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. Ben Shapiro breaks it all down and explains why the NY Times should have left out a crucial part of the story, and why it didn t. Today's show was brought to you by The Ben Shapiro Show, a production of CBS Radio and the Worldwide Leader in Conservative Media, and produced by Ben Shapiro and his co-hosts, Sarah Downey and Jordan Peterson. Subscribe to the show to receive immediate access to all of Ben Shapiro's newest shows and listen to his newest podcast, "The Weekly Standard," wherever you get your shows. Use the promo code: CRIMINALS for 20% off "Become a Friend of the Nation" when you buy a copy of his new book "The Education of Brett KAVANAUGH: How to Fix America's Most Influential Supreme Court Nominee." Subscribe and comment to stay up to date with the latest news and discuss the latest in politics, culture, entertainment, and culture! Thanks for listening and share the podcast with your fellow patriots! Happy New Year! See linktr.ee/TheBenShapiroShow Subscribe? Learn more about your ad choices. Rate, review, and subscribe to our new podcast on Apple Podcasts! The opinions expressed in this podcast are our new and improved version of The Weekly Standard - Rate and review are those of our own Ben Shapiro s newest book, "Whatever Doesn't Kill Meghan" out on Amazon Prime and VaynerSpeak. by clicking here. If you like what you're listening to this podcast, consider us a friend, rate and review us a review on iTunes and subscribe on iTunes, review us your thoughts on the podcast, and tell us what you'd like to review us on your favorite podcasting platform? and we'll be hearing about our podcast on social media too! We'll be listening to Ben Shapiro on the next episode of the show "Ben Shapiro's latest podcast "The Real Thing" on The Real Thing?" and other things like that's going to be featured on The Hill? Subscribe on Insta: on Instapaper and other places on the Big Little Things and more! - Ben Shapiro is a Ben Shapiro Podcast? - Subscribe to his Insta story on this podcast?
00:00:00.000Despite 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.
00:00:23.000We're going to see if we can match that today.
00:00:24.000We'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.
00:00:48.000It was not in the news section because it wasn't actually news.
00:00:50.000It was in the news analysis section so they could pretend that it was quasi-news.
00:00:54.000And it was this excerpt from a book called The Education of Brett Kavanaugh.
00:00:58.000And 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.
00:01:16.000I'm not laughing because that would be funny if it happened.
00:01:18.000I'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.
00:01:29.000She doesn't remember any of this, but the New York Times didn't actually report originally that she didn't remember any of this.
00:01:34.000In 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.
00:01:48.000As 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.
00:01:58.000And 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.
00:02:26.000So 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.
00:02:44.000Here are Robin Pogrebin and Kay Kelly, who actually write for the New York Times talking about this.
00:02:49.000Somewhere in the editing process, those words were tracked.
00:02:51.000Yeah, 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.
00:02:59.000And so I think in this case, the editors felt like maybe it was probably better to remove it.
00:03:03.000And in removing her name, they removed the other reference to the fact that she didn't remember it.
00:03:08.000So 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.
00:03:19.000And so, in their removal of the name, they ended up removing what follows it.
00:03:33.000OK, so how nothing burger was this story?
00:03:35.000Here's how nothing burger this story was.
00:03:36.000Vanity Fair is reporting this morning, quote, Why did the Kavanaugh excerpt end up in the review?
00:03:42.000In 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.
00:03:56.000Instead, Pogrebin and Kelly were told they could pitch the review, which is entirely independent of the news department.
00:04:01.000I 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.
00:04:07.000A Times spokesperson did, however, point out it's not unusual for opinion or Sunday review pieces to break news.
00:04:15.000OK, the real answer is because there was no news there.
00:04:19.000An 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.
00:04:45.000Well, Jan Crawford of CBS reported it.
00:04:48.000Okay, 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.
00:05:04.000Well, she had suggested that there was a woman named Leland Kaiser with whom she was friends and that her friend was at the party.
00:05:10.000Well, 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.
00:05:26.000Now, it seems to me that this would be, you know, the definition of actual news.
00:05:29.000If 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?
00:05:51.000Here is CBS Evening News reporting this.
00:05:54.000Speaking 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.
00:06:07.000She also said she told the FBI that Ford's allies pressured her to say otherwise.
00:06:12.000Now, 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.
00:06:32.000So 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.
00:07:00.000An allegation by one dude that a thing happened where the victim says it didn't happen?
00:07:04.000Like, what exactly is supposed to be investigated there?
00:07:06.000But 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.
00:07:16.000That 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.
00:07:26.000She's the one who called out Leland Kaiser.
00:07:28.000And she's like, yeah, my friend Leland can back this up.
00:07:30.000And Leland Kaiser was like, no, sorry, this thing doesn't wash.
00:08:03.000It'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.
00:08:16.000Weird how everyone connected with these stories is super politically connected.
00:08:21.000Molly 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.
00:09:09.000Its technology identifies people with the right experience and then invites them to apply to your job.
00:09:14.000So, you will get qualified candidates and get them fast.
00:09:17.000Dylan posted his job on ZipRecruiter, said he was impressed by how quickly he had great candidates apply.
00:09:21.000He also used ZipRecruiter's candidate rating feature to filter his applicants so he could focus on the most relevant ones.
00:09:27.000And that's how Dylan found his new director of coffee in just a few days.
00:09:30.000With results like that, it's no wonder that four out of five employers who post on ZipRecruiter get a quality candidate within the very first day.
00:09:48.000But Jess decided to walk to the wrong studio and then walk back to this studio.
00:09:52.000So by the time she got here, she was like an hour late and she was pouring sweat from walking in New York's terrible humidity.
00:09:58.000And I thought to myself, how could I make her day better?
00:09:59.000Well, theoretically, I could fire her and replace her with ZipRecruiter.
00:10:02.000I decided not to do that in the end, but ZipRecruiter.com would have been the resource that I would have used if I decided to replace Jess with somebody who knows directions.
00:10:42.000It was just a nonsense piece of news, because it wasn't news.
00:10:46.000And that ends up being the big story of the day.
00:10:49.000Yesterday, 2020 Democratic candidates coming out and saying that Brett Kavanaugh should be impeached over all of this.
00:10:55.000And 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.
00:11:14.000It's like when you watch a detective show and somebody's like, I'm working off my gut instinct.
00:11:19.000Yeah, well, gut instincts in the past have been wrong about pretty much everything.
00:11:24.000Apparently 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.
00:11:31.000Further, Leland Kaiser had gone out on a date, maybe even two dates, they're not sure, with a friend of Kavanaugh's.
00:11:35.000None 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.
00:11:42.000What exactly is that supposed to mean?
00:11:43.000At 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.
00:11:52.000In fact, she challenged Ford's accuracy.
00:11:54.000I don't have any confidence in the story.
00:11:57.000Hemingway also has detailed the pressure applied on Kaiser to get her to back up Ford's tale.
00:12:04.000It says that Ford's friends had, quote, grown frustrated with Kaiser.
00:12:07.000Her comments about the alleged Kavanaugh incident had been too limited, some of them felt, and did not help their friend's case.
00:12:12.000Surely, 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.
00:12:21.000Except she was supposed to have been at the party.
00:12:23.000So if she had gone out and said, you know, I don't remember this, but Christine, I totally believe her.
00:12:29.000How could she say that having been at the same party?
00:12:32.000Apparently, Kaiser told the authors, quote, I was told behind the scenes that certain things could be spread about me if I didn't comply.
00:12:39.000Who was saying to an alleged witness of a sexual assault?
00:12:44.000That 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.
00:12:54.000If 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.
00:13:06.000If you try to blackmail somebody to do something by threatening to release information about them, that is a crime.
00:13:16.000The 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.
00:13:24.000As previously reported in Justice on Trial, Kaiser continues to think about the story in which she was supposed to have played a part.
00:13:29.000She has both logistical and character-driven problems with it.
00:13:32.000Focusing 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.
00:13:42.000The 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.
00:13:50.000Kaiser also reflects that the get-togethers of their youth were not like the one Ford described.
00:13:53.000She says, I just really didn't have confidence in the story.
00:14:15.000The New York Times, by the way, defended its coverage, and the way they defended their coverage is just ridiculous.
00:14:19.000So they have a piece today titled, Answers to Reader Questions on our Brett Kavanaugh essay.
00:14:25.000The 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.
00:14:34.000Now, I want you to note how they even pitch the supposed third aspect of sexual misconduct.
00:14:41.000So 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.
00:14:51.000During the author's investigation, they learned that a classmate, Max Steyer, witnessed the event and later reported it to senators and to the FBI.
00:14:58.000The authors corroborated his story with two government officials who said they found it credible.
00:15:02.000Based 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.
00:15:14.000In other words, we couldn't have run with this story in the news section because it ain't news.
00:15:17.000So 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.
00:15:27.000But even how they phrase the accusation is not true.
00:15:30.000So they say the essay included a previously unreported claim that friends did this, right?
00:15:35.000And then they say, during the author's investigation, they learned that a classmate, Max Steyer, witnessed the event.
00:15:39.000Okay, what the story says is that Max Steyer claims he witnessed the event.
00:15:42.000It does not say that they had stories about an event and then found a guy to corroborate that story.
00:15:54.000The entire problem with the story is it's not double-sourced.
00:15:57.000But if you actually read those two sentences, they make it sound like it's double source.
00:16:00.000They make it sound like somebody claimed this happened, and so they went and found a witness to it.
00:16:03.000That's not what the original New York Times story says.
00:16:06.000Okay, and that wasn't the limit of the New York Times' stupidity over all of this.
00:16:10.000All the news that's fit to print over there.
00:16:12.000The old gray lady, apparently going senile.
00:16:14.000We'll get to more of this in just one second.
00:16:16.000First, let's talk about something important you can do.
00:16:18.000You want to preserve your memories, you know, outside the auspices of the New York Times trying to jog them.
00:16:23.000Perhaps you should go and preserve the memories that you got in your garage, in that cabinet in the back of your house, the ones that you haven't looked at in a while.
00:16:29.000You got tapes, you got old VHSs, and you have film reels from your parents, and you've got old photos that are degrading.
00:16:36.000Why not just have all of those digitized?
00:16:39.000Why not have all that digitized, put it on a thumb drive, put it on a DVD, and then it's easy to access.
00:17:51.000As I say, the New York Times incompetence is not limited to merely what they reported and what they did.
00:17:55.000And they then tweeted out something about how it may have seemed like harmless fun when Brett Kavanaugh started waving his penis around at people.
00:18:04.000And then they had to delete it because who said that was harmless fun?
00:18:07.000Has anyone ever said that's harmless fun?
00:18:14.000Well, 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.
00:18:20.000In this case, the process was not followed properly, resulting in a tweet that fell well below our standards.
00:18:24.000The department is reviewing with everyone involved, including me, what went wrong to determine how we can avoid similar mistakes.
00:18:30.000Well, it turns out that there are now allegations that the person who actually wrote the tweet were the reporters in that particular story.
00:18:37.000So they wrote the tweet and the New York Times tweeted it out as though it was the opinion of the New York Times itself.
00:18:43.000I mean, this is just, this is all a botchery.
00:18:55.000In New Mexico, he's trying to turn New Mexico red again.
00:18:58.000And 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.
00:19:05.000Listen, I'm somebody who relies on major mainstream media reporters, particularly in foreign reporting, to actually get the facts right.
00:19:13.000You undermine the credibility of your own outlet when you do stuff like this.
00:19:17.000Here's President Trump going hard after the New York Times.
00:19:19.000I 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.
00:19:27.000I call for the resignation of everybody at the New York Times involved in the Kavanaugh smear story.
00:19:38.000And while you're at it, the Russian witch hunt hoax, which is just as phony a story.
00:19:51.000Okay, so President Trump going hard after The Times and doing so with a reason.
00:19:55.000Mitch McConnell, who is not exactly known for getting fiery on the Senate floor.
00:19:58.000I mean, the man has the demeanor of a turtle and looks to match.
00:20:01.000Here is Mitch McConnell yesterday getting pretty upset.
00:20:04.000I mean, I don't know if he has a broken arm or something.
00:20:07.000He's done something to his arm in this clip.
00:20:10.000Maybe it was just from slamming his desk out of frustration at the idiocy of the media.
00:20:13.000Here's Mitch McConnell talking about the Kavanaugh rehash once again.
00:20:18.000Over 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.
00:20:32.000But it would be a mistake to dismiss this as a bad case of sour grapes.
00:20:37.000This is not just a left-wing obsession with one man.
00:20:41.000It's part of a deliberate effort to attack judicial independence.
00:20:45.000When 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.
00:20:55.000Okay, so here is how the media have responded to this.
00:21:03.000In 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.
00:21:21.000Imagine that the same thing had happened about Paula Jones in the 1990s.
00:21:25.000That there was somebody who Paula Jones counted on as a witness to her encounter with Bill Clinton.
00:21:30.000And 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.
00:21:36.000You think that might have been front page news?
00:22:02.000That was the main topic of our show yesterday that went viral.
00:22:04.000Okay, there is no corroborative evidence whatsoever from anyone who is willing to go on the record.
00:22:10.000We don't know the names of any witnesses to these events who say that they were present.
00:22:14.000The main quote-unquote victims in these cases, the alleged victims, do not specifically recall the events.
00:22:19.000Even 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.
00:22:30.000And then you have Christine Blasey Ford, whose entire story is doubted by her main witness, Leland Kaiser.
00:22:36.000And the story isn't Democrats try to reignite political fervor with empty allegations.
00:22:41.000No, the story is, you know, the Republicans didn't fully investigate these empty allegations.
00:22:49.000How 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?
00:22:58.000How do you purport to go about investigating that?
00:23:01.000You know, law enforcement has resources.
00:23:13.000Again, great reporting over at the Washington Post by Seung Min Kim.
00:23:17.000Inaction on Kavanaugh allegations reignites political rancor.
00:23:20.000Four 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.
00:23:35.000Not at the FBI, which assured Coons it had received the letter, but did not interview the person whom the senator referred to the bureau.
00:23:41.000Not 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.
00:23:48.000By the way, Grassley says that they never really even received the letter.
00:23:52.000It is also important, I love that they just sort of, by the way, it contained very little in the way of specifics.
00:23:57.000Maybe that's why the FBI didn't spend its time and resources investigating.
00:24:01.000If you say I saw a bad thing happen, what do you think the FBI is going to do with that?
00:24:06.000Not 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.
00:24:18.000If he thought it was such a serious allegation, why wasn't Nancy Pelosi yelling about it?
00:24:22.000Where were all the other Democrats yelling about it?
00:24:25.000According 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.
00:24:42.000I 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.
00:24:58.000So in other words, the New York Times editorial board said this isn't news enough for us to run in the news section.
00:25:03.000But 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.
00:27:29.000So 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.
00:27:39.000Mr. 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.
00:27:50.000Despite these caveats, both senators insisted the inquiry must be conducted in good faith.
00:27:54.000GOP senators who subsequently voted to confirm Mr. Kavanaugh praised the resulting investigation for being thorough.
00:27:59.000Now comes additional evidence that the investigation was, in fact, far from thorough and more of a sham than it seemed at the time.
00:28:05.000Reasonable investigative steps were not pursued.
00:28:07.000Ah, the gumshoes over at the Washington Post.
00:28:14.000Again, 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.
00:28:24.000The FBI does not have unlimited resources.
00:28:26.000Beyond that, it is not the FBI's job to track down every unverified allegation made about a human.
00:28:32.000There were literally thousands of allegations that came in.
00:28:35.000All of them, I mean, I'm talking about like the crazy letters.
00:28:59.000According 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.
00:29:15.000During his Senate testimony, Kavanaugh said, if the incident Ms.
00:29:17.000Ramirez described had occurred, it would have been the talk of campus.
00:29:20.000Our reporting suggested that it was, the reporters wrote.
00:29:23.000They found that federal agents interviewed none of the two dozen people who Ms.
00:29:26.000Ramirez said could bolster her story and ignored an allegation of a second episode.
00:29:30.000Okay, that second episode is the one that we are talking about.
00:29:32.000As far as the general allegation that she had two dozen witnesses or whatever.
00:29:41.000Weird, 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.
00:29:48.000In 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.
00:29:54.000But according to the Washington Post, this investigative shoddiness was apparently the fault not of the FBI, but of Republicans looking for cover.
00:30:02.000At first, they limited the FBI questioning to only four people about two separate allegations.
00:30:08.000They contacted 10 people, but not an extension of their deadline.
00:30:11.000As though the deadline actually mattered here.
00:30:13.000They could have extended the deadline for months.
00:30:15.000Bottom 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.
00:30:45.000In a second, we'll get to a little bit more on this.
00:30:47.000First, you know what I do when I want to take a break from the political maelstrom?
00:30:51.000Well, 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.
00:31:01.000Every weekday morning, The Lead will bring you one big story from the athletics all-star team of local and national sports reporters.
00:31:07.000Some stories will be a fresh take on a major news event.
00:31:09.000Other episodes will feature an in-depth look into what's been happening off the field.
00:31:14.000From 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.
00:31:24.000It'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.
00:31:37.000I love staying up to speed on sports, and so I've made this a regular part of my diet.
00:31:40.000Go subscribe to The Lead on Apple Podcasts or wherever you are listening to this right now.
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00:31:53.000Okay, 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.
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00:33:34.000I 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.
00:33:51.000Because 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.
00:34:02.000Okay, 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?
00:34:11.000How about believe women, and how about not by percentage?
00:34:13.000How about believe allegations that have substantiation to back them up?
00:34:21.000And 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?
00:34:30.000The good news for Kamala Harris is she's receiving a bit of a renaissance in the media.
00:34:34.000There's a big article in The Washington Post yesterday about Kamala Harris going to Howard University.
00:34:38.000There's another big article in The New York Times about Kamala Harris.
00:34:40.000They'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.
00:35:01.000I 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.
00:35:12.000Here's Jimmy Fallon slow jamming the news with Kamala Harris.
00:35:15.000If you call this comedy or entertainment, man, let me recommend that you actually go view some actual comedy.
00:35:20.000I like the way you work it, Kay Higgity.
00:35:24.000But I gotta ask, lately this country's been so divided, sleeping on opposite sides of the bed.
00:35:30.000Why do you think we can't all just come together?
00:35:33.000Well, it's my opinion that we need a president who fights for the best of who we are.
00:35:39.000And over the past three years, Donald Trump has done the exact opposite.
00:36:08.000Good stuff there from the 2020 Democratic candidates.
00:36:11.000Now, the fact is that she is not part of this race at this point at all, right?
00:36:16.000The main factors in this race are Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren.
00:36:19.000Elizabeth Warren held this massive rally in New York yesterday.
00:36:22.000Her campaign said 20,000 people showed up.
00:36:24.000The cops said something like 5,000 people showed up.
00:36:26.000Whatever it is, she is generating enthusiasm.
00:36:29.000Maybe it's a little bit astroturf, but she's generating enthusiasm.
00:36:34.000She was speaking yesterday in New York City, and she explained how basically she is just going to start ignoring this thing called the Constitution.
00:36:40.000She 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.
00:36:47.000This coming from a millionaire woman who has paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to teach property at Harvard Law School for decades.
00:36:51.000Here she is explaining that women are highly victimized, so she should become president.
00:36:56.000On 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.
00:37:13.000We 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.
00:37:31.000I mean, that is intensely boring stuff and false stuff, by the way.
00:37:34.000Whenever she talks about the pay gap, she uses the debunked statistics.
00:37:38.000I'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.
00:37:51.000You can't use your executive authority to fix the pay gap.
00:37:54.000You're going to have to explain how you're going to do that.
00:37:57.000But 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.
00:38:05.000And if the president is just the right person, then they can wave their magic wand and boom, all of your problems just disappear.
00:38:10.000Well, she pledged another problem she would make disappear.
00:38:13.000She 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.
00:38:22.000Elizabeth Warren yesterday suggested that she was basically going to run roughshod over the First Amendment.
00:38:26.000So it's not just that she's going to run roughshod over the checks and balances of power.
00:38:30.000She's also going to run roughshod over the First Amendment.
00:38:32.000No more hiring corporate lobbyists to staff up the federal government.
00:38:42.000The 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.
00:39:04.000Okay, now do unions, Elizabeth Warren.
00:39:06.000Like, 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!
00:39:33.000Why are you able to prosecute corporations?
00:39:35.000Why are you able to bring them to court and sue them?
00:39:38.000So 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.
00:39:52.000If we form a union, then Elizabeth Warren is totally fine with it.
00:39:57.000This agenda is particularly radical, but Elizabeth Warren is stealing the Bernie base and it's working out well for her.
00:40:03.000Meanwhile, President Trump facing a couple of new obstacles today.
00:40:06.000According to the Associated Press, New York City prosecutors have now subpoenaed President Trump's tax returns.
00:40:11.000A person familiar with the matter told the AP on Monday.
00:40:14.000Now, 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.
00:40:21.000Which, again, I'm not sure why he cares at this point.
00:40:23.000He should just be like, whatever man, I'm only worth a billion dollars, or half a billion dollars, as opposed to ten billion dollars.
00:40:30.000Like, does he really believe anybody cares about that?
00:40:32.000Like, that would make for a few late night jokes, and everybody would go, yeah, dude's way richer than I am, so whatever.
00:40:38.000Nonetheless, he is now fighting a battle with the Manhattan District Attorney's Office, That's Cyrus Vance.
00:40:44.000Their 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.
00:40:53.000This person who talked to the AP was not authorized to speak publicly about the matter and spoke on the condition of anonymity.
00:40:58.000Asked about the subpoena as he left the White House on Monday, Trump said, I don't know anything about it.
00:41:03.000A lawyer for the Trump Organization, Mark Mukasey, said he is evaluating the situation and will respond as appropriate.
00:41:11.000He 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.
00:41:20.000His office is also pursuing a state mortgage fraud case against former Trump campaign chairman, Paul Manafort.
00:41:27.000You 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.
00:41:37.000Crime is crime and should be punished accordingly.
00:41:40.000But, again, there's something disquieting about prosecutors sitting there and using their influence in order to target particularly political enemies.
00:41:48.000Trump 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.
00:41:56.000Of 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.
00:42:09.000But with that said, Democrats are not going to let up in any of this.
00:42:15.000It 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.
00:42:23.000New York Attorney General Letitia James is now investigating whether Trump exaggerated his wealth to obtain loans.
00:42:28.000Again, she said upon taking office that Trump was basically in her crosshairs, which is pretty disturbing.
00:42:34.000Whether you're right or left, the idea of a prosecutor sitting there and being like, I don't like this guy.
00:42:41.000Typically, prosecutors find crime and then prosecute it.
00:42:43.000They don't find people and then try to find crimes that they committed as an excuse for prosecution.
00:42:48.000So that is one problem on Trump's hands.
00:42:49.000The 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.
00:42:56.000And we could be looking at that foreign policy crisis Over in Iran.
00:42:59.000It looks as though the foreign policy crisis with China may be abating just a little bit.
00:43:04.000It 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.
00:43:10.000But it seems like the tensions are abating just enough that we're not going to have a full-scale trade war.
00:43:14.000But 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.
00:43:23.000On 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.
00:43:33.000President Trump obviously does not want to go to war with Iran.
00:43:36.000His administration does not want to go to war with Iran.
00:43:38.000Even John Bolton did not desperately want to go to war with Iran, contrary to popular opinion.
00:43:43.000John Bolton wanted to respond to fire if fire were to happen.
00:43:46.000But I am not aware that John Bolton was advocating for heavy airstrikes on central Iranian military targets.
00:43:54.000The 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.
00:44:02.000Officials 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.
00:44:12.000But they presented no new information that would conclusively show that Iran directed or launched the attack.
00:44:16.000Saudi officials said it led to a 50% reduction in oil production.
00:44:47.000So Trump is not rushing to go to war here.
00:44:49.000There seems to be a contingent of the Republican Party that believes that he is, and that I find weird.
00:44:55.000I've yet to see the evidence that Trump is desperate to enmesh us in a serious foreign war.
00:44:58.000Tulsi Gabbard, Democratic presidential candidate who has not met any of the thresholds for remaining in the debate.
00:45:05.000She's an isolationist on foreign policy, of course, very close with Bashar Assad in Syria and has toured over there and has praised him.
00:45:11.000In any case, she went after Trump, suggesting that Trump was prostituting the United States out at the behest of the Saudis.
00:45:17.000Yesterday 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.
00:45:29.000You'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.
00:45:43.000Not for the Islamist dictator of Saudi Arabia.
00:45:46.000My fellow service members and I, we are not your prostitutes.
00:46:53.000And maybe that opportunity is not what is happening right now.
00:46:56.000I think Trump is actually demonstrating a fair bit of common sense here that I think is well worth it.
00:47:03.000Here's Trump yesterday explaining, listen, I haven't promised the Saudis that we're going to protect them.
00:47:09.000At 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.
00:47:52.000As President Trump was talking with the Pentagon, the Pentagon is urging him not to get into a new conflict.
00:47:57.000In 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.
00:48:11.000So there is this delicate dance that is being played.
00:48:14.000One 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.
00:48:23.000on the hook every time Iran, every time Saudi Arabia is in threat of invasion.
00:48:27.000I mean, that's how we ended up in the first Gulf War.
00:48:29.000The United States should be working with foreign nations to flag their vessels.
00:48:33.000The United States should be providing escorts to foreign boats in the Straits of Hormuz.
00:48:38.000Iran 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.
00:48:44.000And 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.
00:48:54.000Deterrence is an aspect of foreign policy.
00:48:56.000There 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.
00:49:04.000We threaten force, like, all the time in American foreign policy.
00:49:07.000And that is what is called deterrence.
00:49:09.000The vast majority of cases, deterrence is enough.
00:49:11.000We have the most powerful military on planet Earth.
00:49:13.000You know who doesn't want war more than the United States?
00:49:29.000I mean, we have too many people in the region.
00:49:31.000Our bases are not sufficiently protected.
00:49:34.000We are stretched militarily because of the Obama year cuts.
00:49:37.000But with that said, foreign policy is a delicate balance of the threat, the credible threat of aggression, Combine with a desire for diffusing situations.
00:49:48.000And I think, frankly, that President Trump has not done a bad job on this front at all.
00:49:52.000And I think he continues to do a good job on Iran.
00:50:31.000He 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.
00:50:37.000He was special defense advisor to the president of Syria in the middle of the Israeli-Syrian conflict.
00:50:44.000And his work was responsible for saving innumerable Israeli lives.
00:52:02.000Here's the reality of Israel's election.
00:52:04.000It does not matter who the prime minister of Israel is.
00:52:06.000The defense policy will be nearly precisely the same.
00:52:09.000The 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.
00:52:20.000Kachov Levan, which is the centrist party, that is a center-right party.
00:52:25.000If 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.
00:52:38.000So we'll see how the elections shake out tonight.
00:52:42.000But 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.
00:53:02.000They're looking like shooting farmers.
00:53:16.000Okay, time for a quick thing that I hate.
00:53:22.000So 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.
00:53:30.000So they finally got rid of Linda Sarsour.
00:54:36.000She actually tweeted out in 2014, blaming Hamas for firing rockets at Apartheid Israel is like blaming a woman for punching her rapist.
00:54:43.000Hamas was democratically elected to govern Palestine, so she's an actual terror supporter.
00:54:48.000The Women's March replaced some anti-Semites with other anti-Semites.
00:54:53.000Also, 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?
00:55:27.000And 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.
00:55:40.000The 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.
00:55:58.000Alrighty, we'll be back here tomorrow with the results of the Israeli election, among other pieces of news.
00:56:02.000I'm Ben Shapiro, this is The Ben Shapiro Show.
00:56:08.000The Ben Shapiro Show is produced by Robert Sterling.