The Ben Shapiro Show - Decision Day Approaches | Ep. 943

00:00:00.000 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.

00:00:09.000 I'm Ben Shapiro.

00:00:10.000 This is the Ben Shapiro Show.

00:00:11.000 This show is sponsored by ExpressVPN's Stop putting your online data at risk.

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00:00:25.000 Okay, so tomorrow is decision day.

00:00:27.000 Big Friday vote expected on whether Republicans will allow further witnesses.

00:00:33.000 It is up in the air as to how this goes.

00:00:35.000 I mean, it's absolutely unclear.

00:00:36.000 According 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.

00:00:43.000 If Democrats find four Republicans to vote for witnesses, the trial could stretch until March.

00:00:47.000 If they fail, Trump would likely be acquitted.

00:00:49.000 Now, I think that's a bit of an exaggeration.

00:00:51.000 I think that if the Republicans decide to allow witnesses, then basically they allow like two witnesses.

00:00:55.000 I think it's probably John Bolton, maybe Mick Mulvaney, and that's it.

00:00:58.000 I think they say, everybody who already testified, we already have their testimony, we don't need to hear from Gordon Sumlund again.

00:01:03.000 It might be Hunter Biden, and John Bolton, and Mick Mulvaney, and that's it.

00:01:08.000 So no, I don't think this is going to stretch for another month, just to hash out all of the witness activity.

00:01:15.000 Trump confidant Mark Meadows told the New York Post he doesn't believe there will be clarity on the outcome until Friday of this week.

00:01:21.000 Right now, there are basically three senators who are fairly certain to vote in favor of more witnesses.

00:01:27.000 That would be Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, that would be Mitt Romney of Utah, and that would be Susan Collins of Maine. 0.96

00:01:33.000 Some 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.

00:01:42.000 Murkowski 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.

00:01:47.000 She 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.

00:01:54.000 Senator Roger Wicker of Mississippi told the New York Post that the feeling among Republicans was, quote unquote, pretty good.

00:01:58.000 He said, obviously, we need to make a decision at this point whether to drag the foregone conclusion out for another four to six weeks.

00:02:03.000 We know what the outcome is.

00:02:04.000 It's just a question of how long it's going to last.

00:02:06.000 It's Senator Richard Shelby, Republican of Alabama.

00:02:08.000 Now, here is the here's the problem.

00:02:11.000 I mean, seriously, if you all believe the same thing that I believe, I said this yesterday on the show.

00:02:15.000 If 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.

00:02:33.000 If that's not the case, then why not get all of this out in the open now?

00:02:36.000 Because otherwise, it's just going to leak, right?

00:02:38.000 We're just going to have more leaks, and then it's not just going to implicate Trump.

00:02:40.000 Like, look, attacks on Trump.

00:02:42.000 Trump is Teflon. 0.99

00:02:43.000 More than Teflon, Trump is kind of a mud monster, in the sense that if you throw more mud at him, he's already made of mud. 0.99

00:02:48.000 So who cares? 0.96

00:02:49.000 Look, there's more mud on him.

00:02:49.000 He's made of mud.

00:02:50.000 Whatever.

00:02:51.000 That's how everybody has treated Trump since the beginning, and rightly so, because nothing is new in the world of Trumpdom.

00:02:56.000 Everything is baked into that cake.

00:02:58.000 There is sugar, there is caramel, and there's dog poop.

00:03:00.000 Like, everything is in that cake.

00:03:02.000 So that's not going to hurt Trump, but it could hurt incumbent senators in purple states.

00:03:02.000 Everything.

00:03:06.000 This is what I was talking about yesterday.

00:03:08.000 If you're worried about anything beyond Trump, and you should be, because the Republicans are vulnerable in the Senate.

00:03:12.000 They have a very slim majority in the Senate.

00:03:15.000 If Trump is re-elected and he doesn't have the Senate and he doesn't have the House, nothing is getting done.

00:03:19.000 If Trump is not re-elected and the Republicans lose the Senate and the Republicans don't retake the House, then you have a world of hurt.

00:03:25.000 You got President Bernie Sanders with a congressional majority.

00:03:28.000 I mean, God bless him.

00:03:30.000 That would just be the worst of all available worlds.

00:03:33.000 That means that the prudent move here is to hedge your bets to the extent that you can.

00:03:37.000 And that would presumably mean allowing a couple of witnesses to be called, including Hunter Biden, who would in fact be damaging to Joe Biden.

00:03:43.000 And then you move on because Trump is not getting impeached, or removed at least, over any of this.

00:03:48.000 Senator 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. 0.97

00:03:56.000 He said, whoever went out of that meeting and whoever informed the press was either misled, lying, or an imbecile. 0.95

00:04:00.000 I didn't say that. 0.83

00:04:01.000 I have no problem whatsoever with voting no on witnesses.

00:04:01.000 I've been very firm on this.

00:04:05.000 Four Republicans, including Murkowski, have expressed interest in possibly hearing from witnesses.

00:04:09.000 Retiring 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.

00:04:16.000 Mitt Romney, of course, has been the clearest in saying that he is interested in hearing from some of the witnesses.

00:04:23.000 Now, 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.

00:04:30.000 On the one hand, they're saying that we don't need to hear from witnesses.

00:04:33.000 On the other hand, they're saying that the Democrats don't have enough information because they didn't hear from witnesses.

00:04:39.000 That's kind of a weird take, right?

00:04:41.000 What you want to say is the Democrats came with all they could.

00:04:44.000 They didn't call witnesses because they knew there was not going to be anything there.

00:04:47.000 And why would we call more witnesses when the Democrats say that they present a complete case?

00:04:52.000 Instead, the Republicans are making a slightly different case, which is less well articulated.

00:04:52.000 Right.

00:04:56.000 And that case is that the Democrats didn't do their job.

00:04:59.000 If they had done their job and heard from witnesses, then we wouldn't have to do this whole shebang at all.

00:05:03.000 But the implication is that the Democrats' failure was not that they did a complete report and just didn't end up with the goods.

00:05:09.000 Their 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?

00:05:14.000 I mean, you could have more witnesses.

00:05:15.000 Patrick 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.

00:05:32.000 The Senators submitted written questions to the Chief Justice.

00:05:35.000 By the way, Can I just say, we should always do this?

00:05:37.000 Like, every congressional hearing should be this.

00:05:38.000 There should be just one person who's delegated to ask the questions, because otherwise you end up with this insane grandstanding.

00:05:44.000 I 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.

00:05:51.000 I 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.

00:05:58.000 Well, they didn't do that yesterday, and at least the process was a little more fun.

00:06:01.000 Anyway, Patrick Philbin made the case yesterday that no one goes to trial without hearing from the witnesses first.

00:06:05.000 Why didn't the Democrats call the witnesses if it was so all-fire important?

00:06:09.000 Again, the argument is not fantastic.

00:06:11.000 There's a better way to articulate it, but that's the argument anyway.

00:06:15.000 House managers try to present it as if it's just a simple question.

00:06:20.000 How can you have a trial without witnesses?

00:06:23.000 But in real litigation, no one goes to trial without doing discovery.

00:06:28.000 No one goes to trial without having heard from the witnesses first.

00:06:32.000 You 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.

00:06:42.000 for trying to run things in such an upside down way would be very grave for this body as an institution.

00:06:53.000 OK, the argument that it's bad for the Senate to call witnesses is not a very good argument.

00:06:57.000 The argument he should be making is Democrats say that they had a complete case and their case just is insufficient.

00:07:02.000 This is their complete case.

00:07:02.000 So we agree with them.

00:07:03.000 Their complete case is insufficient.

00:07:05.000 That is the best possible case for not having witnesses.

00:07:07.000 We're going to get to more on the witnesses in just one second.

00:07:10.000 Then we'll get to an attack on Alan Dershowitz that is utterly, utterly unearned.

00:07:15.000 I mean, truly unearned.

00:07:17.000 People deliberately taking Alan Dershowitz out of context to pretend they don't understand what he's talking about.

00:07:21.000 We'll get to all of that in just one second.

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00:08:41.000 OK, so Rudy Giuliani, meanwhile, is out there slamming John Bolton.

00:08:45.000 And this, again, is bad strategy.

00:08:47.000 The best strategy with regards to we don't want to hear from John Bolton is he has nothing new to say.

00:08:51.000 And even if what he says is true, it doesn't make any difference, right?

00:08:53.000 That's the best strategy for not calling the witness. 0.98

00:08:55.000 If 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? 0.99

00:09:04.000 Right? 0.99

00:09:04.000 This is bad legal tactics. 0.99

00:09:06.000 But Rudy Giuliani, he used to be a good prosecutor.

00:09:09.000 It's been a while since he was a prosecutor.

00:09:11.000 So here is Rudy Giuliani going after John Bolton with a hatchet.

00:09:15.000 It's the only conclusion I can come to, and it's a harsh one, and I feel very bad about it. 0.97

00:09:19.000 He's a backstabber.

00:09:20.000 He never said to me, I've got a problem with what you are doing in Ukraine. 0.66

00:09:25.000 Never once.

00:09:26.000 Never winked.

00:09:27.000 Never sent me a little note.

00:09:29.000 That's classic backstabber.

00:09:31.000 So I feel I got a slump character here.

00:09:34.000 I find his testimony about the president pretty close to incredible.

00:09:38.000 Close to incredible.

00:09:39.000 Okay, so now he's calling him a liar and a backstabber, but don't call him as a witness, guys.

00:09:42.000 Don't call him as a witness.

00:09:43.000 That's a very hard case to make.

00:09:45.000 Now, people on the right are trotting out.

00:09:47.000 I'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.

00:09:52.000 Bad but not impeachable has been my standard since the very beginning.

00:09:55.000 I don't think that he did something great here, but I also don't think he did anything impeachable here.

00:09:59.000 Okay, 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.

00:10:07.000 And they're saying, well, if John Bolton hadn't had a problem with this, why didn't he say so at the time?

00:10:12.000 I mean, he did an interview where he talked about Trump's calls with Zelensky.

00:10:16.000 And 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.

00:10:22.000 These things are not mutually exclusive.

00:10:24.000 Are 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?

00:10:32.000 I mean, that's silliness.

00:10:33.000 Anyway, here's that clip of Bolton that people are trotting out as the proof positive that Bolton is now lying.

00:10:38.000 I will be meeting President Zelensky.

00:10:40.000 He and President Trump have already spoken twice.

00:10:42.000 The President called to congratulate President Zelensky on his election and then on his success in the parliamentary election.

00:10:50.000 They were very warm and cordial calls.

00:10:52.000 We're hoping that they'll be able to meet in Warsaw and have a few minutes together.

00:10:57.000 Okay, 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?

00:11:05.000 Because this is what people in the Trump administration do.

00:11:07.000 They go on TV specifically in order to get President Trump to pay attention to them.

00:11:11.000 This is a thing that happens on a regular basis in this White House.

00:11:11.000 This is not a joke.

00:11:14.000 If you want the President to take you seriously, you go on TV, he watches you on TV, and he takes you more seriously.

00:11:19.000 This is well-known in all of the halls of power in Washington, D.C.

00:11:23.000 It's not me spilling the beans.

00:11:24.000 It's just a reality.

00:11:25.000 Okay, so people trotting that out.

00:11:27.000 And then Mark Meadows, who again, I like.

00:11:29.000 Congressman Meadows from North Carolina.

00:11:31.000 He 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.

00:11:37.000 I mean, I think that's true, but I don't think that Americans who are in red states particularly care about this.

00:11:42.000 I 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.

00:11:51.000 Here's Mark Meadows.

00:11:53.000 This is the most consequential vote that any senator will take, perhaps other than sending troops into harm's way.

00:12:01.000 And 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?

00:12:08.000 And that's why it'll have repercussions.

00:12:10.000 It'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.

00:12:17.000 They may have tuned out on the hearings.

00:12:19.000 They may not be viewing, but they are tuning in to how their senator is going to vote on this particular issue.

00:12:26.000 I mean, that's true.

00:12:27.000 And again, that's OK for some of the senators in real red states.

00:12:30.000 It's more of a problem for some of the senators who are not in those states.

00:12:32.000 OK, so some of the people who have come under serious fire from the right side of the aisle.

00:12:37.000 Or people like Mitt Romney.

00:12:38.000 So 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.

00:12:45.000 And 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.

00:12:52.000 So the questions that Romney asked were these.

00:12:55.000 One, this is to the White House counsel.

00:12:56.000 Given 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?

00:13:05.000 Okay, this is the basic question of the case, right?

00:13:08.000 Was Giuliani there to dig up dirt about Hunter and Joe Biden for prospects of 2020?

00:13:12.000 Or was he there to dig up stuff about 2016?

00:13:13.000 It is perfectly obvious he was there to dig up stuff about 2016.

00:13:17.000 He was in Ukraine in 2018 before Joe Biden had even announced that he was going to be running for the presidency.

00:13:21.000 That didn't happen until 2019.

00:13:23.000 So it is pretty obvious that that was not about Hunter and Joe Biden, Giuliani's original deployment to Ukraine.

00:13:31.000 The 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?

00:13:46.000 Okay, now this is the big question, right?

00:13:49.000 And it's the question I've been asking since the very start.

00:13:52.000 I've offered two different theories.

00:13:54.000 One was the Trump was planning to go after Joe Biden theory, and one is the miasma of corruption theory.

00:13:59.000 The miasma of corruption theory is that Trump was concerned about some legitimate things, and also, if it happened to knock Joe Biden, well, whatever.

00:14:06.000 That was the miasma of corruption thing.

00:14:08.000 He was concerned about 2016.

00:14:09.000 He was concerned about everything from CrowdStrike to Ukrainian corruption to American funding of Ukraine.

00:14:16.000 He was concerned about everything from Burisma to the record of Ukraine and fighting corruption overall.

00:14:22.000 Because he mentions all of these things, right?

00:14:24.000 Every single one of those things gets mentioned in that phone call with Zelensky, the transcript of which is now public, right?

00:14:29.000 Or at least the memo of which is now public.

00:14:32.000 So, the question being asked is, let's say that a president has dual purposes.

00:14:37.000 Good for Romney, because this has been the question I've been asking all along, every day.

00:14:41.000 Literally every day for months.

00:14:43.000 Let's say the president has dual purposes.

00:14:44.000 One 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.

00:14:52.000 And 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.

00:15:00.000 But, 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.

00:15:08.000 Right, let's say that there's a dual purpose to what's going on.

00:15:10.000 Is that enough to impeach?

00:15:11.000 And the answer, of course, is no, that's not enough to impeach.

00:15:13.000 Because the problem is, that then creates the principle that literally anything a president does is impeachable.

00:15:18.000 Because there is not a president who has ever lived, who is not looking with one eye toward re-election in their first term.

00:15:24.000 Not one.

00:15:24.000 Everything Barack Obama did in his first term.

00:15:27.000 was, at best, directed toward two purposes.

00:15:30.000 One, what he thought was in the national interest, and two, at re-election.

00:15:34.000 Because you're a politician, that's what politicians do.

00:15:36.000 Are we just gonna pretend that politicians are truly altruistic public servants who never have an eye on re-election at all?

00:15:41.000 Of course, everything they do is designated for a couple of purposes.

00:15:44.000 It's only corruption when you cut against the national interest deliberately for your own private purposes, right?

00:15:50.000 Then, you have something that's impeachable, something that's removable, right?

00:15:53.000 When 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.

00:16:02.000 And 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.

00:16:09.000 Then that obviously is not impeachable.

00:16:12.000 That's the question that Mitt Romney is asking.

00:16:13.000 And this is where the left is going after Alan Dershowitz today.

00:16:17.000 The left is going after Dershowitz.

00:16:18.000 Dershowitz is, of course, acting as attorney for Trump in this case.

00:16:22.000 We'll get to the attacks on Dershowitz in just a moment.

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00:17:45.000 Okay, 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.

00:17:58.000 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?

00:18:04.000 Okay, so here's Alan Dershowitz suggesting that activity that helps the president and helps the country is fine.

00:18:09.000 Now the media are reading this as though Dershowitz is saying that any action you take in your own re-elected interest Is fine. 0.99

00:18:17.000 That, of course, is not what Dershowitz is saying, because that would be an idiotic case. 0.99

00:18:19.000 You'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. 0.99

00:18:30.000 It's at least not impeachable. 0.98

00:18:31.000 Of course, nobody believes that.

00:18:32.000 It 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.

00:18:38.000 Dershowitz isn't making that case.

00:18:40.000 Dershowitz 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.

00:18:45.000 Or at least a huge number of people in the media are corrupt.

00:18:48.000 We'll get to the media a little bit later on in the program because they truly are awful.

00:18:51.000 But 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.

00:19:07.000 So here is Dershowitz and what he actually had to say yesterday.

00:19:10.000 Every public official that I know believes that his election is in the public interest.

00:19:16.000 And mostly you're right.

00:19:18.000 Your election is in the public interest.

00:19:21.000 And 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.

00:19:37.000 Okay, 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.

00:19:48.000 That'd be an insane argument. 0.57

00:19:50.000 It'd be patently crazy.

00:19:51.000 Okay, 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.

00:20:06.000 Because everybody has their eye toward re-election.

00:20:09.000 That, like, clearly and obviously.

00:20:09.000 Right?

00:20:13.000 Okay, now, the Democrats immediately jump on this and they're saying, well, now Trump is making a full-on dictatorial argument.

00:20:18.000 And, by the way, it would be true, right?

00:20:19.000 If 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.

00:20:26.000 But that's not what Dershowitz is actually saying.

00:20:28.000 Okay, so Adam Schiff goes on national TV and says, this gives us carte blanche to cheat, right?

00:20:32.000 This is giving Trump carte blanche to cheat because he could then just go do whatever he wants in pursuit of his own re-election.

00:20:38.000 All quid pro quos are fine.

00:20:39.000 It's carte blanche.

00:20:41.000 Is that really what we're prepared to say with respect to this president's conduct or the next?

00:20:47.000 Because if we are, then the next president of the United States can ask for an investigation of you.

00:20:55.000 They can ask for help in their next election from any foreign power.

00:21:02.000 Okay, now Schiff steps right in it here.

00:21:10.000 The reason he steps right in it, he says the next president can do anything.

00:21:14.000 The next president could like, you know, for example, just you know, use a foreign source to initiate an investigation against a political opponent.

00:21:20.000 And 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. 0.90

00:21:26.000 So 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? 0.84

00:21:37.000 Like, were you not aware of that?

00:21:39.000 The 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.

00:21:55.000 He said it would be targeting a rival.

00:21:57.000 Well, that's what that did.

00:21:58.000 He said it would be calling for foreign assistance in that.

00:22:01.000 This was in 2016 against a rival campaign.

00:22:07.000 So, we don't have to do hypotheticals.

00:22:11.000 That's precisely the situation.

00:22:12.000 He had left one nuts over this, but of course what Sekulow is saying is essentially true.

00:22:16.000 And when people say, well, it wasn't an investigation into Trump personally.

00:22:19.000 Well, it kind of was.

00:22:21.000 Okay, let's be real about this.

00:22:22.000 It 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.

00:22:34.000 Okay, so anyway, the Democrats decide that they are going to move with this basic notion that Alan Dershowitz is a dictator.

00:22:41.000 Civil 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.

00:22:48.000 Gloria Borger on CNN says, well, under this standard, couldn't you arrest your political opponents?

00:22:52.000 I mean, the answer is yes, but that's not Dershowitz's standard.

00:22:56.000 Maybe he was trying to appeal to narcissism of politicians.

00:22:59.000 I have absolutely no idea what he was trying to do.

00:23:03.000 But 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.

00:23:15.000 So my question would be, can you arrest an opponent of yours?

00:23:20.000 I mean, you know, the story you can ask questions like that ad infinitum. 0.98

00:23:26.000 It is a ridiculous argument. 0.91

00:23:28.000 I'm not a lawyer. 0.97

00:23:29.000 So, OK, stipulate that.

00:23:31.000 Stipulate that?

00:23:32.000 Well, 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. 0.97

00:23:39.000 He's not an idiot.

00:23:40.000 Nobody is going to make the actual overt case that the president can do anything he wants on behalf of his own re-election. 0.99

00:23:46.000 That's ridiculous. 0.81

00:23:47.000 But of course, this is what the media run with because they're trying to portray Trump as a dictator. 0.86

00:23:50.000 So trying to suggest that Alan Dershowitz is stumping on behalf of dictatorship is a pretty rich vein to mine.

00:23:55.000 Joe Lockhart on CNN doing the same thing, suggesting this is Hitlerian.

00:23:59.000 It's Mussolini.

00:24:00.000 It's like Hitler. 0.92

00:24:01.000 Go, Joe Lockhart, go!

00:24:03.000 Having worked in about a dozen campaigns, there is always the sense that, boy, if we win, it's better for the country.

00:24:10.000 But that doesn't give you license to commit crimes or to do things that are unethical.

00:24:15.000 So it was absurd.

00:24:17.000 And what I thought when I was watching it was, this is un-American.

00:24:21.000 This is what you hear from Stalin. 0.53

00:24:23.000 This 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.

00:24:36.000 Okay, 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.

00:24:47.000 Okay, 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?

00:24:56.000 The 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.

00:25:05.000 Here's Alan Dershowitz.

00:25:05.000 That's okay, right?

00:25:07.000 The 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.

00:25:18.000 Would anybody here suggest that was impeachable?

00:25:21.000 Or 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.

00:25:34.000 Certainly not impeachable at all.

00:25:37.000 The 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.

00:25:49.000 He's making the argument I'm making.

00:25:51.000 If 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.

00:26:00.000 And that, of course, is true.

00:26:01.000 Now, 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.

00:26:10.000 Now, I've talked at length about this before.

00:26:12.000 Eugene 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.

00:26:26.000 But when the president's lawyer says this, it's a big deal, apparently.

00:26:29.000 Mere information is not something that would violate the campaign finance laws.

00:26:36.000 And 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.

00:26:51.000 So 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.

00:27:07.000 There was a study out today showing that 100% of the media coverage of Team Trump in this has been negative.

00:27:13.000 Not 99%, 100% of the media coverage from the mainstream media, non-Fox News, has been negative.

00:27:21.000 95% has been positive for Democrats, which is not any shock at all, even though the Democrats have been fibbing throughout this process.

00:27:26.000 So Adam Schiff yesterday, he did a couple of things where he just overtly lied.

00:27:29.000 So in one, he characterized Trump's conversation with Zelensky, and he again lied about what Trump said.

00:27:34.000 He did this before when he made up his whole, like, I'm a mafioso conversation with Trump.

00:27:38.000 You remember this?

00:27:39.000 He did a whole spiel in the House where he suggested that Trump had gotten on the line and said, I want you to do me a favor.

00:27:44.000 Go out there and do what I want and I won't break down your house, right?

00:27:48.000 That whole thing?

00:27:49.000 Well, he did the same thing yesterday again because he actually changed the language.

00:27:52.000 If you read the Zelensky call, Trump says, we'd like you to do us a favor, meaning he believes it's in the national interest, right?

00:27:58.000 And then Schiff said, no, no, no, it's do me a favor.

00:28:01.000 OK, well, no, if you change the language from do us to do me a favor, that's actually a distinction with a difference.

00:28:06.000 It makes a difference.

00:28:07.000 OK, 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.

00:28:13.000 I mean, the fact is that his staff coordinated with the whistleblower.

00:28:15.000 We already have testimony to that effect.

00:28:18.000 First of all, I don't know who the whistleblower is.

00:28:20.000 I haven't met them or communicated with them in any way.

00:28:25.000 The committee staff did not write the complaint or coach the whistleblower what to put in the complaint.

00:28:33.000 The committee staff did not see the complaint before it was submitted to the Inspector General.

00:28:38.000 Okay, just gonna point out that his staff overtly coordinated with the whistleblower.

00:28:42.000 Like, we know that.

00:28:43.000 That is not a speculation.

00:28:44.000 We 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.

00:28:54.000 Okay, just going to point out that his staff overtly coordinated with the whistleblower.

00:28:57.000 Like, we know that that is not a speculation.

00:28:59.000 That is a fact, right?

00:29:00.000 We know that because Schiff's staff has actually said as much, right?

00:29:04.000 Schiff has said that his own staff coordinated with the whistleblowers.

00:29:06.000 That, of course, is absolute, inherent nonsense. 0.97

00:29:09.000 I mean, it's just absolute silly towns. 0.87

00:29:11.000 Meanwhile, the Democrats, who are desperate for witnesses, they're desperate for witnesses except for Hunter Biden, of course. 0.84

00:29:16.000 Hakeem Jeffries says, there's no reason we should ever call Hunter Biden.

00:29:18.000 Why should we have Hunter Biden?

00:29:19.000 Hunter Biden's not relevant here, even though he is at the center of the entire thing, right?

00:29:23.000 If Trump had never asked about Hunter Biden, we would not be talking about any of this, would we?

00:29:27.000 Really, 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.

00:29:34.000 So yes, Hunter Biden is relevant, because it matters whether or not Hunter Biden did something corrupt that prompted the question in the first place.

00:29:41.000 Well, 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.

00:29:48.000 And ultimately, they, in the first instance, will make this decision in terms of the witnesses that should be called.

00:29:56.000 Although, as Senator Manchin indicated, I do believe that Chief Justice John Roberts should be the ultimate arbiter and referee in terms of deciding relevance.

00:30:07.000 So now the Democrats are trying to kick it over to Roberts.

00:30:09.000 They can blame Roberts, a Bush appointee, obviously, if it turns out that he allows Hunter Biden to be brought in testimony.

00:30:18.000 Meanwhile, 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.

00:30:31.000 Okay, 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?

00:30:39.000 I mean, so, like, he was wandering around there, gathering information on Burisma, apparently, in 2018.

00:30:44.000 So, first of all, that's pretty obvious.

00:30:45.000 Second 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.

00:30:56.000 It 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.

00:31:03.000 It does elevate.

00:31:04.000 Nobody was asking about Donald Trump's associations with Russia until he declared he was running for the presidency.

00:31:10.000 So is it then illegitimate for the DOJ to look into him because he had declared that he was running for the presidency?

00:31:14.000 It's a very weird take.

00:31:15.000 Alan Dershowitz deconstructed that one yesterday on the floor.

00:31:17.000 Let's assume hypothetically that the president was in his second term.

00:31:22.000 And he said to himself, you know, Joe Biden's running for president.

00:31:27.000 I really should now get concerned about whether his son is corrupt.

00:31:31.000 Because 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.

00:31:39.000 And 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.

00:31:50.000 If he wasn't running for president, he's a has-been.

00:31:53.000 He's the former vice president of the United States.

00:31:55.000 Okay, big deal.

00:31:57.000 But if he's running for president, that's an enormous big deal.

00:32:03.000 Okay, 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?

00:32:10.000 You got Don Lemon on TV laughing at all the hick roob Trump supporters and all the rest of this. 0.89

00:32:13.000 And then they wonder, why is it that so many Americans are just ignoring the media's take on this?

00:32:17.000 And the answer is because As always, this is not really about Republican vs. Democrat, this is about Trump vs. the media.

00:32:23.000 As 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.

00:32:41.000 We're gonna get to that in just one second.

00:32:43.000 First, Quick note.

00:32:44.000 If you know anything about this show, you know that we are dramatically pro-life.

00:32:47.000 You may also remember that last year, I did my podcast live from the March for Life in Washington, D.C.

00:32:51.000 I spoke to tens of thousands of people about the pro-life cause.

00:32:53.000 What 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. 0.77

00:33:00.000 They went after some of our advertises.

00:33:01.000 We did lose some revenue.

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00:33:49.000 Okay, so the breakdown on impeachment is puzzling to the media.

00:33:58.000 They don't understand why, after 100% negative media coverage, the American public is still split 50-50.

00:34:03.000 And the answer to that is because nobody trusts the media.

00:34:05.000 I know there's a constant refrain from the right, and I know that the left believes that this is because of Trump.

00:34:09.000 It is not because of Trump.

00:34:10.000 The media had lost all credibility before Trump came on the scene.

00:34:14.000 You 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.

00:34:25.000 People have hated the mainstream media for decades in the Republican Party.

00:34:29.000 They 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.

00:34:36.000 Perfect example.

00:34:36.000 So 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.

00:34:50.000 Well, then Don Lemon went on TV last night to apologize and simply forgot the part where he was going to apologize.

00:34:57.000 And one final note that I have for you, because this is personally important to me to address this, okay?

00:35:06.000 Anyone, ask anyone who knows me, they'll tell you.

00:35:09.000 I don't believe in belittling people.

00:35:12.000 Belittling anyone for who they are, for what they believe, or where they're from.

00:35:19.000 During an interview on Saturday night, one of my guests said something that made me laugh.

00:35:23.000 And while in the moment, I found that joke humorous.

00:35:27.000 And I didn't catch everything that was said.

00:35:30.000 Just to make this perfectly clear, I was laughing at the joke.

00:35:35.000 And not at any group of people.

00:35:37.000 Okay, but the joke was about a group of people, so you're gonna have to explain that one.

00:35:41.000 Don't worry, no apology necessary.

00:35:43.000 By the way, I do find it funny.

00:35:45.000 Don Lemon should just own it, right? 0.95

00:35:46.000 The fact that Don Lemon clings to this ridiculous notion that he is some sort of objective journalist, it's absolute silliness.

00:35:52.000 It'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.

00:36:03.000 I think it was Sam Donaldson, Sam Donaldson.

00:36:05.000 I 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.

00:36:25.000 And he said, yes.

00:36:26.000 And I said, well, were you all, did you always hold these political views?

00:36:29.000 And he said, yes.

00:36:30.000 And I said, so why didn't you just say that for 30 years?

00:36:32.000 And he got very agitated.

00:36:34.000 He got very agitated and he got right up in my face.

00:36:36.000 And he said, are you saying that you're better than I am?

00:36:39.000 And I said, well, yeah, I kind of am.

00:36:41.000 I mean, because like, I just say that I'm a conservative and I don't lie about it.

00:36:44.000 Like, I just, I will tell you exactly that.

00:36:45.000 I 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.

00:36:53.000 This is the problem for places like CNN and also the self-centeredness of the media.

00:36:57.000 The self-centeredness is truly astonishing.

00:36:59.000 There's a great and by great I mean ridiculous piece in the New York Times today by a guy named Charlie Warzel.

00:37:05.000 He'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?

00:37:12.000 Newsrooms still aren't ready for the trolls, and this is all about how sad it is to be a reporter.

00:37:16.000 The culture war will come for us all.

00:37:18.000 On Sunday, it came for Washington Post reporter Felicia Sonmez.

00:37:21.000 Nine 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.

00:37:27.000 The news rocketed around social media, where mourners shared their heartbreak at the news.

00:37:31.000 As is common with major breaking news, some reports were inaccurate or false, layering anxiety on top of grief.

00:37:36.000 Into the mix, Ms. 1.00

00:37:37.000 Sonmez 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.

00:37:43.000 Criminal charges against him were dropped in 2004, and a civil suit was settled out of court.

00:37:47.000 The 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.

00:37:56.000 All of which is completely unjustified.

00:37:58.000 Misanma has then posted a selection of the threats she received, without obscuring the names of people who had sent her hate mail.

00:38:03.000 She slept in a hotel on Sunday night, fearing for her safety at home.

00:38:06.000 We don't know all the details, but it seems that the post's managing and executive editors were not pleased.

00:38:09.000 They 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.

00:38:17.000 Their reasoning on Monday was the tweets displayed poor judgment that undermined the work of her colleagues.

00:38:22.000 The post then reversed her suspension on Tuesday, roughly 36 hours after the initial tweets, stating that senior managers had concluded that Ms.

00:38:28.000 Sonmez's tweets didn't violate company policy.

00:38:30.000 This, of course, was obvious to almost everyone but the post's higher-ups.

00:38:33.000 It 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.

00:38:42.000 There remains a glaring question.

00:38:43.000 Did the executive editor, Marty Baron, inquire about Ms.

00:38:45.000 Sonmez's safety when he emailed her to criticize her tweets?

00:38:48.000 What, 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?

00:38:56.000 Okay, so, here's the thing.

00:38:57.000 This article is right that The Washington Post should not have suspended Ms. 0.84

00:39:00.000 Journalist.

00:39:01.000 They should know. 1.00

00:39:02.000 The cancel culture is stupid. 1.00

00:39:03.000 It is idiotic. 1.00

00:39:04.000 The 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. 0.99

00:39:17.000 But the lack, the utter lack of understanding that what the media do every day is cancel culture is astonishing.

00:39:25.000 So it's only bad when it hits a reporter.

00:39:27.000 But let's just be real about this.

00:39:29.000 The New York Times has come for the Covington Catholic kids.

00:39:32.000 The New York Times has come for shows like mine.

00:39:34.000 The 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.

00:39:47.000 They've been doing this for years.

00:39:49.000 And only when it hits the media do the media suddenly get upset about it.

00:39:51.000 They don't care when it's a normal citizen. 0.68

00:39:53.000 They don't care when they're digging up all the crap on Joe the Plumber from 2008. 0.93

00:39:55.000 Then that's perfect. 0.84

00:39:57.000 That's us journalisming, guys.

00:39:59.000 But 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.

00:40:08.000 The utter blind spot that the media have to their own incompetence and to what they do every day is truly amazing and truly horrifying.

00:40:15.000 And it's one of the reasons why the American people do not believe that the media stand for them.

00:40:19.000 They don't believe that the media stand for the truth.

00:40:20.000 They 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.

00:40:27.000 And the media do not have a consistent standard when it comes to even things like cancel culture.

00:40:32.000 I have a pretty consistent standard.

00:40:33.000 I've defended people right, left, and center who have been subjected to cancel culture. 1.00

00:40:36.000 I think it's garbage. 0.95

00:40:37.000 But people on the left, they don't have this standard, and people in the media don't have this standard. 0.99

00:40:41.000 And this sort of self-pitying attitude with regard to the media all over is just, it's off-putting in the extreme.

00:40:47.000 And the whole take that you've gotten from the media during the Trump era, for now years, that Trump is uniquely brutal to the media.

00:40:54.000 Barack Obama arrested journalists.

00:40:56.000 Okay, he wiretapped journalists.

00:40:58.000 James Rosen was wiretapped.

00:41:00.000 The AP was wiretapped.

00:41:02.000 The notion that journalists have it extremely rough because Mike Pompeo said a mean thing to a journalist from NPR is just absurd. 0.98

00:41:10.000 It's just ridiculous.

00:41:11.000 The 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.

00:41:17.000 And 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.

00:41:24.000 Very, very mean.

00:41:26.000 She writes, ask journalists why they do the job they do and you'll hear a range of answers.

00:41:29.000 Here's mine.

00:41:30.000 Not every day, but on The Best Ones, we get to put questions to powerful people and hold them to account.

00:41:34.000 This is both a privilege and a responsibility.

00:41:36.000 I would love just one question from NPR to Bernie Sanders about whether he believes private property is a right.

00:41:40.000 The 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.

00:41:49.000 So no, you don't get any sort of special exemption in the rough and tumble of American politics.

00:41:54.000 By 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?

00:42:16.000 And Pompeo said, we'll stop them.

00:42:17.000 And she said, how sanctions?

00:42:18.000 And he said, we'll stop them.

00:42:19.000 And then she talked about how the, how the Iranians were blustering. 1.00

00:42:19.000 Okay. 1.00

00:42:24.000 And then he apparently called her a liar during another exchange and challenged her to find Ukraine on an unmarked map.

00:42:32.000 And this was apparently very, very bad, very, very bad and very, very mean.

00:42:36.000 Pompeo says that Kelly first lied in setting up our interview.

00:42:39.000 He says, I agreed to come on your show today to talk about Iran.

00:42:42.000 And then she said, no, no, you came on to talk about Ukraine.

00:42:46.000 And then he shouted at her a little bit, and this is very mean and very bad, and how dare anybody do any sort of thing.

00:42:52.000 Okay, so Pompeo released a statement.

00:42:53.000 He said, look, go back and take a look.

00:42:54.000 There's a lot of history with NPR and Mike Pompeo in Iran.

00:42:56.000 It goes back to 2015.

00:42:57.000 2015, where NPR lied.

00:43:00.000 They 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.

00:43:08.000 So there's a lot of history there.

00:43:09.000 So I took a leap of faith with Mary Louise, invited her to the State Department back in December.

00:43:12.000 We had a great conversation.

00:43:14.000 She asked me if I'd do her the favor of granting her an interview.

00:43:16.000 I said, sure, there's a lot of history to fix.

00:43:17.000 Let's talk about Iran.

00:43:18.000 She agreed that we would talk about Iran, and we set up an interview.

00:43:20.000 I hope she finds peace.

00:43:21.000 Okay, but here's the bottom line.

00:43:23.000 Whatever 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.

00:43:40.000 So you guys, if you'd like to restore your credibility, you could do something very simple.

00:43:43.000 You could stop being awful at your jobs.

00:43:45.000 Dude, stop being completely, thoroughgoingly awful at your jobs.

00:43:49.000 And if you're gonna be on the left, just announce you're on the left.

00:43:50.000 Because guess what?

00:43:51.000 I don't criticize MSNBC for being biased.

00:43:53.000 I've never done it.

00:43:54.000 On the air.

00:43:55.000 I don't criticize them for being on the left.

00:43:57.000 There 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.

00:44:04.000 They say who they are, good.

00:44:05.000 I criticize CNN, I criticize NPR, I criticize the New York Times.

00:44:09.000 You guys want your credibility back?

00:44:10.000 You're gonna have to earn it.

00:44:12.000 In a second, we're gonna get to things I like and things that I hate.

00:44:16.000 So, let's do a thing I like.

00:44:18.000 Okay, so thing that I like. 0.99

00:44:20.000 So, I'm into watching stupid 1990s action films with my wife at this point. 0.98

00:44:25.000 And it is indeed a fun thing to do. 0.95

00:44:28.000 So, 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.

00:44:33.000 I've never even seen the original Bad Boys.

00:44:35.000 But 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.

00:44:45.000 The fact is, he's made some of his best films in the recent past.

00:44:47.000 Like, 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.

00:44:55.000 He's probably at least a little bit right-wing, so they don't like that.

00:44:58.000 Okay, so Michael Bay, his first movie was Bad Boys, which of course has become this major franchise now with Will Smith and Martin Lawrence. 0.98

00:45:04.000 So I went back and watched it with my wife, and it is delightfully stupid. 0.99

00:45:07.000 It is truly a pleasure of idiocy. 1.00

00:45:09.000 And it's exactly what you would think it is, right? 1.00

00:45:12.000 It is...

00:45:14.000 Guns, and cursing, and jokes, and scantily clad women. 1.00

00:45:18.000 All the things that have made America great historically.

00:45:20.000 Anyway, here's a little bit of the trailer for Bad Boys.

00:45:23.000 I did this in preparation for taking my- My wife's also a huge Will Smith fan, so here's a little bit of the trailer for Bad Boys.

00:45:33.000 It's so Michael Bay.

00:45:33.000 day 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.

00:46:02.000 If you want to watch a better Michael Bay movie, The Rock is actually an actively good Michael Bay movie.

00:46:07.000 It's got all the Michael Bay silliness, but perfected to the heights of Michael Bay.

00:46:10.000 In any case...

00:46:11.000 Michael 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.

00:46:17.000 Anyway, 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.

00:46:23.000 And you gotta watch something dumb at night to kind of, like, bring you back a little bit. 0.86

00:46:27.000 So check out Bad Boys if you're looking for something dumb to watch at night. 0.65

00:46:29.000 It is definitely rated R. So if you're not up for rated R movies, then it's not for you. 0.92

00:46:32.000 Okay, time for a quick thing that I hate.

00:46:35.000 Okay, so a couple of quick things that I hate.

00:46:42.000 So number one, this is an absurd story.

00:46:45.000 So 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.

00:46:55.000 But some of the country's most prominent anti-trafficking organizations and advocates won't be there.

00:46:59.000 They've decided to boycott the event.

00:47:01.000 That 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.

00:47:10.000 Their decision comes after months of anguish over what they describe as an act of public deception.

00:47:14.000 They say that although the president frequently invokes human trafficking, his administration is actively endangering a significant portion of trafficking victims, immigrants.

00:47:22.000 So 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. 1.00

00:47:29.000 This is the height of stupidity. 1.00

00:47:30.000 It is incredibly dumb because these two things actively do not have all that much to do with each other. 1.00

00:47:35.000 In 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. 0.95

00:47:47.000 But because everybody has connected the two policies in their mind, they're boycotting the invitations.

00:47:53.000 Three of the groups told the Washington Post they fear backlash over their decision, so they cited conflicts with other events.

00:47:57.000 And this is what they're doing now.

00:47:58.000 They fear backlash from their lefty base.

00:48:00.000 And even though Ivanka Trump is trying to work hard on human trafficking, they are not going to stand up to their lefty base. 0.61

00:48:05.000 And on the other hand, they fear backlash from the right, and so they're citing conflict.

00:48:09.000 Trump repeatedly brings up human trafficking when discussing immigration policy.

00:48:12.000 In 2018, he became the first sitting president to attend a meeting of the Federal Trafficking Task Force since its creation in 2000.

00:48:18.000 Ivanka Trump has advocated anti-trafficking legislation, including a law intended to strengthen prosecutors' ability to go after websites that host advertisements for commercial sex.

00:48:27.000 She wrote about these efforts and others in a 2018 op-ed in the Washington Post.

00:48:33.000 But now, people are boycotting this because they don't like Trump's immigration position.

00:48:38.000 Which, again, is just pretty wild stuff.

00:48:41.000 It's pretty wild stuff.

00:48:43.000 But perfectly typical for this moment in time.

00:48:45.000 Okay, one other thing that I hate.

00:48:47.000 So yesterday, I did a long bit on the history of the Middle East. 0.99

00:48:55.000 And there's a map going around that is complete idiocy. 0.98

00:48:57.000 It has no relation to reality. 0.96

00:48:59.000 So I figure I will just debunk this here online.

00:49:01.000 Majid 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.

00:49:10.000 So if you can't see the map, you should subscribe so you can see things like this.

00:49:13.000 If 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.

00:49:19.000 Then it shows 1947 UN partition plan and the Arab areas in Green.

00:49:23.000 Then it shows the 1967 Borders, the pre-1967 borders, right?

00:49:28.000 Because after 1967, then Israel had control of the entire land of Israel as currently constituted. 0.73

00:49:34.000 And 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?

00:49:40.000 And then it shows basically the pre-1967 borders.

00:49:43.000 And 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.

00:49:51.000 Okay, so these maps are just a mess.

00:49:53.000 They are a complete mess.

00:49:54.000 I'll explain why they are a complete mess moving from early to late.

00:49:57.000 First, it shows a map of quote-unquote historic Palestine all green.

00:50:01.000 It was never Arab territory.

00:50:02.000 Ever.

00:50:03.000 Okay, it was never an independent state.

00:50:05.000 There was no historic Palestine state.

00:50:07.000 It did not exist.

00:50:08.000 It was a territory of the British Mandate at the time of the Balfour Declaration.

00:50:12.000 Before that, it was just a part of the Ottoman Empire.

00:50:15.000 There never was a quote-unquote independent historic Palestine that was Arab-owned.

00:50:19.000 Okay, that is not a thing that has ever happened.

00:50:21.000 So this map is just a fantasy.

00:50:22.000 It doesn't exist.

00:50:24.000 Okay, and there is no way to explain this map as saying this was quote-unquote Arab populated because there were Jews there too.

00:50:29.000 So this is obviously not a population map.

00:50:31.000 The map is a complete fiction.

00:50:33.000 The idea is that there was a legal status of an independent Palestine that was Arab.

00:50:36.000 Never has been the case in human history.

00:50:38.000 Okay, next map.

00:50:39.000 So then they move forward to the 1947 UN partition plan.

00:50:42.000 And it does depict the 1947 UN partition plan.

00:50:45.000 Then it says 44% of historic Palestine.

00:50:47.000 Okay, this neglects the fact that the original Balfour Declaration, number one, included Jordan as part of the Jewish state.

00:50:53.000 That was then sliced off.

00:50:55.000 And then another 44% was sliced off for another state for the Arabs.

00:51:00.000 And then this also neglects to mention that you know who rejected this plan?

00:51:03.000 You know, they're acting as though this was the plan that had been accepted and then the Israelis overran it.

00:51:08.000 This plan was accepted by the Jews. 0.99

00:51:10.000 The Jews accepted this UN partition plan.

00:51:12.000 You know who didn't accept this UN partition plan? 0.99

00:51:13.000 The Arabs who then launched the 1947-48 War of Independence and proceeded to get their asses kicked. 0.98

00:51:19.000 So that would be a them problem. 0.98

00:51:21.000 That 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. 0.75

00:51:26.000 You don't get to whine about the deal that was on the table that you rejected.

00:51:30.000 Okay, that's a your fault problem.

00:51:32.000 The 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.

00:51:39.000 By the way, you can see those borders are absolute nonsense.

00:51:41.000 I mean, those borders are insane for the integrity of any Jewish state. 0.99

00:51:46.000 Completely crazy.

00:51:47.000 Like, no way to make that workable.

00:51:49.000 Basically, Israel is in three separate parts there.

00:51:51.000 It's completely wild.

00:51:52.000 Okay, so, they show that map, and this is supposed to show the Palestinian territory shrunk.

00:51:56.000 It did not shrink because it didn't exist before.

00:51:59.000 And beyond that, it didn't shrink because they didn't accept it!

00:52:02.000 Right?

00:52:02.000 It was completely not accepted.

00:52:03.000 Okay, now to the next map.

00:52:04.000 So they move forward to the pre-67 borders.

00:52:05.000 They say, Okay, a couple of things about this.

00:52:07.000 One, this is pre-67 war, so when they say 1967, they mean pre-1967, really.

00:52:09.000 Okay, and then they say 22% historic Palestine.

00:52:11.000 for peace.

00:52:11.000 Okay, a couple of things about this.

00:52:13.000 One, this is pre-67 war.

00:52:15.000 So when they say 1967, they mean pre-1967, really.

00:52:17.000 Okay, and then they say 22% historic Palestine.

00:52:20.000 First of all, they owned all of this territory.

00:52:23.000 The Arabs controlled all of this territory prior to 1967.

00:52:26.000 So what happened in 1967?

00:52:27.000 You may be asking yourself.

00:52:29.000 Oh, that's right.

00:52:30.000 Jordan, Egypt, Syria, and Saudi Arabia launched another war of extermination against the Jews, and then they proceeded to lose that territory.

00:52:37.000 So they had that territory, and then they lost that territory.

00:52:39.000 So you're whining about the fact that you lost territory that you had, and then you launched an attack.

00:52:45.000 Beyond that, it is just a lie that these border lines were endorsed by the PLO in 1988.

00:52:49.000 If this had been endorsed by the PLO, we'd already have a peace deal.

00:52:53.000 It would already be over.

00:52:55.000 They 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.

00:53:02.000 You can see that the map includes Jerusalem.

00:53:04.000 You can see the map includes Jerusalem in the green area.

00:53:07.000 That was never agreed to by the Jews.

00:53:09.000 There was never any negotiation in which Jews were going to either split up or give up Jerusalem, the holiest city in Judaism.

00:53:14.000 Not going to happen.

00:53:15.000 And 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. 0.98

00:53:22.000 Beyond that, the notion that this was the border endorsed by the Palestinians is complete and abject crap. 0.74

00:53:27.000 The 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. 1.00

00:53:36.000 Which means they never accepted the territorial deal. 0.98

00:53:38.000 See, this is the great lie.

00:53:39.000 They keep saying, well, it's arguments over territory.

00:53:41.000 It is not arguments over territory.

00:53:43.000 You know how we know it's not arguments over territory?

00:53:45.000 Because you know who offered this exact map?

00:53:47.000 With a few land swaps.

00:53:48.000 Ehud Barak in 2000 and Ehud Olmert in 2008.

00:53:50.000 You know what the Palestinians did? 1.00

00:53:52.000 When offered this map with half of Jerusalem.

00:53:54.000 You know what they did?

00:53:55.000 They walked away from the table without a counteroffer and launched a wave of violence. 0.99

00:53:58.000 So this map is crap too. 0.98

00:53:59.000 So three of the four maps we've gone through are now crap. 0.98

00:54:01.000 Finally, we get to the Trump plan. 0.85

00:54:03.000 Okay, so they show the Trump projected plan.

00:54:05.000 And here it shows 15% of historic Palestine and they show the green areas as the parts that would be the Palestinian state.

00:54:14.000 Okay, well now they've actually changed the metric that they are using for explaining which territory is held by the Palestinians.

00:54:21.000 Because 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?

00:54:30.000 They're just kind of drawing a line.

00:54:32.000 You'll notice that the next map, the Trump plan, is population-based, meaning these are the areas that are actively controlled by the Palestinians. 0.90

00:54:38.000 They weren't actively controlled by the Palestinians post-67, even in 1988, right?

00:54:43.000 None of those areas included any of the highways and byways and the Jewish settlements that were gonna be carved out.

00:54:48.000 So now they're using a completely different metric.

00:54:49.000 They're using the land that would actually be controlled by the Palestinians in a peace deal.

00:54:53.000 The pre-67 borders, that was never endorsed by anybody, and it was never going to be the final status negotiations.

00:54:59.000 So that map is going around. 0.56

00:55:01.000 It is complete abject crap from beginning to end. 0.99

00:55:03.000 People who tout that, number one, believe you're an ignoramus, and so you don't know what they're doing. 0.99

00:55:08.000 And number two, are propagandists, because this is perfect propaganda.

00:55:11.000 It is absolute propaganda.

00:55:12.000 The goal of it is to show how Palestinian territory has shrunk over and over and over and over and over.

00:55:18.000 Again, there was no independent state of Palestine in this area, did not exist.

00:55:21.000 Two, the 67 and 47 borders were rejected by the Palestinians, not by the Jews.

00:55:28.000 And third, they are shifting the standard by which they draw the border for 2020.

00:55:31.000 Okay, so that's just the fact of it.

00:55:35.000 By 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?

00:55:41.000 It 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? 0.59

00:55:46.000 Because it was sliced off in the British White Papers from the 1930s.

00:55:49.000 And then you can watch the 1947 borders appear.

00:55:52.000 And the difference is, in those maps, Israel accepted every single one of those deals in order to have an independent Jewish state.

00:55:58.000 The 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.

00:56:08.000 Israel has accepted every serious peace deal put before it, since before the inception of the state, the Arabs have never accepted a single one. 0.98

00:56:16.000 Not one.

00:56:17.000 That's the problem. 0.98

00:56:17.000 And 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. 0.98

00:56:33.000 Alrighty, 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.

00:56:40.000 You're listening to The Ben Shapiro Show.

00:56:45.000 The Ben Shapiro Show is produced by Colton Haas.

00:56:48.000 Directed by Mike Joyner.

00:56:49.000 Executive producer Jeremy Boring.

00:56:51.000 Senior producer Jonathan Hay.

00:56:52.000 Supervising producer Mathis Glover and Robert Sterling.

00:56:55.000 Assistant director Pavel Lydowsky.

00:56:57.000 Technical producer Austin Stevens.

00:56:59.000 Playback and media operated by Nick Sheehan.

00:57:01.000 Associate producer Katie Swinnerton.

00:57:03.000 Edited by Adam Siovitz.

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00:57:08.000 The Ben Shapiro Show is a Daily Wire production.

00:57:10.000 Copyright Daily Wire 2020. 0.99

00:57:12.000 CNN's Don Lemon makes an awkward on-air apology for mocking half of his fellow countrymen as ignorant, illiterate rubes. 0.95

00:57:19.000 The only problem with his apology is that he never actually apologized. 0.97

00:57:22.000 We will examine why being a leftist means never having to say you're sorry.

00:57:26.000 Then, the fate of impeachment comes down to a nail-biter.

00:57:29.000 We take a look at the stakes.

00:57:30.000 The Iowa caucuses are just four days away.

00:57:32.000 And finally, the mailbag.

The Ben Shapiro Show - January 30, 2020

Decision Day Approaches | Ep. 943

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