The Ben Shapiro Show - February 28, 2019


Cohen Of Silence | Ep. 727

Topics
sleep sheets catch-and-kill scenarios Cohen testimony and investigations Rashida Tlaib argument corruption in politics corruption in Israel election Younger People and green new deal revolution
Hosted by
Ben Shapiro
Mentioned
Donald Trump Michael Cohen Kim Jong-un Mark Meadows Rashida Tlaib Otto Warmbier Tommy John Air Collection Roger Stone Barack Obama Mikhail Gorbachev Justin Trudeau Benjamin Netanyahu Mitch McConnell Christopher Steele Vladimir Putin Ronald Reagan Ed Markey Hillary Clinton Shaul Elovich Chuck Schumer and 33 more
Cohen Of Shame | Ep. 726 We Didn’t Start The Fire | Ep. 728

Episode Stats


Length

52 minutes

Words per minute

203.95

Word count

10,704

Sentence count

878

Harmful content

Misogyny

22

sentences flagged

Toxicity

73

sentences flagged

Hate speech

19

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

Trump meets with Kim Jong-un to try and get a deal on North Korea, but it doesn t work. Why did the president fail? And why is this even a thing? Ben Shapiro explains why the president should have known that this was not part of a grand plan, and why it s a massive failure. He also explains why this whole thing is a complete disaster, and how the President should have been able to broker a deal in the first place, not just a deal, but a deal that actually gets a deal done, and doesn t look like a deal at all. Ben Shapiro is the host of The Ben Shapiro Show on Fox News Radio and host of the Daily Wire. He is a regular contributor to The Daily Wire and the Weekly Standard, and is a frequent contributor to the New York Times, CNN, CBS, and the Wall Street Journal. He is also a frequent guest on CNN and CBS News, and hosts the Hot Water podcast, The View from the Cheap Segment on CBS Radio's Hard Knocks. Check out his new show on HBO's The Five on HBO and CBS Radio, where he hosts a new podcast called The View From The Ground Zero. Click here to listen to the latest on the latest breaking news in the world of politics and culture, including Michael Cohen and Rashida Tlaib's testimony on the Cohen/Cohen case, here on The Hill, and much more. Check out Ben Shapiro's new book, on his new podcast, The People s Guide to the Trump-Kim Jong-North Korea Summit, out now on Amazon Prime on HBO. on The Tonight Show on the Tonight Show with Rachel Maddow. Subscribe to The Five, wherever you get your eardrums are listening to the show on the airwaves, and check out his podcast on The Five Most Powerful People on the Four Corners, The Six Billion Dollar Man, The Five most powerful people in the most important podcast on the road. The Six Million Dollar Man and more! Subscribe and subscribe on Apple Podcasts, wherever else you get the best listening experience on the internet, including The Five things you can get the most authentic and the most influential podcast in the best of all things political and most influential on the web, including the best podcast on culture and social media, The Realest place in the podcast The Most Powerful man in the greatest podcast on your favorite podcast, the Realest thing on the planet.

Transcript

Transcripts from "The Ben Shapiro Show" are sourced from the Knowledge Fight Interactive Search Tool. Explore them interactively here.
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
Toxicity classifications generated with s-nlp/roberta_toxicity_classifier .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
Topics generated with Qwen2.5-3B-Instruct.
Hosts, guests, and mentioned names generated with spaCy (en_core_web_sm), reconciled against Wikidata.
00:00:00.000 Michael Cohen's testimony gives everyone what they want, Rashida Tlaib goes off the rails, and President Trump's North Korea gambit comes apart.
00:00:07.000 I'm Ben Shapiro.
00:00:07.000 This is The Ben Shapiro Show.
00:00:13.000 We have a lot of breaking news on the North Korea front.
00:00:15.000 We're going to get to that in just one second.
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00:01:18.000 All right, so the president's gambit in North Korea is an utter giant shambolic failure.
00:01:24.000 It's a giant fail.
00:01:26.000 I have been very critical of the president's strategy on North Korea, but I was willing to withhold judgment.
00:01:30.000 My feeling was, if the president wants to try his sycophancy for denuclearization negotiation tactic, if he wants to pretend that he can flatter Kim Jong-un into giving up his nuclear weapons, which again, makes no sense.
00:01:42.000 The only reason Kim Jong-un is even a player on the world stage is because of his nuclear weapons.
00:01:47.000 But if Trump thinks that he can flatter him into something, if he thinks that he can grant him world credibility by meeting with him and conferring America's imprimatur of quasi-approval upon him, if he thinks he can get him to denuclearize, well, that's a high-risk, high-reward strategy, because if it works, Then the President wins the Nobel Peace Prize.
00:02:06.000 But if it doesn't work, then the United States has just sunk down to the level of the North Korean dictatorship diplomatically by sitting in a room with one of the worst people on planet Earth, a man who is keeping millions of people in a giant gulag, a person who has executed legitimately tens of thousands of people, a person who kills his relatives with anti-aircraft guns and anthrax at airports. 0.67
00:02:24.000 The President of the United States sat down with that guy not once, but twice.
00:02:29.000 And again, if this was all part of some grand plan, fine.
00:02:32.000 It turns out, today, it was not part of a grand plan.
00:02:34.000 And I'm going to show you how this whole thing fell apart, how it was never properly planned, and how the President of the United States made the United States look foolish in this entire endeavor, and continues to do so today in his talk about Kim Jong-un.
00:02:46.000 The bottom line is this.
00:02:47.000 Negotiation takes place between people who are seeking some sort of common interest.
00:02:51.000 The United States does not have a common interest with the Kim regime.
00:02:55.000 Now, is it possible that negotiators could find such a common interest?
00:02:58.000 Perhaps, but that would require actual diplomatic initiative.
00:03:02.000 That would require pre-negotiations.
00:03:03.000 That would require that Kim Jong-un had already signed off on some stuff before President Trump ever got in a room with him. 0.97
00:03:11.000 What you don't do is send the President of the United States around like a used car salesman trying to pawn off a bad lemon on some unsuspecting schmuck. 0.93
00:03:20.000 That's not what the President of the United States is there to do.
00:03:22.000 We have an entire diplomatic corps that is there to ensure that at the end of a summit like this, that something gets signed that looks like a concession by the North Koreans, or that looks like a deal, or that looks like anything.
00:03:34.000 The president didn't even get an empty pledge from the North Koreans this time.
00:03:37.000 He walked away from the table.
00:03:38.000 Now, the president is right to walk away from the table.
00:03:41.000 My point is he shouldn't have been at the table in the first place.
00:03:43.000 You don't come to the table with the worst dictatorship on planet Earth simply because you want a photo op.
00:03:49.000 You better have a plan.
00:03:51.000 Because otherwise, you just took the most powerful, most moral country in the history of the world and put it on an equal photo op playing field with one of the worst people on planet Earth.
00:04:01.000 Here's how things went down.
00:04:03.000 According to the New York Times today, President Trump and Kim Jong-un, North Korea's leader, abruptly ended their second summit meeting on Thursday after talks collapsed, with the two leaders failing to agree on any steps toward nuclear disarmament or measures to ease tensions on the Korean peninsula.
00:04:17.000 Sometimes you just have to walk, Mr. Trump said at an afternoon news conference in Hanoi, the capital of Vietnam.
00:04:22.000 That's true.
00:04:23.000 Sometimes you do just have to walk.
00:04:24.000 The question is why you had walked into Vietnam in the first place without any sort of pre-negotiations.
00:04:29.000 Again, I bashed President Obama back when he was Senator Obama in 2008 for saying he wanted to meet with the Iranians and the Cubans without precondition.
00:04:36.000 You think I'm not going to do the same thing with regard to North Korea and President Trump?
00:04:39.000 Especially when the president confers all sorts of beautiful words upon a piece of human debris like Kim Jong-un. 0.92
00:04:47.000 The president of the United States went to Vietnam and suggested that Kim Jong-un, unlike, you know, many spoiled billionaire's kids, he was really a normal guy.
00:04:56.000 And then they issued a statement yesterday.
00:04:57.000 The United States issued a statement talking about President Trump's special relationship with Kim.
00:05:02.000 Hey, you don't have to hug the dictator to negotiate with the dictator.
00:05:06.000 You don't have to do that.
00:05:07.000 But here's the problem.
00:05:08.000 The president has a personal negotiation strategy.
00:05:10.000 He's been using it in business for years.
00:05:12.000 And that strategy is essentially blustering threats, followed by the possibility of a warm, cordial embrace.
00:05:20.000 The president thinks he can flatter people into doing what he wants, and if he doesn't get that, then he tries to threaten them into doing what he wants.
00:05:25.000 Well, that's not a strategy.
00:05:27.000 That is just a wild vacillation from one point to the other.
00:05:30.000 Remember, two years ago, the president of the United States was threatening little Kim Jong-un with the biggest nuclear button in the world, and now he's calling him his best friend. 0.74
00:05:39.000 Does that seem like a strategy to you, or does that just seem like wild flailing about?
00:05:42.000 I'll tell you, after what I saw today from the president, it seems like wild flailing about.
00:05:47.000 According to Trump, he said Kim had offered to dismantle the North's most important nuclear facility if the United States lifted the sanctions on his nation, but he would not commit to do the same for other elements of its weapons program.
00:05:58.000 Mr. Trump said that was a deal-breaker.
00:06:00.000 He said it was about the sanctions.
00:06:01.000 Basically, they wanted the sanctions lifted in their entirety, but we couldn't do that.
00:06:05.000 Well, that's something that you should have known walking in, is it not?
00:06:09.000 I mean, this is why, again, we have an entire State Department that is designed to do these things.
00:06:14.000 But I want you to see how people moved from Trump is a genius for engaging in the negotiation to Trump is a genius for walking away in the space of 48 hours.
00:06:23.000 It's wildly inconsistent.
00:06:24.000 Not only is it wildly inconsistent, again, I point you to the fact that if Barack Obama did this, people on the right would lose their bleep.
00:06:31.000 They would lose their minds.
00:06:32.000 And they should, because the President of the United States represents not only the people living in the United States today, he represents the Constitution of the United States, he represents the American mission, he represents liberty.
00:06:43.000 It was one of the most shameful things about the Obama presidency, the fact that President Obama was constantly trying to make common cause with the Iranian mullahs, for example. 0.99
00:06:50.000 It was gross.
00:06:52.000 Well, the same thing is true when the President of the United States does this.
00:06:55.000 Now, again, I think all of this was true before he walked away.
00:06:58.000 The reason I'm angry is not because he walked away.
00:06:59.000 That's the right thing.
00:07:00.000 I'm glad he walked away.
00:07:01.000 He should walk away.
00:07:02.000 The United States is not in a position to make concessions to an evil gulag master. 0.92
00:07:09.000 Something straight out Austin Powers over here.
00:07:11.000 We're not in that position.
00:07:12.000 So the President is correct to walk away.
00:07:15.000 The question is, I was assured that there was a strategy here.
00:07:20.000 I was assured that there was a broader strategy here.
00:07:23.000 What is the broader strategy?
00:07:25.000 Is there no broader strategy?
00:07:26.000 I was assured by the president that the threat of a nuclear North Korea had completely been taken off the table.
00:07:30.000 He said that on Twitter.
00:07:32.000 That we shouldn't worry about it anymore.
00:07:34.000 Okay, so what's the plan?
00:07:36.000 So what's the plan?
00:07:36.000 Was there ever a plan?
00:07:38.000 And for people who say, well, you know, it's just talking.
00:07:40.000 It's just talking.
00:07:40.000 You know, it's not just talking when the president of the United States creates an image of the United States as a place willing to overlook the most brutal human rights violations on the planet in exchange for nothing, in exchange for literally nothing.
00:07:54.000 Apparently, there was a meeting that was scheduled today.
00:07:57.000 The premature end to the negotiations leaves the unusual rapprochement between the United States and North Korea that has unfolded for most of a year at a deadlock, with the North retaining both its nuclear arsenal and facilities believed to be producing additional fissile material for warheads.
00:08:10.000 It also represents a major setback at a difficult political moment for Trump, who has long presented himself as a tough negotiator capable of bringing adversaries into a deal and had made North Korea the signature diplomatic initiative of his presidency.
00:08:22.000 And here I will point out that the President's history of negotiation as President of the United States has been rather poor.
00:08:27.000 It has been rather poor.
00:08:28.000 On every budget deal, he has caved to the Democrats.
00:08:31.000 He's undercut his own party to do so.
00:08:33.000 In negotiations with North Korea, he comes away with nothing after spending an enormous amount of his own political capital and the political capital of the United States on these foolhardy negotiations.
00:08:45.000 Now I'm going to show you how this unfolded.
00:08:46.000 So, as of yesterday, President Trump was still talking up all this stuff.
00:08:50.000 He said, listen, we're having great meetings.
00:08:52.000 We had dinner.
00:08:53.000 It was fabulous.
00:08:54.000 We're sitting next to each other.
00:08:55.000 We're best friends.
00:08:58.000 So we're going to have a very busy day tomorrow, and we'll probably have a pretty quick dinner.
00:09:03.000 And a lot of things are going to be solved, I hope, and I think it'll lead to wonderful, it'll lead to really a wonderful situation along the way.
00:09:12.000 And our relationship is a very special relationship.
00:09:17.000 A special relationship.
00:09:18.000 That's a phrase usually reserved for the United States' relations with Great Britain.
00:09:22.000 The special relationship between the U.S.
00:09:23.000 and Great Britain was the hallmark of World War II.
00:09:25.000 Now he's saying that he has a very special relationship with a guy who literally strapped his uncle to an anti-aircraft gun and blew him in half.
00:09:32.000 Who literally took his brother-in-law and had him anthraxed at a public airport.
00:09:37.000 But we have a special relationship.
00:09:39.000 Now, maybe you're so cynical about politics or America's moral standing in the world that you think it doesn't matter what the president says.
00:09:45.000 After all, who really cares?
00:09:46.000 Does it really make much of a difference?
00:09:47.000 The answer is yes.
00:09:48.000 It legitimizes Kim Jong-un in his own country.
00:09:51.000 It legitimizes Kim Jong-un around the world.
00:09:53.000 It makes it look like Kim Jong-un outplayed the president of the United States.
00:09:56.000 That's what it looks like right here.
00:09:59.000 And Kim Jong-un knew what he was playing at.
00:10:01.000 He said yesterday, I have a feeling that good results are going to come from this.
00:10:04.000 Why?
00:10:04.000 Because his real hope is that he was going to be able to sucker Trump into removing the sanctions.
00:10:08.000 That's why, again, the president is absolutely correct to walk away from the negotiations.
00:10:12.000 The question is why he was at the table in the first place without any of these things being discussed.
00:10:17.000 It's not like this was a minor ancillary issue that killed the deal.
00:10:20.000 This was the central issue of the deal.
00:10:23.000 The central issue was, what is North Korea going to do in exchange for removing sanctions, and it better be total denuclearization.
00:10:29.000 That was the entire premise of these negotiations.
00:10:33.000 And when we say that, what I love is the ridiculous line that it's some sort of massive win for the United States to sit down with a tin-pot dictator like Kim Jong-un. 0.92
00:10:42.000 Really? 0.86
00:10:43.000 The president of the United States can sit down with anyone on earth that he wants.
00:10:46.000 When the most prominent recent guest to North Korea from America was Dennis Rodman, I'm going to go with Kim Jong-un's social book is not exactly full up. 0.99
00:10:56.000 It's not a big win for the United States to sit down with a piece of garbage like Kim Jong-un. 0.90
00:11:00.000 Anyway, here was Kim Jong-un saying that he had a feeling that good results were going to come out of this. 0.98
00:11:04.000 Chairman Kim, are you confident?
00:11:05.000 Thank you.
00:11:06.000 How are you?
00:11:13.000 Well, it's too early to tell.
00:11:14.000 How are you?
00:11:16.000 But I wouldn't say that I'm pessimistic.
00:11:24.000 From what I feel right now, I do have a feeling that good results will come out.
00:11:28.000 OK, so that is, you know, again, his good result was that he thought he was going to roll Trump.
00:11:33.000 Now, Trump wasn't fully rolled.
00:11:34.000 Good for him.
00:11:35.000 But again, if he had been fully rolled, I'm sure there would be people praising him today for that, too. 0.88
00:11:39.000 OK, we're going to talk in a second about how this thing ended, how it went down and how the defense went from Trump is a brilliant negotiator to Trump has has all the the cojones in the world for walking away from this. 0.98
00:11:50.000 He has cojones for walking in and he has cojones for walking out. 0.92
00:11:52.000 Well, then you have now created an untestable and unverifiable thesis. 0.95
00:11:57.000 Okay, if the hypothesis is that it's good for him to walk in because something good will result, and then nothing good results, so it's good for him to walk out, which was it?
00:12:05.000 We'll get to that in just one second, and I'll explain really why I'm so ticked this morning, because I am.
00:12:09.000 I'm upset.
00:12:10.000 I will explain in a second why I'm so ticked.
00:12:11.000 We'll get to that in just one second.
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00:13:22.000 Okay, so President Trump meets with Kim and everything is going swimmingly.
00:13:25.000 Everything is going just great.
00:13:26.000 And Republicans are saying, well, it's going so great over there and that's why Democrats scheduled the Michael Cohen hearing because it's just terrible.
00:13:32.000 They wanted to distract from President Trump over in Vietnam because things are just going so awesome over there.
00:13:37.000 And then you got Kim saying, listen, I'm ready to denuclearize.
00:13:40.000 I'm prepared to denuclearize.
00:13:41.000 Now what he means by denuclearize, obviously, is that the United States pulls all of its troops out of South Korea and the entire continent becomes free of American influence.
00:13:51.000 That's what Kim meant by denuclearize. 0.98
00:13:53.000 So when he says this, understand that he is lying.
00:13:55.000 At least if you think denuclearize means he stops his nuclear program.
00:13:58.000 But here was Kim making the overture that is not real.
00:14:02.000 If I'm not willing to do that, I won't be here right now.
00:14:08.000 If I'm not willing to do that, I won't be here right now.
00:14:12.000 I'm not sure you're the best answer you've ever heard.
00:14:20.000 Are you ready to take concrete steps to the world's life or not quite yet?
00:14:26.000 That is what we are discussing right now. - Okay, so that would be Kim Jong-un and his sister basically saying, yeah, this is what we're discussing.
00:14:46.000 And they have no intention of handing over their nuclear weapons.
00:14:48.000 The minute the Kim family hands over the nuclear weapons, they get deposed in North Korea.
00:14:51.000 Everybody knows this.
00:14:53.000 This is obvious to anyone who's watching this.
00:14:54.000 But that doesn't stop President Trump's fans from praising his brilliance in negotiation early on in this thing.
00:15:00.000 And as I say, I was willing to withhold judgment.
00:15:03.000 Not moral judgment, because again, the United States should not be granting this sort of legitimacy to an evil dictator.
00:15:08.000 I wasn't willing to suspend judgment when it came to the president flattering Kim Jong-un to the skies and talking about his beautiful pen pal relationship with him.
00:15:16.000 People saying today that it's just like Ronald Reagan and Gorbachev.
00:15:19.000 Two differences.
00:15:19.000 One, Gorbachev represented a nation that was an existential threat to the United States and that ruled over half of Eastern Europe.
00:15:27.000 And also, President Reagan never downplayed the evil of the evil empire.
00:15:32.000 He was constantly talking about the evil of the Soviet Union.
00:15:35.000 Constantly.
00:15:36.000 President Trump has taken the opposite tack, which is to sort of pretend that it's not all that evil over there for purposes of trying to flatter the Kim regime into doing what he wants. 0.57
00:15:44.000 Okay, so President Trump is doing these negotiations and supposedly everything is going swimmingly.
00:15:49.000 Everything is going great.
00:15:50.000 Newt Gingrich, who's obviously a major fan of the president, he goes on Fox News and he says, this is just, it's fantastic stuff.
00:15:55.000 Look, Kim Jong-un, he's opening up to the world.
00:15:58.000 Look at him, he's just opening up.
00:16:00.000 Everybody watching tonight, if you see Kim Jong-un answering questions off the cuff to the news media, you're seeing a historic change that every person in North Korea is going to pick up on.
00:16:15.000 I mean, it is an enormous moment because he's coming out of a shell of total control into a world where he's now trying to interact with Trump in a way that makes him more normal.
00:16:29.000 And I think there's a real piece of this of trying to become normal.
00:16:33.000 Oh, well, that's what's happening here.
00:16:34.000 He's becoming normal.
00:16:35.000 Now, I heard the same exact bullcrap about the Iranian regime when Barack Obama was trying to hand over the store to them.
00:16:42.000 Oh, they're moderates now.
00:16:43.000 They're normalizing.
00:16:44.000 That's what they're doing.
00:16:45.000 They're becoming normal, don't you see?
00:16:47.000 Well, everybody's in the streets chanting death to America.
00:16:50.000 Okay, so there's all this buildup.
00:16:51.000 Oh, the brilliant negotiation tactic of going to a place and being with a person in the same place at the same time.
00:16:56.000 Wow!
00:16:57.000 And saying nice things about that person.
00:16:59.000 What a diplomatic initiative.
00:17:01.000 What incredible... Now, As I said, if the result had been something of any substance, or if there had been a plan, then I would concede this was out of the box.
00:17:11.000 It was weird, but it worked.
00:17:13.000 That's not what happened.
00:17:14.000 And not only did the president walk away from the table, as he should have, because North Korea never intended on giving anything up.
00:17:19.000 Not only that, but then Trump did something, and this is what has really set me off today.
00:17:24.000 What has really set me off today is President Trump was asked about Otto Warmbier.
00:17:30.000 Now, you'll remember the case of Otto Warmbier.
00:17:31.000 He was an American college student.
00:17:32.000 He visited North Korea, and he took a poster off the wall, supposedly.
00:17:36.000 The North Korean regime took hold of him and literally beat him to death.
00:17:40.000 They beat him into a coma, they made him a vegetable, and then they shipped him back to the United States.
00:17:44.000 You'll remember it was a major issue because one Donald J. Trump spoke about Otto Warmbier and had his parents to the State of the Union address just a couple of years ago.
00:17:52.000 Now here's the President of the United States, the most moral power on the face of the earth and in human history, talking about how he trusts Kim Jong-un that Otto Warmbier was not actually murdered.
00:18:02.000 Otto Warmbier, something bad happened to him.
00:18:04.000 But I mean, I trust this Kim guy over here, the one who murders his relatives with anti-aircraft guns. 1.00
00:18:09.000 It just wasn't to his advantage to allow that to happen.
00:18:12.000 Those prisons are rough.
00:18:14.000 They're rough places.
00:18:16.000 And bad things happened.
00:18:17.000 But I really don't believe that he was... He... I don't believe he knew about it.
00:18:22.000 Did he say... Did he tell you that he did not... Did Kim Jong-un tell you... He felt badly about it.
00:18:26.000 I did speak to him.
00:18:27.000 He felt very badly.
00:18:28.000 But he knew the case very well.
00:18:29.000 But he knew it later.
00:18:30.000 You know, you got a lot of people.
00:18:32.000 Big country.
00:18:33.000 A lot of people.
00:18:34.000 And in those prisons and those camps, you have a lot of people.
00:18:38.000 And some really bad things happened to Otto.
00:18:40.000 Some really, really bad things.
00:18:42.000 Why are you- But he tells me, he tells me that he didn't know about it.
00:18:45.000 And I will take him at his word. 0.99
00:18:47.000 Okay, absolute, sheer, unmitigated moral garbage right there. 0.99
00:18:51.000 I will take him at his word? 0.98
00:18:52.000 How many American citizens does he think North Korea was holding?
00:18:55.000 He was holding an American citizen.
00:18:57.000 Everybody knew about it.
00:18:58.000 Kim Jong-un certainly knew about it. 0.89
00:18:59.000 This guy was beat to death, beat to death. 1.00
00:19:02.000 And now he's going to take Kim Jong-un, an evil piece of garbage, at his word? 1.00
00:19:08.000 That's what the president of the United States is. 1.00
00:19:09.000 And don't tell me the alternative is nuclear war.
00:19:11.000 If the alternative were nuclear war, don't you think we would have been at nuclear war with North Korea sometime over the past 20 years?
00:19:17.000 They've had nuclear weapons for a solid 15 years at this point.
00:19:20.000 I've been told over and over this is the same exact tactic.
00:19:23.000 You heard about Iran.
00:19:23.000 Well, if you don't go for President Obama's deal, that means you want war with the Iranians.
00:19:28.000 No, it absolutely does not.
00:19:29.000 I am not suggesting that war with the North Koreans is the solution.
00:19:32.000 I am suggesting that the solution is not the president of the United States going out there and saying that he trusts a man who had an American murdered.
00:19:41.000 And Trump does this all the time.
00:19:43.000 He does this all the time.
00:19:44.000 And I know there are a bunch of people out there who say, well, that's real politique, you know.
00:19:47.000 I'm so dark and cynical about it.
00:19:50.000 Because politics is house of cards.
00:19:52.000 There's no moral component to politics.
00:19:53.000 You know, so if Trump is praising Putin because it's advantageous, or if he's praising Kim Jong-un because it's advantageous, Well, what's the big deal?
00:20:00.000 I mean, don't we all know that politics is dirty pool and people... It's the scene from The Godfather where Michael Corleone is walking around with Kay and he's explaining how he's just like a senator because senators have people killed too.
00:20:14.000 This kind of faux sophistication about politics.
00:20:16.000 Well, you know, we're pretty bad too.
00:20:18.000 Trump has done that routine with Vladimir Putin for years.
00:20:20.000 He said that he took Vladimir Putin at his word that he didn't interfere in the 2016 election.
00:20:25.000 He said that while Vladimir Putin has had his political opponents killed, we here in the United States have done some of that stuff too.
00:20:31.000 And now he's extending that to North Korea.
00:20:34.000 There's no excuse for this.
00:20:36.000 None.
00:20:36.000 There's none.
00:20:37.000 I mean, imagine you're the Wombier family, and you're sitting home, and Trump brought you to the State of the Union address two years ago.
00:20:42.000 Not ten years ago.
00:20:43.000 Two years ago.
00:20:44.000 And made your son a national issue.
00:20:46.000 And now he's standing there saying, well, you know, the regime that murdered him seemed like nice people.
00:20:50.000 Seemed like good guys.
00:20:50.000 We got a good relationship.
00:20:54.000 If you were doing that for some effect, at least you could point to the effect.
00:20:57.000 If you're doing it to no effect, then you just look like a tool.
00:21:01.000 President Trump says that this wasn't a walk away like you get up and walk out.
00:21:04.000 He said, no, this was very friendly.
00:21:06.000 We shook hands.
00:21:06.000 There's a warmth we have.
00:21:08.000 And I hope that stays.
00:21:10.000 International negotiations are not won or lost based on personal relationships.
00:21:13.000 This is a myth of history.
00:21:15.000 It wasn't that the Cold War ended because President Trump, because President Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev became friends.
00:21:23.000 The Cold War ended because every incentive aligned against Mikhail Gorbachev, because Gorbachev made the mistake of believing that if he allowed a few of the fringe nations around the edges of the Soviet Union to leave, then the others would not leave, and that he would be saving money in the process.
00:21:37.000 This is well documented inside the Soviet archives.
00:21:40.000 He didn't do it because he was personal friends with Reagan.
00:21:41.000 He was like, you know what?
00:21:42.000 Communism is bad now.
00:21:43.000 I guess we're done.
00:21:44.000 Gorbachev never expected the Soviet Union to collapse.
00:21:48.000 Negotiations do not take place simply out of love between the participants.
00:21:53.000 This is true in business.
00:21:54.000 It's true in life.
00:21:55.000 It is certainly true in international politics, where you are representing an entire nation and or a dictatorship that has to be preserved at all costs, including the cost of murdering many of its own citizens.
00:22:05.000 There's no excuse for the president's behavior here.
00:22:07.000 None.
00:22:07.000 None.
00:22:08.000 The only excuse would have been if he had somehow done all this crap and for some odd reason it had worked and Kim Jong-un had committed to denuclearization with verifiability.
00:22:17.000 He committed to none of those things and he still got out of the president that they are besties and also Otto Warmbier, maybe, you know, maybe it was just sort of an accident in one of those crazy prison camps.
00:22:27.000 So, apparently, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, he said that officials had worked through the previous night and into the morning to come up with terms acceptable to both leaders.
00:22:35.000 He said, when you are dealing with a country that is of the nature of North Korea, it is often the case that only the most senior leaders have the capacity to make those important decisions.
00:22:41.000 He said, we'll each need to regroup a little bit.
00:22:43.000 There was no statement from the Kim regime.
00:22:47.000 So, giant moral fail.
00:22:49.000 Giant moral fail.
00:22:51.000 Now, maybe this all results in something good down the line, but at this very moment, if I have to judge at this very moment, and I will judge the president on moral grounds here, no excuse.
00:23:01.000 Just no excuse for that.
00:23:02.000 None.
00:23:03.000 I do not have the capacity to speak in defense of a president who is saying that Otto Warmbier was, that the family of Otto Warmbier should apparently be trusted less than Kim Jong-un.
00:23:12.000 I just don't know how to even remotely justify that or explain it.
00:23:16.000 It just, it doesn't hold.
00:23:17.000 In a second, We're gonna get to the Cohen hearings, which, as it turns out, didn't do a lot of damage to the president.
00:23:24.000 We'll talk about that in just a second.
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00:24:32.000 Okay, so the other big story of the day, of course, is the fallout from Michael Cohen's testimony.
00:24:37.000 Michael Cohen was the president's personal fixer.
00:24:39.000 And Cohen's testimony, all you can really say about it is that it gave pretty much everybody what they want.
00:24:45.000 For the Republicans, it gave them good case that the president did not actually involve himself in illegal activity.
00:24:51.000 That the Trump-Russia collusion stuff, there's no evidence to it.
00:24:54.000 And that the Trump campaign finance stuff, there's no evidence to that either.
00:24:59.000 So on a legal side, Republicans win.
00:25:01.000 On an image-making side, probably Democrats win.
00:25:03.000 So everybody goes home happy, except for Michael Cohen, who goes to jail sad, I assume.
00:25:07.000 So, on the legal side, Cohen said a bunch of things that actually cut in favor of President Trump.
00:25:13.000 So, let's begin with the argument that President Trump colluded with the Russians in 2016 and with WikiLeaks.
00:25:18.000 So, Cohen says that Trump talked with Roger Stone about WikiLeaks.
00:25:22.000 Now, the problem for Trump is what he said to the Mueller investigation.
00:25:28.000 So, he has written testimony.
00:25:30.000 If he was asked specifically about whether he talked to Roger Stone about WikiLeaks, Then, presumably, this could maybe be a problem.
00:25:36.000 Then it's Michael Cohen saying that he did talk to Roger Stone, Trump saying he didn't talk to Roger Stone.
00:25:40.000 But here's the point.
00:25:42.000 If you put aside the answers he gave to Mueller, if Trump talked to Roger Stone about WikiLeaks in the way that Michael Cohen says he did, there is no collusion and no violation of law.
00:25:50.000 Here's what Cohen said.
00:25:51.000 Based on your experience with the President and knowledge of his relationship with Mr. Stone, do you have reason to believe that the President explicitly or implicitly authorized Mr. Stone to make contact with Wikileaks and to indicate the campaign's interest in the strategic release of these illegally hacked materials?
00:26:07.000 I'm not aware of that.
00:26:09.000 Was Mr. Stone a free agent reporting back to the President what he had done, or was he an agent of the campaign acting on behalf of the President and with his apparent authority?
00:26:19.000 No, he was a free agent.
00:26:21.000 He frequently reached out to Mr. Trump, and Mr. Trump was very happy to take his calls.
00:26:28.000 Okay, so he was a free agent, not working for Trump, and Trump took his calls, and then when Stone told him that WikiLeaks was going to release stuff on Hillary, Trump was like, oh, great.
00:26:37.000 Okay, that's not collusion.
00:26:38.000 That's Trump being informed of a fact, and then Trump saying good.
00:26:41.000 That is not Trump colluding, that is not him actively participating.
00:26:45.000 That's not legal liability.
00:26:47.000 Other evidence that there's no legal liability when it comes to the collusion stuff.
00:26:50.000 Michael Cohen, who is as close to the president as anybody, according to his own testimony, he was asked, do you have any evidence that the president colluded with Russia?
00:26:57.000 And Cohen says, no, not at all, actually.
00:27:00.000 The questions have been raised about whether I know of direct evidence that Mr. Trump or his campaign colluded with Russia.
00:27:09.000 I do not.
00:27:11.000 And I want to be clear.
00:27:13.000 But I have my suspicions.
00:27:16.000 OK, so he has his suspicions, but who cares about Michael Cohen's suspicions?
00:27:19.000 I mean, the guy's a legitimate fraudster who's going to jail for a taxi medallion scheme for perjury.
00:27:25.000 Who cares about his suspicions?
00:27:27.000 He doesn't have any evidence.
00:27:28.000 That's all that matters.
00:27:28.000 Then he was asked, have you been to Prague?
00:27:30.000 So this is only important because the Steele dossier, which has been the linchpin of the argument that President Trump was colluding with the Russians, had a claim that Michael Cohen had traveled to Prague to negotiate with the Russians on behalf of Campaign Trump.
00:27:42.000 Have you ever been to Prague?
00:27:43.000 I've never been to Prague.
00:27:44.000 Never have.
00:27:45.000 I've never been to the Czech Republic.
00:27:51.000 Okay, so in order, Cohen has now debunked the idea that Trump was colluding with WikiLeaks, that collusion generally was happening, and that he personally was involved in anything the Steele dossier talked about, demonstrating once again that the Steele dossier was basically just a mash-up of garbage that Christopher Steele was trying to dump onto the Hillary Clinton campaign via Perkins Coie, and that that was eventually moved to Fusion GPS.
00:28:17.000 That's Cohen debunking half of the Democratic talking points for the last three years.
00:28:22.000 And then it gets worse because Michael Cohen talks about the payoff deal that Trump had with Stormy Daniels.
00:28:27.000 Now his suggestion is that he paid off Stormy Daniels at Trump's direction.
00:28:30.000 As I mentioned yesterday, there are two elements required in order for Trump to violate a campaign finance law.
00:28:35.000 One, the payment to Stormy Daniels must have been seen as a campaign contribution, meaning that if Trump had a long history of paying off women to shut up, that's not actually evidence in favor of the campaign finance violation.
00:28:47.000 That's evidence against the idea that there was a campaign finance violation.
00:28:50.000 A campaign expenditure is an expenditure that takes place only in the context of a campaign.
00:28:55.000 That's why if I eat lunch on the campaign, I can't charge that to the campaign.
00:28:59.000 Because I'm going to eat lunch normally.
00:29:01.000 If, however, I'm flying to Iowa for the campaign, then I wouldn't be flying to Iowa if it weren't for the campaign.
00:29:06.000 That's campaign expenditure.
00:29:07.000 Well, if I pay off women on a regular basis, then me paying off this woman this time is probably also not a campaign expenditure. 0.67
00:29:14.000 So that was question number one.
00:29:16.000 Is it a campaign expenditure?
00:29:17.000 Question number two.
00:29:18.000 Did Trump know that he was violating campaign election law and trying to end around disclosure requirements by using Cohen as a cutout?
00:29:25.000 And the answer, if Cohen does this on a regular basis, is no.
00:29:28.000 Because if he's been using Cohen as a cutout for 10 years, what's the claim that he did it specifically this time to avoid law?
00:29:34.000 Here's Cohen basically admitting that there's no legal liability even in the campaign finance case.
00:29:39.000 Catch and kill is a method that exists when you're working with a news outlet, in this specific case it was AMI, National Enquirer, David Pecker, Dylan Howard and others, where they would contact me or Mr. Trump or someone and state that there's a story that's ...percolating out there that you may be interested in.
00:30:03.000 And then what you do is you contact that individual and you purchase the rights to that story from them.
00:30:10.000 These catch-and-kill scenarios existed between David Pecker and Mr. Trump long before I started working for him in 2007.
00:30:21.000 Okay, so this has been going on for years and years and years and years.
00:30:24.000 Therefore, this is probably not a campaign expenditure.
00:30:26.000 And then he says, yeah, I was personally involved in killing a couple of these stories.
00:30:29.000 Like, for example, there was a story about a love child.
00:30:31.000 That turned out to be nonsense.
00:30:32.000 I was involved in killing that story.
00:30:34.000 There's a story about Trump hitting Melania in an elevator.
00:30:37.000 That didn't happen.
00:30:38.000 And I tried to track that down.
00:30:39.000 It didn't happen either.
00:30:40.000 Again, none of this cuts in favor of Democrats.
00:30:42.000 Is there a love child?
00:30:44.000 There is not, to the best of my knowledge.
00:30:45.000 So you would pay off someone to It wasn't me, ma'am.
00:30:50.000 It was AMI.
00:30:51.000 It was David Pecker.
00:30:52.000 So he paid off someone about a love child that doesn't exist.
00:30:56.000 Correct.
00:30:57.000 It was about $15,000.
00:30:59.000 Okay, so again, if there's a long history of paying off people, then this particular payoff is not a campaign finance violation.
00:31:05.000 Now, it doesn't mean it's not embarrassing.
00:31:06.000 It doesn't mean the president doesn't do embarrassing stuff.
00:31:08.000 He does.
00:31:09.000 He does embarrassing, immoral stuff.
00:31:10.000 That does not make it illegal.
00:31:12.000 Immoral, embarrassing stuff is not grounds for impeachment.
00:31:14.000 Impeachment is about high crimes and misdemeanors.
00:31:17.000 Now, in a second, We're going to get to the only real attempt to try and catch Trump in serious legal violation, and then we'll get to the stuff that was bad for President Trump, just in terms of the headlines, in one second.
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00:32:19.000 So the only real attempt to get Cohen to implicate Trump in illegal activity in any serious way was actually made by AOC.
00:32:32.000 So Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez, who for some reason has been giving a plumb spot on the House Oversight Committee, she actually did a pretty good job of trying to tie down Michael Cohen to a story that could result in at least the capacity for the Democrats to try and grab Trump's tax records. 0.94
00:32:46.000 She asked if Trump tried to commit fraud, and then Cohen says yes, and that provides the impetus for Democrats to now try to subpoena Trump's tax Tax records.
00:32:54.000 So here's Michael Cohen giving these answers.
00:32:57.000 In October 2018, the New York Times revealed that quote, President Trump participated in dubious tax schemes during the 1990s, including instances of outright fraud that greatly increased the fortune he received from his parents.
00:33:12.000 He also helped formulate a strategy to undervalue his parents' real estate holdings by hundreds of millions of dollars on tax returns, sharply reducing his tax bill when those properties were transferred to him and his siblings.
00:33:26.000 Mr. Cohen, do you know whether that specific report is accurate?
00:33:30.000 I don't.
00:33:31.000 And would it help for the committee to obtain federal and state tax returns from the president and his company to address that discrepancy?
00:33:38.000 I believe so.
00:33:38.000 Okay, so that is her basically just saying that's what we're going to do.
00:33:42.000 Now, Cohen didn't give any basis for them to actually subpoena the records because he says he doesn't know, but she's going to do that anyway.
00:33:49.000 So this is just the beginning of the investigations, not the end.
00:33:52.000 Meanwhile, so on the legal side, Republicans can easily say Michael Cohen provided no additional evidence of any illegal activity that harms President Trump.
00:33:59.000 On the bad headlines side, there's going to be a round about headlines, because whenever one of your members of your inner circle turns on you, and then talks crap about you, and the media don't like you, that's going to be a headline. 0.52
00:34:09.000 So, Michael Cohen, you know, basically just bad-mouthed the president yesterday. 0.98
00:34:15.000 He called him a racist, he called him a bigot, he called him a sexist, and all the rest.
00:34:18.000 But here's the problem even for that.
00:34:20.000 Like, I really don't think that the Cohen testimony hurts Trump in any serious way.
00:34:24.000 After about a week.
00:34:25.000 And the reason is because Cohen is innately not believable and also dislikable.
00:34:29.000 So Cohen is not only a convicted perjurer who's going to go to jail, Cohen also has an unfortunate habit of seeing himself as the hero.
00:34:37.000 It's like that clip from The Office with Michael Scott talking about, am I saying I'm a hero?
00:34:42.000 Yes.
00:34:43.000 I mean, that's essentially Michael Cohen.
00:34:45.000 Michael Cohen, his closing statement yesterday was so ridiculously Cringeworthy.
00:34:51.000 Here is Michael Cohen explaining that he hoped that his truth will help heal America.
00:34:54.000 First of all, the minute anybody says my truth, you know they're lying.
00:34:59.000 First of all, I want to say thank you all for being here today.
00:35:02.000 I am humbled.
00:35:03.000 I am thankful to Chairman Cummings for giving me the opportunity today to tell my truth.
00:35:09.000 And I hope that, as Chairman Cummings said, it helps in order to heal America.
00:35:15.000 And I thank you all again and have a good day.
00:35:17.000 Okay, if anybody truly thinks that this is helping to heal America, you got another thing coming, man.
00:35:21.000 I mean, it's just silliness.
00:35:23.000 And the Democrats' attempt to paint Michael Cohen as some sort of redeemed hero was similarly cringeworthy.
00:35:28.000 Elijah Cummings, who's the chairman of the House Oversight Committee under the new Democratic Congress, he says, listen, we're better than this.
00:35:34.000 We can be redeemed because Michael Cohen can be redeemed.
00:35:36.000 Michael Cohen, he's changed his life here.
00:35:39.000 Yeah, if anybody believes that, I got a bridge in Brooklyn to sell you.
00:35:42.000 You come saying I have made my mistakes, but now I want to change my life.
00:35:52.000 If we, as a nation, did not give people an opportunity after they made mistakes to change their lives, a whole lot of people would not do very well.
00:36:07.000 We're better than this.
00:36:09.000 We are so much, we really are.
00:36:12.000 As a country, we are so much better than this.
00:36:16.000 No, we're not.
00:36:18.000 Sorry to break it to you, we're not.
00:36:19.000 That's why we're here.
00:36:21.000 The reason that we're here is because we're not better than this.
00:36:23.000 The opposing candidate in the last election cycle was Hillary Clinton, the most corrupt woman in the history of modern American politics. 1.00
00:36:28.000 So no, we are not better than this.
00:36:30.000 The last president of the United States was involved in innumerable scandals.
00:36:34.000 The only difference is that the media didn't care about those scandals.
00:36:36.000 We're not better than this.
00:36:37.000 American politics has been like this for a very long time.
00:36:40.000 It's just that now the mask is off because President Trump is very obvious, and also because the Democrats are very obvious and the media are very obvious.
00:36:47.000 Now, the worst moment of the entire day actually had nothing to do with Michael Cohen.
00:36:52.000 It had to do with Rashida Tlaib.
00:36:53.000 So Rashida Tlaib is just a vile human being. 1.00
00:36:55.000 She's a nasty, nasty person. 1.00
00:36:57.000 And you can tell she's a nasty person. 1.00
00:36:59.000 Not just because she's an open anti-Semite, but also because the Congresswoman from Michigan does stuff like this. 1.00
00:37:03.000 So, yesterday, Mark Meadows brought in Lynn Patton from the White House, with whom he is friends, and he said, and she's also close with Trump, to sort of rebut the allegation that President Trump was a racist. 0.99
00:37:13.000 Now, as I say, I think this is dumb. 0.97
00:37:15.000 I don't think it's racist. 0.97
00:37:16.000 I do not think it is a racist thing to say, you know, here's another black person who knows the President, she says he's not a racist.
00:37:21.000 I think it's a bad argument. 0.98
00:37:23.000 I think it's a stupid argument because not everyone of any race is going to have the same opinion about any person. 1.00
00:37:30.000 So I think this is a dumb argument. 1.00
00:37:31.000 So I think this is racist? 0.99
00:37:32.000 Of course not.
00:37:32.000 But here is Mark Meadows doing it.
00:37:34.000 I guess what I'm saying is, is I've talked to, to the president over 300 times.
00:37:38.000 I've not heard one time a racist comment out of, out of his mouth in private.
00:37:45.000 So how do you reconcile it?
00:37:46.000 Do you have proof of those conversations?
00:37:48.000 But I would ask, so why would you ask me a question?
00:37:50.000 Do you have proof?
00:37:51.000 Do you have proof?
00:37:52.000 Yes or no?
00:37:53.000 I do.
00:37:54.000 Oh, where's the proof? 0.98
00:37:55.000 Ask Miss Patton how many people who are black Okay, so is that a silly gambit? 0.99
00:38:13.000 Yes, it's a silly gambit. 0.99
00:38:15.000 But does it make Mark Meadows a racist? 0.93
00:38:17.000 The answer, of course, is no.
00:38:18.000 But according to Rashida Tlaib, it does make him a racist.
00:38:20.000 So in a second, I'm going to play you, Rashida Tlaib, going after Mark Meadows and suggesting he's a racist.
00:38:25.000 This is so out of bounds that even Elijah Cummings had to step in.
00:38:28.000 So this does explain a difference right now between the modern, new-fangled Democratic Party and maybe some of the older members of the Democratic Party.
00:38:35.000 Mark Meadows and Elijah Cummings are really good friends.
00:38:37.000 They've been good friends for many, many years. 0.87
00:38:39.000 The new members of the Democratic Party, however, have been deeply ensconced in the idea that every Republican down deep is a vicious, evil racist.
00:38:48.000 So here's Rashida Tlaib calling Mark Meadows a racist for the crime of having said, here's a black friend of the President of the United States who's not a racist.
00:38:55.000 Just to make a note, Mr. Chairman, just because someone has a person of color, a black person working for them, does not mean they aren't racist.
00:39:02.000 And it is insensitive.
00:39:04.000 The fact that someone would actually use a prop, a black woman, in this chamber, in this committee, is alone racist in itself. 0.56
00:39:13.000 Mr. Chairman. 0.77
00:39:14.000 Mr. Meadows, wait a minute.
00:39:16.000 I've defended you about- Mr. Meadows!
00:39:19.000 Mr. Meadows!
00:39:21.000 I'm the chair.
00:39:23.000 Yes sir, you are.
00:39:23.000 Thank you.
00:39:24.000 I will clear this up.
00:39:27.000 Now Ms.
00:39:27.000 Tlaib, I want to make sure I understand.
00:39:31.000 You did not, you were not intending to call Mr. Meadows a racist, is that right?
00:39:36.000 No, Mr. Chairman, I do not call Mr. Meadows a racist.
00:39:40.000 I am trying as a person of color, Mr. Chairman, just to express myself and how I felt at that moment.
00:39:46.000 I listened very carefully to Ms.
00:39:48.000 Tlaib.
00:39:50.000 And I think, and I'm not going to put words in her mouth, but I think she said that she was not calling you a racist.
00:39:59.000 So there's Cummings trying to quell that controversy.
00:40:02.000 Now, the truth is that Tlaib was, of course, calling Meadows a racist, because Tlaib and half the Democratic Party are constantly calling Republicans racist at the drop of a hat.
00:40:11.000 This is why Republicans don't take seriously accusations of racism, in some cases to their own detriment, because Democrats are willing to call everything racist.
00:40:19.000 Cummings at least has the wherewithal to say, hey, that's not right.
00:40:21.000 I mean, let's not go there.
00:40:23.000 But does Tlaib actually believe that Meadows is a racist?
00:40:26.000 Sure.
00:40:26.000 Because why not?
00:40:27.000 The New Democratic Party believes that anyone who doesn't agree with their agenda is inherently and innately racist and racially bigoted. 0.93
00:40:35.000 And it's pretty gross.
00:40:37.000 Good for Elijah Cummings for at least stepping in and shutting that down.
00:40:40.000 In other news, it is important to note here that I mentioned yesterday that Matt Gaetz, who is the Republican congressperson from Florida who basically threatened Michael Cohen before his testimony, He has now tweeted out, I've personally apologized to Michael Cohen, referencing his private family in the public square.
00:40:54.000 Regardless of disagreements, family members should be off limits from attacks from representatives, senators, and presidents, including myself.
00:40:59.000 Let's leave the Cohen family alone.
00:41:01.000 He said that after Bar Association initiated actual investigation into him in the state of Florida.
00:41:08.000 There are reports today that Goetz was on the phone with President Trump and Trump had basically suggested that he do this thing with Michael Cohen in the first place, which Again, is a is a thug tactic and has no place in American politics.
00:41:20.000 I mean, it's just it's a mob.
00:41:21.000 It's a mob tactic.
00:41:22.000 All of this is extraordinarily ugly.
00:41:24.000 What's the final impact of it?
00:41:26.000 Nothing.
00:41:27.000 I mean, really, because nothing matters anymore.
00:41:29.000 I think that that's that's sort of the theme is that very few things matter.
00:41:32.000 If we are a people of principle, then a lot of this should matter.
00:41:36.000 We should be able to say that President Trump engaged in immoral activity, but that's not illegal activity.
00:41:40.000 And illegal activity is necessary for an impeachment.
00:41:42.000 On North Korea, we should be able to say, the president, his statements are immoral.
00:41:47.000 Immoral. 1.00
00:41:48.000 And you may agree with the president on policy, you may like the president, you may back the president, but immoral is immoral.
00:41:54.000 We should be able to hold all of these thoughts simultaneously. 0.96
00:41:57.000 Unfortunately, because nothing matters and everything is stupid, people want to get rid of their cognitive dissonance by suggesting that there are good guys and bad guys in American politics. 0.97
00:42:05.000 There are very few good guys, and there are a lot of people who are mediocre, and there are a significant number of bad guys. 0.98
00:42:10.000 That's the actual breakdown of good guys, bad guys, and people in between in American politics. 0.91
00:42:15.000 Okay, meanwhile, speaking of corruption, it's not restricted to the United States, and it would be Silly to suggest that America is more corrupt and more dirty than any of the other nations of the West.
00:42:26.000 Like, people have not paid attention to this, but Justin Trudeau in Canada is in serious trouble.
00:42:30.000 Handsome Bernie.
00:42:32.000 Up north.
00:42:33.000 That guy's got some real problems.
00:42:34.000 According to Bloomberg, Justin Trudeau is facing the most explosive crisis of his administration After his former Attorney General detailed a months-long campaign by the Canadian Prime Minister's office to quietly end a legal problem for an iconic Quebec construction firm.
00:42:47.000 In dramatic testimony that lasted nearly four hours, Jody Wilson-Raybould broke her silence with a detailed account of efforts by Trudeau and top aides to persuade her to step in and end prosecution of SNC-Lavalin Group Inc.
00:42:59.000 She argues it amounted to interference in the judicial system. 0.96
00:43:03.000 She concedes it wasn't illegal.
00:43:04.000 Trudeau says he was trying to prevent job losses in his home province of Quebec by interfering in the judicial system.
00:43:10.000 The former attorney general says, Wilson-Raybould, who quit the cabinet this month, also said she faced veiled threats about what might happen if she refused to order an out-of-court settlement.
00:43:25.000 Her testimony shook the core of Justin Trudeau's team, naming him, his finance chief, and his most senior aides.
00:43:30.000 Conservative leaders have been trying to unseat Trudeau, and they're calling for his resignation.
00:43:34.000 In the polls, suddenly the Conservative Party is surging in Canada, thanks to all of this.
00:43:38.000 That's not the only corruption that is being charged.
00:43:41.000 There's corruption charges now issued against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
00:43:45.000 The Attorney General of the State of Israel announced on Thursday his office had indicted Netanyahu on corruption charges after a two-year investigation.
00:43:52.000 There are apparently one count of bribery and two counts of fraud and breach of trust.
00:43:56.000 The most serious allegation against Bibi involves his relationship with Shaul Elevich, the controlling shareholder of an Israeli telecom company called Bizek.
00:44:05.000 Bezek.
00:44:06.000 Police recommended an indictment in the case based on evidence collected that confidants of Netanyahu promoted regulatory changes worth hundreds of millions of dollars to Bezek.
00:44:14.000 In exchange, they believe Netanyahu used his connections with Elevich to receive positive press coverage on Bezek's popular subsidiary news site, Walla.
00:44:21.000 So the idea is that he traded favors for positive news coverage.
00:44:25.000 Police have said that their investigation concluded that Netanyahu and Elevich engaged in a bribe-based relationship.
00:44:30.000 That is the most serious charge.
00:44:31.000 The other charges against him are a lot less serious.
00:44:34.000 The conclusions are published 39 days prior to a general election, so people have no idea how this is going to impact the vote.
00:44:41.000 Bibi is actually, his Likud party is running second to a unity party created by the sort of center-right and center-left in Israel, with the indictment coming down.
00:44:51.000 There's great uncertainty as to what happens in Israel next.
00:44:53.000 So when we talk about corruption in the United States, recognize that corruption in government is sort of endemic to government.
00:44:59.000 The good news is that in Western democracies, people try to do something about it, as opposed to in North Korea, where you just kill everyone who asks a question. 0.80
00:45:06.000 All righty.
00:45:07.000 So time for some things I like and then some things that I hate.
00:45:11.000 All right.
00:45:12.000 Things I like.
00:45:13.000 You have to love Chuck Schumer.
00:45:14.000 Chuck Schumer is the Senate minority leader.
00:45:17.000 And he's stuck between a rock and a hard place.
00:45:19.000 Why?
00:45:19.000 Because the base of his party is extraordinarily extreme, and the mainstream of his party knows that if the base takes control, they have a real problem on their hands.
00:45:28.000 So he's got the base of his party clamoring for a vote on this Green New Deal. 1.00
00:45:32.000 The Green New Deal resolution is a bag of crap. 1.00
00:45:34.000 It's just horse manure. 1.00
00:45:35.000 Or cow manure.
00:45:36.000 Or cow farts.
00:45:37.000 Whatever you please.
00:45:38.000 It's just a terrible proposal.
00:45:39.000 It contains all sorts of nonsensical resolutions about solving climate change in 10 years.
00:45:45.000 It puts all these pie-in-the-sky proposals out there.
00:45:49.000 Nothing policy-oriented.
00:45:51.000 And Mitch McConnell...
00:45:52.000 The Senate Majority Leader said, you know what?
00:45:54.000 Let's vote on this thing.
00:45:55.000 Let's get Democrats on record. 0.99
00:45:56.000 Are they really willing to embrace this sort of nonsense?
00:45:59.000 Here is Chuck Schumer gamely trying to say that it is Republicans' fault that a bill that Democrats proposed could make it to the floor for a vote.
00:46:08.000 I heard Leader McConnell knocking the Green New Deal.
00:46:14.000 I would ask the leader, and we're going to keep asking him, and every Republican in this chamber, what they would do About climate change.
00:46:22.000 About global warming.
00:46:24.000 Until Leader McConnell and his Republican majority answer those questions, the games they're playing here will have no meaning.
00:46:34.000 This is not a debate.
00:46:36.000 It's a diversion.
00:46:37.000 It's a sham.
00:46:38.000 Okay, so what?
00:46:41.000 It's a diversion and a sham to bring up your proposal for a vote?
00:46:44.000 I demand a vote!
00:46:45.000 It's super important!
00:46:46.000 Okay, here's your vote.
00:46:47.000 This is a sham!
00:46:48.000 Why are you telling me to vote?
00:46:52.000 Pick one.
00:46:52.000 Pick one, guys.
00:46:53.000 So that's really funny.
00:46:54.000 So, well done Senate Majority Leader McConnell for allowing Democrats to humiliate themselves.
00:46:59.000 This one definitely falls under the old aphorism that you give people enough rope to hang themselves.
00:47:04.000 And that's basically what the Democratic Party is doing right now.
00:47:07.000 Okay, time for a couple of things that I hate.
00:47:12.000 Okay, thing that I hate, number one.
00:47:15.000 So, Senator Ed Markey, I love this.
00:47:16.000 So, Senator Ed Markey, this ties right in.
00:47:18.000 He is one of the co-sponsors of the Green New Deal.
00:47:20.000 He's talking about, he says, listen, young people know it's time for a revolution, a revolution in this country.
00:47:26.000 Here's Senator Markey.
00:47:27.000 Republicans may think that the Green New Deal is just a resolution, but it's a revolution.
00:47:37.000 It's a revolution.
00:47:38.000 Young people want a green energy revolution in our country.
00:47:44.000 They know we can do this.
00:47:46.000 They know that all of these new technologies can be invented.
00:47:50.000 All these new technologies can be deployed.
00:47:52.000 Oh my goodness.
00:47:53.000 Okay, so sorry, we can stop him there.
00:47:55.000 Young people know that we can invent stuff that nobody knows what the hell they're talking about. 0.99
00:47:59.000 Young people know that we can manufacture diamonds from horse crap. 0.94
00:48:02.000 Young people know that if we just wish hard enough, then money will pour from the skies like God's mana. 0.98
00:48:08.000 That's what young people know.
00:48:10.000 I also love it when senators do this wordplay. 1.00
00:48:13.000 It's always really awkward.
00:48:14.000 Like, this resolution isn't a resolution, it's a revolution.
00:48:18.000 You see what I did right there?
00:48:19.000 Just switch the S for the V. You see that?
00:48:21.000 Yeah, clever, huh?
00:48:22.000 Resolution, revolution, re-lo-lution.
00:48:25.000 Just keep switching the letter out.
00:48:26.000 Pretty great.
00:48:28.000 Ed Markey does this.
00:48:29.000 I love that he's like, young people know how vital this is.
00:48:32.000 And then McConnell's like, vote on it.
00:48:33.000 Like, no!
00:48:34.000 Stop that! 1.00
00:48:35.000 How?
00:48:36.000 No!
00:48:37.000 No!
00:48:38.000 Because the revolution will not require you to vote, apparently. 0.98
00:48:40.000 It'll just require you to say silly things. 0.84
00:48:42.000 Okay, other things that I hate today.
00:48:43.000 So this one, if you're eating breakfast, now is not the time to do so, if you are a subscriber and you can see this.
00:48:49.000 There is a woman who has now smeared herself with menstrual blood, saying that she wanted to show that periods are both beautiful and powerful.
00:48:57.000 First of all, super transphobic.
00:49:00.000 What about women who don't have periods? 1.00
00:49:02.000 And what about men who do have periods?
00:49:05.000 Has anyone thought of those people?
00:49:07.000 Second of all, this look worked way better in Braveheart.
00:49:12.000 Worked way better in Braveheart.
00:49:13.000 Also, I don't think that those words mean what she thinks they mean.
00:49:17.000 Beautiful and powerful.
00:49:21.000 Now, I'm just gonna put this out there.
00:49:23.000 Bodily fluids.
00:49:25.000 Not the best.
00:49:26.000 Just no matter from which orifice. 0.93
00:49:28.000 Bodily fluids. 0.81
00:49:29.000 Smearing them on yourself.
00:49:31.000 Not great.
00:49:32.000 Not great, Bob. 0.98
00:49:34.000 So not sure why exactly this is, why somebody would do this, unless they're a crazy person. 0.99
00:49:40.000 Well, this person is a crazy person. 0.95
00:49:41.000 Her name is Dimitra Nix, 26, although I don't want to assume her sex, because obviously we can't do that anymore. 0.99
00:49:47.000 She's a sex coach. 1.00
00:49:50.000 So I get, maybe that's what, maybe that's what this is.
00:49:51.000 Maybe this was like, maybe it is a Braveheart motivational tactic. 0.68
00:49:53.000 She's a sex coach. 1.00
00:49:54.000 So she smears herself with menstrual blood and then she's like, do it! 1.00
00:49:57.000 Do it now!
00:49:59.000 Own it!
00:50:01.000 So, she's trying to end the stigma and shame around periods. 0.52
00:50:04.000 All she is succeeding in doing is having people back away slowly into the bushes, like Homer Simpson.
00:50:09.000 She says that she regularly posts these photos to her Instagram page. 1.00
00:50:13.000 She lives in LA, California, because my city is intensely stupid. 0.99
00:50:17.000 She had her first period age 12, just like most young women, I know. 1.00
00:50:20.000 Shocking.
00:50:21.000 But was ashamed of it, and thought it was disgusting.
00:50:23.000 She would try and hide her period from boyfriends, worried about bleeding through her clothes.
00:50:27.000 Well, first of all, shouldn't we all be worried about bleeding through our clothes from wherever?
00:50:31.000 Like, that's not sanitary as a general rule.
00:50:36.000 She said, I was simultaneously embarrassed and fascinated by my period.
00:50:39.000 I felt apologetic about it a lot and tried to hide it from boyfriends.
00:50:42.000 Our society teaches us that periods are dirty and inconvenient.
00:50:47.000 Well, they're not clean and convenient from what I hear from women. 1.00
00:50:49.000 I mean, I've never heard a woman who was like, you know what? 0.94
00:50:52.000 My period came, it was so clean and so convenient for me.
00:50:55.000 It was just great.
00:50:57.000 Ads about menstrual products talk about smelling fresh or making us cleaner, implying that our body's natural functions are gross. 0.81
00:51:02.000 If she doesn't think our body's natural functions are gross, she should smear poop on herself and walk around. 1.00
00:51:05.000 Like really, when my son doesn't want his diaper changed, you know what I say to him? 0.97
00:51:11.000 It's time to change your diaper, because you have gross poopoo. 1.00
00:51:15.000 I know, deep thoughts here on a Thursday. 1.00
00:51:18.000 But we have reduced adults to dumber than our smallest children. 0.98
00:51:26.000 There are very few parents who have never had the experience of walking into a room and seeing your child with their diaper around their ankles looking at their own poop. 1.00
00:51:35.000 And you thought, well, that's a dumb thing because kids are dumb. 0.98
00:51:38.000 When you're in your mid-twenties and you're still doing this with the stuff coming out of your body, let me suggest that you may have a problem larger than the societal feelings about periods. 1.00
00:51:48.000 Unbelievable. 0.61
00:51:49.000 And again, supremely transphobic. 0.93
00:51:52.000 Really, really transphobic and terrible. 0.99
00:51:55.000 Very cisgender. 0.99
00:51:56.000 Alrighty. 0.99
00:51:57.000 I have to stop there because I need to go vomit.
00:51:59.000 So I will be back a little bit later.
00:52:00.000 If you subscribe, then you'll get two additional hours of The Ben Shapiro Show.
00:52:04.000 So check us out over there, or we'll see you here tomorrow.
00:52:05.000 I'm Ben Shapiro.
00:52:06.000 This is The Ben Shapiro Show.
00:52:11.000 The Ben Shapiro Show is produced by Senya Villarreal.
00:52:14.000 Executive producer, Jeremy Boring.
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00:52:17.000 Our supervising producer is Mathis Glover.
00:52:19.000 And our technical producer is Austin Stevens.
00:52:21.000 Edited by Adam Sajovic.
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00:52:27.000 The Ben Shapiro Show is a Daily Wire production.