The Ben Shapiro Show - Choose Your Own Ukraine Adventure | Ep. 883

00:00:00.000 President Trump's DOJ opens a criminal probe into the Trump-Russia investigation.

00:00:04.000 We lay out the two theories of Trump's Ukraine activities.

00:00:07.000 And there are new developments in the case of a seven-year-old boy being treated as a girl by his mom in Texas.

00:00:12.000 I'm Ben Shapiro.

00:00:12.000 This is The Ben Shapiro Show.

00:00:14.000 The Ben Shapiro Show is sponsored by ExpressVPN.com.

00:00:22.000 Protect your online privacy today at expressvpn.com slash Ben.

00:00:26.000 Love myself some ExpressVPN.

00:00:28.000 Okay, so the big news of the day is that the Justice Department is apparently going to open now a criminal inquiry into the Trump-Russia investigation.

00:00:36.000 And the media are already playing defense on this thing.

00:00:38.000 The media are already suggesting that this thing is wildly out of bounds.

00:00:42.000 Just to get this straight, it was totally inbounds when we spent two and a half years spending Millions of dollars investigating the Trump-Russia collusion non-entity.

00:00:51.000 It ended up being a big nothing burger, at least the collusion part of it.

00:00:53.000 The obstruction part of it ended up piggybacking off of that and really was only generated by the presence of the Trump-Russia collusion investigation in the first place.

00:01:01.000 That was totally fine.

00:01:02.000 That was above board?

00:01:03.000 That was good.

00:01:03.000 It was good to have the DOJ investigating the President of the United States, which effectively is what the Trump-Russia Mueller investigation became.

00:01:12.000 That was all good, wonderful, according to the press.

00:01:15.000 But when the Trump administration looks into the origins of the Trump-Russia collusion investigation, which may or may not have been badly founded, well, then it's a terrible thing.

00:01:25.000 A very, very bad thing.

00:01:26.000 It's something that William Barr clearly should not do.

00:01:28.000 It's just William Barr, the Attorney General, being a political hack.

00:01:30.000 There are no legitimate questions to be asked.

00:01:32.000 So we'll get to what exactly William Barr is investigating here and whether it is illegitimate.

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00:03:07.000 Okay, so, the New York Times is obviously very hot and bothered about the prospect of William Barr looking into the Trump-Russia collusion investigation.

00:03:18.000 My friend Andrew McCarthy over at National Review, the legal analyst, he's been suggesting from the very beginning that this thing was basically a put-up job.

00:03:24.000 That effectively speaking, the Obama administration was eager, very eager, to look into the Trump campaign.

00:03:30.000 And as soon as they started receiving notes on the Steele dossier from the Hillary campaign, they were ready to go.

00:03:36.000 They're ready and they're raring to go.

00:03:37.000 And it turns out that they couldn't dig up anything before the election that was truly damning of President Trump.

00:03:42.000 But there were leaks, slow leaks along the way, and McCarthy's theory, and the theory of a lot of other people, is that basically a lot of members of the so-called deep state, members of the intelligence community who didn't like Trump, who feared Trump, who thought that Trump would be a terrible president, they were digging up all this material in case Trump should be elected so that they could then break glass in case of emergency and basically sideline his presidency by Pushing into investigative territory, right?

00:04:05.000 That is the going theory.

00:04:06.000 So, according to the New York Times today, for more than two years, President Trump has repeatedly attacked the Russia investigation, portraying it as a hoax and illegal, even months after the special counsel closed it.

00:04:15.000 Now Trump's own Justice Department has opened a criminal investigation into how it all began.

00:04:19.000 Now, there was already an investigator, an inspector general, Michael Hoare was.

00:04:25.000 who is going to release a report, a public report.

00:04:28.000 He said today it'll be a public report.

00:04:29.000 There will be no private version or classified version and public version.

00:04:32.000 There will just be one version.

00:04:33.000 And it will be a report into how all of this started.

00:04:36.000 Now, my theory has been that this thing was started not under false pretenses, but under authentic concern over the activities of people like Carter Page and George Papadopoulos.

00:04:45.000 And that it quickly morphed into something that went beyond its original mandate.

00:04:49.000 It quickly morphed thanks to people who are all fired gung-ho to go get Trump into, Let's look into every one of Trump's associates and all of his business connections, Let's suggest that President Trump is in fact a plant of Vladimir Putin and all the rest of this.

00:05:03.000 But what does it mean that this has now shifted into a criminal investigation?

00:05:06.000 Well, it means that the Justice Department now has additional legal tools at its disposal.

00:05:10.000 According to the New York Times, Justice Department officials have shifted an administrative review of the Russia investigation closely overseen by William Barr to a criminal inquiry, according to two people familiar with the matter.

00:05:20.000 The move gives the prosecutor running at John Durham the power to subpoena for witness testimony and documents to convene a grand jury and to file criminal charges.

00:05:29.000 Now, here's where the New York Times starts playing defense for the Democrats.

00:05:32.000 Normally, that would be the story, right?

00:05:34.000 They've opened the criminal investigation.

00:05:36.000 The New York Times, however, does what they are so fond of doing.

00:05:39.000 People say.

00:05:39.000 This isn't serious journalism.

00:05:42.000 They're not going to say, we, the editorial board at the New York Times, really object to this.

00:05:42.000 No.

00:05:46.000 Instead, what they do is they sort of, they kind of slide into the DMs.

00:05:49.000 They just slide into the reporting other people's opinions.

00:05:52.000 The opening of a criminal investigation is likely to raise alarms that Mr. Trump is using the Justice Department to go after his perceived enemies.

00:05:59.000 Okay, that's called editorializing right there.

00:06:01.000 Likely to raise alarm is likely.

00:06:04.000 Whenever they use passive voice like that, they're not saying who is going to raise the alarms.

00:06:08.000 Democrats.

00:06:09.000 They're not saying who is going to be seriously concerned that Trump is militarizing the Justice Department.

00:06:13.000 The New York Times.

00:06:14.000 They just say it's likely to be perceived that way by, you know, people.

00:06:18.000 Who?

00:06:18.000 People.

00:06:19.000 Just people.

00:06:20.000 See, Mr. Trump fired James Comey, the FBI director, under whose watch agents opened the Russia inquiry and has long assailed other top former law enforcement and intelligence officials as partisans who sought to block his election.

00:06:31.000 Mr. Trump has made clear he sees the typically independent Justice Department as a tool to be wielded against his political enemies.

00:06:36.000 This is in a news article, guys.

00:06:38.000 This is in a news article.

00:06:40.000 Trump has made clear he sees the DOJ as his personal tool.

00:06:44.000 Okay, yeah, and Eric Holder called himself Barack Obama's wingman.

00:06:47.000 So, you know, it turns out that presidents have long sort of seen the DOJ as a way of pursuing their own agendas.

00:06:54.000 That doesn't mean it's good when Trump does it.

00:06:56.000 It just means that to pretend that this is unique to Trump is to ignore American history.

00:07:01.000 According to the New York Times, that view factors into the impeachment investigation against him, as does his long obsession with the origins of the Russia inquiry.

00:07:07.000 House Democrats are examining, in part, whether his pressure on Ukraine to open investigations into theories about the 2016 election constituted an abuse of power.

00:07:15.000 The move also creates an unusual situation in which the DOJ is conducting a criminal investigation into itself.

00:07:21.000 And then they say, well, you know, the real reason that Barr is doing this is so that he can use Durham as a front.

00:07:25.000 The entire article is just speculation about how corrupt Barr is.

00:07:29.000 They're not waiting for the report to come out.

00:07:32.000 And at no point did they ever suggest that the emptiness of the final Trump-Russia collusion report from Robert Mueller invalidated the investigation to begin with.

00:07:39.000 The investigation was valid, according to the New York Times.

00:07:41.000 It was just that it didn't come up with the answer that they wanted.

00:07:44.000 But here, they're trying to invalidate the entire investigation before they even know what the results are, which is Frankly, kind of Trumpian in its approach to the investigation.

00:07:52.000 And this is the New York Times.

00:07:53.000 They say Mr. Barr's reliance on Mr. Durham, a widely respected and veteran prosecutor who has investigated CIA torture and broken up mafia rings, could help insulate the Attorney General from accusations he is doing the President's bidding and putting politics above justice.

00:08:07.000 It was not clear what potential crime Durham is investigating, nor when the criminal investigation was prompted.

00:08:12.000 Okay, so you don't know anything about the investigation.

00:08:13.000 You just know there is one.

00:08:14.000 So the New York Times immediately calls it corrupt.

00:08:17.000 And then they get into more of likelies, right? 0.55

00:08:20.000 Their perspective.

00:08:21.000 People who are likely to see things a certain way.

00:08:23.000 They say, Mr. Trump is certain to see the criminal investigation as a vindication of the years he and his allies have spent trying to discredit the Russia investigation.

00:08:32.000 In May, Trump told Fox News host Sean Hannity that the FBI officials who opened the case had committed treason.

00:08:38.000 When Barr appointed Durham to lead the review, he had only the power to voluntarily question people and examine government files.

00:08:44.000 But now the criminal investigation is open, that means that there are new tools at their disposal.

00:08:49.000 So the New York Times obviously is very upset about all of this.

00:08:54.000 Revelations so far about Durham's investigation have shown he has focused in his first months on the accusations that Trump's conservative allies have made about the origins of the Russia inquiry and their efforts to undermine it.

00:09:04.000 Durham's efforts have prompted criticism that he and Barr are trying to deliver the president a political victory.

00:09:09.000 The investigators would typically run down all aspects of the case to complete a review of it.

00:09:12.000 So now, they're already forecasting the results of this thing before it comes out, which reads like preemptive spinning, does it not?

00:09:18.000 It reads like they are very much afraid of what's going to be in Durham's final report here.

00:09:22.000 They're afraid of what's going to be in the Inspector General Michael Horowitz's report, and so they're already trying to spin it away as, well, it was a selective investigation done at the behest of the President of the United States.

00:09:33.000 In interviewing more than two dozen former and current FBI and intelligence officials, Mr. Durham's investigators have asked about any anti-Trump bias among officials who worked on the Russia investigation and about one aspect of the investigation that was at the heart of highly contentious allegations that they abused their powers, the secret application seeking a court order for a wiretap on Carter Page.

00:09:53.000 Law enforcement officials suspected that Page was the target of recruitment by the Russian government, which is tonight.

00:09:57.000 Carter Page, by the way, was never prosecuted at any level for this sort of activity in which he was involved and for which he was investigated.

00:10:05.000 Some CIA officials are already retaining criminal lawyers.

00:10:09.000 It's not clear whether Durham is scrutinizing other former top intelligence officials as well.

00:10:14.000 Durham has indicated he wants to talk to the people who ran the CIA in 2016 to find out how this whole thing started.

00:10:19.000 He has not yet questioned either John Brennan or James Clapper.

00:10:23.000 As Durham's investigation moves forward, according to the New York Times, the Justice Department Inspector General is wrapping up his own inquiry into aspects of the FBI's conduct in the early days of the Russia investigation.

00:10:33.000 Among other things, Michael Horowitz is scrutinizing the application for a warrant to wiretap Mr. Page.

00:10:39.000 So, this whole article is basically speculation that some sort of corruption is going on in investigating the investigators.

00:10:46.000 As opposed to, you know, you could just wait until you find out whether the investigation of the investigators comes up with something damning.

00:10:52.000 I encouraged people to wait on the Mueller report.

00:10:54.000 I did.

00:10:55.000 Go back and listen to it for years.

00:10:57.000 I'm now encouraging people to wait on the IG report and on the Durham report.

00:11:00.000 You don't have enough information.

00:11:01.000 But the New York Times isn't waiting.

00:11:03.000 They've already declared this thing a corrupt attempt by Trump to swivel the DOJ to punch his political opponents.

00:11:09.000 And that seems like fairly bad journalism-ing from where I sit.

00:11:15.000 Okay, in just a second, I want to get into a recap of the Trump-Ukraine allegations, because it's all confusing, I understand.

00:11:23.000 I mean, there's a lot going on there, a lot of moving pieces, and I want to, for just a few minutes, Go through and explain piece by piece how this whole thing fits together, how there are two plausible theories of Trump's activities in Ukraine, how the media are only treating that as one plausible theory, but there really are two plausible theories.

00:11:39.000 We're gonna get to that, and I'm gonna give you all the details on how all that fits together in just one second.

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00:12:51.000 Okay, so...

00:12:53.000 I want to take a minute now and explain the Trump-Russia allegations, where we currently stand, because there is so much floating around, and it's very difficult to break down.

00:13:01.000 And you're hearing wild allegations from all sides.

00:13:03.000 On the part of Republicans, you're hearing this is all closed-door stuff.

00:13:06.000 Behind closed doors, Democrats are simply prying information out of people, and then they're twisting that information in public.

00:13:12.000 And from Democrats, you're hearing, we have the damning information that is going to condemn President Trump to removal by the Senate.

00:13:19.000 Where are we?

00:13:20.000 The answer is, we're kind of where we've been for the past few weeks.

00:13:22.000 There's more information that is now...

00:13:25.000 sort of filling out the gaps that we had at the very beginning of this entire debacle.

00:13:32.000 But the fact is that until, in the end, we hear from either Trump or Giuliani, nothing is gonna change here.

00:13:38.000 Why?

00:13:39.000 Because there are right now two plausible theories of what Trump was doing in Ukraine and what Trump was withholding military aid in order to do in Ukraine.

00:13:46.000 And those two plausible theories, it's basically choose-your-own-adventure time when it comes to Ukraine.

00:13:51.000 It's choose-your-own-adventure time.

00:13:53.000 And you get to pick which of these two theories you think is more plausible.

00:13:56.000 So let's spell this out.

00:13:57.000 So according to the media, Bill Taylor, right?

00:13:58.000 This was the big thing this week.

00:14:00.000 It was Bill Taylor, the acting charged affairs of the U.S.

00:14:03.000 Embassy in Ukraine, the highest ranking foreign official in Ukraine, delivered the coup de grace to the Trump presidency, right?

00:14:09.000 This is according to the media.

00:14:10.000 This was the end of the Trump presidency.

00:14:11.000 He has no defense.

00:14:13.000 And you're seeing this repeated in the New York Times.

00:14:14.000 You're seeing this repeated in Politico.

00:14:16.000 Why?

00:14:16.000 Well, because Taylor testified before members of the House committees, leading the Democrats impeachment inquiry behind closed doors.

00:14:23.000 But his opening statement was revealed to the public.

00:14:25.000 Well, that in and of itself has driven Republicans up a wall.

00:14:27.000 They're like, okay, well, he gave his opening statement, but then he didn't reveal anything he actually testified.

00:14:32.000 So these sorts of selective leaks, this is why we are complaining about the behind-closed-doors stuff.

00:14:36.000 And as we'll see, the media are very angry at Republicans for complaining about this.

00:14:40.000 It's, how could they possibly complain?

00:14:41.000 We'll get to that in a bit.

00:14:43.000 So Taylor's theory of Trump's behavior was pretty simple.

00:14:46.000 Trump withheld hundreds of millions in congressionally authorized military aid to Ukraine in order to benefit himself politically going into 2020.

00:14:53.000 In particular, by leveraging the aid to pressure the Ukrainian government to investigate his potential 2020 opponent, Joe Biden and Biden's son, Hunter.

00:15:01.000 All the other corruption stuff, that was kind of a smokescreen for him trying to impact the 2020 election by doing something politically beneficial for himself.

00:15:09.000 That's what we'll call the Get Biden Theory.

00:15:12.000 That is Bill Taylor's theory.

00:15:13.000 It's the theory of the media that Trump was trying to shape the 2020 election by having Ukraine go and do his dirty work for him and withholding military aid to make Ukraine go do his dirty work.

00:15:23.000 That was the Bill Taylor theory.

00:15:25.000 And it's not implausible, right?

00:15:27.000 The timeline fits. 0.96

00:15:28.000 Trump keeps saying dumb stuff publicly that sort of undermines his own position on this. 0.67

00:15:32.000 He has said he's not averse to asking foreign powers to target his political opponents. 0.77

00:15:36.000 He openly called in 2016 for Vladimir Putin to release Hillary Clinton's emails.

00:15:41.000 He asked the Chinese to investigate Joe Biden.

00:15:42.000 Trump says this kind of stuff all the time.

00:15:44.000 So it's not implausible.

00:15:46.000 And to be perfectly fair about where we are, we have to recognize that that theory to independent ears is not implausible.

00:15:54.000 Right?

00:15:54.000 That's why the polls are not in President Trump's favor on the impeachment stuff.

00:15:58.000 And I'm not going to lie to you and pretend that the American people are wildly angry about impeachment.

00:16:02.000 No.

00:16:02.000 A particular segment of the American people are wildly angry about impeachment.

00:16:05.000 A particular segment of the American people are extraordinarily excited about impeachment.

00:16:09.000 And then there are the people in the middle who are trying to figure out what actually happened here and are sort of wavering on the fence.

00:16:15.000 Okay, so that's theory number one is the Get Biden Theory.

00:16:18.000 Then there is another plausible theory.

00:16:20.000 This one we'll call the Miasma of Corruption Theory.

00:16:23.000 Okay, it's still not great for Trump.

00:16:25.000 But it's not great for Trump in a non-impeachable way.

00:16:29.000 So the Get Biden Theory's story is a story of a scheming president who is seeking re-election by twisting American foreign policy to his political benefit, right?

00:16:38.000 That's the story.

00:16:39.000 Trump is the guy who's sitting there and he's trying to skew foreign policy so that he'll get re-elected, and he's trying to withhold American military aid so that he'll get re-elected.

00:16:46.000 The Miasma of Corruption Theory?

00:16:47.000 characterizes Trump differently.

00:16:49.000 It's the story of a president who's being petty and vindictive and obsessive about the 2016 election, not about 2020, about 2016, and following breadcrumbs left for him by his personal attorney, Rudy Giuliani.

00:17:01.000 It's the story of a president who doesn't actually trust his foreign policy establishment because he believes that they are there to undermine him, and a president who believes conspiracy theories and refuses to let them go even when the evidence doesn't really match up.

00:17:12.000 So which of those two sounds more like Trump?

00:17:14.000 The guy who is like a laser, focused on 2020 and ready to skew things so that he can win 2020?

00:17:20.000 Or the guy who is obsessed about 2016, talking about his crowd sizes, doesn't trust his own people, and so he brings in Rudy Giuliani and creates irregular channels and then buys whatever information confirms whatever pre-existing bias he already had?

00:17:34.000 So in this story, this is a story of a quid pro quo, not to help Trump in 2020, but a quid pro quo to target This miasma of Trump-perceived corruption that the president believes led to the Russian collusion narrative that damaged his legitimacy.

00:17:48.000 So he has been obsessed since 2016 with the idea that Democrats are undermining his victory by saying that Russia interfered in the election.

00:17:54.000 He's saying, no, Ukraine interfered in the election.

00:17:56.000 The American people have a right to know just the way you say they have a right to know if Russia interfered.

00:17:59.000 We have a right to know if Ukraine interfered.

00:18:01.000 And as part of all of that, if Ukraine interfered, maybe one of the ways that they interfered is by not going forward with an investigation of Democrats in the middle of the 2016 election, including Joe Biden.

00:18:11.000 Right, so if the second theory is true, then Trump was acting wrongly and stubbornly and foolishly and on bad information, but he didn't commit an impeachable offense because the stuff he was trying to target in his own mind was in America's interest.

00:18:24.000 It was not just in Trump's interest.

00:18:26.000 So, in story number one, again, this comes down to your judgment of Trump's character, which is why it's a Rorschach test.

00:18:31.000 In story number one, Trump is this strategic thinker who initiated the Ukraine scandal, deployed Rudy Giuliani to go after Joe Biden, militarized our aid to Ukraine to help Giuliani left the Ukrainians high and dry in the face of Russian aggression because he likes Putin.

00:18:43.000 In story number two, Trump was led astray by Giuliani and his own rich sense of grievance, but it was much more about 2016 than it was about looking forward to 2020.

00:18:51.000 So, Which of these theories is more plausible?

00:18:55.000 Well, let's go to the evidence.

00:18:56.000 Let's start with Rudy Giuliani.

00:18:58.000 We'll look at the timeline a little bit here.

00:19:00.000 So, this all begins with Rudy Giuliani, Trump's personal attorney.

00:19:03.000 This whole story begins with Giuliani.

00:19:05.000 So in June 2017, well it really starts with Biden and Biden's whole...

00:19:09.000 Deal with his son and his son working for Burisma and then Biden withholding Ukrainian loan guarantees until they fired a prosecutor who allegedly was going to look into Hunter Biden.

00:19:22.000 That allegation was floating out there and it was floating out there thanks to the New York Times, by the way, which reported on it.

00:19:26.000 And then there were allegations in 2017 that Hillary Clinton was coordinating with the Ukrainian embassy in order to find dirt on Donald Trump.

00:19:35.000 That was reported by Politico, that the DNC actually had sent an operative to the Ukrainian embassy to gather all this data.

00:19:42.000 That's the backdrop.

00:19:43.000 Then we get to Giuliani.

00:19:44.000 So in June 2017, Rudy Giuliani visits Ukraine, and he meets with the president at the time, a guy named Petro Poroshenko, and a prosecutor named Yuri Lutsenko.

00:19:53.000 In August 2018, Giuliani is hired by a company run by Lev Parnas, who's a Ukrainian businessman, and Giuliani clearly begins to funnel information provided by Parnas, as well as Parnas' partner, Igor Fruman, to Trump.

00:20:05.000 In late 2018, Parnas and Fruman fix up Giuliani with a former Ukrainian prosecutor named Viktor Shokin, as well as Lutsenko.

00:20:14.000 According to Lutsenko, Giuliani pushed him to open investigations into the Bidens and Burisma.

00:20:21.000 According to the New York Times, Giuliani met with Lutsenko multiple times in January 2019, allegedly asking Lutsenko about Burisma, the Bidens, and Marie Yovanovitch, the American ambassador to Ukraine.

00:20:32.000 And Giuliani told Trump about these conversations.

00:20:34.000 In March 2019, Lutsenko opens two investigations, one into Burisma and one into the Bidens.

00:20:40.000 And according to The Times, Lutsenko accuses Yovanovitch of corruption as well.

00:20:43.000 And Trump starts tweeting about all of this stuff.

00:20:46.000 So at this point, certainly it is plausible that Rudy Giuliani is out there to quote unquote, get Joe Biden to get Burisma.

00:20:53.000 It's also plausible that as Rudy Giuliani himself later says, he's actually out there to defend his guy from the Trump-Russia stuff by targeting Ukraine, right?

00:21:01.000 Which ties back into 2016, not forward into 2020.

00:21:04.000 By April, Trump is telling Sean Hannity that Attorney General William Barr might consider allegations about Ukrainian interference in the 2016 election, which, by the way, he actually is doing, right?

00:21:12.000 I mean, that stuff is being investigated right now.

00:21:14.000 By April 29th, Yovanovitch was being recalled.

00:21:17.000 The Wall Street Journal later says that Giuliani was actually telling Yovanovitch, telling Trump that Yovanovitch, the ambassador, was, quote, obstructing efforts to persuade Kiev to investigate former Vice President Joe Biden.

00:21:30.000 Okay, fast forward to May of this year.

00:21:31.000 The New York Times reports that Giuliani was set to visit Ukraine.

00:21:35.000 They said Mr. Giuliani's planned trip, which has not been previously reported, is part of a months-long effort by the former New York mayor and a small group of Trump allies working to build interest in the Ukrainian inquiries.

00:21:44.000 Their motivation is to try to discredit the special counsel's investigation, undermine the case against Paul Manafort, Mr. Trump's imprisoned former campaign chairman, and to potentially damage Mr. Biden, the early frontrunner for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination.

00:21:57.000 So Giuliani then does an interview with Fox News in which he talks about his theory that Ukraine worked with the Clinton campaign in 2016 and discussed the Bidens.

00:22:04.000 Days later, Trump says to Politico it would be appropriate to ask Attorney General William Barr to open an investigation into the Bidens.

00:22:10.000 Trump says, I've not spoken to him about it.

00:22:12.000 When I speak to him about it, I haven't thought of that.

00:22:14.000 All of this is the backdrop to Trump's decision to pressure Ukraine.

00:22:18.000 So, was Giuliani telling Trump he had a way of quote-unquote getting Biden?

00:22:21.000 Or is he telling Trump that bad actors in Ukraine had covered up Ukrainian election interference in 2016 and Biden-related corruption?

00:22:30.000 So Giuliani had sort of tweeted out about this in June of 2019.

00:22:35.000 Giuliani is, again, the key figure when it comes down to it.

00:22:42.000 So Giuliani had tweeted out about all of this in 2019, in May of 2019, in June, rather, of 2019.

00:22:50.000 He tweeted out that the president was going to, that there had to be some sort of investigation into Ukraine in 2016 and the Biden's, right?

00:22:58.000 It's all one big ball of corruption.

00:23:00.000 It's one big ball of corruption.

00:23:02.000 That language was then parroted by Trump.

00:23:04.000 So again, was Giuliani coordinating with Trump to get Biden, or was Biden merely part of this broader ball of corruption that Giuliani was supposedly attempting to fight, including fighting the Trump-Russia collusion narrative by looking into a Ukraine Hillary collusion narrative.

00:23:18.000 We're not going to know this until Giuliani testifies.

00:23:20.000 Either way, Trump decides to withdraw the military aid from Ukraine contingent on Ukrainian public commitments to fight corruption, which now in Trump's mind include both 2016 election interference as well as the Bidens.

00:23:32.000 Even today, Giuliani continually insists that his Ukrainian efforts were not an attempt to go after the Bidens, really.

00:23:38.000 They were aimed at defending his client Trump, presumably from charges of Trump-Russia collusion in 2016, and not aimed at targeting Biden.

00:23:44.000 Specifically, he tweeted out yesterday that his job is to defend Trump from all charges.

00:23:48.000 That that was his goal here.

00:23:50.000 Which is, again, retrospective about 2016, not really looking prospectively toward 2020.

00:23:55.000 But both theories are plausible.

00:23:57.000 We're going to get into more of the evidence in just one second.

00:24:00.000 So you can see how an honest person can see the interpretation, the Bill Taylor interpretation, and how an honest person can also see the President Trump.

00:24:11.000 Okay, we'll get to that in just one second.

00:24:16.000 First, let's talk about your child's success.

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00:25:45.000 Okay, so back to the two theories of this Trump-Ukraine stuff.

00:25:51.000 Okay, so the next piece of the puzzle.

00:25:53.000 So we have Giuliani's activities, right?

00:25:55.000 We now know that Rudy Giuliani was wandering around Ukraine, funneling information to Trump via corrupt Ukrainian business people and prosecutors who were saying that Ukrainian corruption involved willful overlooking of Joe Biden and Hunter Biden and Burisma.

00:26:11.000 Okay, now we get to the phone call, right?

00:26:12.000 This is the famous transcript of the phone call.

00:26:14.000 So according to that transcript, to that July 25th phone call that initiated this whole mess, Between Trump and Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky, Trump asked Zelensky for a favor because, quote, our country has been through a lot and Ukraine knows a lot about it.

00:26:26.000 I would like you to find out what happened with this whole situation with Ukraine.

00:26:29.000 They say CrowdStrike.

00:26:30.000 I guess you have one of your wealthy people.

00:26:32.000 The server.

00:26:33.000 They say Ukraine has it.

00:26:34.000 They say a lot of it started with Ukraine.

00:26:35.000 Whatever you can do, it's very important you do it if that's possible.

00:26:39.000 So here, what the hell is Trump talking about?

00:26:42.000 Well, he is referring to the baseless conspiracy theory that Russia was framed by Ukraine for the 2016 hack and supposed and subsequent release of a damaging tranche of DNC emails, which involved a supposedly secret DNC server being spirited away to and hidden in Ukraine.

00:26:58.000 This theory has no evidence to back it.

00:27:00.000 And Trump seems to be asking Zelensky to investigate the conspiracy theory, presumably in the hopes that this will then remove the taint of Russian interference from the 2016 victory.

00:27:08.000 So Lensky then responds by mentioning Giuliani because this is the source of the information.

00:27:12.000 And Trump jumps on the mention saying, quote, Rudy very much knows what's happening and he is a very capable guy.

00:27:17.000 If you could speak to him, that would be great.

00:27:19.000 And then he adds, there's a lot of talk about Biden's son, that Biden stopped the prosecution.

00:27:22.000 And a lot of people want to find out about that.

00:27:24.000 So whatever you can do with the attorney general would be great.

00:27:26.000 So is this call evidence of Trump seeking a quid pro quo to quote unquote get Biden or a pressure campaign to fight Trump's Giuliani fueled idea of corruption, including but not exclusively focused on Biden in Ukraine?

00:27:38.000 Okay, now fast forward to the text messages.

00:27:41.000 We're going through each piece of evidence here, and you can see how it all fits within each one of the two theories.

00:27:45.000 There are a series of text messages that have been revealed between the Ambassador to the European Union, Gordon Sondland, Special Envoy to Ukraine, Kurt Volker, and Taylor.

00:27:53.000 In those texts, Volker says that after explaining that he's fixed up a meeting between Giuliani and a Ukrainian representative, quote, most important is for Zelensky to say that he will help investigation and address any specific personnel issues if there are any.

00:28:07.000 And then Volker later reiterates, quote, heard from White House, assuming President Xi convinces Trump he will investigate, get to the bottom of what happened in 2016.

00:28:15.000 We'll nail down date for visit to Washington.

00:28:17.000 Good luck.

00:28:18.000 So it appears that American diplomats have basically accepted that Trump is just listening to Giuliani now, and that pleasing Giuliani, and then therefore pleasing Trump, is the key to restoring aid.

00:28:27.000 Taylor is incredulous about all of this, right?

00:28:29.000 He reads the investigations as a pretext for getting Biden from the start.

00:28:32.000 He says, are we now saying that security assistance and White House meeting are conditioned on investigations?

00:28:37.000 He texts again, as I said on the phone, I think it's crazy to withhold security assistance for help with a political campaign.

00:28:43.000 And Gordon Sondland responds, quote, Bill, I believe you are incorrect about President Trump's intentions.

00:28:47.000 The president has been crystal clear, no quid pro quos of any kind.

00:28:51.000 The president is trying to evaluate whether Ukraine is truly going to adopt the transparency and reforms that President Zelensky promised during his campaign.

00:28:59.000 I suggest we stop the back and forth by text.

00:29:00.000 Okay, so that brings us forward to the actual perceptions of the people involved in the text.

00:29:04.000 That'd be Gordon Sondland specifically.

00:29:06.000 As well as Bill Taylor, the charged affairs in Ukraine.

00:29:11.000 So Sondland submits written testimony.

00:29:12.000 Again, we haven't seen the full testimony, which is part of the problem here.

00:29:15.000 Republicans want the public to see the full testimony.

00:29:18.000 Democrats want to hold it back, at least for now.

00:29:20.000 So Sondland's written testimony suggests his own confusion about Trump's agenda.

00:29:24.000 He acknowledges that, quote, corruption poses challenges to the legitimacy and stability of government.

00:29:28.000 Corruption is also an economic issue.

00:29:30.000 He also says, quote, President Trump was skeptical that Ukraine was serious about reforms and anti-corruption, and he directed those of us present at the meeting to talk to Mr. Giuliani, his personal attorney, about his concerns.

00:29:41.000 It was apparent to all of us that the key to changing the president's mind on Ukraine was Mr. Giuliani.

00:29:46.000 And then Sondland says, based on the president's direction, we were faced with a choice.

00:29:50.000 We could abandon the goal of a White House meeting for Zelensky, which we all believed was crucial to strengthening U.S.-Ukrainian ties and furthering long-held U.S.

00:29:56.000 foreign policy goals in the region, Or we could do as President Trump directed and talk to Mr. Giuliani to address the President's concern.

00:30:04.000 Someone says he didn't understand until much later Giuliani's agenda might also have included an effort to prompt the Ukrainians to investigate VP Biden or his son or to involve Ukrainians directly or indirectly in the President's 2020 re-election campaign.

00:30:17.000 He also says he spoke to Giuliani in short conversations in which Giuliani quote-unquote emphasized that the president wanted a public statement from President Zelensky committing Ukraine to look into anti-corruption issues.

00:30:28.000 Giuliani specifically mentioned the 2016 election including the DNC server and Burisma as two anti-corruption investigatory topics of importance for the president.

00:30:36.000 He denies that Biden was ever specifically mentioned in these conversations.

00:30:40.000 And he also says that his statement that no quid pro quos had taken place came directly from conversations with Trump.

00:30:40.000 Someone does.

00:30:46.000 Here's what he said in his testimony.

00:30:47.000 This is a very short call.

00:30:47.000 president, what do you want from Ukraine?

00:30:49.000 The president responded, nothing.

00:30:50.000 There is no quid pro quo.

00:30:51.000 The president repeated, no quid pro quo, multiple times.

00:30:54.000 This is a very short call.

00:30:55.000 I recall the president was in a very bad mood, which is not.

00:30:58.000 Either rare or surprising.

00:31:00.000 Okay, that brings you forward to Taylor's testimony.

00:31:02.000 And this, of course, is the big testimony, right?

00:31:04.000 This is the testimony that's going to end Trump's presidency, according to the media.

00:31:07.000 So in contrast with Sunlin's lack of clarity on Trump's agenda, because Sunlin is clearly in the ball of corruption category, the miasma of corruption theory.

00:31:15.000 Taylor seems pretty clear on this thing, right?

00:31:17.000 Taylor seems convinced the entire Giuliani hunt was about Biden specifically and that Trump withheld the aid in order to target Biden, right?

00:31:25.000 And that all of this really, in the end, was about affecting 2020.

00:31:28.000 His written testimony repeatedly suggests as much.

00:31:30.000 Like Sondland, he says he found that Giuliani was actually running the Ukraine show.

00:31:34.000 He testified, quote, by mid-July, it was becoming clear to me that the meeting President Zelensky wanted was conditioned on the investigations of Burisma and alleged Ukrainian interference in the 2016 elections.

00:31:44.000 It was also clear that this condition was driven by the irregular policy channel I had come to understand was guided by Giuliani, right?

00:31:50.000 That's exactly what Sunlin says.

00:31:51.000 Later, he says he realized security assistance was also conditioned on those terms.

00:31:57.000 But again, it's not clear whether all of this is conditioned on generalized investigation of corruption regarding 2016 or whether, again, this is about affecting 2020 for the president's political benefit.

00:32:07.000 Taylor obviously believes the former.

00:32:09.000 He says that the term investigations, quote, was used to mean matters related to the 2016 elections and to the investigations of Burisma and the Bidens.

00:32:17.000 But were there open questions to ask about the Bidens?

00:32:19.000 In other words, would Trump have to be motivated by a simple desire to quote-unquote get the Bidens rather than to wrap up the Burisma Biden investigation in the broader rubric of fighting corruption in Ukraine, an issue that Trump cared about because he was personally invested in the 2016 election and feels that his legacy has been tarnished by all the Trump-Russia stuff?

00:32:37.000 Trump found all of this urgent because he'd read the media coverage about Ukraine's cooperation with Hillary's campaign in 2016, believed conspiracy theories about CrowdStrike, believed that maybe Ukraine is where all the answers were hidden about 2016.

00:32:50.000 Okay, that brings you forward to Mick Mulvaney's statement.

00:32:52.000 So Mulvaney is Trump's chief of staff, right, and he's been roped into this debacle because Trump ordered him to effectuate the withholding of the military aid.

00:33:00.000 He gave a pretty disastrous press conference in which he talked about Trump engaging in a quid pro quo.

00:33:04.000 But his comments didn't clear up the nature of the quid pro quo itself.

00:33:06.000 Was it about Biden?

00:33:08.000 Was it about 2020?

00:33:09.000 Or was it about Trump's perception of Ukrainian corruption?

00:33:11.000 Mulvaney suggested the latter, right?

00:33:13.000 He said, Did he also mention to me in the past the corruption related to the DNC server?

00:33:18.000 Absolutely.

00:33:18.000 No question about that.

00:33:19.000 But that's it.

00:33:20.000 And that's why we held up the money.

00:33:21.000 The look back to what happened in 2016 certainly was part of the thing that he was worried about in corruption with that nation.

00:33:26.000 And that is absolutely appropriate.

00:33:29.000 So how about Trump's statements?

00:33:31.000 As always, Trump never helps himself, right?

00:33:33.000 He continually breathes life into the worst theory of events.

00:33:36.000 He says he'd like to see China investigate Joe and Hunter.

00:33:38.000 He says he'd accept information about political rivals from foreign sources.

00:33:41.000 He continually cites Giuliani, mouths silliness about obvious conspiracy theories, but that doesn't change the basic question.

00:33:48.000 Was this an attempt to get Biden or a petty, foolish, misinformed attempt to fight the corruption that he thinks targeted him in 2016? 0.54

00:33:58.000 And more to the point, did Trump commit an impeachable offense?

00:33:59.000 In one second, we're going to discuss whether Trump, in all of this, committed the impeachable offense and why these two theories end up mattering, why this is the crux of the whole impeachment argument.

00:34:07.000 We'll get to that in just one second.

00:34:08.000 First, let's talk about the fact that there are a lot of cars on the road, a lot of different types of car on the road.

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00:35:29.000 Okay, so in just a second we're going to get to the bottom line question.

00:35:33.000 Is this stuff impeachable?

00:35:35.000 But first, you have to subscribe.

00:35:36.000 Go over to dailywire.com.

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00:36:07.000 All righty, so now we get to the crux of the matter.

00:36:15.000 Is this impeachable?

00:36:16.000 So the answer to that depends on whether you believe the Get Biden Theory or the Miasma of Corruption Theory.

00:36:21.000 Now, are these mutually exclusive?

00:36:23.000 Can you believe that what Trump was actually trying to do was look into 2016, but also affect 2020 by going after Joe Biden?

00:36:32.000 Could it be both?

00:36:33.000 Well, here is the problem.

00:36:35.000 The theories are only mutually exclusive because the Get Biden Theory forecloses the possibility that Biden could have ever been investigated as part of a generalized, non-2020-oriented push to investigate Ukrainian corruption.

00:36:47.000 In other words, if there was a dual intent, then the dual intent makes it impossible to discern whether this was in fact a corrupt quid pro quo.

00:36:54.000 Right?

00:36:54.000 If Trump had in his mind, yeah, Biden was part of this whole 2016 corruption, Ukrainian corruption fiasco, and if that affects 2020, then sure, I guess it affects 2020.

00:37:03.000 Or, great, it affects 2020.

00:37:04.000 If it affects 2020, good, I'm glad.

00:37:06.000 Right?

00:37:06.000 That is not something that is discernible, right?

00:37:08.000 There's no way for you to actually discern whether that's criminal or not, because it's just too vague.

00:37:13.000 What this would have to be is a concerted attempt to effectuate an American policy to Help Trump in 2020 by targeting an American citizen.

00:37:22.000 And it's not even enough to say that it's an attempt to affect 2020 generally.

00:37:25.000 Because guess what?

00:37:26.000 Virtually everything a president does is attempted to affect his re-election possibilities, right?

00:37:31.000 Virtually everything on economics, on foreign policy, all of it has to do with the president's re-elect possibilities.

00:37:36.000 So it's simply too broad an argument to say foreign policy is being directed toward helping a president.

00:37:41.000 Yeah, I mean, again, every president does that.

00:37:43.000 The question is whether Trump did something criminal in withholding military aid By going after Joe Biden specifically, in order to go after Joe Biden specifically, an American citizen, initiate a corrupt investigation into Biden, from a foreign government, in order to affect 2020.

00:37:57.000 So dual use is not a possibility, under the Get Biden theory.

00:38:01.000 The answer as to whether the Bidens could ever be legitimately investigated by Ukraine, thanks to pressure from you Trump, is the distinguishing point in the two theories.

00:38:07.000 So under the Get Biden theory, the answer is no.

00:38:10.000 Even as part of a broader Ukrainian anti-corruption push, any mention of Biden turns that push into a corrupt effort to use American taxpayer dollars to attack a political rival and skew 2020.

00:38:21.000 Under the miasma of corruption theory, investigating the Bidens doesn't automatically mean that Trump was aiming at 2020 electioneering purely.

00:38:29.000 Rather, he was obsessed about 2016 and wanted everything he'd ever heard from Rudy Giuliani investigated on that score.

00:38:36.000 So, your theory of Trump's impeachment comes down to which of these two theories you find more plausible, as I've been saying all along.

00:38:42.000 Now, here's the big problem.

00:38:43.000 There are only two people, really, who are gonna be able to answer this question, right?

00:38:45.000 Trump himself could answer the question, but is unlikely to.

00:38:49.000 Rudy Giuliani could answer the question, and this is the thing that should scare Trump.

00:38:52.000 If, in fact, Rudy Giuliani was delegated by Trump to Ukraine to go get Joe Biden, it's gonna be a problem. 0.99

00:38:57.000 Rudy Giuliani's got a big mouth, and he goes on TV, and he says dumb crap all the time. 0.99

00:39:01.000 Which is why Trump's closest allies are telling him, tell Rudy to shut his head, like to stop, the face needs to stop moving, like enough. 0.99

00:39:09.000 Okay, so it's really down to Trump and Giuliani, which I've been saying for weeks, right?

00:39:13.000 For weeks, I've been saying until Rudy Giuliani testifies, all this other stuff is just third party perception of firsthand knowledge, right?

00:39:21.000 Bill Taylor's perception of events is not the same thing as Rudy Giuliani being ordered by Trump to do X. Because Bill Taylor's perception is closer to the events than mine, but in effect, he's still hearing stuff secondhand.

00:39:36.000 And the same thing is true with Gordon Sumlin, right?

00:39:39.000 Because Gordon Sumlin and apparently Taylor totally construe this differently.

00:39:45.000 In one way, we're going to know the truth one way or the other, but now at least you understand the theories.

00:39:50.000 Now at least you see how all of this plays out.

00:39:54.000 Okay, now I want to get to the latest on this Texas case.

00:39:58.000 So, as you know, there's been this case, we've all been following it, in which there's a seven-year-old named James Younger, and there's a ruling that came down from a court that originally was going to grant sole custody to this kid's mother, Dr. Ann Georgalis.

00:40:11.000 Georgalis, according to the father, has been, since the age of three, indoctrinating this kid to believe that he's a girl.

00:40:17.000 Has been telling him that he is a girl.

00:40:18.000 In fact, there is tape of this kid being asked, when he's three years old, why he thinks he is a girl.

00:40:24.000 It's disturbing.

00:40:25.000 Here's what it sounds like.

00:40:27.000 You're a boy, right?

00:40:28.000 No.

00:40:29.000 I'm a girl.

00:40:31.000 Who told you you were a girl? 1.00

00:40:32.000 Mommy.

00:40:34.000 When did she tell you you were a girl?

00:40:35.000 Because I love girls.

00:40:38.000 Oh, I see.

00:40:39.000 So Mommy told you you were a girl?

00:40:40.000 Uh-huh.

00:40:41.000 So Mommy puts you in a dress and puts nail polish on you? 1.00

00:40:44.000 Uh-huh.

00:40:45.000 And what does Mommy tell you?

00:40:47.000 She tells me I'm a girl.

00:40:49.000 Oh, okay.

00:40:51.000 Do you think you're a girl?

00:40:52.000 Uh-huh.

00:40:54.000 You do?

00:40:55.000 Is that why you wear this?

00:40:57.000 So that you can have long hair?

00:40:59.000 Okay, so mommy tells me I'm a girl.

00:41:00.000 Okay, that's pretty disturbing stuff.

00:41:02.000 Mommy should not be telling a boy that he is a girl. 0.98

00:41:04.000 That is child abuse.

00:41:06.000 It is.

00:41:06.000 I'm sorry.

00:41:07.000 It is the telling a three-year-old boy that he is a girl.

00:41:11.000 Not even humoring him, telling him that, yes, indeed, you are correct, you are a girl.

00:41:14.000 That's child abuse. 1.00

00:41:15.000 It's your job as a parent to parent your child, not to humor his fantasies about life.

00:41:21.000 Yeah, well, here's the latest development in this case.

00:41:24.000 According to the Daily Wire, Amanda Prestigiacomo reporting, on Thursday, Judge Kim Cook's ruled Texas father Jeffrey Younger has a say in his seven-year-old son's gender transition, which is being facilitated by the boy's mother and Younger's ex-wife, Dr. Angie Orgelas.

00:41:38.000 Younger's attempting to halt the boy's transition.

00:41:40.000 Cooks of the 255th district ruled that the parents will have joint conservatorship over James, which includes making joint medical decisions for the child.

00:41:48.000 However, Cook's also placed a gag order on Younger so that he can't speak to the press about the case and decided the father is not required to pay attorney's fees, which means that Younger's Save James website, which has circulated videos of James' testimonials and vital court documents, will have to be shut down pursuant to the order.

00:42:05.000 So now that means that if Mommy continues to manipulate the case and then the judge rules for sole conservatorship, he won't have been able to say anything or he'll be in danger of violating a gag order.

00:42:15.000 So it sounds more like the judge is just saying, listen, we don't like all this public scrutiny.

00:42:18.000 We don't like that Greg Abbott stepped in.

00:42:20.000 The Texas governor said he would investigate and send Child Family Services to investigate.

00:42:23.000 He doesn't like that Ted Cruz mouthed off about it and Dan Crenshaw.

00:42:26.000 He doesn't like that people like me mouth off about it.

00:42:29.000 Right, so the judge is just saying, well, you know what?

00:42:31.000 Let's just keep going with what we've got going here, and you don't say anything. 0.95

00:42:34.000 You shut up. 0.90

00:42:34.000 There's no gag order on Georgulas, by the way. 0.90

00:42:37.000 Right, as far as we know, there's no gag order on Georgulas.

00:42:39.000 So she can continue to put up pictures on her website of her son in a dress and talk about her modern parenting methods, which is apparently something that she does.

00:42:45.000 Right, she's a doctor, and her medical practice website, until recently, according to Matt Walsh, had a picture of her and her son up there, him wearing a dress.

00:42:54.000 Which is incredibly, incredibly invasive for a seven-year-old child.

00:43:00.000 And what you're seeing is that the media are being denied access.

00:43:03.000 Before the judge handed down her verdict, she kicked out all media sources, including the Texan Daily Mail and LifeSite News, as well as ABC, CBS 11.

00:43:10.000 Well, ABC, CBS 11, and NBC were reportedly allowed access, but all family and friends were kicked out, and anybody who covered this thing skeptically.

00:43:19.000 That's according to LifeSite News.

00:43:21.000 Reporting from the Texan says that Giorgoulis' lawyers, Jessica Janicek and Laura Hayes, claimed during the trial the mother does not plan on giving James hormone blockers at this time, but no one has stated that Giorgoulis would not be open to using them when James begins puberty, which is when he is like 11 and a half.

00:43:33.000 So, you know, people who are reporting that she's about to start using hormones is not true, but she says nothing would stop her, presumably.

00:43:40.000 She could start using hormones on him at 11 and a half and the father couldn't do anything about that.

00:43:45.000 Plus, She obviously gets to continue to indoctrinate her child in the belief that he is, in fact, a little girl when, by all biological metrics, he is not a little girl.

00:43:53.000 He is a little boy.

00:43:55.000 And confusing children about this stuff is nasty.

00:43:57.000 It does not protect their innocence.

00:43:59.000 It does not help them.

00:44:00.000 The vast majority of children who say that they are members of the opposite sex end up abandoning that belief as they get older.

00:44:08.000 Okay, the whole thing, George Liss's July 2018 testimony apparently reveals that if James persists, is set to be evaluated for hormone suppressants as young as age 8.

00:44:20.000 This is just incredibly disturbing stuff.

00:44:22.000 Now, it was funny.

00:44:23.000 A couple of weeks ago, you may remember that people got very uptight with me when I said that I do not like the idea of the state being able to tell me how to parent my child.

00:44:31.000 I don't want the state should be able to shut down my religious school on the basis of my religious school being offensive to their ears, and I wouldn't like it if the state decided that they were going to shut down my ability to homeschool my child, and that if I moved states and this became federal policy, That there would be no place for me to go and if it came to the police showing up at my door calling me a truant parent and threatening to remove my child from my home because I can't parent my child the way that I see fit.

00:44:56.000 Then I would meet those people at the door with a gun if I had no other choice, right?

00:44:59.000 If I had no choice, it was not... Voting is no longer an issue, right?

00:45:03.000 I mean, somebody shows up at your door to take your child away.

00:45:04.000 Voting is not really the issue, right?

00:45:06.000 You remember I got myself in all sorts of angry waters on Twitter.

00:45:10.000 Ooh, Twitter got so mad about us.

00:45:11.000 By the way, that's called the Constitution of the United States, when fundamental rights are absolutely breached and are unchanging, and now you are faced with a violation of those fundamental constitutional rights.

00:45:20.000 The Declaration of Independence and Constitution are pretty clear on this.

00:45:23.000 Okay, so, that's what I said.

00:45:25.000 We are now living in an era where it is considered a fulsome good for the state.

00:45:31.000 I mean, the state was this close to telling this father he could not, that he had to treat his son as a girl, according to media reports, that he would be forced by the state of Texas to treat his boy as a girl.

00:45:43.000 And if he did not, he would be removed from custody of his own son.

00:45:47.000 Don't tell me that the sort of debates that we have on politics in this country don't have very personal ramifications for parents and how they treat their children.

00:45:55.000 Don't tell me that this is all about non-interventionism and kindness and protection.

00:46:00.000 It is not.

00:46:01.000 It is about invalidating particular points of view.

00:46:03.000 It is about invalidating what I believe to be decent and good parenting.

00:46:07.000 Namely, it is your job to guide your child, not to humor their delusions when they are three years old or five years old or seven years old.

00:46:17.000 Hey, this is what I'm talking about.

00:46:18.000 When the state becomes a weapon of the social left to the point where parents are having their children removed from them.

00:46:24.000 And then the state has become too much of a danger.

00:46:27.000 So I'm glad the court backed off of this.

00:46:28.000 I'm glad that the Texas government stepped in and decided to investigate all of this.

00:46:32.000 That is the right thing to do.

00:46:33.000 But don't tell me it's fantasy land when I say that there are folks on the left who absolutely would like to invade your home and not only tell you how to raise your child, but mandate via the state how to raise your kids or threaten to remove them.

00:46:44.000 Because that's basically what happened in this case, at least originally, as reported.

00:46:49.000 By the way, Matt Walsh makes a great point on this.

00:46:52.000 Walsh was all over this.

00:46:52.000 He writes for us over at Daily Wire and he was really terrific on this issue.

00:46:55.000 It was his attention to this issue that probably created a lot of the firestorm that led to the governor of Texas stepping in.

00:47:02.000 He points out something that is quite important.

00:47:06.000 He says that if you read all of the reports of this, this kid, when he was three, was saying that he was a girl.

00:47:14.000 But he wasn't just saying he was a girl.

00:47:15.000 He was saying, actually, that his first name was Starfire.

00:47:20.000 Interestingly, The amicus attorney Dunlop revealed that Georglas told him that Luna was not the first female name that James picked out.

00:47:28.000 The first was Starfire, a female character from the superhero cartoon Teen Titans Go!

00:47:33.000 Georglas, however, encouraged him to pick a different name.

00:47:37.000 Walsh says, while this shows what realm James was living in when he allegedly claimed he was a girl, he was in the same realm of every normal child inhabiting from infancy until adolescence, the realm of fantasy.

00:47:46.000 He wasn't identifying as a girl.

00:47:47.000 He was identifying as a cartoon girl.

00:47:49.000 There's no substantive difference between this self-identity and the self-identity of my own three-year-old boy, who regularly claims to be a dinosaur, a bear, a bear hunter, a shark, or sometimes all four.

00:47:58.000 He said, kids at that age have no understanding of reality in theory or practice.

00:48:02.000 This is me now.

00:48:03.000 That's why they have parents.

00:48:05.000 To guide them through that stage of development.

00:48:07.000 Not to humor their fantasies.

00:48:12.000 Walsh says...

00:48:13.000 The fact that James identified not just as a girl, but as a cartoon girl should make it pretty clear that this is magical thinking and psychological immaturity.

00:48:22.000 He also says, reflect on the fact that James' mom didn't let him go by Starfire.

00:48:25.000 This is an amazing point, right?

00:48:26.000 The fact is that James' mom was like, you know what?

00:48:28.000 Starfire's too much.

00:48:29.000 We can't do Starfire.

00:48:30.000 Instead, we're going to call you Luna.

00:48:32.000 So just to be straight about this, a three-year-old kid can decide that he is a girl, but can't decide his name is Starfire.

00:48:38.000 I mean, it would be crazy to let him go through life thinking that he's a person named Starfire.

00:48:42.000 That would be totally wild.

00:48:43.000 But letting him go through life and encouraging him to go through life, believing that he's a member of the opposite sex, not only is that legitimate, that's solid parenting, according to the members of the social left. 0.66

00:48:54.000 Walsh says indeed it is striking that these painfully progressive parents who want their children to have the freedom to choose their own gender still won't let them choose their own names.

00:49:01.000 There's a reason why trans kids always have names like Luna or Jazz or Sky or Parker or something similarly ambiguous and trendy. 0.97

00:49:07.000 Do we think three and four year olds are hopping onto Google to find out which unisex monikers are in fashion at the moment?

00:49:12.000 No, if you left it to a young child to decide for himself, he'll inevitably gravitate towards something like Starfire, or Ninja, or Pirate Poopbutt.

00:49:19.000 All of these options would be better than Luda, but they still wouldn't look great on a resume. 1.00

00:49:23.000 But you never end up with a trans daughter named Pirate Poopbutt or Starfire, because even Ange- Georgalus knows her son is too young to be entrusted with choosing his own name, and that eventually he'll grow up and won't be as fond of the name he liked when he was a child. 0.97

00:49:35.000 What sort of idiot parent would allow her young son to make that kind of decision, knowing how immature he is, and how certain it is that he will grow out of this phase? 0.98

00:49:41.000 We don't let our kids choose their names for the same reason we don't let them get tattoos. 1.00

00:49:45.000 Correct.

00:49:46.000 Correct.

00:49:47.000 Okay, but this is... It's not alarmism to say that the social left would love to parent children, parent your children, and take your children away from you and tell you that you're not allowed to determine how you want to parent your child and they will militarize the power of the state if they can in order to accomplish this.

00:50:03.000 That is not alarmism.

00:50:04.000 That is a thing that is happening on rare occasions in the United States.

00:50:07.000 But over time, this will become increasingly volatile.

00:50:11.000 It'll be increasingly bad.

00:50:13.000 This is gonna become mainstream policy within 10 years in the Democratic Party.

00:50:17.000 This is not, it's fringe right now.

00:50:19.000 It ain't gonna be fringe for long.

00:50:21.000 Not the way the media are treating this issue, not the way Hollywood treats this issue, and certainly not the way that Democrats are treating this issue.

00:50:26.000 Already going along with every, I mean, basically, Democrats are five seconds away from declaring it child abuse for you to say to a three-year-old child who says that he is a girl and he's a boy, that he is a boy.

00:50:39.000 That's already happening up in Canada.

00:50:40.000 So to pretend that this is not, A coming issue is to ignore the reality on the ground.

00:50:45.000 But this is what you see so often from the left.

00:50:47.000 Why are you guys being so alarmist?

00:50:49.000 We would never do anything like that!

00:50:50.000 And then five seconds later, they're doing exactly that.

00:50:53.000 Really, five seconds later.

00:50:55.000 Okay, time for a quick thing that I like.

00:50:58.000 And then maybe a thing that I hate.

00:51:00.000 Maybe.

00:51:01.000 Okay, so, quick thing that I like today.

00:51:03.000 So, I have decided that a couple of years ago, I was going through the Bible week by week, and I feel like now's a good time to sort of get back into that.

00:51:12.000 Now, you don't have to be a believer in the Bible to sort of find inspiration in the Bible or to Think about some of the deep messages of the founding document of Western civilization and the most read book of all time, right?

00:51:24.000 It still seems relevant.

00:51:25.000 Even if you are not a believer in the veracity of biblical stories, even if you're not a believer in God, per se, it is important to understand where your civilization came from and some of the thoughts that are embedded at the deepest levels of what you would consider myth, but what people who are in religious circles would consider to be God's God's story about the world, the story that God tells us.

00:51:48.000 So this week restarts the Jewish canonical cycle. 0.78

00:51:53.000 So we've reached the end of reading the Torah every year.

00:51:57.000 The Jews read through all five books of Moses.

00:51:59.000 We read portion by portion, one every week.

00:52:01.000 And this week we finally finished the final portion of the Torah, Bezos HaBracha. 0.78

00:52:05.000 These are the five books of Moses.

00:52:06.000 And we'll restart from the beginning of Genesis.

00:52:10.000 So for a second, I just want to talk about one of the more bizarre stories in Genesis.

00:52:13.000 Of course, the very famous story, probably the most famous story in the Bible.

00:52:16.000 And that would be the story of Adam and Eve.

00:52:18.000 That's a very weird story, right?

00:52:20.000 I mean, just on the face of it, it's a very weird story.

00:52:22.000 You've got God going around telling people they can eat from certain trees and not eat from other trees.

00:52:26.000 And then you've got a snake who shows up and says, a talking snake, and he shows up and he says to a lady, well, you know, if you eat from that tree, everything is, you're going to be like God.

00:52:33.000 You're going to know the difference between good and evil.

00:52:35.000 And then she eats from the tree.

00:52:36.000 And sure enough, her eyes are open.

00:52:38.000 And suddenly she knows things she didn't before.

00:52:39.000 And God gets pissed and he throws everybody out of the garden, right?

00:52:42.000 I mean, that's sort of the short version of the story.

00:52:44.000 But what is this thing actually about?

00:52:46.000 Like, why does this actually have serious meaning?

00:52:49.000 So there are all sorts of interpretations.

00:52:50.000 Now I want to present one interpretation that I think fits really well with the Hebrew text of this section of Genesis.

00:52:57.000 So, there is a, the biggest question about this story is, what is actually wrong with knowing good and evil?

00:53:03.000 Remember, the entire story is predicated on God saying you can eat from every tree in this garden.

00:53:06.000 In fact, you should eat from every tree in this garden.

00:53:09.000 But, there's one tree you can't eat from, and that is the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

00:53:12.000 You can't eat from that one.

00:53:13.000 Do not, don't do it.

00:53:14.000 I'm telling you, just don't.

00:53:15.000 It ain't gonna end well.

00:53:17.000 And Eve is seduced by the snake into eating from that tree.

00:53:19.000 So the question is, why is it bad to eat from the tree of knowledge of good and evil?

00:53:24.000 You know more stuff now, right?

00:53:25.000 Now can't you make more moral judgments?

00:53:27.000 You know good, you know evil, you got knowledge of good and evil.

00:53:29.000 What's the big problem?

00:53:31.000 And all of this seems pretty harsh, because as soon as this happens, God is like, okay, well now you're gonna die, you're gonna live by the sweat of your brow, you're gonna suffer in childbirth.

00:53:39.000 I mean, the snake actually sort of gets it right when you read the biblical account, right?

00:53:43.000 Because God says to Adam, really says to Adam, if you eat from that tree, on that day you will surely die.

00:53:49.000 And the snake says, well, well, the snake says, quote, you will not surely die, for God knows that on the day you eat thereof, your eyes will be open.

00:53:57.000 You'll be like angels, knowing good and evil.

00:53:59.000 And sure enough, the snake seems to be correct, right?

00:54:01.000 God's first words after the sin to the angels is, Behold, man has become like one of us, having the ability of knowing good and evil.

00:54:07.000 And then God gets ticked off.

00:54:08.000 So what exactly did they do wrong?

00:54:11.000 Well, so to understand the problem, first we have to define our terms good and evil.

00:54:15.000 So the only reference terms that we have for good occur before this in Genesis, right?

00:54:20.000 At the very beginning of Genesis, when God is creating the universe.

00:54:22.000 So in the very first chapter of Genesis, God creates the heavens and the earth, and then he labels things good.

00:54:28.000 Vayar Hashem Kitov, right?

00:54:28.000 Right?

00:54:30.000 That would be the Hebrew, right? 0.92

00:54:31.000 He saw that it was good, and then there was evening, then there was morning, the first day, right?

00:54:35.000 That is constantly repeated.

00:54:36.000 God creates something, He sees that it's good, and it's evening, and it's morning a day.

00:54:40.000 So, what does that mean, that it's good?

00:54:42.000 Right?

00:54:43.000 Does it mean that His creations are morally good?

00:54:45.000 That light is morally good?

00:54:46.000 That the creation of animals, that that's morally good?

00:54:51.000 No, the Bible is using good in the same sense that Aristotle used the word good.

00:54:57.000 Creations that serve their purpose.

00:54:59.000 So when you say that you have a really good car, you don't mean the car is morally good, that the car really gives charity to children.

00:55:05.000 You mean the car works.

00:55:06.000 You mean that the car does what it is supposed to do.

00:55:09.000 God's creations also serve their various purposes.

00:55:12.000 So, in Aristotelian language, human beings are created with the same thing, right?

00:55:16.000 We are created with a telos.

00:55:17.000 We are created with a purpose in mind.

00:55:19.000 Objects are created with a purpose.

00:55:20.000 A good hammer hammers things. 0.95

00:55:21.000 Good human reasons, according to Aristotle.

00:55:24.000 What makes human beings good is whether they serve their purpose.

00:55:27.000 In the Bible, that would be worship of God, mastery of his world, cultivation of the garden, right?

00:55:31.000 Because people are actually given tasks in the garden.

00:55:35.000 God tells them to cultivate the garden.

00:55:36.000 God tells them to be fertile and multiply, right?

00:55:39.000 There are certain things they're supposed to do that fulfills their good.

00:55:42.000 So the Bible itself establishes man purpose to quote-unquote work and guard the garden.

00:55:46.000 That's what it says.

00:55:48.000 So good is not actually contrasted with evil in this definition.

00:55:50.000 Good is just what a thing is supposed to do.

00:55:53.000 So things that are good fulfill their purpose.

00:55:55.000 Things that are bad, they're not really bad per se, they're just unfit for use.

00:56:00.000 The contrast isn't between good and bad, it's between good and unfit for use.

00:56:03.000 So the moral world, from God's perspective, is constructed in that fashion.

00:56:07.000 That which is moral is that which we do that fulfills God's purpose.

00:56:11.000 It's only when we begin to contrast good and evil, and we eat from the tree of that knowledge, that things start to get confused.

00:56:16.000 Because only God can know his own purposes.

00:56:18.000 Basic tenet of religion.

00:56:19.000 Only God really knows what's going on.

00:56:21.000 Only God can define that which is good.

00:56:23.000 In the God sense, right?

00:56:24.000 In the Aristotelian sense, too.

00:56:26.000 That which is useful to God.

00:56:27.000 But human beings, we have an unfortunate tendency to craft our own moral systems.

00:56:32.000 Subjectively.

00:56:33.000 And then we contrast that which is good with that which is evil.

00:56:35.000 And we do so from the perspective of stuff that we think affects us well versus stuff that we think affects us poorly.

00:56:41.000 But that's our view.

00:56:43.000 Not God, right?

00:56:43.000 We think that pain is evil.

00:56:44.000 Unfairness is evil.

00:56:46.000 Well...

00:56:47.000 Not necessarily, right?

00:56:48.000 Those are things that occur in life according to God.

00:56:50.000 Maybe those are evil, maybe they're unfit, and maybe they're not unfit, but they're not evil, right?

00:56:56.000 They're good or they're bad, but they're not evil.

00:56:59.000 Human beings see these things as evil, and that's why the natural consequence of Adam and Eve eating from the Tree of Knowledge is that suddenly action that was good in the Aristotelian sense becomes evil in our own eyes.

00:57:09.000 So to take an example, I don't actually think that childbirth was easy and painless before Adam and Eve sinned.

00:57:15.000 I don't think, like, that's not human biology.

00:57:17.000 It was probably pretty painful before Adam and Eve sinned.

00:57:20.000 But only now does Eve actually perceive childbirth as sorrow and pain, because now she sees stuff that's bad happening to her as a moral problem, right, as the theodicy problem.

00:57:31.000 It's a problem of God's justice, it's a problem of the moral system of the world.

00:57:34.000 And that's a problem, because she's no longer trying to reflect the mind of God, now she's trying to project her own moral system onto the world. 1.00

00:57:40.000 Whereas before, Adam was already told to work, and presumably he had to sweat when he worked.

00:57:45.000 But now the ground is quote-unquote cursed for your sake, with the sweat of your face you shall eat bread, until you return to the ground, for you were taken there from, for dust you are, and to dust you will return. 0.92

00:57:53.000 So Adam now enters this world of existential angst.

00:57:56.000 Before, work was the goal of life, now it's an obstacle to pleasure.

00:57:59.000 So work is evil, pleasure is good.

00:58:01.000 So things radically change, and human beings become human beings because they struggle with the failure of human-created moral systems to match God's moral system, and because human beings have a tendency to sort of supplant one for the other and to ignore even the idea of an Aristotelian good.

00:58:17.000 By constructing our own moral frameworks, subjective moral frameworks, rather than attempting to reflect a more objective moral framework, we actually exile ourselves from reality and rebel against us, and then we're barred from the Garden of Eden by flaming swords of our own creation.

00:58:30.000 There's no way to get back in, because there's no way for human beings to actually perceive what God wants, and so we instead supplant our own idea of what is evil for God's idea of what is good or not good.

00:58:42.000 Alright, so what does it mean that we're going to die upon eating the tree of knowledge?

00:58:45.000 Human beings didn't die even in the story itself.

00:58:45.000 Because we didn't die, right?

00:58:48.000 He lives, right?

00:58:49.000 He lives for another several hundred years according to the Bible.

00:58:51.000 So, what exactly does die?

00:58:53.000 Well, the part of us that actually gives us eternal life, that immediate communion with God.

00:58:58.000 So, the Bible has this beautiful language when it talks about the creation of man, that we're formed from the clay of the earth and then God breathes life into us, right?

00:59:04.000 It's this beautiful, beautiful image.

00:59:06.000 When we die, according to religion and according to a lot of philosophers, the soul doesn't disappear so long as we use our earthbound bodies to work in God's service.

00:59:14.000 We're not even separated from him while we're alive.

00:59:17.000 But, our bodies, once they become obstacles to our perception of God, well then, a part of us has died.

00:59:23.000 We're now more animal than man, right?

00:59:25.000 We are trapped in the same world as the animals, experiencing pleasure and pain, driven by the same instincts that Thomas Hobbes and David Hume talked about, as opposed to that attempt to reason, that attempt to rise above, that attempt to commune with a higher level of morality.

00:59:38.000 Okay, so there's your read on the beginning.

00:59:40.000 of Genesis, and I hope that you enjoyed that.

00:59:44.000 And I, frankly, it's my show, so I get to say what I want.

00:59:48.000 So we'll do some more of that next week.

00:59:49.000 Otherwise, you know, if you don't like it, you can always tune out early from the show.

00:59:52.000 But I think that it's important to understand the Bible.

00:59:54.000 I think that it's important to understand what religious people think of the Bible, and that we are not all simpletons who simply go around thinking that snakes talk to people and say weird stuff, and then there are flaming swords and all that.

01:00:03.000 Like, there's actual meaning to these stories, which is why they're so deeply embedded in Western consciousness.

01:00:08.000 Okay, unfortunately we are out of time, but there are two additional hours of The Ben Shapiro Show coming up later.

01:00:13.000 This is why you should subscribe.

01:00:14.000 I'll do mailbagging it up then, so we'll see you then.

01:00:17.000 I'm Ben Shapiro, this is The Ben Shapiro Show.

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01:00:29.000 Senior producer, Jonathan Hay.

01:00:30.000 Our supervising producer is Mathis Glover.

01:00:33.000 And our technical producer is Austin Stevens.

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01:00:48.000 On The Matt Walsh Show, we're not just discussing politics.

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The Ben Shapiro Show - October 25, 2019

Choose Your Own Ukraine Adventure | Ep. 883

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