A Friday deadline looms for a decision on whether to allow more witnesses in President Trump's impeachment trial. Is it time to call more witnesses, or not? And what will it mean for Trump s chances of being acquitted if they fail to call any more witnesses. Plus, impeachment lawyers take questions from Republicans and Democrats, Alan Dershowitz finds himself under fire after explaining the nature of impeachable activity, and Republicans mull more witnesses Ben Shapiro's show is sponsored by ExpressVPN's Stop Putting Your Online Data at Risk. Get protected at ExpressVPN.com/ProtectYourData and use the promo code: PGPodcasts to receive 20% off your first month with discount code ProtectYourData at checkout. Use the discount code: "RP2020" at checkout to get 20% all year long when you sign up for VIP access to "Protect Your Data" and receive $5 and up when you become a patron. If you like the show, please consider becoming a patron and/or share it on your social media platforms. Subscribe to "The Ben Shapiro Show" Subscribe to the show! Subscribe on Apple Podcasts! Subscribe on iTunes Learn more about your ad-free version of the show? Subscribe on Audible Subscribe on Podchaser.me/TheBenShawShow Subscribe on the App Store or wherever else you get your own podcasting option or wherever you re listening to your favorite podcasting platform? You can become a supporter of The Ben Shapiro Podcast! Become a supporter? Learn more at Ben Shapiro s and learn more about Ben Shapiro on The Ben's newest book, "The Testimony" Subscribe and review? Leave us a review! Thank you for supporting the show on iTunes? Ben's AMA? Subscribe for a chance to become a fellow Ben Shapiro is mentioned in The Six Figure Podcast? Thanks for listening to Ben's latest episode on The FiveThirtyEight podcast? "Ben Shapiro's newest episode of The Six PIECE of "The Six Figure Challenge? and Ben Shapiro "The Best of Ben's "The Most Influential Podcast?" "The Real Thing" on PodCastle of the Six Figurecrunch? , "The Five Most Influenomenon of the Week's New York Times? & much more! "Thank you, Ben Shapiro, on The Six Figures of the Final Episode of The Five-Castle?
00:00:00.000Impeachment lawyers take questions from Republicans and Democrats, Alan Dershowitz finds himself under fire after explaining the nature of impeachable activity, and Republicans mull more witnesses.
00:00:36.000According to the New York Post, President Trump's impeachment defense team expects a Friday cliffhanger when senators vote on whether to call witnesses in Trump's trial.
00:00:43.000If Democrats find four Republicans to vote for witnesses, the trial could stretch until March.
00:00:47.000If they fail, Trump would likely be acquitted.
00:00:49.000Now, I think that's a bit of an exaggeration.
00:00:51.000I think that if the Republicans decide to allow witnesses, then basically they allow like two witnesses.
00:00:55.000I think it's probably John Bolton, maybe Mick Mulvaney, and that's it.
00:00:58.000I think they say, everybody who already testified, we already have their testimony, we don't need to hear from Gordon Sumlund again.
00:01:03.000It might be Hunter Biden, and John Bolton, and Mick Mulvaney, and that's it.
00:01:08.000So no, I don't think this is going to stretch for another month, just to hash out all of the witness activity.
00:01:15.000Trump confidant Mark Meadows told the New York Post he doesn't believe there will be clarity on the outcome until Friday of this week.
00:01:21.000Right now, there are basically three senators who are fairly certain to vote in favor of more witnesses.
00:01:27.000That would be Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, that would be Mitt Romney of Utah, and that would be Susan Collins of Maine.
00:01:33.000Some Republican senators, according to the New York Post, were optimistic after the McConnell-Murkowski talk, which followed a conference meeting of senators on Tuesday, when McConnell said he didn't yet have the votes to block witnesses.
00:01:42.000Murkowski was tight-lipped after meeting with McConnell, telling reporters, I had a meeting with Leader McConnell, but I'm not going to talk to you about it.
00:01:47.000She said, I've been talking with the folks in the cloakroom about what the universe is to see how we can supplement that with regard to witnesses.
00:01:54.000Senator Roger Wicker of Mississippi told the New York Post that the feeling among Republicans was, quote unquote, pretty good.
00:01:58.000He said, obviously, we need to make a decision at this point whether to drag the foregone conclusion out for another four to six weeks.
00:02:11.000I mean, seriously, if you all believe the same thing that I believe, I said this yesterday on the show.
00:02:15.000If you believe that the impeachment outcome is a foregone conclusion because John Bolton is not going to get up and testify, he's just not going to get up and testify that President Trump said explicitly to him, I want you condition Ukraine aid on them making up information about Joe Biden for purposes of 2020, which is the only thing that would be impeachable here.
00:02:33.000If that's not the case, then why not get all of this out in the open now?
00:02:36.000Because otherwise, it's just going to leak, right?
00:02:38.000We're just going to have more leaks, and then it's not just going to implicate Trump.
00:03:30.000That would just be the worst of all available worlds.
00:03:33.000That means that the prudent move here is to hedge your bets to the extent that you can.
00:03:37.000And that would presumably mean allowing a couple of witnesses to be called, including Hunter Biden, who would in fact be damaging to Joe Biden.
00:03:43.000And then you move on because Trump is not getting impeached, or removed at least, over any of this.
00:03:48.000Senator Tom Tillis of North Carolina angrily denied reports that he told fellow Republicans on Tuesday night that extending Trump's trial would hurt vulnerable GOP incumbents.
00:03:56.000He said, whoever went out of that meeting and whoever informed the press was either misled, lying, or an imbecile.
00:04:05.000Four Republicans, including Murkowski, have expressed interest in possibly hearing from witnesses.
00:04:09.000Retiring Senator Lamar Alexander of Tennessee said he intended to make up his mind after we've heard the questions and the answers to the questions on Thursday.
00:04:16.000Mitt Romney, of course, has been the clearest in saying that he is interested in hearing from some of the witnesses.
00:04:23.000Now, the Trump team is basically saying that they're trying to make a split case, and I'm not sure it's a great case.
00:04:30.000On the one hand, they're saying that we don't need to hear from witnesses.
00:04:33.000On the other hand, they're saying that the Democrats don't have enough information because they didn't hear from witnesses.
00:04:56.000And that case is that the Democrats didn't do their job.
00:04:59.000If they had done their job and heard from witnesses, then we wouldn't have to do this whole shebang at all.
00:05:03.000But the implication is that the Democrats' failure was not that they did a complete report and just didn't end up with the goods.
00:05:09.000Their failure was that they didn't even do a complete report, which sort of suggests that, okay, well, now you could do a complete report, right?
00:05:14.000I mean, you could have more witnesses.
00:05:15.000Patrick Philbin, who's one of the lawyers for President Trump, said as much yesterday in the closing arguments that basically yesterday was a day when the impeachment managers for the House, that'd be the Democrats, like Schiff, and the Trump team, that would be Patrick Philbin and Alan Dershowitz, were asked questions via the Chief Justice by the Senators.
00:05:32.000The Senators submitted written questions to the Chief Justice.
00:05:35.000By the way, Can I just say, we should always do this?
00:05:37.000Like, every congressional hearing should be this.
00:05:38.000There should be just one person who's delegated to ask the questions, because otherwise you end up with this insane grandstanding.
00:05:44.000I will say the process yesterday was so much better, just because you had senators who couldn't stand there and grandstand for five minutes before getting to a question mark.
00:05:51.000I do a lot of Q&As publicly, there's nothing more irritating than when someone takes the mic, tells you their life story, and never hits a question mark.
00:05:58.000Well, they didn't do that yesterday, and at least the process was a little more fun.
00:06:01.000Anyway, Patrick Philbin made the case yesterday that no one goes to trial without hearing from the witnesses first.
00:06:05.000Why didn't the Democrats call the witnesses if it was so all-fire important?
00:06:11.000There's a better way to articulate it, but that's the argument anyway.
00:06:15.000House managers try to present it as if it's just a simple question.
00:06:20.000How can you have a trial without witnesses?
00:06:23.000But in real litigation, no one goes to trial without doing discovery.
00:06:28.000No one goes to trial without having heard from the witnesses first.
00:06:32.000You don't show up at trial and then start trying Okay, the argument that it's bad for the Senate to call witnesses is not a very good argument.
00:06:42.000for trying to run things in such an upside down way would be very grave for this body as an institution.
00:06:53.000OK, the argument that it's bad for the Senate to call witnesses is not a very good argument.
00:06:57.000The argument he should be making is Democrats say that they had a complete case and their case just is insufficient.
00:07:17.000People deliberately taking Alan Dershowitz out of context to pretend they don't understand what he's talking about.
00:07:21.000We'll get to all of that in just one second.
00:07:23.000Let's talk about that time that your car battery died.
00:07:25.000So I remember one time my car battery died and for some odd reason I went over to the generic auto body parts store and they did not have the right battery.
00:07:32.000They didn't have the correct battery and so I had to go to a second auto parts store.
00:07:36.000The whole day I don't have a car because of all of this.
00:07:38.000You know it would have been a lot easier just going to rockauto.com and getting the exact part I needed.
00:07:44.000And I'm looking, I'm not a car expert.
00:07:45.000If I were a car expert I'd be looking at Rock Auto like every day because they've got all the parts.
00:07:49.000All the specialized parts that you're never going to find at a generic auto parts store.
00:07:53.000rockauto.com is a family business serving auto parts customers online for 20 years.
00:07:57.000Go to rockauto.com to shop for auto and body parts from hundreds of manufacturers.
00:08:01.000They've got everything from engine control modules and brake parts to tail lamps, motor oil, even new carpet.
00:08:05.000Whether it's for your classic or your daily driver, get everything you need in a few easy clicks delivered directly to your door.
00:08:10.000You don't have to experience the store markup, you don't have to wait in line, you don't have to get the generic part as opposed to the specialized part that you actually need.
00:08:15.000Best of all, prices at rockauto.com are always reliably low and the same for professionals and do-it-yourselfers.
00:08:21.000They've got great selection, reliably low prices, all the parts your car will ever need over at rockauto.com.
00:08:26.000Go to rockauto.com right now, see all the parts available for your car or truck right Shapiro in their How Did You Hear About Us box.
00:08:47.000The best strategy with regards to we don't want to hear from John Bolton is he has nothing new to say.
00:08:51.000And even if what he says is true, it doesn't make any difference, right?
00:08:53.000That's the best strategy for not calling the witness.
00:08:55.000If your case is the witness is a damn liar and everything that the witness says is a lie and violates national Well, then the question is, why don't you call him as a witness and then just cross-examine him?
00:09:45.000Now, people on the right are trotting out.
00:09:47.000I'm trying to be as fair-minded as I can about this, and I've said a thousand times, I don't think Trump did anything impeachable here.
00:09:52.000Bad but not impeachable has been my standard since the very beginning.
00:09:55.000I don't think that he did something great here, but I also don't think he did anything impeachable here.
00:09:59.000Okay, but People on the right are trying to trot out this old clip of John Bolton talking about President Trump's calls with Vladimir Zelensky, who's the president of Ukraine.
00:10:07.000And they're saying, well, if John Bolton hadn't had a problem with this, why didn't he say so at the time?
00:10:12.000I mean, he did an interview where he talked about Trump's calls with Zelensky.
00:10:16.000And the answer is, yes, you say something different publicly about the company you work for than you say privately behind the scenes to your boss.
00:10:22.000These things are not mutually exclusive.
00:10:24.000Are we really going to treat it as though everything anyone says publicly about the place where they work is a reflection of what they're actually saying inside the house?
00:10:40.000He and President Trump have already spoken twice.
00:10:42.000The President called to congratulate President Zelensky on his election and then on his success in the parliamentary election.
00:10:50.000They were very warm and cordial calls.
00:10:52.000We're hoping that they'll be able to meet in Warsaw and have a few minutes together.
00:10:57.000Okay, so that last line right there, we're hoping they're going to be able to meet in Warsaw, that can easily be read as John Bolton trying to telegraph to the President and meet with him in Warsaw, right?
00:11:05.000Because this is what people in the Trump administration do.
00:11:07.000They go on TV specifically in order to get President Trump to pay attention to them.
00:11:11.000This is a thing that happens on a regular basis in this White House.
00:11:27.000And then Mark Meadows, who again, I like.
00:11:29.000Congressman Meadows from North Carolina.
00:11:31.000He was saying to GOP senators, Americans are paying attention to your vote, so you should be very careful how you vote on the prospect of more witnesses.
00:11:37.000I mean, I think that's true, but I don't think that Americans who are in red states particularly care about this.
00:11:42.000I mean, when I say they don't care, I mean, they don't want more witnesses, but Americans in purple states, like Mark Meadows doesn't have to worry about his district, but Susan Collins certainly has to worry about her seat in Maine.
00:11:53.000This is the most consequential vote that any senator will take, perhaps other than sending troops into harm's way.
00:12:01.000And so the American people are going to be looking at this and they're going to say, well, did you vote with the president that I voted for or against him?
00:12:08.000And that's why it'll have repercussions.
00:12:10.000It's nothing that will happen here on Capitol Hill, but it really will be the voters because they are paying attention to this one vote.
00:12:17.000They may have tuned out on the hearings.
00:12:19.000They may not be viewing, but they are tuning in to how their senator is going to vote on this particular issue.
00:12:38.000So Romney submitted a series of questions yesterday that were answered on the floor of the Senate by both the White House counsel and the House managers on the Democratic side.
00:12:45.000And for all of the people who are ripping Romney up and down, the questions that he asked yesterday are basically the correct questions in this particular case.
00:12:52.000So the questions that Romney asked were these.
00:12:55.000One, this is to the White House counsel.
00:12:56.000Given that Rudy Giuliani's May 10th, 2019 letter to President Zelensky asserted he was acting with the knowledge and consent of President Trump, what did President Trump specifically task Giuliani to do in Ukraine?
00:13:05.000Okay, this is the basic question of the case, right?
00:13:08.000Was Giuliani there to dig up dirt about Hunter and Joe Biden for prospects of 2020?
00:13:12.000Or was he there to dig up stuff about 2016?
00:13:13.000It is perfectly obvious he was there to dig up stuff about 2016.
00:13:17.000He was in Ukraine in 2018 before Joe Biden had even announced that he was going to be running for the presidency.
00:13:23.000So it is pretty obvious that that was not about Hunter and Joe Biden, Giuliani's original deployment to Ukraine.
00:13:31.000The second question that Romney asked was, if evidence indicates President Trump had multiple purposes, some in the national interest, some political, for holding up the security assistance, is it the House manager's position that the presence of any political purpose should be grounds for removing a president for abuse of power?
00:13:46.000Okay, now this is the big question, right?
00:13:49.000And it's the question I've been asking since the very start.
00:13:54.000One was the Trump was planning to go after Joe Biden theory, and one is the miasma of corruption theory.
00:13:59.000The miasma of corruption theory is that Trump was concerned about some legitimate things, and also, if it happened to knock Joe Biden, well, whatever.
00:14:06.000That was the miasma of corruption thing.
00:14:43.000Let's say the president has dual purposes.
00:14:44.000One is, he wants to be more stingy with regards to Ukrainian aid, because he doesn't like foreign aid generally, and he's worried about corruption.
00:14:52.000And the second is, that it's going to help his re-election prospects if he withholds the foreign aid and somehow gets investigations started against a bunch of Democrats.
00:15:00.000But, it's legit to get those investigations started because it's also in America's interest to find out what happened in 2016 and whether there was indeed anything corrupt going on.
00:15:08.000Right, let's say that there's a dual purpose to what's going on.
00:15:24.000Everything Barack Obama did in his first term.
00:15:27.000was, at best, directed toward two purposes.
00:15:30.000One, what he thought was in the national interest, and two, at re-election.
00:15:34.000Because you're a politician, that's what politicians do.
00:15:36.000Are we just gonna pretend that politicians are truly altruistic public servants who never have an eye on re-election at all?
00:15:41.000Of course, everything they do is designated for a couple of purposes.
00:15:44.000It's only corruption when you cut against the national interest deliberately for your own private purposes, right?
00:15:50.000Then, you have something that's impeachable, something that's removable, right?
00:15:53.000When you're talking about something where it's a dual-purpose thing, Right where it serves both your political interest and also what you believe to be the national interest of the country.
00:16:02.000And it's not just that you believe it to be the national interest of the country, but there can be a fair case made that the American people should believe it to be in the national interest of the country.
00:16:09.000Then that obviously is not impeachable.
00:16:12.000That's the question that Mitt Romney is asking.
00:16:13.000And this is where the left is going after Alan Dershowitz today.
00:16:32.000Well, you go out to your garage, got a bunch of old film reels out there.
00:16:36.000Do you still have one of those old cameras that projects on the wall?
00:16:39.000If the answer is no, if you haven't had one of those for 60 years, but you got those old film room reels out in the garage and they're just moldering, well why not take those and put them in a digital format and now you can see all the tapes from when grandma was young, or when mom and dad were young, or when you were young.
00:17:45.000Okay, so Alan Dershowitz comes under fire specifically because he seeks to answer the question that Mitt Romney is asking, which is, if the evidence indicates that Trump had multiple purposes, Some in the national interest, some political, for holding up security assistance.
00:17:58.000Is it the House manager's position that the presence of any political purpose should be grounds for removing a president for abuse of power?
00:18:04.000Okay, so here's Alan Dershowitz suggesting that activity that helps the president and helps the country is fine.
00:18:09.000Now the media are reading this as though Dershowitz is saying that any action you take in your own re-elected interest Is fine.
00:18:17.000That, of course, is not what Dershowitz is saying, because that would be an idiotic case.
00:18:19.000You'd have to be, like, a complete dunderhead to believe that, like, because that basically says, OK, if the president goes and just kills Joe Biden, but he believes that it's in his own electoral interest to do so, well, then that's OK.
00:18:32.000It would be saying that that Nixon's crimes during Watergate would have been fine because, after all, it was in his own re-elective interest.
00:18:40.000Dershowitz is saying something that is perfectly obvious, and everybody in the media is pretending they don't understand it because everybody in the media is corrupt.
00:18:45.000Or at least a huge number of people in the media are corrupt.
00:18:48.000We'll get to the media a little bit later on in the program because they truly are awful.
00:18:51.000But what Dershowitz is trying to say here, fairly obviously since he has said it on this program, is that if a president both has a public purpose for what he is doing and also has an eye toward re-election, that is not impeachable because if it were impeachable, then presidents would never be able to do anything.
00:19:07.000So here is Dershowitz and what he actually had to say yesterday.
00:19:10.000Every public official that I know believes that his election is in the public interest.
00:19:18.000Your election is in the public interest.
00:19:21.000And if a president does something which he believes will help him get elected, in the public interest, that cannot be the kind of quid pro quo that results in impeachment.
00:19:37.000Okay, so the way that people are reading that is that Dershowitz is saying that if you do something that is only in your own re-elective interest because you believe that you're better a candidate and so you can do what you want, that would be an overbroad and ridiculous argument, obviously.
00:19:51.000Okay, but what Dershowitz is actually saying, I believe strongly since he has said this before, is that if you do something that you believe is in the national interest and it is in your re-elective interest, then the fact that it is also in your re-elective interest does not make it impeachable.
00:20:06.000Because everybody has their eye toward re-election.
00:20:13.000Okay, now, the Democrats immediately jump on this and they're saying, well, now Trump is making a full-on dictatorial argument.
00:20:18.000And, by the way, it would be true, right?
00:20:19.000If Dershowitz were actually saying that your wish to be re-elected allows you to do anything in pursuit of re-election, yes, that would be a dictatorial argument.
00:20:26.000But that's not what Dershowitz is actually saying.
00:20:28.000Okay, so Adam Schiff goes on national TV and says, this gives us carte blanche to cheat, right?
00:20:32.000This is giving Trump carte blanche to cheat because he could then just go do whatever he wants in pursuit of his own re-election.
00:20:41.000Is that really what we're prepared to say with respect to this president's conduct or the next?
00:20:47.000Because if we are, then the next president of the United States can ask for an investigation of you.
00:20:55.000They can ask for help in their next election from any foreign power.
00:21:02.000Okay, now Schiff steps right in it here.
00:21:10.000The reason he steps right in it, he says the next president can do anything.
00:21:14.000The next president could like, you know, for example, just you know, use a foreign source to initiate an investigation against a political opponent.
00:21:20.000And if they thought it was in their reelective interest, it would be it'd be totally it would be totally OK under the standard currently articulated.
00:21:26.000So Jay Sekulow, who's the counsel for the White House, he gets up and says, I'm like, have you not been watching for the past several years when the Obama FBI and DOJ initiated an investigation into Donald Trump based on Trump's garbage from the Russians?
00:21:39.000The Department of Justice and the FBI engaged in an investigation of the candidate for president of the United States when they started their operation called Crossfire Hurricane.
00:21:55.000He said it would be targeting a rival.
00:22:22.000It was initiated as an investigation into Carter Page, and it quickly became an investigation into the entire Trump campaign, which is why the Trump campaign was not notified that Carter Page was being investigated and Paul Manafort was being investigated until much, much later.
00:22:34.000Okay, so anyway, the Democrats decide that they are going to move with this basic notion that Alan Dershowitz is a dictator.
00:22:41.000Civil libertarian Alan Dershowitz is an actual dictator who wants the president to be able to get off scot-free for anything he does, so long as he can claim that it's in his re-elective interest.
00:22:48.000Gloria Borger on CNN says, well, under this standard, couldn't you arrest your political opponents?
00:22:52.000I mean, the answer is yes, but that's not Dershowitz's standard.
00:22:56.000Maybe he was trying to appeal to narcissism of politicians.
00:22:59.000I have absolutely no idea what he was trying to do.
00:23:03.000But he effectively said, if you believe you should be president, then you can do anything you want to make yourself President, because you will believe that is in the national interest.
00:23:15.000So my question would be, can you arrest an opponent of yours?
00:23:20.000I mean, you know, the story you can ask questions like that ad infinitum.
00:23:32.000Well, I mean, why don't we stipulate that everybody is deliberately misunderstanding what Dershowitz is saying because you have to assume a baseline level of intelligence on Dershowitz's part.
00:24:23.000This is what you hear from Mussolini, what you hear from Hitler, from all the authoritarian people who rationalized You know, in some cases genocide, based on what was in the public interest.
00:24:36.000Okay, so if you think that this is truly just about, if you think that they're interpreting Dershowitz correctly, then I ask what Dershowitz is talking about in the next clip.
00:24:47.000Okay, so Dershowitz then asks, he would go on to ask, was it impeachable when Obama didn't bomb Syria because he believed that it would hurt his electoral chances?
00:24:56.000The point being that foreign policy is quite malleable and that if you do something that you believe is in the national interest and it includes your reelection interest, then that's answerable.
00:25:07.000The left wing of your party is really going to give you a hard time if you start selling lethal weapons and getting into a lethal war, potentially, with Russia.
00:25:18.000Would anybody here suggest that was impeachable?
00:25:21.000Or let's assume President Obama said, I promised to bomb Syria if they had chemical weapons, but I'm now told by my pollsters that bombing Syria would hurt my electoral chances.
00:25:37.000The point that he's making is that if it's not a crime in the essence of it, if it's not a crime in the essence of it, if the president has plenty of discretion in a particular area, and politics plays into the use of the discretion, that's not impeachable.
00:25:51.000If you do something and you believe that it could go either way, it's in the national interest, and the national interest could go either way, and also you have an eye toward re-election, that's not impeachable.
00:26:01.000Now, the left has also been going nuts over Patrick Philbin, one of the president's attorneys, yesterday, making the perfectly obvious point that it is not a campaign finance violation to accept information from a foreign source.
00:26:10.000Now, I've talked at length about this before.
00:26:12.000Eugene Volokh, over at UCLA School of Law, wrote a long piece about this, probably now three to four years ago, regarding the use of information from a foreign source in a campaign, and pointed out this is not a campaign finance violation because that is not a quote-unquote thing of value under campaign finance law.
00:26:26.000But when the president's lawyer says this, it's a big deal, apparently.
00:26:29.000Mere information is not something that would violate the campaign finance laws.
00:26:36.000And if there is credible information, credible information of wrongdoing by someone who's running for a public office, it's not campaign interference for credible information about wrongdoing to be brought to light, if it's credible information.
00:26:51.000So I think that the idea that any information that happens to come from overseas Okay, and what he's saying there is, again, uncontroversial, but it was played as controversial today because everything was played as controversial.
00:27:07.000There was a study out today showing that 100% of the media coverage of Team Trump in this has been negative.
00:27:13.000Not 99%, 100% of the media coverage from the mainstream media, non-Fox News, has been negative.
00:27:21.00095% has been positive for Democrats, which is not any shock at all, even though the Democrats have been fibbing throughout this process.
00:27:26.000So Adam Schiff yesterday, he did a couple of things where he just overtly lied.
00:27:29.000So in one, he characterized Trump's conversation with Zelensky, and he again lied about what Trump said.
00:27:34.000He did this before when he made up his whole, like, I'm a mafioso conversation with Trump.
00:28:07.000OK, then Schiff claims yesterday that he hasn't had that his staff has had no contact with the whistleblower, which, of course, is an overt lie.
00:28:13.000I mean, the fact is that his staff coordinated with the whistleblower.
00:28:15.000We already have testimony to that effect.
00:28:18.000First of all, I don't know who the whistleblower is.
00:28:20.000I haven't met them or communicated with them in any way.
00:28:25.000The committee staff did not write the complaint or coach the whistleblower what to put in the complaint.
00:28:33.000The committee staff did not see the complaint before it was submitted to the Inspector General.
00:28:38.000Okay, just gonna point out that his staff overtly coordinated with the whistleblower.
00:28:44.000We had an open hearing with the active director on September 26, more than three weeks after the legal deadline by which the committee should have received the complaint.
00:28:54.000Okay, just going to point out that his staff overtly coordinated with the whistleblower.
00:28:57.000Like, we know that that is not a speculation.
00:29:19.000Hunter Biden's not relevant here, even though he is at the center of the entire thing, right?
00:29:23.000If Trump had never asked about Hunter Biden, we would not be talking about any of this, would we?
00:29:27.000Really, if he'd been asking about CrowdStrike, if he'd been asking about all of the crazy conspiracy theories he was asking about in Ukraine, but he never mentioned Hunter Biden, we wouldn't be talking about any of this.
00:29:34.000So yes, Hunter Biden is relevant, because it matters whether or not Hunter Biden did something corrupt that prompted the question in the first place.
00:29:41.000Well, it's my view that Hunter Biden is not a relevant witness, but I have great respect for Joe Manchin and for all of the senators on both sides of the aisle.
00:29:48.000And ultimately, they, in the first instance, will make this decision in terms of the witnesses that should be called.
00:29:56.000Although, as Senator Manchin indicated, I do believe that Chief Justice John Roberts should be the ultimate arbiter and referee in terms of deciding relevance.
00:30:07.000So now the Democrats are trying to kick it over to Roberts.
00:30:09.000They can blame Roberts, a Bush appointee, obviously, if it turns out that he allows Hunter Biden to be brought in testimony.
00:30:18.000Meanwhile, the Democrats are trying to claim, with regard to Hunter Biden, that unless Donald Trump asked about Hunter Biden and Burisma before Biden announced his investigation, then he's only doing this for his re-election prospect.
00:30:31.000Okay, first of all, That take sort of ignores the timeline, which is that Rudy Giuliani was wandering around Ukraine in the middle of 2018, according to the Whistleblower Report, right?
00:30:39.000I mean, so, like, he was wandering around there, gathering information on Burisma, apparently, in 2018.
00:30:44.000So, first of all, that's pretty obvious.
00:30:45.000Second of all, even if Donald Trump only asked about Hunter Biden once it became clear that Joe was actually running for president, that again does not mean that's directed toward 2020.
00:30:56.000It means that maybe it's a little bit more relevant whether the guy who just declared for president was engaged in corruption in 2016 than it was five minutes ago.
00:31:15.000Alan Dershowitz deconstructed that one yesterday on the floor.
00:31:17.000Let's assume hypothetically that the president was in his second term.
00:31:22.000And he said to himself, you know, Joe Biden's running for president.
00:31:27.000I really should now get concerned about whether his son is corrupt.
00:31:31.000Because he's not only a candidate, and he's not running against me, I'm finished with my term, but he could be the president of the United States.
00:31:39.000And if he's the president of the United States and he has a corrupt son, the fact that he's announced his candidacy is a very good reason for upping the interest in his son.
00:31:50.000If he wasn't running for president, he's a has-been.
00:31:53.000He's the former vice president of the United States.
00:31:57.000But if he's running for president, that's an enormous big deal.
00:32:03.000Okay, so as we move forward, people are asking like, okay, so it's perfectly obvious to everybody in the media that they are right and everybody else is wrong, right?
00:32:10.000You got Don Lemon on TV laughing at all the hick roob Trump supporters and all the rest of this.
00:32:13.000And then they wonder, why is it that so many Americans are just ignoring the media's take on this?
00:32:17.000And the answer is because As always, this is not really about Republican vs. Democrat, this is about Trump vs. the media.
00:32:23.000As always, everything boils down to Trump vs. the media, because the filter you are seeing things through, unless you are sitting there and actually watching the wall-to-wall testimony, in this case, which nobody has done, I haven't even done it, I've been watching it pretty steadily, but even I have not done it, then the filter that you are hearing is the filter of the media, and most people just don't trust the media on either side.
00:32:41.000We're gonna get to that in just one second.
00:32:44.000If you know anything about this show, you know that we are dramatically pro-life.
00:32:47.000You may also remember that last year, I did my podcast live from the March for Life in Washington, D.C.
00:32:51.000I spoke to tens of thousands of people about the pro-life cause.
00:32:53.000What you may not know is that we then received blowback from all of the jackasses over on the wild left wing who are interested in cancel culture.
00:33:00.000They went after some of our advertises.
00:33:06.000If you subscribe right now at Daily Wire, we will give a portion of your subscription when you use promo code LIVEACTION to my friends over at LIVEACTION.
00:33:15.000And they spend their days trying to push the messages of life and the messages of protection of the unborn to the American public and the public abroad.
00:34:10.000The media had lost all credibility before Trump came on the scene.
00:34:14.000You don't remember back in 20, it would have been 2012, when Newt Gingrich was running for president, and Newt Gingrich bashed the moderator, I believe it was John Harwood, in one of the debate exchanges, and he immediately soared to the top of the Republican polls.
00:34:25.000People have hated the mainstream media for decades in the Republican Party.
00:34:29.000They do so with a reason, and the mainstream media prove every day why we shouldn't trust them when it comes to analysis of ongoing issues.
00:34:36.000So you remember that just a couple of days ago, Don Lemon went on air and was laughing hysterically as Wajahat Ali and Rick Wilson made nasty jokes about Trump supporters, suggesting that they were toothless Rube Hicks who didn't know how to read a map.
00:34:50.000Well, then Don Lemon went on TV last night to apologize and simply forgot the part where he was going to apologize.
00:34:57.000And one final note that I have for you, because this is personally important to me to address this, okay?
00:35:06.000Anyone, ask anyone who knows me, they'll tell you.
00:35:46.000The fact that Don Lemon clings to this ridiculous notion that he is some sort of objective journalist, it's absolute silliness.
00:35:52.000It's funny, I remember, I was covering the RNC back in 2012, and one of the sort of big-name reporters from the 1980s was walking around.
00:36:03.000I think it was Sam Donaldson, Sam Donaldson.
00:36:05.000I remember because of the eyebrows and Sam Donaldson was walking around at the at the RNC in Tampa in beautiful Tampa and we and I came across him and I started asking him at the time he was hosting a political show for I believe it was ABC News and I asked him so you're overtly political now and he said yes And I said, and you're overtly a Democrat now.
00:36:41.000I mean, because like, I just say that I'm a conservative and I don't lie about it.
00:36:44.000Like, I just, I will tell you exactly that.
00:36:45.000I don't pretend for 30 years that I'm an objective voice of truth and then go on the air and spout exactly the same kind of crap I do when I'm an opinion host.
00:36:53.000This is the problem for places like CNN and also the self-centeredness of the media.
00:36:57.000The self-centeredness is truly astonishing.
00:36:59.000There's a great and by great I mean ridiculous piece in the New York Times today by a guy named Charlie Warzel.
00:37:05.000He's an opinion writer at large for the New York Times and it's called, What Will You Do When The Culture War Comes For You?
00:37:12.000Newsrooms still aren't ready for the trolls, and this is all about how sad it is to be a reporter.
00:37:18.000On Sunday, it came for Washington Post reporter Felicia Sonmez.
00:37:21.000Nine people were killed in a helicopter crash in Calabasas, California that morning, including the basketball legend Kobe Bryant and his 13-year-old daughter Gianna.
00:37:27.000The news rocketed around social media, where mourners shared their heartbreak at the news.
00:37:31.000As is common with major breaking news, some reports were inaccurate or false, layering anxiety on top of grief.
00:37:37.000Sonmez tweeted the link to a 2016 article from the Daily Beast about a young woman's accusation that Mr. Bryant had raped her in Colorado.
00:37:43.000Criminal charges against him were dropped in 2004, and a civil suit was settled out of court.
00:37:47.000The tweet highlighted the fact that Mr. Bryant's legacy is fraught and complicated, and attracted the attention of fans as well as trolls, who bombarded her inbox with abuse and posted her home address online.
00:37:56.000All of which is completely unjustified.
00:37:58.000Misanma has then posted a selection of the threats she received, without obscuring the names of people who had sent her hate mail.
00:38:03.000She slept in a hotel on Sunday night, fearing for her safety at home.
00:38:06.000We don't know all the details, but it seems that the post's managing and executive editors were not pleased.
00:38:09.000They chastised her over the email, they placed her on administrative leave, while the organization reviewed whether she had violated the company's social media guidelines.
00:38:17.000Their reasoning on Monday was the tweets displayed poor judgment that undermined the work of her colleagues.
00:38:22.000The post then reversed her suspension on Tuesday, roughly 36 hours after the initial tweets, stating that senior managers had concluded that Ms.
00:38:28.000Sonmez's tweets didn't violate company policy.
00:38:30.000This, of course, was obvious to almost everyone but the post's higher-ups.
00:38:33.000It was impossible to imagine how posting a link to a story by a different publication on Twitter could undermine the work of colleagues, just as it was impossible to imagine which colleagues would have felt undermined.
00:38:43.000Did the executive editor, Marty Baron, inquire about Ms.
00:38:45.000Sonmez's safety when he emailed her to criticize her tweets?
00:38:48.000What, beyond a reflux for online civility, led The Post to determine the reporter was hurting this institution by discussing a part of Mr. Bryant's legacy that appeared in The Post's own newspapers?
00:39:04.000The fact that people didn't like what this person tweeted does not mean that she should have been removed from her job at the Washington Post for tweeting in, I would say, at least ill-timed fashion, an article about Kobe Bryant's rape case from 2004.
00:39:17.000But the lack, the utter lack of understanding that what the media do every day is cancel culture is astonishing.
00:39:25.000So it's only bad when it hits a reporter.
00:39:29.000The New York Times has come for the Covington Catholic kids.
00:39:32.000The New York Times has come for shows like mine.
00:39:34.000The folks over at Media Matters who are in cahoots with the mainstream media, they have like their own little kind of retweet circle where they try to gin up outrage at particular outrages of the day and gin up outrage at advertisers.
00:39:59.000But if you guys object to any of our journalists saying X, Y, or Z, and then you email the editors at our newspaper, then that's cancel culture, and it's very, very bad.
00:40:08.000The utter blind spot that the media have to their own incompetence and to what they do every day is truly amazing and truly horrifying.
00:40:15.000And it's one of the reasons why the American people do not believe that the media stand for them.
00:40:19.000They don't believe that the media stand for the truth.
00:40:20.000They believe that the media stand for the media and that the media are in it for the glory, that the media are in it for the clicks, and that the media are in it for the money.
00:40:27.000And the media do not have a consistent standard when it comes to even things like cancel culture.
00:41:11.000The back and forth between journalists and their subjects has been a thing for quite a long time, and if you can't take the heat, get out of the kitchen.
00:41:17.000And yet the New York Times prints another piece from Mary Louise Kelly, the co-host of NPR's All Things Considered, because Mike Pompeo was a meanie to her.
00:41:30.000Not every day, but on The Best Ones, we get to put questions to powerful people and hold them to account.
00:41:34.000This is both a privilege and a responsibility.
00:41:36.000I would love just one question from NPR to Bernie Sanders about whether he believes private property is a right.
00:41:40.000The reason we don't trust you guys is when you say you put questions to powerful people and hold them to account, you only mean one side of the aisle and only when it benefits you politically.
00:41:49.000So no, you don't get any sort of special exemption in the rough and tumble of American politics.
00:41:54.000By the way, Mike Pompeo put out his own comment with regard to his tête-à -tête with Mary Louise Kelly, because it turns out that she approached Pompeo, and Pompeo got mad at her, and Pompeo suggested that she didn't know where Ukraine was on a map, The irrelevant portion of the interview was Kelly said, how do you stop Iran from getting a nuclear weapon?
00:43:00.000They took money from plowshares and were part of the Ben Rhodes echo chamber, and they ultimately had to go on air and say, yup, it's true, we took money from plowshares and didn't disclose it after enormous pressure from Congressman Pompeo.
00:43:23.000Whatever the kind of details of this silly dust-up, the fact that members of the media are writing in other media outlets about how victimized they are as members of the media because it's so rough for them, it's the reason why the credibility of the media has been in the toilet for years at this point, and Trump has been able to take advantage of that.
00:43:40.000So you guys, if you'd like to restore your credibility, you could do something very simple.
00:43:43.000You could stop being awful at your jobs.
00:43:45.000Dude, stop being completely, thoroughgoingly awful at your jobs.
00:43:49.000And if you're gonna be on the left, just announce you're on the left.
00:43:55.000I don't criticize them for being on the left.
00:43:57.000There are, like, I'll criticize what they say, I'll make fun of Chris Matthews, I'll do whatever they say, but I never go on and I'm like, I can't believe the bias in MSNBC.
00:44:28.000So, because there is a new Bad Boys movie that is coming out, there's a new Bad Boys movie coming out and I haven't seen it yet.
00:44:33.000I've never even seen the original Bad Boys.
00:44:35.000But I will say that Michael Bay, because Michael Bay is Michael Bay, and he was the first person to be Michael Bay, and so many people ripped off Michael Bay, He has now become sort of an unappreciated commodity.
00:44:45.000The fact is, he's made some of his best films in the recent past.
00:44:47.000Like, 13 Hours is actually a very good film, and the critics savaged it because they don't like that Michael Bay is probably a Republican.
00:44:55.000He's probably at least a little bit right-wing, so they don't like that.
00:44:58.000Okay, so Michael Bay, his first movie was Bad Boys, which of course has become this major franchise now with Will Smith and Martin Lawrence.
00:45:04.000So I went back and watched it with my wife, and it is delightfully stupid.
00:45:33.000day it was the perfect crime but for miami detectives marcus burnett and mike lowry buenos dias mi amor so it it's a very very silly movie obviously and And yet, that is the glory of it.
00:46:02.000If you want to watch a better Michael Bay movie, The Rock is actually an actively good Michael Bay movie.
00:46:07.000It's got all the Michael Bay silliness, but perfected to the heights of Michael Bay.
00:46:11.000Michael Bay is, like, I kind of feel bad because Michael Bay's new stuff is actually better than his old stuff, but because he's Michael Bay, he's been sort of discounted.
00:46:17.000Anyway, if you want to go back and watch, like, my wife and I, we've been on this jag lately because, honestly, my kids are wiping me out.
00:46:23.000And you gotta watch something dumb at night to kind of, like, bring you back a little bit.
00:46:27.000So check out Bad Boys if you're looking for something dumb to watch at night.
00:46:29.000It is definitely rated R. So if you're not up for rated R movies, then it's not for you.
00:46:32.000Okay, time for a quick thing that I hate.
00:46:35.000Okay, so a couple of quick things that I hate.
00:46:42.000So number one, this is an absurd story.
00:46:45.000So according to Jessica Contrera over at the Washington Post, on Friday, President Trump is expected to attend a White House summit organized by his daughter Ivanka on human trafficking, an issue he frequently invokes as a top priority.
00:46:55.000But some of the country's most prominent anti-trafficking organizations and advocates won't be there.
00:47:01.000That group includes Polaris, the non-profit organization that runs the National Human Trafficking Hotline, and the leader of the Freedom Network USA, the country's largest anti-trafficking coalition.
00:47:10.000Their decision comes after months of anguish over what they describe as an act of public deception.
00:47:14.000They say that although the president frequently invokes human trafficking, his administration is actively endangering a significant portion of trafficking victims, immigrants.
00:47:22.000So in other words, they don't like Trump's policies on illegal immigration, so they're not going to show up to fight human trafficking from the White House.
00:47:30.000It is incredibly dumb because these two things actively do not have all that much to do with each other.
00:47:35.000In fact, if they do have something to do with each other, then the thing that should be happening is you should explain how the policy against illegal immigration does not actually help stop the coyotes who are engaged in human trafficking across the border.
00:47:47.000But because everybody has connected the two policies in their mind, they're boycotting the invitations.
00:47:53.000Three of the groups told the Washington Post they fear backlash over their decision, so they cited conflicts with other events.
00:47:58.000They fear backlash from their lefty base.
00:48:00.000And even though Ivanka Trump is trying to work hard on human trafficking, they are not going to stand up to their lefty base.
00:48:05.000And on the other hand, they fear backlash from the right, and so they're citing conflict.
00:48:09.000Trump repeatedly brings up human trafficking when discussing immigration policy.
00:48:12.000In 2018, he became the first sitting president to attend a meeting of the Federal Trafficking Task Force since its creation in 2000.
00:48:18.000Ivanka Trump has advocated anti-trafficking legislation, including a law intended to strengthen prosecutors' ability to go after websites that host advertisements for commercial sex.
00:48:27.000She wrote about these efforts and others in a 2018 op-ed in the Washington Post.
00:48:33.000But now, people are boycotting this because they don't like Trump's immigration position.
00:48:38.000Which, again, is just pretty wild stuff.
00:48:59.000So I figure I will just debunk this here online.
00:49:01.000Majid Nawaz, who is a Muslim commentator In Britain actually debunked this yesterday, but I figured that I will walk you through this since you've probably seen this online.
00:49:10.000So if you can't see the map, you should subscribe so you can see things like this.
00:49:13.000If you can't see the map, basically it shows historic Palestine, and then it shows the entire thing in Greed, the entire state of Israel in Greed.
00:49:19.000Then it shows 1947 UN partition plan and the Arab areas in Green.
00:49:23.000Then it shows the 1967 Borders, the pre-1967 borders, right?
00:49:28.000Because after 1967, then Israel had control of the entire land of Israel as currently constituted.
00:49:34.000And they show that, and then they show these are the border lines endorsed by the PLO in 1988 as a historic compromise for peace, right?
00:49:40.000And then it shows basically the pre-1967 borders.
00:49:43.000And then it shows Trump's projected plan and how much control it would actually give to the Palestinians in terms of the areas that they would control.
00:51:21.000That would be a your fault problem if you are a member of an Arab government and then you decided to launch a war without accepting a deal.
00:51:26.000You don't get to whine about the deal that was on the table that you rejected.
00:51:32.000The entire refugee problem with regard to the Palestinians would not exist if the Arabs had simply accepted this deal that was on the table that the Israelis did accept.
00:51:39.000By the way, you can see those borders are absolute nonsense.
00:51:41.000I mean, those borders are insane for the integrity of any Jewish state.
00:52:30.000Jordan, Egypt, Syria, and Saudi Arabia launched another war of extermination against the Jews, and then they proceeded to lose that territory.
00:52:37.000So they had that territory, and then they lost that territory.
00:52:39.000So you're whining about the fact that you lost territory that you had, and then you launched an attack.
00:52:45.000Beyond that, it is just a lie that these border lines were endorsed by the PLO in 1988.
00:52:49.000If this had been endorsed by the PLO, we'd already have a peace deal.
00:52:55.000They were endorsed as the starting point for negotiations, but they did not acknowledge that there were already a lot of Jews living in that area.
00:53:02.000You can see that the map includes Jerusalem.
00:53:04.000You can see the map includes Jerusalem in the green area.
00:53:15.000And a city that had been split prior to 1967, and in which Jews were not allowed to any of the holy sites, Hey, that was never going to happen.
00:53:22.000Beyond that, the notion that this was the border endorsed by the Palestinians is complete and abject crap.
00:53:27.000The reason it's complete and abject crap is because one of their other demands is the so-called right of return, which would have swamped the state of Israel with an additional 5 million Palestinians as of now.
00:53:36.000Which means they never accepted the territorial deal.
00:54:03.000Okay, so they show the Trump projected plan.
00:54:05.000And here it shows 15% of historic Palestine and they show the green areas as the parts that would be the Palestinian state.
00:54:14.000Okay, well now they've actually changed the metric that they are using for explaining which territory is held by the Palestinians.
00:54:21.000Because before, if you go back to the 67 map, Right, if you go back to the 67 map, they are showing territory that is not population-based, right?
00:54:32.000You'll notice that the next map, the Trump plan, is population-based, meaning these are the areas that are actively controlled by the Palestinians.
00:54:38.000They weren't actively controlled by the Palestinians post-67, even in 1988, right?
00:54:43.000None of those areas included any of the highways and byways and the Jewish settlements that were gonna be carved out.
00:54:48.000So now they're using a completely different metric.
00:54:49.000They're using the land that would actually be controlled by the Palestinians in a peace deal.
00:54:53.000The pre-67 borders, that was never endorsed by anybody, and it was never going to be the final status negotiations.
00:55:35.000By the way, you could draw this exact opposite map, but actually be realistic about the amount of land that was promised to the Jews originally, right?
00:55:41.000It could show the amount of land promised to the Jews in 1917, including all of Jordan, and you can watch it get sliced off, right?
00:55:46.000Because it was sliced off in the British White Papers from the 1930s.
00:55:49.000And then you can watch the 1947 borders appear.
00:55:52.000And the difference is, in those maps, Israel accepted every single one of those deals in order to have an independent Jewish state.
00:55:58.000The bottom line of this conflict, there has never been a deal, nor will there ever be a deal, so long as the Palestinian leadership and the Palestinian people do not change their opinion about the existence of the state of Israel.
00:56:08.000Israel has accepted every serious peace deal put before it, since before the inception of the state, the Arabs have never accepted a single one.
00:56:17.000And so anybody who suggests that the people who continue to walk away from deals are the innocents in all of this, and the people who continue to propose deals, and then unilaterally withdraw from territory, That's because you are determined to be ignorant or you just have a problem with Jews.
00:56:33.000Alrighty, we'll be back here a little bit later today with two additional hours of content or we'll be back here tomorrow for your listening and viewing pleasure.
00:56:40.000You're listening to The Ben Shapiro Show.
00:56:45.000The Ben Shapiro Show is produced by Colton Haas.