modes of defeating that person, right?
00:38:36.000You're willing to now cooperate with one of the worst people on planet Earth, Vladimir Putin, in order to stop who you perceive to be the worst person on planet Earth, Hillary Clinton, right?
00:38:43.000Vladimir Putin is less threatening to you and less threatening to the world than Hillary Clinton, so Hillary Clinton must be stopped.
00:38:48.000That justifies anything and everything up to and including Russia, Russian involvement.
00:38:53.000Now, let's say, for example, and this is obviously not true, let's say that there was a situation where
00:38:58.000ISIS had some sort of damaging information on Hillary Clinton.
00:39:01.000They knew that she had chipped guns to them or something.
00:39:03.000And they went to the Trump campaign and they said, here's the information on Hillary Clinton.
00:39:07.000Would people on the right go along with that?
00:39:09.000Well, it depends how bad they think Hillary Clinton is.
00:39:11.000Because maybe the means are okay in order to stop Hillary Clinton.
00:39:30.000I thought Hillary Clinton would be a disaster for the country.
00:39:33.000I did not think Hillary Clinton, however, was Vladimir Putin, which means that the methods I was willing to use were restricted to things like truth, and not cooperating with Russia, and engaging in certain means that were dedicated toward defeating her.
00:40:28.000I think that Donald Trump defeated her without colluding with Russia.
00:40:31.000So this bizarre perception by people that Donald Trump didn't collude with Russia, but if he tried to, that's awesome because it just shows how far he was willing to go.
00:40:52.000What makes me so cool is even if I didn't beat him to death with a baseball bat, I was willing to beat him to death with a baseball bat.
00:40:58.000No, the means have to be calibrated to the ends, and you also have to honestly judge us.
00:41:03.000Listen, me saying that I think Hillary Clinton is not Vladimir Putin is not talking up Hillary Clinton, but it shows how ridiculous our political discourse has become.
00:41:10.000That if I say something like that, people on my own side will say that this is me being soft on Hillary.
00:41:16.000I don't think that Hillary Clinton has to be Hitler in order to think that Hillary Clinton is a bad human being who never should have been within a thousand feet of the White House.
00:41:24.000And so that's, you know, so I think that we have to be very careful about this because our own mortal souls are in danger.
00:41:30.000And if you think that that's not at risk, if you think that we can be as bad as anybody else, if we can just use any means, then I ask where you draw the line.
00:41:38.000Because you're asking the left to draw some lines, so I would ask for you to draw some moral lines yourself.
00:41:52.000When I travel for business, very often I'm traveling by myself, and the best way to get a loan ticket for business travel is at Upside.com.
00:42:32.000But $150 is the average Amazon gift card that you get to you personally when you buy a business trip.
00:42:38.000So you go on, use your company's credit card for your business trip, and then you personally get the Amazon gift card, which, as I say, the average gift card that you get from working with Upside is $150.
00:43:16.000So, uh, since we mentioned Job Bluth, I just have to say Arrested Development, have I ever recommended Arrested Development on the show before?
00:43:22.000Arrested Development is the funniest series that ever was filmed.
00:43:24.000Arrested Development is absolutely hilarious.
00:43:27.000Um, you have to have a very quirky sense of humor to get it.
00:43:29.000Job is maybe the best character, uh, on the show.
00:43:31.000Job is the, the, uh, the, kind of, there are three brothers, uh, there is, uh, Michael and the, is it Michael?
00:43:45.000And it's been probably a couple years since I've watched the show.
00:43:49.000The cast is phenomenal, hilarious, it's full of references that you'll end up using with your friends.
00:43:55.000Here is a clip from the opening episode of Arrested Development, when you first meet Job Bluth.
00:44:00.000Job stands for George, and then his middle initial is O, so it's G-O-B Bluth, but he's called Job, which of course is a play on the fact that everything bad in the world happens to Job in the course of the show.
00:46:12.000So Joan Walsh, who used to be the editor over at Salon.com, she was on the MSNBC's and she said that Ivanka, who, as you recall, took Papa Trump's place at the G20, she sat in his seat, and people were like, wait a second, we didn't elect Trump so we get Ivanka in that seat.
00:47:06.000We all have our girly days, but I think showing up, taking your father's seat in a pink dress with big bows on the sleeves is really an interesting message.
00:48:56.000The idea is that God provides you value from the very, very beginning.
00:49:00.000And God knows you as a human being from the very, very beginning.
00:49:04.000And you are predestined to have a certain skill set.
00:49:07.000But as we see all throughout Tanakh, as we see all throughout the Torah, and the Prophets, and the Writings, and the New Testament as well, just because God has foreordained a particular job for you doesn't mean that you're necessarily going to fulfill it.
00:49:19.000So there are two points to be made here.
00:49:20.000One is that God knows you and He knows you well enough to know what He expects of you.
00:49:34.000But we still have the choice whether to fulfill that responsibility ourselves.
00:49:37.000This is where that moral choice comes in.
00:49:39.000Because the fact is that Jeremiah could have decided not to fulfill that plan, and he would have been sinning against God in doing so, right?