The Ben Shapiro Show - Democrats Just Keep Doubling Down On Kavanaugh | Ep. 862

00:00:00.000 Despite a nothing burger New York Times report, Democrats keep doubling down on Brett Kavanaugh, Elizabeth Warren flexes her muscles, and debate breaks out among Republicans over Iran.

00:00:08.000 I'm Ben Shapiro.

00:00:09.000 This is the Ben Shapiro show.

00:00:11.000 You know, our goal each and every day here at the Ben Shapiro show is to bring you the news and also to trend on Twitter.

00:00:20.000 So today, yesterday was a great day.

00:00:23.000 We're going to see if we can match that today.

00:00:24.000 We're going to try and trend on Twitter nearly every day because, hell, as my old mentor Andrew Breitbart used to say, whatever doesn't kill me just makes me more famous.

00:00:32.000 But in any case...

00:00:33.000 In any case, we'll begin with the still news of the day, and that is this ridiculous New York Times supposed bombshell on Brett Kavanaugh.

00:00:41.000 So you'll recall from yesterday's famous show that the New York Times had this report.

00:00:46.000 It was in the news analysis section.

00:00:48.000 It was not in the news section because it wasn't actually news.

00:00:50.000 It was in the news analysis section so they could pretend that it was quasi-news.

00:00:54.000 And it was this excerpt from a book called The Education of Brett Kavanaugh. 0.97

00:00:58.000 And the new bombshell report is that some dude who worked at a Washington non-profit, that's all we knew about him, that this person says that he had once witnessed another dude push Brett Kavanaugh's penis into the hand of a woman who was sitting there. 0.95

00:01:14.000 This was the story. 0.93

00:01:16.000 I'm not laughing because that would be funny if it happened.

00:01:18.000 I'm laughing because literally every aspect of the story is ridiculous, up to and including the fact that, as it turns out, the book itself reports that the alleged victim in this case doesn't remember any of this.

00:01:29.000 She doesn't remember any of this, but the New York Times didn't actually report originally that she didn't remember any of this.

00:01:34.000 In fact, the original report said nothing about the alleged victim, making it appear as though there was a substantiated and corroborated piece of evidence about Brett Kavanaugh exposing himself to unapproving women in an act of sexual assault.

00:01:48.000 As it turns out, that was a bunch of crap, and the New York Times had to issue a correction in which they acknowledged that, yes, indeed, the alleged victim says that she doesn't recall any such event.

00:01:58.000 And amazingly enough, this morning, the authors of the book at issue, Robin Pogrebin and Kate Kelly, they were appearing on television and they explicitly state, they explicitly point out that the New York Times original draft did include the line where it said that the alleged victim had no memory of the incident and that the stellar editors engaging in unbelievable levels of journalisming Remove that line. 0.96

00:02:26.000 So the original report, now it's not just that they missed the line, or that it wasn't there in the first place, they had a line in there saying, the alleged victim in this case doesn't remember the incident, won't be interviewed, any of that, that was in the original piece, and the New York Times editors, in all of their wisdom and glory, decided to remove that from the piece.

00:02:44.000 Here are Robin Pogrebin and Kay Kelly, who actually write for the New York Times talking about this.

00:02:49.000 Somewhere in the editing process, those words were tracked.

00:02:51.000 Yeah, I mean, I think what happened actually was that, you know, we had her name and, you know, the Times doesn't usually include the name of the victim.

00:02:59.000 And so I think in this case, the editors felt like maybe it was probably better to remove it.

00:03:03.000 And in removing her name, they removed the other reference to the fact that she didn't remember it.

00:03:08.000 So the way, in your draft for The Times, you used basically the exact words that are in the book that I deliberately left off the name because that passage begins with the name.

00:03:19.000 And so, in their removal of the name, they ended up removing what follows it.

00:03:25.000 Oh, so oops!

00:03:27.000 We took out the only relevant portion of the story, which is that the alleged victim doesn't remember this story ever happening.

00:03:27.000 Oops!

00:03:33.000 OK, so how nothing burger was this story?

00:03:35.000 Here's how nothing burger this story was.

00:03:36.000 Vanity Fair is reporting this morning, quote, Why did the Kavanaugh excerpt end up in the review?

00:03:42.000 In the New York Times review of books, people familiar with how things went down told me that Kelly and Pogrebin initially pitched their scoop to the news side, but the top editors ultimately felt there wasn't enough juice to warrant a story there, let alone a big page one treatment.

00:03:56.000 Instead, Pogrebin and Kelly were told they could pitch the review, which is entirely independent of the news department.

00:04:01.000 I asked for clarification as to what about the story wasn't news pages worthy, but the Times declined to comment, as did Kelly and Pogrebin.

00:04:07.000 A Times spokesperson did, however, point out it's not unusual for opinion or Sunday review pieces to break news.

00:04:15.000 OK, the real answer is because there was no news there.

00:04:17.000 There's no news there.

00:04:18.000 I'm sorry.

00:04:19.000 An allegation by a third party who will not go on record when talking with you and also who's in which the alleged victim says that she has no memory of the incident.

00:04:31.000 That's not news.

00:04:32.000 That's just called somebody saying a thing.

00:04:35.000 That's not, in and of itself, news.

00:04:36.000 Now, here's the funny part.

00:04:37.000 There was an actual piece of news in the education of Brett Kavanaugh.

00:04:41.000 A pretty significant piece of news, as it turns out.

00:04:43.000 What was this piece of news?

00:04:45.000 Well, Jan Crawford of CBS reported it.

00:04:48.000 Okay, the actual piece of news is that Blasey Ford, Christine Blasey Ford, who was the original big-name accuser against Brett Kavanaugh, this professor out in California who suggested that back when he was 17 years old, he held her down on a bed while laughing and tried to rape her and that it was emblazoned in her memory and all of this.

00:05:04.000 Well, she had suggested that there was a woman named Leland Kaiser with whom she was friends and that her friend was at the party.

00:05:10.000 Well, according to Jan Crawford at CBS, Leland Kaiser says that, in the book, that Christine Blasey Ford's story is not believable and that Christine Blasey Ford's allies pressured Leland Kaiser to change her story.

00:05:26.000 Now, it seems to me that this would be, you know, the definition of actual news.

00:05:29.000 If it turns out that the biggest news story in America, the news story that put Christine Blasey Ford on the cover of national news magazines and had her touted as a Me Too heroine, If it turns out that her close friend, who was supposed to be the person backing up her story, said the story is not, number one, not believable, and number two, I was pressured by Ford and her allies to lie about it, isn't that a page one news story?

00:05:51.000 Here is CBS Evening News reporting this.

00:05:54.000 Speaking publicly for the first time to the Times reporters, Ford's close friend Leland Kaiser, who Ford said was at the party, said she didn't believe Ford's account and that it just didn't make any sense.

00:06:07.000 She also said she told the FBI that Ford's allies pressured her to say otherwise.

00:06:12.000 Now, all four people that Ford identified as being at that high school party in the summer of 1982 have now said no such party occurred.

00:06:23.000 That's unbelievable!

00:06:24.000 How is that not the front page news?

00:06:27.000 Good for CBS for covering this, but what in the actual hell?

00:06:31.000 What the hell?

00:06:32.000 So we get now a new, renewed debate over allegations with regard to Deborah Ramirez that were supposedly corroborated by a completely separate incident substantiated by a third party who says that he saw a completely separate incident, not with Deborah Ramirez, but about a separate woman who denies that the incident occurred or that she remembers it.

00:06:54.000 And that is front page news.

00:06:55.000 That is news that we have to cover on the front page.

00:06:56.000 Oh my God, how could the Republicans not investigate?

00:06:58.000 Investigate what?

00:07:00.000 An allegation by one dude that a thing happened where the victim says it didn't happen?

00:07:04.000 Like, what exactly is supposed to be investigated there?

00:07:06.000 But you know what we should definitely, definitely not report on, at least not on the front page of the New York Times, is the allegation in the same exact book, by the same exact authors.

00:07:16.000 That the key allegation in the Brett Kavanaugh saga in the first place was doubted by the key witness cited by the alleged victim, Christine Blasey Ford.

00:07:26.000 She's the one who called out Leland Kaiser.

00:07:28.000 And she's like, yeah, my friend Leland can back this up.

00:07:30.000 And Leland Kaiser was like, no, sorry, this thing doesn't wash.

00:07:33.000 I don't remember anything like this.

00:07:34.000 Doesn't make any sense to me.

00:07:36.000 And by the way, Christine Blasey Ford and her friends were pressuring me to lie about this.

00:07:41.000 This is in the education of Brett Kavanaugh, in the same book, in the same book.

00:07:45.000 Now that is newsworthy.

00:07:46.000 That should be on page one of the New York Times.

00:07:49.000 But instead, that doesn't make the New York Times at all.

00:07:51.000 So Maggie Haberman over at the New York Times, after Jan Crawford over at CBS reported this, This is unbelievable.

00:07:58.000 Maggie Heyman tweeted out, yeah, we at the New York Times knew that.

00:08:01.000 We knew that, right?

00:08:02.000 Actually, we reported that.

00:08:03.000 It's like, well, did you report that in, you know, the same bold headline banner fashion as you reported this crap allegation by Max Stiers, who, as it turns out, we now have details on, and was a lawyer for Bill Clinton during his impeachment in the 1990s.

00:08:16.000 Weird how everyone connected with these stories is super politically connected.

00:08:21.000 Molly Hemingway also reporting that one of the reporters in this particular book Pogrebin was a longtime roommate at Yale with Kathy Charlton, the woman centrally involved in the anti-Kavanaugh efforts, according to public statements from her husband.

00:08:35.000 It's unreal.

00:08:37.000 It's unreal.

00:08:38.000 None of this withstands a moment's scrutiny.

00:08:41.000 Not a moment's scrutiny.

00:08:43.000 And yet somehow, The story that the media take away from this is that Brett Kavanaugh needs to be impeached.

00:08:48.000 We'll get to that in just one second.

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00:10:29.000 So, as I say, there was an actual piece of news in this book, The Education of Brett Kavanaugh.

00:10:34.000 It was not reported anywhere except on CBS like a day later. 0.92

00:10:37.000 Then there was a piece of crap news, and that was the Max Steyer piece of news. 0.99

00:10:41.000 And it was just nonsense. 0.99

00:10:42.000 It was just a nonsense piece of news, because it wasn't news.

00:10:46.000 And that ends up being the big story of the day.

00:10:49.000 Yesterday, 2020 Democratic candidates coming out and saying that Brett Kavanaugh should be impeached over all of this.

00:10:55.000 And the Federalist, which got an advance copy of the book, reports, quote, The book offers no evidence in support of the allegations made by Christine Blasey Ford, but, write the authors, their gut reaction was that her allegations rang true, which means nothing.

00:11:08.000 I'm sorry, that means nothing.

00:11:09.000 If I make an allegation, you're like, oh, well, that rings true. 1.00

00:11:11.000 Well, that sounds like evidence in court to me.

00:11:13.000 It rings true. 0.99

00:11:14.000 It's like when you watch a detective show and somebody's like, I'm working off my gut instinct.

00:11:19.000 Yeah, well, gut instincts in the past have been wrong about pretty much everything.

00:11:24.000 Apparently their gut instinct was based on the fact that Blasey Ford and Kavanaugh grew up in the same rough area and she had once dated one of his friends.

00:11:31.000 Further, Leland Kaiser had gone out on a date, maybe even two dates, they're not sure, with a friend of Kavanaugh's.

00:11:35.000 None of that means that Ford was in fact assaulted by Kavanaugh, they write, but it does mean she has a baseline level of credibility as an accuser.

00:11:42.000 What exactly is that supposed to mean?

00:11:43.000 At the end of the book, according to Molly Hemingway, The authors say, quote, we spoke multiple times to Leland Kaiser, who also said she didn't recall that get together or any others like it.

00:11:52.000 In fact, she challenged Ford's accuracy.

00:11:54.000 I don't have any confidence in the story.

00:11:57.000 Hemingway also has detailed the pressure applied on Kaiser to get her to back up Ford's tale.

00:12:03.000 So does the new book.

00:12:04.000 It says that Ford's friends had, quote, grown frustrated with Kaiser.

00:12:07.000 Her comments about the alleged Kavanaugh incident had been too limited, some of them felt, and did not help their friend's case.

00:12:12.000 Surely, given what a close friend Kaiser had been, she could say more to substantiate Ford's testimony and general veracity, even if she could not corroborate Ford's more specific memories.

00:12:21.000 Except she was supposed to have been at the party.

00:12:23.000 So if she had gone out and said, you know, I don't remember this, but Christine, I totally believe her.

00:12:29.000 How could she say that having been at the same party?

00:12:32.000 Apparently, Kaiser told the authors, quote, I was told behind the scenes that certain things could be spread about me if I didn't comply.

00:12:38.000 How is that not page one news?

00:12:39.000 Who was saying to an alleged witness of a sexual assault?

00:12:44.000 That there would be rumors spread about her if she didn't comply with their wishes to testify about something that she didn't know to be true.

00:12:52.000 I mean, that's a criminal act, folks.

00:12:54.000 If you're trying to suborn perjury, right, if you pressure somebody to lie and you threaten them to lie, under oath, presumably, if you try to blackmail them, forget about suborning perjury, which requires an actual judicial proceeding.

00:13:06.000 If you try to blackmail somebody to do something by threatening to release information about them, that is a crime.

00:13:12.000 That is called blackmail.

00:13:13.000 How is that not a page one story?

00:13:16.000 The new book also delves into one bizarre aspect of Ford's claim, according to Joe Curl over at Daily Wire, how she got home after she abruptly left the party.

00:13:24.000 As previously reported in Justice on Trial, Kaiser continues to think about the story in which she was supposed to have played a part.

00:13:29.000 She has both logistical and character-driven problems with it.

00:13:32.000 Focusing on one of the angles that many women had trouble believing, she says, quote, It would be impossible for me to be the only girl at a get-together with three guys, have her leave, and then not figure out how she's going to get home.

00:13:42.000 The authors previously note that Blasey Ford suggested that Kaiser might have driven her home, which they do not note is a change from her claim she doesn't know how she got home.

00:13:50.000 Kaiser also reflects that the get-togethers of their youth were not like the one Ford described.

00:13:53.000 She says, I just really didn't have confidence in the story.

00:13:58.000 I mean, it's just, it's unreal.

00:14:00.000 So there is a real story here.

00:14:00.000 It's unreal.

00:14:01.000 It is the story that the media are largely ignoring, except for Jan Crawford and CBS.

00:14:07.000 The New York Times instead deciding to focus on a story that turns out to be complete and sheer nonsense.

00:14:13.000 It's truly amazing. 0.95

00:14:15.000 The New York Times, by the way, defended its coverage, and the way they defended their coverage is just ridiculous.

00:14:19.000 So they have a piece today titled, Answers to Reader Questions on our Brett Kavanaugh essay.

00:14:25.000 The Times' deputy editorial page editor, James Dow, answers questions about how they handled the essay on the Supreme Court justice and a third accusation of sexual misconduct.

00:14:34.000 Now, I want you to note how they even pitch the supposed third aspect of sexual misconduct.

00:14:41.000 So they say, quote, the essay included a previously unreported claim that friends pushed Mr. Kavanaugh's penis into the hand of a female Yale student during a dorm party with drunken classmates.

00:14:51.000 During the author's investigation, they learned that a classmate, Max Steyer, witnessed the event and later reported it to senators and to the FBI.

00:14:58.000 The authors corroborated his story with two government officials who said they found it credible.

00:15:02.000 Based on that corroboration, we felt mentioning the claim as one part of a broader essay was So even that last part, you know, as part of a broader essay, we mentioned it suggests that there's no substantiation and that this is super weak.

00:15:14.000 In other words, we couldn't have run with this story in the news section because it ain't news.

00:15:17.000 So we ran with it in the broader context of Yale climate at the time to try and illuminate what was going on in the seedy halls of Yale.

00:15:27.000 But even how they phrase the accusation is not true.

00:15:30.000 So they say the essay included a previously unreported claim that friends did this, right?

00:15:35.000 And then they say, during the author's investigation, they learned that a classmate, Max Steyer, witnessed the event.

00:15:39.000 Okay, what the story says is that Max Steyer claims he witnessed the event.

00:15:42.000 It does not say that they had stories about an event and then found a guy to corroborate that story.

00:15:47.000 That would be double-sourcing.

00:15:48.000 If they just went to Max Steyer and he says, hey, you know what?

00:15:51.000 I saw a thing.

00:15:53.000 That's not double-sourced.

00:15:54.000 The entire problem with the story is it's not double-sourced.

00:15:57.000 But if you actually read those two sentences, they make it sound like it's double source.

00:16:00.000 They make it sound like somebody claimed this happened, and so they went and found a witness to it.

00:16:03.000 That's not what the original New York Times story says. 0.97

00:16:06.000 Okay, and that wasn't the limit of the New York Times' stupidity over all of this. 0.96

00:16:10.000 All the news that's fit to print over there. 1.00

00:16:12.000 The old gray lady, apparently going senile.

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00:17:50.000 Okay, so.

00:17:51.000 As I say, the New York Times incompetence is not limited to merely what they reported and what they did. 0.99

00:17:55.000 And they then tweeted out something about how it may have seemed like harmless fun when Brett Kavanaugh started waving his penis around at people. 0.95

00:18:04.000 And then they had to delete it because who said that was harmless fun? 0.95

00:18:07.000 Has anyone ever said that's harmless fun?

00:18:09.000 Like, really, is that a common thing?

00:18:12.000 That people call it harmless fun?

00:18:14.000 Well, according to the New York Times, the opinion section, like other parts of the Times, has a process for writing and editing social media copy.

00:18:20.000 In this case, the process was not followed properly, resulting in a tweet that fell well below our standards.

00:18:24.000 The department is reviewing with everyone involved, including me, what went wrong to determine how we can avoid similar mistakes.

00:18:30.000 Well, it turns out that there are now allegations that the person who actually wrote the tweet were the reporters in that particular story.

00:18:37.000 So they wrote the tweet and the New York Times tweeted it out as though it was the opinion of the New York Times itself.

00:18:43.000 I mean, this is just, this is all a botchery.

00:18:46.000 It is a massive, massive botchery.

00:18:49.000 All of this led President Trump to go off as he has wanted to do.

00:18:53.000 So he was doing a rally.

00:18:55.000 In New Mexico, he's trying to turn New Mexico red again. 0.75

00:18:58.000 And he brought up the Kavanaugh stuff as well he should because it is perfect evidence of just how biased the media are and how terrible they very often are at their jobs.

00:19:05.000 Listen, I'm somebody who relies on major mainstream media reporters, particularly in foreign reporting, to actually get the facts right.

00:19:13.000 You undermine the credibility of your own outlet when you do stuff like this.

00:19:17.000 Here's President Trump going hard after the New York Times.

00:19:19.000 I just put out a statement on social media that said I don't think they'll do it, but they should, for the good of the nation.

00:19:27.000 I call for the resignation of everybody at the New York Times involved in the Kavanaugh smear story.

00:19:38.000 And while you're at it, the Russian witch hunt hoax, which is just as phony a story.

00:19:45.000 The Times is dead.

00:19:47.000 Long live the New York Times.

00:19:51.000 Okay, so President Trump going hard after The Times and doing so with a reason.

00:19:55.000 Mitch McConnell, who is not exactly known for getting fiery on the Senate floor.

00:19:58.000 I mean, the man has the demeanor of a turtle and looks to match.

00:20:01.000 Here is Mitch McConnell yesterday getting pretty upset.

00:20:04.000 I mean, I don't know if he has a broken arm or something.

00:20:07.000 He's done something to his arm in this clip. 1.00

00:20:10.000 Maybe it was just from slamming his desk out of frustration at the idiocy of the media. 0.98

00:20:13.000 Here's Mitch McConnell talking about the Kavanaugh rehash once again. 0.98

00:20:18.000 Over the last couple of days, Leading Democrats have tried to grab on to yet another poorly sourced, thinly reported, unsubstantiated allegation against Justice Brett Kavanaugh.

00:20:32.000 But it would be a mistake to dismiss this as a bad case of sour grapes.

00:20:37.000 This is not just a left-wing obsession with one man.

00:20:41.000 It's part of a deliberate effort to attack judicial independence.

00:20:45.000 When you are this willing to launch unhinged personal attacks You reveal a whole lot more about your own radicalism than about the men and women you target.

00:20:55.000 Okay, so here is how the media have responded to this.

00:20:57.000 Okay, he is right, of course.

00:20:59.000 The fact is that the Democrats have no new evidence.

00:21:01.000 None, zero, zip, zilch.

00:21:01.000 None.

00:21:03.000 In fact, as I say, the main revelation from the new book is that Christine Blasey Ford's best friend does not believe her, and not only does not believe her, has now suggested openly that she was being pressured by Christine Blasey Ford and allies to go after Brett Kavanaugh.

00:21:17.000 That's an astonishing story.

00:21:19.000 That's an astonishing story.

00:21:21.000 Imagine that the same thing had happened about Paula Jones in the 1990s. 0.91

00:21:25.000 That there was somebody who Paula Jones counted on as a witness to her encounter with Bill Clinton.

00:21:30.000 And then that person would come out and say, not only do I not believe Paula Jones, Paula and her friends in the Republican Party were calling me and pressuring me.

00:21:36.000 You think that might have been front page news?

00:21:38.000 But here it's not front page news.

00:21:39.000 It's reported begrudgingly and late by the New York Times.

00:21:43.000 Here's how the media have decided to cover all of this.

00:21:45.000 So is the story the botchery of the New York Times?

00:21:47.000 No, that's not the story.

00:21:48.000 The story is, according to the Washington Post, inaction on Kavanaugh allegations reignites political rancor.

00:21:54.000 So you get this?

00:21:55.000 You get this?

00:21:56.000 So another Empty allegation is put forward with no corroborative evidence.

00:22:01.000 None.

00:22:02.000 That was the main topic of our show yesterday that went viral.

00:22:04.000 Okay, there is no corroborative evidence whatsoever from anyone who is willing to go on the record.

00:22:10.000 We don't know the names of any witnesses to these events who say that they were present.

00:22:14.000 The main quote-unquote victims in these cases, the alleged victims, do not specifically recall the events.

00:22:19.000 Even Deborah Ramirez, who's now being trotted out as the main witness to a sexual assault, She had to spend six days talking with her lawyer and refreshing her memory before she even felt comfortable talking about this whole thing.

00:22:30.000 And then you have Christine Blasey Ford, whose entire story is doubted by her main witness, Leland Kaiser.

00:22:36.000 And the story isn't Democrats try to reignite political fervor with empty allegations.

00:22:41.000 No, the story is, you know, the Republicans didn't fully investigate these empty allegations.

00:22:46.000 How would they invest?

00:22:48.000 Real serious question.

00:22:49.000 How would you suggest that they investigate an allegation by a guy who provided apparently no details in which the alleged victim doesn't recall the event?

00:22:58.000 How do you purport to go about investigating that?

00:23:01.000 You know, law enforcement has resources.

00:23:02.000 Those resources are not endless.

00:23:04.000 They don't spend every day tracking down every allegation of misbehavior in which there is no supportive evidence provided.

00:23:12.000 But here is the reporting.

00:23:13.000 Again, great reporting over at the Washington Post by Seung Min Kim.

00:23:17.000 Inaction on Kavanaugh allegations reignites political rancor.

00:23:20.000 Four days before Brett Kavanaugh was confirmed to the Supreme Court by the narrowest of margins, Senator Chris Coons sent a letter to the FBI urging appropriate follow-up on new information he believed was relevant to sexual misconduct allegations made against the nominee.

00:23:33.000 Then, apparently, not much happened.

00:23:35.000 Not at the FBI, which assured Coons it had received the letter, but did not interview the person whom the senator referred to the bureau.

00:23:41.000 Not in the office of then Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Charles Grassley, Republican of Iowa, which was copied on the letter that contained few in the way of specifics.

00:23:48.000 By the way, Grassley says that they never really even received the letter.

00:23:52.000 It is also important, I love that they just sort of, by the way, it contained very little in the way of specifics.

00:23:57.000 Maybe that's why the FBI didn't spend its time and resources investigating.

00:24:01.000 If you say I saw a bad thing happen, what do you think the FBI is going to do with that?

00:24:06.000 Not among Democrats, several of whom had been unaware of the information until a New York Times report this weekend detailed a new alleged incident involving Kavanaugh.

00:24:13.000 So weird.

00:24:14.000 Chris Coons knew about this.

00:24:16.000 Why didn't all the other Democrats?

00:24:18.000 If he thought it was such a serious allegation, why wasn't Nancy Pelosi yelling about it?

00:24:22.000 Where were all the other Democrats yelling about it?

00:24:25.000 According to the Washington Post, that inaction, made public in recent days through new reports about Kavanaugh's alleged misbehavior, has renewed a bitter debate about how his confirmation was handled, angering Democrats about a process they felt was rushed, and animating Republicans who decried what they viewed as attempts to assassinate Kavanaugh's character.

00:24:42.000 I love that the idea here is that what led to this outrage is a lack of investigation by the FBI, not a bunch of fresh, non-corroborated allegations from the New York Times that have been blown so far out of proportion that the New York Times wouldn't run this as a news story because they didn't feel there was enough juice.

00:24:58.000 So in other words, the New York Times editorial board said this isn't news enough for us to run in the news section.

00:25:03.000 But the Washington Post and New York Times editorial boards also say the FBI should have expended full resources investigating this nothing burger of an allegation.

00:25:11.000 It's unreal.

00:25:12.000 And it's obviously politically motivated, just as the original allegations against Kavanaugh were by the Democrats.

00:25:18.000 Not Blasey Ford.

00:25:19.000 I don't know why Blasey Ford did what, maybe it happened, maybe it didn't.

00:25:21.000 I have no evidence one way or the other.

00:25:23.000 Neither do you.

00:25:24.000 That's the point.

00:25:24.000 Without evidence, how the hell are we supposed to judge if a thing is true?

00:25:28.000 But what I do know is that the Democrats, with no evidence, were willing to destroy the character of Brett Kavanaugh.

00:25:32.000 They're willing to malign him and lie about him.

00:25:34.000 And now they are doing the same thing for political gain.

00:25:37.000 We'll get to more of this in just one second.

00:25:39.000 First, let's talk about that credit card debt you've been racking up.

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00:26:49.000 So as I say, the media's angle on this is the FBI is bad.

00:26:52.000 So just to get this straight, it's not that the New York Times is bad for printing a baseless allegation.

00:26:58.000 Or for editing that baseless allegation to make it seem like it had more of a basis?

00:27:01.000 Or for not bold-faced reporting on Christine Blasey Ford's close friend undercutting her entire allegation?

00:27:08.000 Now the problem here is the FBI.

00:27:11.000 So the Washington Post editorial board has a piece today titled, And this was the word of the day.

00:27:19.000 Yesterday was sham.

00:27:20.000 You saw it in every Democratic tweet.

00:27:21.000 A sham investigation.

00:27:22.000 Sham this.

00:27:23.000 Sham... Almost as though everybody's talking to each other and using exactly the same verbiage.

00:27:28.000 Weird, weird.

00:27:29.000 So the Washington Post editorial board says, in September 2018, as the battle over the confirmation of Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court raged, then-Senator Jeff Flake of Arizona and Chris Coons of Delaware struck a deal.

00:27:39.000 Mr. Flake would delay confirming Kavanaugh until the FBI completed an investigation into credible allegations of sexual misconduct, but the investigation couldn't be open-ended or last ages.

00:27:50.000 Despite these caveats, both senators insisted the inquiry must be conducted in good faith.

00:27:54.000 GOP senators who subsequently voted to confirm Mr. Kavanaugh praised the resulting investigation for being thorough.

00:27:59.000 Now comes additional evidence that the investigation was, in fact, far from thorough and more of a sham than it seemed at the time.

00:28:05.000 Reasonable investigative steps were not pursued.

00:28:07.000 Ah, the gumshoes over at the Washington Post. 1.00

00:28:09.000 They know.

00:28:10.000 They know those gumshoes. 1.00

00:28:11.000 Those FBI experts. 0.94

00:28:14.000 Again, I said at the time that the foolishness of Jeff Flake caving to the Democrats and pretending as though any FBI investigation would please them is insane.

00:28:24.000 The FBI does not have unlimited resources.

00:28:26.000 Beyond that, it is not the FBI's job to track down every unverified allegation made about a human.

00:28:32.000 There were literally thousands of allegations that came in.

00:28:35.000 All of them, I mean, I'm talking about like the crazy letters.

00:28:40.000 Not one has been substantiated.

00:28:42.000 Not one.

00:28:43.000 You think the press haven't spent time trying to substantiate this stuff?

00:28:45.000 If it was that easy, what was the FBI going to do?

00:28:48.000 Truly, that the media have not already done, or have done now, and still the media can't come up with anything.

00:28:53.000 So show me the evidence that the FBI missed the thing.

00:28:56.000 What's the crucial area they missed here?

00:28:56.000 What's the thing they missed?

00:28:59.000 According to the Washington Post, in an article adapted from their forthcoming book on the Kavanaugh controversy, two New York Times reporters revealed that the FBI interviewed practically no one regarding one of the allegations against Mr. Kavanaugh, in which one of his Yale classmates, Deborah Ramirez, said Kavanaugh drunkenly exposed himself to her.

00:29:15.000 During his Senate testimony, Kavanaugh said, if the incident Ms. 0.99

00:29:17.000 Ramirez described had occurred, it would have been the talk of campus.

00:29:20.000 Our reporting suggested that it was, the reporters wrote.

00:29:23.000 They found that federal agents interviewed none of the two dozen people who Ms.

00:29:26.000 Ramirez said could bolster her story and ignored an allegation of a second episode.

00:29:30.000 Okay, that second episode is the one that we are talking about.

00:29:32.000 As far as the general allegation that she had two dozen witnesses or whatever.

00:29:41.000 Weird, because she provided exactly those witnesses to these New York Times reporters and they could come up with no one who actually verified her story.

00:29:48.000 In fact, she herself couldn't verify her story because she said that she had to sit around for a week trying to figure out if it was Brett Kavanaugh.

00:29:54.000 But according to the Washington Post, this investigative shoddiness was apparently the fault not of the FBI, but of Republicans looking for cover.

00:30:02.000 At first, they limited the FBI questioning to only four people about two separate allegations.

00:30:06.000 Agents eventually got an expansion.

00:30:08.000 They contacted 10 people, but not an extension of their deadline.

00:30:11.000 As though the deadline actually mattered here.

00:30:13.000 They could have extended the deadline for months.

00:30:15.000 Bottom line is that the media are grasping for any straw with which to club the DOJ and to club Trump and to club Kavanaugh and it doesn't matter that this allegation fell apart upon arrival.

00:30:26.000 It was DOA and it doesn't matter. 0.98

00:30:28.000 They're treating it as though it is an animate corpse wheeling that sucker around like Weekend at Bernie's. 0.97

00:30:33.000 Gonna pretend there's an actual story. 0.98

00:30:35.000 It ain't.

00:30:36.000 And all this is part of a broader trend, which is the supposed corruption inside the Trump administration, over at the DOJ, and...

00:30:43.000 Like really, really weak stuff.

00:30:45.000 In a second, we'll get to a little bit more on this.

00:30:47.000 First, you know what I do when I want to take a break from the political maelstrom?

00:30:51.000 Well, I head on over to the sports page because I love, love sports, which is why I am excited to share with you a new daily sports podcast from Wondery and The Athletic you're going to want to listen to.

00:31:00.000 It's called The Lead.

00:31:01.000 Every weekday morning, The Lead will bring you one big story from the athletics all-star team of local and national sports reporters.

00:31:07.000 Some stories will be a fresh take on a major news event.

00:31:09.000 Other episodes will feature an in-depth look into what's been happening off the field.

00:31:14.000 From the story of how a truly awful call in last year's NFL playoffs enraged the entire city of New Orleans, to in-depth interviews on mental health and sports, The Lead is your daily lens into the biggest stories of the day.

00:31:24.000 It's hosted by a couple of great sports writers, Kavitha Davidson, And Anders Kelto, who will take you close to the story through comprehensive reporting, fascinating clips, exclusive interviews you won't hear anywhere else.

00:31:37.000 I love staying up to speed on sports, and so I've made this a regular part of my diet.

00:31:40.000 Go subscribe to The Lead on Apple Podcasts or wherever you are listening to this right now.

00:31:44.000 Again, if you love sports and you need a break from the craziness of the day, you're going to want to go check out The Lead on Apple Podcasts from Wondery.

00:31:52.000 It is fantastic.

00:31:53.000 Okay, in just a second, we're going to get to New York prosecutors honing in on President Trump's tax returns, and we'll get to Elizabeth Warren threatening to violate the Constitution every which way from Sunday. 0.56

00:32:03.000 First, you have to go over to dailywire.com and subscribe.

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00:32:21.000 And you get the same sort of access that Media Matters has to this show, you know, where they watch the show and then clip out of context a lot of things from the show and put them up. 0.97

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00:32:44.000 So the Democratic candidates, of course, making hay out of this Kavanaugh thing, even though there's no hay to make.

00:32:57.000 Kamala Harris, who is the most rehearsed, I mean, people have compared Elizabeth Warren to Hillary Clinton.

00:33:02.000 Kamala Harris is much more similar to Hillary Clinton than Elizabeth Warren is. 0.72

00:33:07.000 So Elizabeth Warren is a lot more shrewd. 0.75

00:33:10.000 She doesn't appear quite as calculated as Kamala Harris.

00:33:13.000 Kamala Harris is rehearsed in every way, shape, or form.

00:33:16.000 Here she was on MSNBC last night with Rachel Maddow.

00:33:20.000 And just really wildly entertaining stuff.

00:33:22.000 And here's Kamala Harris explaining.

00:33:24.000 And when it came to the Kavanaugh hearing, men were coming up to her on the street in public places, crying. 1.00

00:33:30.000 To which I'm gonna say, that's a bunch of crap. 0.99

00:33:32.000 Here's Kamala Harris. 0.99

00:33:34.000 I mean, listen, after the initial hearings that happened a year ago, the number of women and men who approached me in public places and cried, About what this meant to them.

00:33:51.000 Because there is so much about this issue and one of the worst things that happens is that when we are not willing to believe the victim and take them seriously.

00:34:02.000 Okay, if we're going to get back into this routine, believe all women, this whole nonsense that you pushed before, how about believe most women? 0.82

00:34:11.000 How about believe women, and how about not by percentage?

00:34:13.000 How about believe allegations that have substantiation to back them up?

00:34:16.000 How about that?

00:34:17.000 How about like corroborative details?

00:34:19.000 She was a prosecutor for God's sake! 1.00

00:34:21.000 And do I really believe that men were coming up to Kamala Harris on the street, wrapping their arms around her and sobbing on her shoulder about Brett Kavanaugh?

00:34:28.000 No.

00:34:29.000 No, I'm sorry.

00:34:30.000 I don't believe that.

00:34:30.000 The good news for Kamala Harris is she's receiving a bit of a renaissance in the media.

00:34:34.000 There's a big article in The Washington Post yesterday about Kamala Harris going to Howard University.

00:34:38.000 There's another big article in The New York Times about Kamala Harris.

00:34:40.000 They're trying to sort of Revitalize her campaign because they're starting to realize that Elizabeth Warren has no support in the black community and that Kamala Harris may have more support in the black community if she gets better media coverage.

00:34:51.000 They're trying to revivify her. 0.63

00:34:52.000 The most awkward attempt at revivifying her dying candidacy.

00:34:55.000 I mean, she was at like 16 percent two months ago.

00:34:57.000 She's now at five or six percent.

00:34:59.000 This happened on Jimmy Fallon.

00:35:01.000 I don't know why Jimmy Fallon continues to do this, but He does this slow jamming the news with particular Democratic candidates, and it's so awkward and so terrible and so telling.

00:35:12.000 Here's Jimmy Fallon slow jamming the news with Kamala Harris.

00:35:15.000 If you call this comedy or entertainment, man, let me recommend that you actually go view some actual comedy.

00:35:20.000 I like the way you work it, Kay Higgity.

00:35:24.000 But I gotta ask, lately this country's been so divided, sleeping on opposite sides of the bed.

00:35:30.000 Why do you think we can't all just come together?

00:35:33.000 Well, it's my opinion that we need a president who fights for the best of who we are.

00:35:39.000 And over the past three years, Donald Trump has done the exact opposite.

00:35:44.000 Hold up.

00:35:45.000 So what you're trying to say is that Trump's the bad guy?

00:35:48.000 Duh.

00:36:00.000 So much humor.

00:36:00.000 So much comedying.

00:36:03.000 I can't imagine why Jimmy Fallon is falling apart in the ratings.

00:36:06.000 Kamala Harris, wildly entertaining.

00:36:08.000 Good stuff there from the 2020 Democratic candidates.

00:36:11.000 Now, the fact is that she is not part of this race at this point at all, right?

00:36:16.000 The main factors in this race are Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren.

00:36:19.000 Elizabeth Warren held this massive rally in New York yesterday.

00:36:22.000 Her campaign said 20,000 people showed up.

00:36:24.000 The cops said something like 5,000 people showed up.

00:36:26.000 Whatever it is, she is generating enthusiasm.

00:36:29.000 Maybe it's a little bit astroturf, but she's generating enthusiasm.

00:36:34.000 She was speaking yesterday in New York City, and she explained how basically she is just going to start ignoring this thing called the Constitution.

00:36:40.000 She suggested that she's going to use her executive authority as president of the United States to fix the so-called pay gap between men and women. 1.00

00:36:47.000 This coming from a millionaire woman who has paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to teach property at Harvard Law School for decades. 1.00

00:36:51.000 Here she is explaining that women are highly victimized, so she should become president. 1.00

00:36:56.000 On day one of my administration, I will use my executive authority to start closing the pay gap between women of color and everyone else, because it's about time we valued the work of women of color.

00:37:13.000 We must recognize the systemic discrimination that infects our economy, and we must work actively and deliberately to root it out and set this country on a better path.

00:37:30.000 My God, she's boring. 1.00

00:37:31.000 I mean, that is intensely boring stuff and false stuff, by the way.

00:37:34.000 Whenever she talks about the pay gap, she uses the debunked statistics.

00:37:38.000 I'm basically aggregating the average wage of various groups against the average wage of other various groups without concern with number of hours worked, or the kind of job held, or educational level, or time in the workforce, or time away from the workforce, or any of that sort of stuff.

00:37:51.000 You can't use your executive authority to fix the pay gap.

00:37:54.000 You're going to have to explain how you're going to do that.

00:37:57.000 But I love that people cheer for this sort of stuff because people have come to believe on both the right and the left, and it's really irritating, that the president is a magical, magical personage.

00:38:05.000 And if the president is just the right person, then they can wave their magic wand and boom, all of your problems just disappear.

00:38:10.000 Well, she pledged another problem she would make disappear.

00:38:13.000 She said she was going to fight corruption, did Elizabeth Warren, which is always amusing since Democrats are very much in the pocket of a bunch of different political interests, including particular unions.

00:38:22.000 Elizabeth Warren yesterday suggested that she was basically going to run roughshod over the First Amendment. 1.00

00:38:26.000 So it's not just that she's going to run roughshod over the checks and balances of power.

00:38:30.000 She's also going to run roughshod over the First Amendment. 1.00

00:38:32.000 No more hiring corporate lobbyists to staff up the federal government.

00:38:42.000 The right of every person in this country to petition their government does not protect a multi-billion dollar influence industry whose sole purpose is to undermine democracy and tilt every decision in favor of those who can pay.

00:39:04.000 Okay, now do unions, Elizabeth Warren. 0.88

00:39:05.000 Now do unions.

00:39:06.000 Like, it's always fascinating to watch as the exact same people who are celebrating Walmart for injecting itself into the Second Amendment debate, and celebrating, like, Zara's and Forever 21 for having comments about abortion, and those same exact people who are looking to corporations to be our moral leaders, like, those corporations have no rights!

00:39:23.000 They have no rights!

00:39:25.000 Okay, well, if the corporations are not people, then you're gonna have to explain to me why you should tax a corporation.

00:39:29.000 It's not a person.

00:39:30.000 So why should you be able to tax a corporation?

00:39:31.000 It's just a legal entity, after all.

00:39:33.000 Why are you able to prosecute corporations?

00:39:35.000 Why are you able to bring them to court and sue them?

00:39:38.000 So they're treated as people in every way under the law, except for if you and I get together, form an LLC, and decide that we want to spend some money.

00:39:47.000 On an issue ad in Virginia.

00:39:49.000 Then it's very bad.

00:39:50.000 Then it's corporate influencing.

00:39:52.000 Unless we're a union.

00:39:52.000 If we form a union, then Elizabeth Warren is totally fine with it.

00:39:57.000 This agenda is particularly radical, but Elizabeth Warren is stealing the Bernie base and it's working out well for her. 1.00

00:40:03.000 Meanwhile, President Trump facing a couple of new obstacles today.

00:40:06.000 According to the Associated Press, New York City prosecutors have now subpoenaed President Trump's tax returns.

00:40:11.000 A person familiar with the matter told the AP on Monday.

00:40:14.000 Now, I've long suspected that the reason that President Trump doesn't want his tax returns revealed, is because they're going to reveal that he is not as wealthy as he says he is.

00:40:21.000 Which, again, I'm not sure why he cares at this point.

00:40:23.000 He should just be like, whatever man, I'm only worth a billion dollars, or half a billion dollars, as opposed to ten billion dollars.

00:40:30.000 Like, does he really believe anybody cares about that?

00:40:32.000 Truly?

00:40:32.000 Like, that would make for a few late night jokes, and everybody would go, yeah, dude's way richer than I am, so whatever.

00:40:38.000 Nonetheless, he is now fighting a battle with the Manhattan District Attorney's Office, That's Cyrus Vance.

00:40:44.000 Their office recently sent a subpoena to President Trump's accounting firm seeking the last eight years of state and federal tax returns for Trump and his company, the Trump Organization, the person said.

00:40:53.000 This person who talked to the AP was not authorized to speak publicly about the matter and spoke on the condition of anonymity.

00:40:58.000 Asked about the subpoena as he left the White House on Monday, Trump said, I don't know anything about it.

00:41:03.000 A lawyer for the Trump Organization, Mark Mukasey, said he is evaluating the situation and will respond as appropriate.

00:41:09.000 Vance is a Democrat, of course.

00:41:11.000 He subpoenaed the Trump Organization last month for records related to payments that Trump's former lawyer, Michael Cohen, helped to arrange to a porn actress who claimed she had an affair with Trump.

00:41:20.000 His office is also pursuing a state mortgage fraud case against former Trump campaign chairman, Paul Manafort.

00:41:25.000 Now, maybe there's crime there.

00:41:27.000 Maybe there's not.

00:41:27.000 You do get the feeling that Cyrus Vance is basically sitting there with a target list and then trying to dig up crime on the particular target list.

00:41:34.000 Now, if he digs up crime, so be it.

00:41:36.000 Let the chips fall where they may.

00:41:37.000 Crime is crime and should be punished accordingly.

00:41:40.000 But, again, there's something disquieting about prosecutors sitting there and using their influence in order to target particularly political enemies.

00:41:48.000 Trump has already been fighting efforts by several Democratic-led congressional committees to obtain his tax returns and other records that could give them a window into his finances.

00:41:56.000 Of course, Trump and his kids filed a lawsuit in April seeking to block House committees from getting records that his longtime lender, Deutsche Bank, has said includes tax returns, saying that this is not relevant to any investigation.

00:42:06.000 Trump happens to be right about that.

00:42:08.000 He is right.

00:42:09.000 But with that said, Democrats are not going to let up in any of this.

00:42:15.000 It is pretty amazing that The members of the New York Bar who are in charge of law enforcement have openly said that they're targeting Trump.

00:42:23.000 New York Attorney General Letitia James is now investigating whether Trump exaggerated his wealth to obtain loans.

00:42:28.000 Again, she said upon taking office that Trump was basically in her crosshairs, which is pretty disturbing.

00:42:34.000 Whether you're right or left, the idea of a prosecutor sitting there and being like, I don't like this guy.

00:42:38.000 I'm going to find something he did.

00:42:40.000 That is troubling.

00:42:41.000 Typically, prosecutors find crime and then prosecute it.

00:42:43.000 They don't find people and then try to find crimes that they committed as an excuse for prosecution.

00:42:48.000 So that is one problem on Trump's hands.

00:42:49.000 The other problem on Trump's hands is that it is very rare that a first-term president does not experience some sort of foreign policy crisis.

00:42:56.000 And we could be looking at that foreign policy crisis Over in Iran.

00:42:59.000 It looks as though the foreign policy crisis with China may be abating just a little bit.

00:43:04.000 It doesn't mean a long-term trade deal with China is on the table, nor really should it be until they stop stealing our intellectual property. 0.92

00:43:10.000 But it seems like the tensions are abating just enough that we're not going to have a full-scale trade war.

00:43:14.000 But as that happens, tensions are ramping up in the Middle East where Iran is doing its damnedest in order to pressure the Europeans to make concessions to it.

00:43:23.000 On Monday, President Trump stopped short of directly blaming Iran for a major attack on Saudi oil installations, allaying, at least for a moment, fears of a military conflict between the United States and Iran.

00:43:33.000 President Trump obviously does not want to go to war with Iran.

00:43:36.000 His administration does not want to go to war with Iran.

00:43:38.000 Even John Bolton did not desperately want to go to war with Iran, contrary to popular opinion.

00:43:43.000 John Bolton wanted to respond to fire if fire were to happen.

00:43:46.000 But I am not aware that John Bolton was advocating for heavy airstrikes on central Iranian military targets.

00:43:54.000 The only airstrikes I think he was in favor of was in response to ships being bombed in the Straits of Hormuz and he was suggesting that certain naval targets in the Iranian Navy be hit.

00:44:02.000 Officials in Washington and Riyadh spent the day analyzing satellite photos and other intelligence they said indicated that Iranian weapons were used in the assault on Saudi Aramco facilities.

00:44:12.000 But they presented no new information that would conclusively show that Iran directed or launched the attack.

00:44:16.000 Saudi officials said it led to a 50% reduction in oil production.

00:44:19.000 U.S.

00:44:20.000 officials did reject claims by Houthi rebels in Yemen.

00:44:23.000 That they launched the strike.

00:44:24.000 They said it was too sophisticated and powerful for that.

00:44:27.000 But Trump is, for the moment, withholding his judgment on whether, in fact, it was Iran.

00:44:35.000 Trump said on Monday, I'm not looking to get into new conflict, but sometimes you have to.

00:44:39.000 Asked what message he wanted to send to Iran.

00:44:41.000 Trump said, I think I'll have a stronger message or maybe no message at all when we get the final results of what we're looking at.

00:44:45.000 There's no rush.

00:44:47.000 So Trump is not rushing to go to war here.

00:44:49.000 There seems to be a contingent of the Republican Party that believes that he is, and that I find weird.

00:44:55.000 I've yet to see the evidence that Trump is desperate to enmesh us in a serious foreign war.

00:44:58.000 Tulsi Gabbard, Democratic presidential candidate who has not met any of the thresholds for remaining in the debate.

00:45:05.000 She's an isolationist on foreign policy, of course, very close with Bashar Assad in Syria and has toured over there and has praised him.

00:45:11.000 In any case, she went after Trump, suggesting that Trump was prostituting the United States out at the behest of the Saudis.

00:45:17.000 Yesterday President Trump offered to place our military, my brothers and sisters in uniform, under the command of Prince Mohammed bin Salman, the dictator of the Islamist kingdom of Saudi Arabia.

00:45:29.000 You're offering our military assets to the dictator of Saudi Arabia to use as he sees fit is a betrayal of my brothers and sisters in uniform, who are ready to give our lives for our country.

00:45:43.000 Not for the Islamist dictator of Saudi Arabia. 1.00

00:45:46.000 My fellow service members and I, we are not your prostitutes. 1.00

00:45:49.000 You are not our pimp. 0.66

00:45:52.000 Okay, I am not aware, I am not aware anywhere here that Trump offered to put our soldiers under the command of Mohammed bin Salman, right?

00:46:01.000 No one would be in favor of that, including President Trump, that's an insane contention.

00:46:06.000 We can see that Trump is not interested in going to war here.

00:46:09.000 The truth is that the only solution may be to just muddle through.

00:46:12.000 And this is the underrated solution in American foreign policy.

00:46:15.000 Everybody always wants a final answer to serious foreign policy questions.

00:46:20.000 How can we make it so that terrorists are never a threat again?

00:46:22.000 The answer is you can't.

00:46:23.000 How can you make it so that Iran doesn't threaten the region? 1.00

00:46:26.000 Well, maybe you can't.

00:46:26.000 Maybe you have to just contain them.

00:46:28.000 Maybe every day that there's not a full-scale war is a good day.

00:46:31.000 Maybe every day that Iran is not multiplying its terrorist influence is a good day. 1.00

00:46:34.000 Maybe every day that Iran goes without the funds necessary to spread its cancerous tentacles throughout the Middle East is a good day. 1.00

00:46:42.000 Maybe that.

00:46:42.000 Maybe foreign policy is really about just maintaining.

00:46:44.000 And I know that's not romantic and it's not sexy, but maybe that's really what foreign policy generally is.

00:46:49.000 And then you wait for opportunities to make a major push.

00:46:51.000 And those opportunities are rare.

00:46:53.000 And maybe that opportunity is not what is happening right now.

00:46:56.000 I think Trump is actually demonstrating a fair bit of common sense here that I think is well worth it.

00:47:03.000 Here's Trump yesterday explaining, listen, I haven't promised the Saudis that we're going to protect them.

00:47:09.000 At the same time, he's saying, well, I'm not letting the Iranians know that we won't protect them because then that would obviously lead the Iranians to get more aggressive. 0.99

00:47:16.000 I mean, that's not wrong.

00:47:21.000 No, I haven't.

00:47:22.000 No, I haven't.

00:47:23.000 I haven't promised the Saudis that we have to sit down with the Saudis and work something out.

00:47:28.000 And the Saudis want very much for us to protect them.

00:47:31.000 But I say, well, we have to work.

00:47:33.000 That was an attack on Saudi Arabia.

00:47:35.000 And there wasn't an attack on us.

00:47:38.000 So now they're under attack, and we will work something out with them.

00:47:43.000 But they also know that, you know, I'm not looking to get into new conflict.

00:47:49.000 But sometimes you have to.

00:47:52.000 As President Trump was talking with the Pentagon, the Pentagon is urging him not to get into a new conflict.

00:47:57.000 In a message posted on Twitter, Mark Esper, who's the Defense Secretary, he said that the United States military and other government agencies were, quote, working with our partners to address this unprecedented attack and defend the international rules-based order that is being undermined by Iran.

00:48:11.000 So there is this delicate dance that is being played.

00:48:14.000 One of the things that has to happen, obviously, is the United States should work to strengthen Saudi's capacity to defend itself against Iranian incursions.

00:48:22.000 Otherwise, it does put the U.S.

00:48:23.000 on the hook every time Iran, every time Saudi Arabia is in threat of invasion.

00:48:27.000 I mean, that's how we ended up in the first Gulf War.

00:48:29.000 The United States should be working with foreign nations to flag their vessels.

00:48:33.000 The United States should be providing escorts to foreign boats in the Straits of Hormuz.

00:48:38.000 Iran should know that we're not looking for all-out war, but if you fire on an internationally flagged vessel, you will be fired upon.

00:48:44.000 And if you attempt to send drones into Saudi Arabia, the Saudis should have the capacity to shoot down those drones and to retaliate in like fashion against Iranian military targets.

00:48:54.000 Deterrence is an aspect of foreign policy.

00:48:56.000 There seems to be this weird binary view of American foreign policy, where if the United States threatens force, that that ends up meaning that we use force.

00:49:04.000 We threaten force, like, all the time in American foreign policy.

00:49:07.000 And that is what is called deterrence.

00:49:09.000 The vast majority of cases, deterrence is enough.

00:49:11.000 We have the most powerful military on planet Earth.

00:49:13.000 You know who doesn't want war more than the United States?

00:49:15.000 Iran.

00:49:16.000 Because if Iran were to actually go to full-scale war with the United States, you know who ends up dead? 0.77

00:49:22.000 The mullahs.

00:49:22.000 Okay, that is not a war that the Iranians want to fight.

00:49:25.000 Now, does that mean that the United States should want to fight that war?

00:49:28.000 Of course not.

00:49:29.000 I mean, we have too many people in the region.

00:49:31.000 Our bases are not sufficiently protected.

00:49:34.000 We are stretched militarily because of the Obama year cuts.

00:49:37.000 But with that said, foreign policy is a delicate balance of the threat, the credible threat of aggression, Combine with a desire for diffusing situations.

00:49:48.000 And I think, frankly, that President Trump has not done a bad job on this front at all.

00:49:52.000 And I think he continues to do a good job on Iran.

00:49:53.000 We need to keep the pressure up.

00:49:55.000 We need to strengthen Saudi Arabia's ability to defend itself from these sorts of incursions.

00:49:58.000 But we shouldn't be looking to go to all out war.

00:50:00.000 And I think, frankly, that is where President Trump is at this point.

00:50:02.000 OK, time for some things I like and then time for some things that I hate.

00:50:06.000 So things that I like today.

00:50:07.000 There is a phenomenal series on Netflix, a really first rate series on Netflix.

00:50:13.000 Starring Sasha Baron Cohen, who, as it turns out, can act.

00:50:16.000 And not just a comedic actor, actually a good, like, actor actor.

00:50:20.000 The series is called The Spy.

00:50:21.000 He plays a spy named Eli Cohen.

00:50:23.000 Eli Cohen was one of the most famous spies in Israeli history.

00:50:26.000 He actually rose to become, effectively, the deputy defense minister of Syria.

00:50:29.000 I mean, it's an amazing story.

00:50:31.000 He infiltrated the government of Syria in the 1960s and became so friendly with everybody that they elevated him to one of the top government positions.

00:50:37.000 He was special defense advisor to the president of Syria in the middle of the Israeli-Syrian conflict.

00:50:44.000 And his work was responsible for saving innumerable Israeli lives.

00:50:49.000 It's a touching story.

00:50:50.000 It's a tragic story.

00:50:52.000 It's really, really well done.

00:50:54.000 Gideon Raff was the guy behind the original Israeli version of Homeland, created the series, and Baron Cohen does a terrific job with it.

00:51:00.000 Here's a little bit of the preview.

00:51:05.000 Do you consider yourself a patriot?

00:51:11.000 I love this country with all my might.

00:51:14.000 Welcome to Syria. 1.00

00:51:18.000 If your country needed you to lie to your friends, your family, your wife, would you do it?

00:51:24.000 I would be a buyer, working for the government.

00:51:30.000 If your country asked you to risk your life, would you do it?

00:51:34.000 This is the opportunity for me to give you the life that I promised your daddy.

00:51:41.000 My name...

00:51:44.000 My name is Kamel Amin Thabit.

00:51:49.000 It really is terrific.

00:51:50.000 I mean, first rate, well produced, beautiful, beautiful looking.

00:51:54.000 Tragic.

00:51:54.000 It's I can't speak highly enough of the series.

00:51:56.000 It really is great.

00:51:57.000 Go check out The Spy.

00:51:57.000 One of the things that's great about The Spy is that it does make clear the stakes in the Middle East.

00:52:01.000 So today is Israel's election.

00:52:02.000 Here's the reality of Israel's election.

00:52:04.000 It does not matter who the prime minister of Israel is.

00:52:06.000 The defense policy will be nearly precisely the same.

00:52:09.000 The left in the United States and internationally would like to pretend that with Netanyahu not in power, suddenly Israel is going to cut some sort of deal with terrorists.

00:52:17.000 It ain't happening.

00:52:18.000 The left in Israel no longer exists.

00:52:20.000 Kachov Levan, which is the centrist party, that is a center-right party.

00:52:25.000 If it were not for the fact that Netanyahu, because he is a power broker in Israeli politics and a power player and very Machiavellian, had basically ousted a lot of former leaders inside his own Likud party, the fact is that the Likud coalition would be like 90 seats, not 60.

00:52:38.000 So we'll see how the elections shake out tonight.

00:52:42.000 But this does raise the question of continued anti-semitism because this movie does show that there's one fantastic scene in which Ellie Cohen is at the Syrian border and in a Syrian high-ranking military officers explaining that killing civilians is totally worthwhile and necessary because each civilian that is killed in Israel is killing a future soldier or a current soldier.

00:53:02.000 They're looking like shooting farmers.

00:53:04.000 It's a pretty telling moment.

00:53:06.000 The fact is that that is the anti-Semitism that Israel does face in the Middle East.

00:53:09.000 They've always faced that in the Middle East.

00:53:10.000 It's not going to abate anytime soon.

00:53:12.000 The Israeli government knows it.

00:53:13.000 The center knows it.

00:53:14.000 The right knows it.

00:53:15.000 The Israeli people know it.

00:53:16.000 Okay, time for a quick thing that I hate.

00:53:22.000 So speaking of the continued prevalence of antisemitism and the willingness to abide it on the left, the Women's March has gotten rid of some of its leaders.

00:53:30.000 So they finally got rid of Linda Sarsour.

00:53:32.000 She is out.

00:53:33.000 So is Bob Land.

00:53:34.000 So is Tamika Mallory. 0.54

00:53:35.000 Sarsour, of course, is a rabid antisemite.

00:53:37.000 Tamika Mallory is a person who has paid homage to Louis Farrakhan repeatedly.

00:53:41.000 Well, now they've been replaced.

00:53:42.000 Isn't that exciting? 0.62

00:53:43.000 And they've been replaced by a bunch of people who are basically just as terrible.

00:53:48.000 There's one named Zahra Bilu.

00:53:50.000 Okay, and turns out that Zahra Bilu is just a civil rights lawyer and now a new head of the Women's March. 1.00

00:53:56.000 She has some opinions on the Jews and it's not great.

00:54:01.000 She's tweeted in favor of Hezbollah and Hamas. 0.73

00:54:05.000 She's tweeted in favor, she accused the FBI of recruiting mentally ill young people for ISIS. 0.99

00:54:13.000 Okay, she suggested that Hamas is superior to what she calls Apartheid Israel.

00:54:20.000 She says, Israel is an Apartheid racist state which engages in terrorism against Palestinians, just in case the Zionists didn't hear me.

00:54:27.000 So they replaced some anti-Semites with other anti-Semites, which is really exciting and solid stuff. 0.82

00:54:34.000 Well done, everybody.

00:54:36.000 She actually tweeted out in 2014, blaming Hamas for firing rockets at Apartheid Israel is like blaming a woman for punching her rapist.

00:54:43.000 Hamas was democratically elected to govern Palestine, so she's an actual terror supporter.

00:54:48.000 The Women's March replaced some anti-Semites with other anti-Semites.

00:54:53.000 Also, she'll be joined in the leadership of the Women's March by a woman named Samia Assad, who apparently also tweeted, the more appropriate question to ask in the context of this conversation is, do you believe in how Israel exists now?

00:55:05.000 I will tell you no.

00:55:06.000 To this day, Israel has never declared its borders and continues to occupy lands and deny Palestinians human rights.

00:55:12.000 So just wonderful job, everybody.

00:55:15.000 You've done fantastic work there over at the Women's March.

00:55:20.000 It's just weird how this coincidence keeps happening, just keeps happening over and over.

00:55:24.000 But don't worry, anti-Semitism is dead.

00:55:26.000 It doesn't exist.

00:55:27.000 And obviously, Israel needs to elect someone who's going to make a deal with Hamas at the behest of Ilhan Omar, just so long as, listen, Ilhan Omar says, as long as Netanyahu is not existent, if he stops existing, things will be better.

00:55:40.000 The world may be in for a rude awakening, because whether Netanyahu is re-elected, in which case everybody freaks out, or whether Netanyahu is not re-elected, and the new government does exactly what the old government did, they're about to find out the Israeli public is not willing to go quietly into that good night at the behest of the international left and their terrorist allies in Hamas and Hezbollah.

00:55:58.000 Alrighty, we'll be back here tomorrow with the results of the Israeli election, among other pieces of news.

00:56:02.000 I'm Ben Shapiro, this is The Ben Shapiro Show.

00:56:08.000 The Ben Shapiro Show is produced by Robert Sterling.

00:56:10.000 Directed by Mike Joyner.

00:56:12.000 Executive producer, Jeremy Boring.

00:56:14.000 Senior producer, Jonathan Hay.

00:56:16.000 Our supervising producer is Mathis Glover.

00:56:18.000 And our technical producer is Austin Stevens.

00:56:20.000 Assistant director, Pavel Wydowski.

00:56:23.000 Edited by Adam Siovitz.

00:56:24.000 Audio is mixed by Mike Koromina.

00:56:26.000 Hair and makeup is by Jesua Olvera.

00:56:28.000 Production assistant, Nick Sheehan.

00:56:29.000 The Ben Shapiro Show is a Daily Wire production.

00:56:31.000 Copyright Daily Wire 2019.

00:56:34.000 On The Matt Walsh Show, we're not just discussing politics.

00:56:37.000 We're talking culture, faith, family, all of the things that are really important to you.

The Ben Shapiro Show - September 17, 2019

Democrats Just Keep Doubling Down On Kavanaugh | Ep. 862

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