The Ben Shapiro Show - Democrats UNLEASH On Biden Over Hunter Pardon

00:00:00.000 Well, the fallout continues from Joe Biden pardoning his own son for pretty much every crime for a decade.

00:00:05.000 Those that have been charged and those that remain uncharged.

00:00:07.000 We'll get to that in a moment.

00:00:08.000 First, if you haven't heard, Daily Wire Plus is 50% off right now.

00:00:12.000 It is our best deal of the year.

00:00:13.000 That is one full year of uncensored shows, exclusive series, documentaries, and more.

00:00:17.000 Do not wait.

00:00:18.000 The deal ends soon.

00:00:19.000 Head on over to dailywire.com slash cyberweek and join the fight today.

00:00:23.000 All right, so, as we know, on Sunday evening, President Joe Biden decided to give a blanket pardon to his son Hunter for any and all activities.

00:00:30.000 There's a scene in The Three Musketeers in which the Cardinal Richelieu decides that he is going to give one of his henchmen a prospective pardon for anything that he or she is going to do at any point.

00:00:43.000 The note says the bearer has done what has been done.

00:00:46.000 That's essentially what Joe Biden did with his son Hunter.

00:00:49.000 He essentially wrote him a pardon brief that allowed him any crime for about a decade, which is an amazingly broad pardon.

00:00:57.000 In fact, it's almost unprecedented in American history.

00:00:59.000 The only precedent that anybody can find that is this broad is the Gerald Ford pardon of Richard Nixon, which was specifically designed to basically quiet any and all problems surrounding Watergate and any sort of ancillary legal issues that would have arisen there from with regard to Richard Nixon.

00:01:14.000 The goal was get that off the American people's table and let them move on to the next thing.

00:01:18.000 That is not true with regard to Hunter Biden.

00:01:21.000 This is the President of the United States pardoning his son for any and all crimes, including those that were never charged.

00:01:27.000 Now, why is he doing that?

00:01:29.000 He's doing that because he believes that the incoming Trump DOJ is going to look into Hunter Biden's financial improprieties, going to look into the Biden family corruption.

00:01:39.000 And so it's not just about Hunter.

00:01:41.000 It really is about Joe.

00:01:42.000 In fact, you could say that the Richard Nixon precedent is maybe the best precedent here because really what is Joe Biden doing here?

00:01:48.000 He's attempting to pardon himself.

00:01:50.000 He can't pardon himself because he hasn't been charged with any crimes and he wants to pretend that he's not guilty of any crimes.

00:01:55.000 What he's really doing here is he is getting Hunter off the table to get himself off the table.

00:02:00.000 That is the goal.

00:02:00.000 I mean, there's really no other way to explain this.

00:02:03.000 According to Margaret Love, U.S. pardon attorney from 1990 to 1997, this is very broad.

00:02:07.000 She called it unprecedented except for the Richard Nixon pardon.

00:02:10.000 She says, quote, it does not pardon specific offenses, but rather takes a rather broad time span and pardons anything, any crime that may have been committed during that time span.

00:02:19.000 Mark Osler, professor of law at University of St. Thomas, said, quote, this is very unusual.

00:02:23.000 It's unusual enough to grant clemency in a case where there hasn't yet been a conviction.

00:02:26.000 It's rare still to have the breadth of this one.

00:02:29.000 And that's right.

00:02:30.000 I mean, this is an insanely broad pardon.

00:02:32.000 And it's meant to cover everything from violations of the Foreign Agent Registration Act to further tax crimes to the possibility of bribery.

00:02:40.000 It's meant to cover pretty much everything for a decade-long period.

00:02:45.000 Now, Joe Biden is not answering questions about any of this.

00:02:47.000 He issued the pardon and then he immediately went to Angola.

00:02:51.000 I do wonder at this point whether, as almost a transitional move, he resigns from the presidency like a month before his term is up because he clearly no longer cares.

00:03:02.000 He's clearly no longer invested in being president of the United States.

00:03:05.000 He's not been invested in being president of the United States since he was ousted from the nomination for re-election.

00:03:10.000 This is the kind of move that you make when you're saying F you to your own party and to the American people, pardoning your son on any and all charges for a decade, and then taking off on a plane to go to Angola while answering zero questions.

00:03:20.000 Here was President Biden ignoring questions from the press yesterday.

00:03:22.000 Mr. President.

00:03:24.000 Mr. President, what change?

00:03:26.000 Mr. President, what change?

00:03:29.000 He's walking toward Air Force One, just ignoring all the questions as per his usual arrangement.

00:03:34.000 Jill Biden did answer a question.

00:03:36.000 She said that, of course, she supports the pardon because, of course, Hunter Biden is her son.

00:03:40.000 You wouldn't expect anything less from Jill Biden.

00:03:42.000 Obviously, Jill is one of the Biden family members who has been greatly enriched by her husband's presence in politics.

00:03:49.000 Thanks for coming, guys.

00:03:50.000 Dr. Biden, do you support the pardon of Hunter?

00:03:53.000 of course i support the pardon as she hugs a bunch of children during a christmas event Apparently, this was in the offing for a long time.

00:04:17.000 Joe Biden had been claiming since July that he was not going to pardon his son, but he clearly wanted to pardon his son.

00:04:20.000 Everybody knew it.

00:04:21.000 CNN's Jake Tapper reported yesterday that Joe Biden has been discussing this pretty openly inside the White House since June.

00:04:28.000 Sources told CNN today that President Biden did not go through the office of the pardon attorney at the Justice Department as is standard.

00:04:37.000 In fact, President Biden has been discussing pardoning his son with top aides since Hunter's conviction in June, according to NBC News' reporting.

00:04:46.000 Okay, that is amazing.

00:04:48.000 So he didn't go through even the normal pardon procedure.

00:04:50.000 Instead, he just went directly around it.

00:04:52.000 Why?

00:04:53.000 Well, because there are two possible reasons.

00:04:55.000 One is that Joe actually is guilty of further crimes, which certainly is plausible.

00:04:59.000 And given the documentary evidence, Joe Biden was vice president of the United States while his son Hunter was traveling to China, traveling to Ukraine, picking up giant sacks of cash with money being held in trust for, quote unquote, the big guy.

00:05:11.000 That's while his father was vice president of the United States.

00:05:15.000 And that is nothing new.

00:05:16.000 Joe Biden has been venally using his office since he entered office.

00:05:20.000 The reality of Joe Biden's corruption is the baseline of his career.

00:05:26.000 The fact is that since he was elected to the Senate in Delaware, he's been using his office in order to promote his family members, ranging from getting special bank benefits for members of his family to getting jobs for his son Hunter back in the 1990s while giving special benefits to the various companies that hired him.

00:05:44.000 This is really, you know, again, pretty clearly an attempt by Joe Biden to head off questions about his own corruption.

00:05:50.000 But there's something else going on here.

00:05:52.000 And that is something even worse.

00:05:54.000 Right now, Democrats have basically decided that they are going to preemptively use every option on the table rather than sticking with any set of rules.

00:06:04.000 One of the reasons that norms have actually declined in politics, and you keep hearing that Donald Trump has broken the norms, he's breaking all the norms, Let's trace the history here of how and why this pardon happened.

00:06:14.000 So, Joe Biden is pretty openly saying that the reason that he is doing this is because he believes that Donald Trump is going to come in and prosecute him.

00:06:21.000 And the reason he believes that Donald Trump is going to come in and prosecute him is because Donald Trump has been appointing people who have been saying that they might in fact look into Hunter and Joe Biden.

00:06:31.000 That the Biden issues aren't going to end with the Biden presidency.

00:06:34.000 But why is that happening?

00:06:35.000 Why is Donald Trump saying any of that?

00:06:37.000 Why is Joe Biden taking that seriously?

00:06:40.000 Now, Joe Biden would say he's taking that seriously because Donald Trump is that kind of guy.

00:06:43.000 But we know that Donald Trump actually is not that kind of guy.

00:06:46.000 You will recall all the way back to 2015, 2016, when Donald Trump was running for president of the United States and crowds were chanting, lock her up about Hillary Clinton.

00:06:54.000 And Donald Trump said openly in debate that if he were president, Hillary Clinton would probably be in jail.

00:06:59.000 And then you know what he didn't do?

00:07:00.000 Any of that.

00:07:01.000 The DOJ was not activated in order to get his political opponent who had basically been ended on the public stage in a presidential election.

00:07:09.000 You know who did do it?

00:07:10.000 Joe Biden.

00:07:11.000 So after the 2020 election, it was Joe Biden's DOJ that decided to drill down on Donald Trump.

00:07:17.000 And that was after four long years of career appointees inside the FBI and the DOJ drilling down on Donald Trump.

00:07:24.000 So Democrats initiated this conflict, and now they are afraid of the blowback.

00:07:28.000 They're afraid that Donald Trump will do the same thing to them.

00:07:30.000 And so Joe Biden is now preemptively using the pardon power in a unique and unprecedented way in order to avoid this.

00:07:36.000 Well, we have now entered an era where that norm has been broken, too.

00:07:39.000 And so you can imagine easily a situation in which every president the last day in office has to pardon himself and all of his family members just to avoid a future in which the opposite party comes in and prosecutes everybody.

00:07:51.000 You can easily see that happening.

00:07:53.000 Is the next Democratic president going to prosecute Donald Trump for something?

00:07:58.000 I mean, I'd be shocked if they didn't try to.

00:08:01.000 Is the next Democratic president going to come in and pledge to prosecute members of Donald Trump's family?

00:08:05.000 I mean, hell, they basically did it while Donald Trump was president, so why wouldn't they?

00:08:09.000 That is the world in which we now live.

00:08:10.000 Democrats have been breaking precedents and norms for the last 15 years in American politics.

00:08:15.000 And then, in anticipation of Republicans doing the same thing, they break the next norm.

00:08:20.000 So they break the norm about not prosecuting their political opponents.

00:08:23.000 And then in order to prevent Republicans from prosecuting them back, they're issuing blanket pardons to people like Hunter Biden.

00:08:30.000 This is how norms get destroyed.

00:08:31.000 The actual norms destroyers in the country right now are the Democrats.

00:08:35.000 It's Democrats who talk about destroying the filibuster. 0.80

00:08:37.000 It's Democrats who talk about utilizing the deep state in order to thwart the leader of the executive branch.

00:08:43.000 It's Democrats who talk about how they want to pack the Supreme Court. 0.51

00:08:46.000 These are all destructions of norms Democrats are doing.

00:08:49.000 And they're doing it preemptively because they say if we don't do it, the other side will.

00:08:53.000 But here's the thing.

00:08:54.000 When Republicans have power, they're not doing those things.

00:08:57.000 Republicans right now are not talking about nuking the filibuster.

00:08:59.000 Only Democrats are talking about nuking the filibuster if they had a majority. 0.66

00:09:04.000 Now, there's something Republicans can do about many of these things, and that is they can force Democrats to abide by their stated belief system.

00:09:11.000 So if Democrats, for example, right now are very pro-filibuster, Republicans should right now in the Senate, Senate Majority Leader John Thune, incoming Senate Majority Leader Thune, he should immediately say that he is going to pursue a constitutional amendment to enshrine the filibuster in the Constitution.

00:09:26.000 A constitutional amendment requires two-thirds of the members present in the Senate and in the House in order to pass.

00:09:32.000 So, John Thune should say, listen, we're going to pass this overwhelmingly because right now you guys want the filibuster and we're fine with the filibuster, but we're either going to pass it right now and make it part of the Constitution permanently or we're going to nuke it ourselves in 12 or 18 months.

00:09:44.000 That suggestion is not my own.

00:09:46.000 That's a suggestion from my business partner, Jeremy Boring.

00:09:48.000 I think that is quite right.

00:09:49.000 The problem is once we are on a pathway to breaking every norm, the next norm will be broken in expectation that the other side will probably do it.

00:09:56.000 You don't have an arms race of breaking norms.

00:09:59.000 But the problem is that it's actually a one-sided arms race.

00:10:02.000 race, the only party that keeps breaking the norms, and then they're surprised when the rules swing back around on them like a boomerang, are the Democrats.

00:10:09.000 It's amazing.

00:10:11.000 Well, folks, we are now in a period of norm destruction spiraling down into nothingness.

00:10:16.000 If that's not depressing enough, the reality is there are lots of people who actually want to steal your online information.

00:10:21.000 Going online without ExpressVPN, that's like driving without car insurance.

00:10:24.000 Maybe you're a great driver, but with all the crazy people on the road these days, why would you actually take that risk?

00:10:28.000 Every time you connect to public Wi-Fi, cafes, hotels, airports, your personal data is completely exposed.

00:10:33.000 Here's the truly frightening part.

00:10:34.000 Anyone on that same network can access your passwords, banking information, and private details.

00:10:38.000 It doesn't even take a sophisticated hacker to steal your data.

00:10:40.000 The hardware is cheap and readily available.

00:10:42.000 Your personal information is incredibly valuable.

00:10:44.000 Hackers can sell it for up to $1,000 on the dark web.

00:10:47.000 That's exactly why I use ExpressVPN.

00:10:49.000 When I'm traveling for speaking events or broadcasting from different locations, I actually need to know my data is secure.

00:10:54.000 ExpressVPN creates an encrypted tunnel between my device and the internet that's virtually impenetrable.

00:10:58.000 We're talking.

00:10:59.000 Encryption's so strong it would take a supercomputer over a billion years to crack it.

00:11:02.000 It's incredibly simple to use.

00:11:03.000 Just one click and you're protected.

00:11:04.000 It works on all your devices.

00:11:06.000 Phones, laptops, tablets.

00:11:07.000 It's rated number one by CNET and The Verge.

00:11:09.000 It's just about convenience.

00:11:10.000 It's about protecting your digital liberty.

00:11:11.000 Right now, you can take advantage of ExpressVPN's Black Friday, Cyber Monday offer and get the absolute best VPN deal you will find all year.

00:11:18.000 Use my special link, expressvpn.com slash ben.

00:11:20.000 Get four extra months with the 12-month plan or six extra months.

00:11:23.000 With a 24-month plan totally free.

00:11:25.000 That's expressvpn.com slash Ben.

00:11:27.000 Get an extra four or even six months of ExpressVPN for free.

00:11:30.000 Also, you know what the radical left keeps saying?

00:11:31.000 That somehow being pro-life is anti-woman, which is insane.

00:11:35.000 The left wants you to believe killing babies is healthcare and infanticide is quote-unquote reproductive freedom, which is nuts.

00:11:41.000 Here's the thing.

00:11:41.000 We don't just complain about the problem.

00:11:43.000 we solve it, which is where Preborn comes in.

00:11:45.000 They're the largest pro-life organization in America.

00:11:47.000 They're doing something extraordinary.

00:11:48.000 They're actually empowering women. 1.00

00:11:50.000 Unlike the abortion industry, the profits from their vulnerability.

00:11:52.000 When a mom sees her baby on ultrasound, her likelihood of choosing life doubles.

00:11:56.000 And Preborn doesn't just stop there.

00:11:57.000 They provide support for up to two years after birth with diapers, car seats, counseling, actual health care, not the left's pathetic version of it.

00:12:04.000 Here's how you can help save lives.

00:12:06.000 Just 28 bucks, that's less than a week of coffee at Starbucks, sponsors one ultrasound that could save a baby's life.

00:12:10.000 If you have the means, 15 grand will place an entire ultrasound machine in a women's center, saving countless lives for years to come.

00:12:16.000 To donate, dial pound 250, say baby.

00:12:18.000 That's pound 250, baby.

00:12:20.000 Or visit preborn.com slash ben.

00:12:21.000 All gifts are tax deductible.

00:12:23.000 Preborn has a four-star charity rating.

00:12:25.000 That's preborn.com slash ben.

00:12:27.000 Again, preborn.com slash ben.

00:12:30.000 Or dial pound 250 and say keyword baby to donate.

00:12:33.000 I mean, take, for example, the argument that the DOJ has politicized.

00:12:36.000 So, So Democrats politicized the DOJ. They did.

00:12:39.000 Democrats decided during the first Trump administration that insiders at the DOJ were going to initiate a completely spurious investigation into Donald Trump's team.

00:12:48.000 That actually happened during the Obama administration originally.

00:12:51.000 That led to Russiagate.

00:12:53.000 It led to the Mueller report.

00:12:54.000 It led to FBI leaks and James Comey and all the rest of it.

00:12:57.000 They politicized the DOJ. And then Donald Trump noted that the DOJ was politicized.

00:13:03.000 And then Joe Biden claims now that the DOJ is politicized, but only against Democrats.

00:13:08.000 That is the case that he is making.

00:13:10.000 So in his little statement, pardoning Hunter Biden, Joe Biden suggested that his son had been selectively prosecuted.

00:13:15.000 Now, if Donald Trump says that about the DOJ, everybody on the left says that's a lie.

00:13:20.000 There's no way.

00:13:21.000 When Joe Biden says the DOJ selectively prosecuted his son, which isn't true, crickets, absolute crickets.

00:13:27.000 Now, for his part, the special counsel, David Weiss, they push back.

00:13:32.000 They said, quote, there was none and has never been any evidence of vindictive or selective prosecution in this case.

00:13:36.000 In fact, the reality is that Joe Biden and Hunter Biden were let off the hook by the DOJ. Joe Biden and Hunter Biden went out of their way to be let off the hook by the DOJ. The DOJ had Joe Biden dead to right on mishandling of classified information.

00:13:51.000 And Robert Herr wrote a report saying that Joe Biden could not be prosecuted because he was senile.

00:13:55.000 His senility was his get out of jail free card.

00:13:59.000 Hunter Biden was offered a sweetheart deal of all sweetheart deals by the DOJ. Such a sweetheart deal that a judge looked at it and said, there's no way I can sign off on all of this.

00:14:08.000 But still, Joe Biden is claiming selective prosecution by the DOJ. But then at the same time, they want to claim that the DOJ is not politicized.

00:14:14.000 Here's Karine Jean-Pierre yesterday.

00:14:16.000 Does the president believe now and agree with President-elect Trump that the justice system has been weaponized for political purposes and that it needs root and branch reform?

00:14:30.000 No.

00:14:30.000 Read the president's statement.

00:14:32.000 Seriously, read the president's statement.

00:14:34.000 He said he believes in the Department of Justice.

00:14:36.000 He does.

00:14:37.000 He says it in his statement.

00:14:40.000 He also believes that war politics infected the process and it led to a miscarriage of justice.

00:14:46.000 He believes his son was unfairly targeted.

00:14:48.000 He said that what his political opponents have done to my son, that's his words, is cruel and enough is enough.

00:14:55.000 He says he believes in the justice system.

00:14:58.000 And I said both things...

00:14:59.000 No, but no, no, no, but...

00:15:01.000 Both things...

00:15:02.000 Well, I'm not gonna...

00:15:04.000 I can only speak for this president.

00:15:06.000 I'm not gonna speak for anybody else.

00:15:08.000 Well, I mean, you're not going to speak for the president or anybody else.

00:15:10.000 It's literally your job to do that, lady.

00:15:12.000 But again, here's the thing.

00:15:14.000 The real reason that some Democrats today are upset with Joe Biden is not because Joe Biden pardoned Hunter.

00:15:19.000 The real reason they're upset with what Joe Biden did is because once again, A new rule has been set, and they know that rule is going to come back around.

00:15:27.000 It's going to swing back around and hammer them directly in the head.

00:15:31.000 Senator Michael Bennett, Democrat of Colorado, he ripped into Joe Biden yesterday.

00:15:35.000 He said, quote, President Biden's decision put personal interest ahead of duty and further erodes Americans' faith that the justice system is fair and equal for all.

00:15:43.000 He's right about that.

00:15:45.000 But again, it isn't fair and equal for all.

00:15:47.000 Donald Trump had pointed this out.

00:15:49.000 Now Joe Biden is just acknowledging the obvious as well, except this time it actually was fair with regard to his son.

00:15:54.000 And somehow that is now unfair.

00:15:57.000 Claire McCaskill, former senator, she is making clear that the reason she's upset is because it's going to give ammunition to Trump. 1.00

00:16:03.000 She's not upset on principle at what Joe Biden did.

00:16:05.000 If Joe Biden could get away with it, she'd be fine with it.

00:16:07.000 What she's afraid of is that now that the pardon power has been used this way, Donald Trump will use the pardon power this way.

00:16:12.000 Well, then maybe you should tell your own side to stop breaking the norms.

00:16:16.000 And the party of norms is ready to violate any norm in pursuit of power.

00:16:20.000 This is the story of the Democratic Party over the course of my lifetime.

00:16:23.000 They are not in favor of norms.

00:16:25.000 They hate norms.

00:16:26.000 They are willing to destroy every norm, from social institutions like churches to governmental institutions like the Senate and the Supreme Court, solely in pursuit of power.

00:16:34.000 That's what's happening here.

00:16:35.000 Now you're just mad because Joe Biden made it obvious, because he was too stupid to do it subtly, the way that you would prefer.

00:16:41.000 Here's Claire McCaskill lamenting.

00:16:43.000 Here's the thing.

00:16:45.000 Do I understand Joe Biden's pardon?

00:16:48.000 Yes, completely.

00:16:51.000 I get it.

00:16:52.000 It's completely understandable.

00:16:55.000 But the both sides folks out there have just gotten some really powerful ammunition, and for that reason, I hate it.

00:17:03.000 I don't hate it that he did it.

00:17:05.000 I get it.

00:17:05.000 I understand it.

00:17:06.000 I don't blame it.

00:17:07.000 You know, he's a wonderful man, and he loves his family desperately, and I admire him for that.

00:17:14.000 He has a sense of family above almost anything else in the world.

00:17:18.000 But he said he wouldn't do it.

00:17:20.000 Repeatedly, he said he wouldn't do it.

00:17:22.000 Again, the real reason she's upset is not because Joe Biden lied.

00:17:25.000 The real reason she's upset is not because Joe Biden did it.

00:17:27.000 The real reason she's upset is because Joe Biden exposed the fact that Democrats are willing to use power in pursuit of their own agenda at the cost of any and all norms.

00:17:37.000 That is the reality of what Democrats are doing right now.

00:17:40.000 Full credit to Charlemagne the God who pointed this out.

00:17:42.000 He says, listen, you guys have been saying that the Republicans are the norm violators.

00:17:45.000 They're the ones who are breaking the systems, but you guys are the ones breaking the systems too.

00:17:48.000 Don't give me this crap.

00:17:49.000 Good for Charlemagne.

00:17:51.000 I just want Democrats to stop acting like they are on this moral high ground politically when they have shown us they're not, you know, whether it's skipping the primary process when Biden stepped down and things like Biden pardoning his son.

00:18:01.000 Stop acting like y'all the pure party and Republicans aren't.

00:18:05.000 And it also shows me elected officials can do whatever they want as long as they have the political will and courage to do it.

00:18:10.000 You know, that sort of hypocrisy eventually led even some members of the media to actually ask Democrats hard questions.

00:18:17.000 Every so often, the media, when their agenda is exposed, in their own defense, they have to go after Democrats.

00:18:22.000 So you'll remember they did this after Joe Biden was proved senile, live on stage in a debate with Donald Trump.

00:18:27.000 They then had to pretend that they were shocked, shocked that any of this was happening.

00:18:31.000 Well, the media knew full well that Joe Biden is corrupt.

00:18:34.000 They've known for years that Joe Biden is corrupt, but they have to pretend that they are shocked by Joe Biden's corruption, which means that you get these sort of occasional glimpses, like stars emerging from a cloudy sky, of honesty.

00:18:45.000 So yesterday, CNN's Breonna Keller made Democrat of New York Daniel Goldman watch video of himself saying that Joe Biden would not pardon Hunter.

00:18:56.000 You went out on a limb backing up Biden when he said that there would not be a pardon.

00:19:03.000 In July of 2023, just after that plea deal fell through, this is what you said.

00:19:08.000 I want to watch.

00:19:11.000 Do you think a pardon for his son would be a mistake?

00:19:16.000 Yes, and I don't think there's any chance that President Biden is going to do that, unlike his predecessor, who pardoned all of his friends and anyone who had any access to him.

00:19:27.000 And I think you see that in this case, where he kept on, and Merrick Garland kept on, a Trump-appointed U.S. attorney to investigate the president's son.

00:19:36.000 If there is not an indication of the independence of the Department of Justice beyond that, I don't know what we could look for.

00:19:45.000 What does that feel like, watching yourself back then reassuring people that Biden was not going to issue a pardon for his son?

00:19:55.000 Yeah, and I think that if that plea agreement and that plea deal had gone through, there would be no pardon.

00:20:02.000 That was a satisfactory outcome.

00:20:04.000 It had already fallen through.

00:20:06.000 Sorry?

00:20:10.000 When you reacted, this was when the deal had fallen through.

00:20:13.000 And I hear what you're saying about the Kash Patel appointment, but, you know, you took him at his word.

00:20:20.000 So what does that feel like knowing that he's gone back on it?

00:20:28.000 Well, as I said, I'm disappointed that after the plea fell through and it became clear about why it did, including Republican congressional intervention in this case, which made this case very unique and very different from any other case, I think that we all, perhaps I should have as well, recognized that this is not the normal prosecution.

00:20:55.000 I said many times that if Hunter Biden were not Hunter Biden, he would never be charged with these crimes.

00:21:02.000 And when you start to see what Donald Trump is planning to do with his Department of Justice and with his FBI, and the degree to which Hunter Biden has already been shamelessly attacked as a private citizen I certainly understand why the president felt like this miscarriage of justice should not carry forward and that he should not be at risk of retributive prosecution.

00:21:31.000 Okay, enough of this guy.

00:21:32.000 I mean, man, he's just going to keep on humping that basketball over there.

00:21:34.000 It's Dan Goldman.

00:21:36.000 It's amazing.

00:21:36.000 This guy was involved in both impeachment efforts of Donald Trump.

00:21:39.000 But don't worry, the only politicization that happened is with regard to Hunter Biden.

00:21:43.000 Well, the media may sometimes randomly hit the nail on the head, but most of the time, not so much.

00:21:48.000 Because you know what the radical left will never understand?

00:21:50.000 The profound and unshakable bond between the Christian and Jewish communities in America. 1.00

00:21:53.000 While the secular left pushes their anti-religious agenda, Christians and Jews have stood together, defending our shared values and religious liberties.

00:21:59.000 That's why I'm proud to partner with the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews.

00:22:02.000 For over 40 years, they've been doing something remarkable, building bridges between our communities through faith, shared values, and mutual respect.

00:22:09.000 And the fellowship doesn't just talk, they act.

00:22:11.000 Right now, they're on the ground providing real help to vulnerable Jewish families and elderly around the globe.

00:22:14.000 We're talking food, medical care, emergency assistance, security to those who need it most.

00:22:18.000 Look, as someone who has spent years talking about Judeo-Christian values, I can tell you this organization represents exactly what makes our alliance so powerful.

00:22:24.000 It's about Christians and Jews coming together to do what our faiths command, helping people in need.

00:22:29.000 If you wanna be part of this incredible mission, visit benforthefellowship.org.

00:22:32.000 That's benforthefellowship.org.

00:22:34.000 Your support makes a real difference in people's lives.

00:22:36.000 God bless and thank you.

00:22:37.000 It's benforthefellowship.org.

00:22:39.000 Also, we all know tasks that seem to take forever, like sorting through that endless inbox of emails or wrestling with that easy-to-assemble office chair that is not easy to assemble at all, waiting months for your office plant to grow, being stuck in customer service purgatory with an airline.

00:22:51.000 Well, if you're an employer, hiring can feel just as time-consuming and worrying.

00:22:55.000 But here is the good news.

00:22:56.000 ZipRecruiter is changing all of that.

00:22:58.000 They find qualified candidates fast.

00:23:00.000 Today, you can try it for free at ziprecruiter.com slash dailywire.

00:23:03.000 ZipRecruiter isn't just another job site.

00:23:05.000 They're the number one hiring site preferred by employers, according to G2.

00:23:08.000 Their smart technology starts matching your job to qualified candidates the moment you post it.

00:23:12.000 Plus, their powerful matching technology finds top talent quickly and efficiently, saving you both time and money.

00:23:17.000 Let ZipRecruiter find top talent for your roles in no time at all. 0.99

00:23:20.000 See why four out of five employers who post on ZipRecruiter get a quality candidate within day one.

00:23:24.000 If you go to ZipRecruiter.com slash Daily Wire right now, you can try it for free.

00:23:27.000 That's the same price as laughing so hard that your sides hurt or getting a compliment from a random stranger.

00:23:32.000 So much joy.

00:23:33.000 Again, that's ZipRecruiter.com slash DailyWire.

00:23:36.000 ZipRecruiter is indeed the smartest way to hire, which is why we've been using it here at DailyWire for years at this point.

00:23:40.000 You should do the same.

00:23:41.000 Head on over to ZipRecruiter.com slash DailyWire.

00:23:43.000 Okay, well, we have now reached the point in America's institutions where the institutions are perceived by the American public as so corrupt that they require a cleansing.

00:23:51.000 And that is what Donald Trump is pledging to do.

00:23:53.000 Now, is that going to restore a sense of normalcy in the institutions?

00:23:56.000 No, I think that it takes a long time for a sense of normalcy to ever be restored to these institutions.

00:24:01.000 They may have to be completely torn to the ground and rebuilt in order for that legitimacy to return.

00:24:06.000 I mean, that's how badly these institutions have been corrupted.

00:24:09.000 And that predates what is happening here with Joe Biden and Hunter Biden.

00:24:12.000 It's just that Joe Biden and Hunter Biden are making perfectly clear to everybody how corrupt all of this is.

00:24:18.000 It's still fun to watch some Democrats try to defend Joe and Hunter.

00:24:21.000 I mean, you have to give points to Whoopi Goldberg for efforts.

00:24:23.000 Whoopi Goldberg over on The View.

00:24:24.000 She said, don't worry.

00:24:25.000 Joe never lied.

00:24:26.000 Joe never lied.

00:24:27.000 And they don't pay her enough to be this kind of partisan. 1.00

00:24:31.000 Seriously.

00:24:32.000 I mean, she's getting paid a lot of money. 1.00

00:24:33.000 She's not getting paid enough by the Democratic Party. 1.00

00:24:35.000 That's for sure.

00:24:37.000 I respect it as a parent.

00:24:38.000 I understand why he would do it.

00:24:40.000 But I wonder to understand, why lie about it for so long?

00:24:44.000 I would stop calling it a lie.

00:24:47.000 Okay, why repeatedly say you're not going to and you do?

00:24:50.000 And secondarily, for the part of this country, half of it that doesn't support Biden, doesn't know him personally, doesn't get to have phone calls, and they're just looking at a system that seems like it only benefits the people who are in power.

00:25:02.000 What precedent does that set?

00:25:03.000 Well, here's what it says.

00:25:04.000 It's a precedent for all of us to open our eyes because we've elected someone who is in a similar situation, who didn't have a drug problem, who knew what he was doing, who clearly stood and said, I can do this.

00:25:20.000 And he did it.

00:25:21.000 So I think, for many, many reasons, This is very different than any other situation that we have averaged out with.

00:25:33.000 Because when we're talking about who gets a pardon and who doesn't get a pardon, this man, I think Biden had no intentions of pardoning Hunter.

00:25:44.000 And I think the more stuff that went down, I think he said, well, why am I busting my behind to stay straight and do this when nobody else is doing it?

00:25:58.000 Okay, and as Alyssa Farrah points out, the actual reason that Joe said that he wasn't going to pardon Hunter is because he figured that Kamala Harris would.

00:26:05.000 He figured that Kamala Harris would commute a sentence after she was elected president of the United States. 0.99

00:26:09.000 And then hilariously, because God has an amazing sense of humor, Kamala Harris somehow blew the election to Donald Trump in historic fashion. 0.99

00:26:17.000 Okay, well, there is one piece of good news for Republicans aside from the obvious exposure of the Democrats as venal, corrupt, and power-hungry, and that is the unintended consequence of giving a pardon to Hunter Biden is he can no longer plead the Fifth Amendment.

00:26:29.000 It's a point I made yesterday on the show, seconded by Senator Tom Cotton, another Harvard Law School graduate from Arkansas.

00:26:35.000 Here is Senator Cotton.

00:26:37.000 I will say this, though, Joe Biden may come to regret this decision because having given his son a blanket pardon of 11 years to include time when Joe Biden was vice president, Hunter Biden now can't plead the fifth if he appears before Congress.

00:26:52.000 Or appears before a grand jury.

00:26:55.000 He has to testify about exactly what he was up to, for instance, when he was traveling to China on Air Force Two and meeting with Chinese Communist princelings, or why he was being paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to sit on a Ukrainian energy company's board for which he had no qualifications.

00:27:13.000 So that may be one unintended consequence of this pardon that Joe Biden didn't fully think through.

00:27:18.000 OK, that is absolutely true.

00:27:20.000 Now, again, when it comes to the corruption of our institutions, that continues apace.

00:27:24.000 And it really is crisis point in America with regard to the corruption of these institutions.

00:27:28.000 See, as a conservative, I think that institutions are really crucial.

00:27:31.000 They shape the people who go into them.

00:27:33.000 There is a reliance for our liberty on functional institutions.

00:27:36.000 And as those institutions are hollowed out and become corrupt, it makes it very, very difficult for liberty to become the baseline that we all live with.

00:27:44.000 For example, when it comes to free markets, you require a couple of things for free markets to function.

00:27:48.000 One, private property, obviously, and two, consistent rule of law.

00:27:52.000 If there's no consistent rule of law, and anybody can grab anybody else's property at any time, or the government can come in and seize your property at any time, there is no way for markets to function.

00:28:01.000 Because you have no incentive to invest.

00:28:03.000 You know that the money can get stolen at any time.

00:28:05.000 You need workable, consistent rules with institutions that act in unbiased fashion.

00:28:10.000 Well, all of this is now going by the wayside throughout our institutions.

00:28:12.000 This is the corruption of the left.

00:28:15.000 The left has unfortunately always been a sort of post-modernist institution in the sense that it's all about power.

00:28:21.000 Going all the way back to Karl Marx, the argument is that pretty much all human relations are power dynamics and power relations.

00:28:27.000 And thus, you are justified in using any means necessary to accomplish your goals.

00:28:32.000 That was only made clear, obviously, over the course of the 20th century by people on the left.

00:28:36.000 But it's now become part and parcel of pretty much every institution.

00:28:39.000 As the left enters institutions, it corrupts them and destroys them.

00:28:43.000 Whether we were talking about the DOJ, whether we were talking about the FBI, or whether we were talking about the courts.

00:28:48.000 So, Elon Musk has now been hit with an insane judgment.

00:28:52.000 It really is quite insane.

00:28:54.000 So, this insane judgment comes courtesy of a chancellor in Delaware named Kathleen McCormick, who voided a pay plan for Elon Musk.

00:29:04.000 Now, if Elon Musk were not named Elon Musk, if Elon Musk were, in fact, an apolitical president, Totally benign, absolutely anodyne CEO of a company.

00:29:17.000 Would he be having $56 billion in values revoked from him?

00:29:21.000 This is actually a major story because it is a confiscation of private property and an invasion of freedom of contract.

00:29:27.000 So for those who don't know this story, the basic story goes like this.

00:29:31.000 Back in 2018, Elon Musk took control of Tesla and one of the things that he put in place was zero compensation for himself.

00:29:39.000 Zero.

00:29:40.000 There is only one proviso, which is that if he achieved returns on the stock price of Tesla at an extraordinary rate, then he would get a big payday.

00:29:52.000 So, as Nellie Bowles has pointed out at the Free Press, when Elon Musk announced he didn't need a salary from Tesla, but wanted instead to make a bet that if the company grew to a market cap of $650 billion to get an enormous payout, just about everybody laughed.

00:30:05.000 That figure was more than 10 times the value of Tesla at the time.

00:30:09.000 In fact, the New York Times' top business writer, Andrew Ross Sorkin, said it was the, quote, most radical compensation plan in corporate history.

00:30:16.000 Sorkin said, quote, he gets no salary, cash bonus, equity.

00:30:19.000 He gets only equity that vests over time, but only if he reaches these hurdle rates, which are, I dare I say, crazy.

00:30:26.000 The Washington Post-owned business writer said that the deal was, quote, the Elon Musk of corporate pay deals, a cocksure all or nothing moonshot into history.

00:30:34.000 Nobody suggested this was a deal that was designed to bankrupt Tesla or that the deal was an insider deal or anything.

00:30:42.000 The hot take, according to Nellie Bowles, was that the deal was technically kosher, but that Elon Musk must be an idiot.

00:30:47.000 The board unanimously approved the compensation plan.

00:30:50.000 Tesla shareholders then approved the grant with 73% voting in his favor.

00:30:55.000 And then it turns out that Tesla became the largest, most high-value market cap car company on planet Earth.

00:31:01.000 And he hit the mark.

00:31:02.000 And then he got the payday.

00:31:03.000 Except now, this chancellor is attempting to claw it back.

00:31:07.000 According to CNBC... The package, worth about $56 billion, was the largest compensation plan in U.S. history for a public company executive.

00:31:15.000 Tesla said in a post on social media, which Musk owns, that it plans to appeal the ruling.

00:31:19.000 Musk called the ruling absolute corruption.

00:31:21.000 In January, the chancellor, Kathleen McCormick, voided the pay plan, ruling that Musk had individually controlled Tesla and dictated the terms of his own compensation to a board that didn't fairly negotiate.

00:31:30.000 So, Tesla then went back in June at its annual meeting in Texas and asked investors to ratify the 2018 CEO pay plan.

00:31:37.000 And they did.

00:31:39.000 Okay, and then the chancellor still voided the pay plan.

00:31:43.000 McCormick wrote, quote, even if a stockholder vote could have a ratifying effect, it could not do so here.

00:31:48.000 Were the courts condoned the practice of allowing defeated parties to create new facts for the purpose of revising judgments, lawsuits would become interminable.

00:31:55.000 That is the stupidest argument in human history.

00:31:57.000 So, if there is a trial, and then after the trial...

00:32:02.000 You and I decide that we are going to have a settlement.

00:32:04.000 Does the judge suddenly declare, or in the middle of the trial, we decide that we're going to go outside and have a settlement.

00:32:08.000 Does the judge declare that settlement talks are bad because the settlement talks would somehow preclude a judgment from being found?

00:32:14.000 That is not how that works.

00:32:16.000 No one believes that's how the judicial system works.

00:32:19.000 Who actually got paid?

00:32:21.000 Well, somebody did.

00:32:21.000 As it turns out, money did change hands.

00:32:23.000 McCormick ended up approving a $345 million attorney fee award for the lawyers who successfully sued on behalf of a minority of Tesla shareholders in order to void Musk's pay plans.

00:32:33.000 The lawyers got super rich, as always.

00:32:35.000 Musk, for his part, suggests that this is corruption.

00:32:39.000 He is right about that.

00:32:40.000 It is ridiculous.

00:32:41.000 It is a taking in violation of the Constitution of the United States.

00:32:44.000 And you would imagine that Musk is going to appeal here.

00:32:48.000 But you wonder why these institutions are widely perceived as corrupt.

00:32:50.000 This is why they are widely perceived as corrupt.

00:32:54.000 The system on every level is now widely perceived as corrupt, and that is a problem.

00:32:58.000 It is a problem from the DOJ to the FBI to the Delaware Chancellery of Law.

00:33:06.000 It is a massive issue in American public life.

00:33:09.000 Well folks, let's talk about something that actually works.

00:33:11.000 Efficient business finance management.

00:33:13.000 You want to know how to run your company's finances smoother than a well-oiled machine?

00:33:16.000 Check out Ramp.

00:33:17.000 Ramp is a corporate card and spend management software designed to help you save time and put money back in your pocket.

00:33:21.000 Ramp gives your finance team unprecedented control over company spending.

00:33:25.000 You can issue cards to every employee with actual limits and restrictions.

00:33:27.000 A novel concept in today's world of runaway expenses.

00:33:30.000 Ramp's accounting software automatically collects receipts and categorizes your expenses in real time.

00:33:34.000 No more chasing down receipts.

00:33:36.000 Your employees won't waste hours on expense reports, allowing you to close your books eight times faster.

00:33:40.000 Unlike most so-called money-saving solutions, Ramp actually does put cash back in your pocket.

00:33:45.000 Businesses using Ramp save an average of 5% in their very first year.

00:33:48.000 Plus, it's easier to set up than my son's Lego sets.

00:33:50.000 You can get started, issue virtual and physical cards, and start making payments in less than 15 minutes.

00:33:54.000 Whether you have five employees or 5,000.

00:33:56.000 And now, get $250 when you join Ramp.

00:33:59.000 Just go to ramp.com slash Shapiro.

00:34:01.000 That's ramp.com slash Shapiro.

00:34:03.000 R-A-M-P dot com slash Shapiro.

00:34:05.000 Cards issued by Sutton Bank member FDIC.

00:34:07.000 Terms and conditions do apply.

00:34:08.000 That's ramp.com.

00:34:10.000 Also, if you've ever thought about joining Daily Wire Plus, now would be the moment.

00:34:14.000 Our best deal of the year is here.

00:34:16.000 It ends this week, 50% off new annual memberships to Daily Wire Plus.

00:34:19.000 Let me say that again, 50% off for an entire year of Daily Wire Plus.

00:34:22.000 That means one year of uncensored daily shows with limited ads, access to our entire entertainment catalog, including Am I Racist, and Dr. Jordan B. Peterson's new series, The Gospels.

00:34:29.000 And for families...

00:34:31.000 You have unlimited access to our kids at Benke.

00:34:33.000 If you're already a member, it's the holiday season.

00:34:35.000 Give that gift to Daily Wire Plus.

00:34:36.000 Save 50% on a gift membership.

00:34:38.000 There's never been a better time to join.

00:34:39.000 Head over to dailywireplus.com slash cyberweek right now.

00:34:42.000 No code necessary.

00:34:43.000 Just 50% off.

00:34:44.000 But hurry.

00:34:45.000 This deal ends soon.

00:34:46.000 Don't wait.

00:34:46.000 Join the fight today.

00:34:47.000 Meanwhile, Pete Hegseth, President Trump's nominee for Secretary of Defense, has fallen under significant fire, particularly from the press.

00:34:54.000 So there's another hit piece from The New Yorker that came out on Monday, making a wide variety of wild claims about Pete Hegseth.

00:35:01.000 That piece suggests that Hegseth was, quote, forced to step down as president of the advocacy group Concerned Veterans for America made, quote, serious allegations of misconduct.

00:35:10.000 So what exactly are those allegations?

00:35:12.000 Well, some of those allegations are manhandling of strippers, for example.

00:35:17.000 The allegation that he went to some sort of club and was shouting about killing Muslims or something.

00:35:22.000 Okay, the allegations are quite wild.

00:35:26.000 Now, according to Compat Magazine, it is clear that they are probably untrue.

00:35:31.000 Saurabh Amari writes, quote, in interviews with me, two former senior leaders of CVA have denied the whistleblower allegations against Hegseth.

00:35:37.000 They insisted he left the organization voluntarily without any pressure bearing down on him from its funders.

00:35:41.000 Unlike the New Yorker sources, one of Hegseth's CVA defenders spoke on the record.

00:35:45.000 Sean Parnell, former U.S. Army Airborne Ranger who retired as a captain with a Purple Heart and two Bronze Stars and served as senior advisor at CVA during Hegseth's tenure, said, quote, I was just there for most of these alleged incidents, and this stuff is complete fabrication.

00:35:57.000 Parnell asserted the whistleblower claims had come from people who were let go as the organization was growing, weren't fulfilling their duties.

00:36:04.000 They just weren't.

00:36:05.000 Another veteran of the war on terror said, quote, These were false allegations made by a group of disgruntled employees fired by Pete.

00:36:11.000 In some cases, according to this veteran, the complainants attributed their own carousing to Hegseth.

00:36:17.000 Parnell and the second CVA veteran also rejected the New Yorker's claim that Hegseth was forced out of his position at the organization because of personal misconduct.

00:36:25.000 Parnell says, quote, That couldn't be further from the truth.

00:36:27.000 This was right before President Trump began his first term.

00:36:29.000 Pete and I were on media all the time talking about national security and foreign policy.

00:36:32.000 He and I became big believers in Trump's vision of foreign policy.

00:36:35.000 The funders of that organization didn't necessarily believe that.

00:36:37.000 Because of that policy difference over what America's foreign policy and national security policy should be, Pete parted ways.

00:36:42.000 It was 100% professional political differences.

00:36:46.000 Parnell says he was already a Fox News contributor.

00:36:48.000 ABC was interested in him.

00:36:49.000 He didn't leave for no reason at all.

00:36:52.000 But again, the smears are going to keep on coming for Pete Hegseth, largely because so many people see Pete Hegseth as a threat to the system.

00:37:01.000 And meanwhile, Hegseth apparently had a bit of a tête-à-tête with a Fox News reporter.

00:37:09.000 According to Fox News reporter Chad Programme, He was reporting that Pam Bondi might be easier to confirm than Matt Gaetz, but Pete Hegseth could be a problem.

00:37:17.000 And then apparently Hegseth addressed a press gaggle in the halls of the Capitol building.

00:37:22.000 At which point, on tape, CBS News' Nicole Killian asked Hegseth, quote, When you were at Concerned Veterans of America, were you ever drunk while traveling on the job?

00:37:30.000 And Hegseth said, I won't dignify that with a response.

00:37:33.000 Which, again, I think is the proper response from Pete Hegseth at this point.

00:37:37.000 There's a reason why the media are out to get Hegseth in a way that they weren't even out to get, I think, Matt Gaetz.

00:37:43.000 These sort of organic objections to Hegseth do not exist in the same way that they did with regard to Matt Gaetz.

00:37:49.000 And meanwhile, it is clear that the Trump foreign policy is going to be very different from the Joe Biden foreign policy.

00:37:55.000 Yesterday, Trump issued an amazing statement with regard to the hostages currently being held by Hamas.

00:38:01.000 Here is the statement, quote, Everybody is talking about the hostages who are being held so violently, inhumanely, and against the will of the entire world in the Middle East.

00:38:07.000 But it's all talk and no action.

00:38:09.000 Please let this truth serve to represent that if the hostages are not released prior to January 20th, 2025, the date that I proudly assume office as President of the United States, there will be all hell to pay, that's all caps, in the Middle East.

00:38:20.000 And for those in charge who perpetrated these atrocities against humanity, those responsible will be hit harder than anyone has been hit in the long and storied history of the United States of America.

00:38:28.000 Release the hostages now.

00:38:29.000 And now, just imagine if Joe Biden had taken that position from the very beginning of this war.

00:38:33.000 This war would have been over six months ago.

00:38:35.000 Okay, but Donald Trump is doing that.

00:38:38.000 So what exactly is that going to look like for President Trump?

00:38:42.000 Well, there are a wide variety of things that President Trump could do.

00:38:44.000 So for example, he could put heavy pressure on both Qatar and Turkey.

00:38:48.000 Qatar has serious connections with Hamas.

00:38:50.000 That is why the Hamas leadership was until very recently staying in Qatar.

00:38:54.000 Qatar plays all sides of every field.

00:38:56.000 They pour money into American universities.

00:38:58.000 They pour money into soccer teams.

00:39:00.000 They host the Olympics.

00:39:01.000 They host the World Cup.

00:39:03.000 They do all of these things in order to shield themselves from criticism, but they effectively are an Iranian katspa.

00:39:09.000 The United States could easily say that we are going to remove our airbase from Qatar if Qatar doesn't pressure Hamas to release the hostages. 0.64

00:39:16.000 The United States could also take measures against Turkey, the government of Turkey, which is an Islamist government currently supporting Sunni ISIS members in Syria, among others, and currently playing host to wounded Hamas members and Hamas leadership.

00:39:29.000 We could simply say to them, listen, whatever membership in NATO you have is going to be immediately revoked unless you guys get on board, expel Hamas, and force Hamas to release the hostages. 0.75

00:39:40.000 That could certainly be something.

00:39:41.000 In terms of on-the-ground action, let's say that there is no incentive structure from outside the Gaza Strip that could actually be brought to bear on members of Hamas inside the Gaza Strip.

00:39:51.000 There are still things that the United States could do.

00:39:53.000 Number one, the United States could theoretically relieve pressure on the Israelis to We're good to go. 0.81

00:40:17.000 Their goal was to kill enough Israelis to prompt a serious military response in the hopes that Israel would end up mass killing civilians that Hamas could claim that it was the victim and then get the world on board for actions against Israel.

00:40:29.000 That was their pretty open goal.

00:40:31.000 So they don't care if Hamas-affiliated civilians or non-affiliated civilians die in the Gaza Strip.

00:40:36.000 However, it is true that Hamas has been making its money by stealing humanitarian aid at point of gun and then reselling it to people in the Gaza Strip or seizing the aid and using it for themselves.

00:40:46.000 If the United States were to say, listen, no more humanitarian aid until the hostages are given up, at the very least, Hamas would be deprived of its lifeline and its monetary supply.

00:40:53.000 And then there's a proposal that's been put forward by Eugene Kontorovich, who is a legal scholar from Israel.

00:40:59.000 This is a proposal that I think would probably be the most successful proposal.

00:41:03.000 This is a proposal that suggests that the thing that Hamas and terrorists in the Palestinian Authority and the rest care about most is grabbing more and more and more territory.

00:41:14.000 If, however...

00:41:16.000 That were to reverse.

00:41:18.000 If holding the hostages were to result in more territory being annexed by Israel with the permission and acquiescence of the United States, then that would actually reverse the polarity.

00:41:28.000 See, the thing is that if you're going to exert pressure on Hamas, you have to find something they care about.

00:41:32.000 They don't care about dead civilians.

00:41:33.000 They don't seem to care about money very much, obviously, because the Israeli government has been offering a reward of $5 million for any person who frees a hostage and instant transport out of the Gaza Strip.

00:41:46.000 But, Kantorovich points out that one of the things that the United States could do, he says, For every day Hamas does not give up the hostages, America could recognize 100 square dunam of Gaza as a permanent Israeli buffer zone.

00:41:58.000 For every murdered hostage, 1,000 square dunam.

00:42:01.000 And then do it.

00:42:02.000 The war would be over in days.

00:42:04.000 A dunam is approximately a quarter of an acre.

00:42:08.000 So basically, his suggestion is that for every single day that Hamas doesn't give up the hostages, America recognizes that 25 square acres of Gaza disappear. 0.57

00:42:23.000 They become part of a buffer zone in which nobody lives in the Gaza Strip, and the territory just keeps shrinking.

00:42:28.000 So Hamas would have achieved the reverse of its supposed goals in this war, which was to extirpate the state of Israel.

00:42:34.000 Instead, they would be extirpating their own territory.

00:42:36.000 This is easily the best suggestion by Kantorovich.

00:42:39.000 The bottom line is that the entire orientation of the Trump administration is very different from the Biden administration when it comes to this conflict.

00:42:45.000 The Biden administration keeps trying to play halfsies with terrorists over and over and over.

00:42:49.000 In fact, it was the Biden administration playing halfsies with terrorists that led to the breakdown of the ceasefire between Hezbollah and Israel yesterday.

00:42:56.000 So basically, that ceasefire, which was signed just about a week ago, That ceasefire gave Israel the ability to continue to do anti-terror operations if Hezbollah were to ship weaponry or personnel south of the Latani River in Lebanon.

00:43:11.000 And the Biden administration has been yelling at Israel for enforcing that.

00:43:16.000 So basically the Biden administration position is that actually Hezbollah can willy-nilly violate the ceasefire by shipping both personnel and material south of Latani with the acquiescence or in spite of any resistance by the Lebanese armed forces and that Israel could do nothing.

00:43:30.000 Well, the minute that the American government said that publicly, that now gave Hezbollah every ability to do exactly what it wanted to do and up the ante again and violate the ceasefire. 0.52

00:43:40.000 Which is why yesterday Hezbollah fired at Israeli-controlled territory for the first time since the ceasefire was reached last week, prompting Israel to launch a wave of airstrikes in Lebanon as each side blamed the other for violating the tenuous truce.

00:43:50.000 The Israeli military said two Hezbollah projectiles fell in open areas without causing casualties.

00:43:55.000 The Lebanese armed group said its launches had been prompted by, quote, repeated violations of the agreement by the Israeli enemy, describing it as, quote, an initial defensive response that serves as a warning.

00:44:05.000 Now again, the reason that they are doing that is because Hezbollah terrorists have been crossing the Latani, and they've been shipping in materiel, and they've been moving up on the Lebanese border once again.

00:44:15.000 The only reason they think they can get away with that is because Joe Biden is a fool and a simpleton, and so are the rest of the members of his foreign policy administration.

00:44:23.000 They are jokes, and because they are jokes, Hezbollah is treating them as jokes. 0.94

00:44:26.000 That is going to end the minute that Donald Trump enters office.

00:44:30.000 In fact, if Hamas were to cut a deal today, one of the things that would be very clear is that they are cutting a deal because they know that they better cut a deal now with Joe Biden, sop that he is in office, rather than Donald Trump, because they're going to get a much worse deal out of President Trump than they're going to get out of the pathetic and weak-spined Biden administration.

00:44:48.000 Well, folks, meanwhile, over at the Supreme Court, there's a big case that is being heard all about, quote-unquote, transgender rights.

00:44:55.000 What is it really about?

00:44:56.000 Well, the case is called United States v.

00:44:58.000 Scrumetti, and it's about whether a Tennessee law that bans gender transition, sex change techniques used on minors...

00:45:06.000 The basic idea here would somehow be that if you are a state that says that boys cannot become girls and girls cannot become boys and you enshrine that in law, you are violating equal rights under the Constitution, which is an insane contention.

00:45:19.000 Joining me on the line to discuss is Chloe Cole, detransitioner. 0.93

00:45:22.000 So she had a double mastectomy at 15 and draws from her personal experiences to shed light on the distressing consequences of gender-affirming care for adolescents.

00:45:29.000 Chloe, thanks so much for the time.

00:45:31.000 Really appreciate it.

00:45:32.000 Thank you for having me.

00:45:33.000 So for those who don't know your story, why don't you tell your story, how you got sucked into this whole ridiculous worldview and what happened?

00:45:43.000 So growing up, before all this happened to me, I was quite a bit on the tomboyish side, especially considering I have a few older brothers, and I had some body image issues, I had an early puberty, and all of that culminated into me having distress around my sex and my body and just the fact that I was female.

00:46:00.000 I didn't know at the time that these were just normal developmental feelings.

00:46:05.000 Instead, I was affirmed in this newfound male identity by the transgender community and by my doctors.

00:46:13.000 And they had told me, they told me, my parents, that this was the way to go.

00:46:19.000 That I would be happy and healthy and whole in pursuing a gender trench. 0.98

00:46:23.000 And there never was any other alternative that was given to us.

00:46:28.000 They completely ignored the concerns of my parents in regards to how this would affect me over the years and whether I might regret this or not.

00:46:35.000 And they told them Well, if you don't allow your child to basically undergo this as she pleases, then you're probably going to have a dead daughter on your hands versus a live transgender son. 0.99

00:46:48.000 So my parents were completely emotionally manipulated into this.

00:46:51.000 I started the process at a pretty young age.

00:46:54.000 I was 13 years old when I was put on Lupron, which has previously been used as a chemical castration agent and a cancer drug, to stop my puberty.

00:47:04.000 And weekly injections of male hormones. 0.73

00:47:08.000 And at 15 years old I underwent my first and my only surgery during this time.

00:47:13.000 I had a radical double mastectomy to remove my breasts.

00:47:18.000 And it took less than a year after that for me to realize that this all was a mistake.

00:47:24.000 That I never should have gone through this.

00:47:26.000 That this was never actually going to turn me into a young man.

00:47:29.000 I was just becoming a young woman with less parts of my body and less function in my body.

00:47:35.000 And that I was okay.

00:47:37.000 That one day I wanted to become a mother, I wanted to become a wife, and this potential was taking away my ability to do all of that.

00:47:43.000 But I never had to do any of it to be whole in the first place because I was a beautiful child the way that I was.

00:47:51.000 And so at the age of 16, I stopped my transition following this major epiphany for me.

00:47:59.000 That's really why this case is so dear to me.

00:48:03.000 It's the culmination of this battle to protect children all the way up until this point.

00:48:08.000 So, obviously, when people are undergoing gender dysphoria, when people are uncomfortable in their own bodies, the medical industry has decided that they're not, as you mentioned, going to offer any alternatives at all.

00:48:21.000 In fact, it's now considered, quote-unquote, Sort of a gender conversion.

00:48:27.000 It's considered conversion therapy.

00:48:29.000 It's forbidden to suggest that maybe you ought to rethink your presuppositions about what gender you are.

00:48:34.000 In fact, we're supposed to just cut off healthy body parts or inject people with hormones. 0.93

00:48:38.000 Well, since you decided to detransition, what's your mental health been like since then?

00:48:43.000 I mean, I have been much healthier in every single way since then, both physically and psychologically and emotionally.

00:48:53.000 I was done a major disservice being told that my path to happiness was living a lie every day, trying to chase something that could never become true.

00:49:03.000 And I suffered some physical ailments from it, and it was a lot of pressure trying to live as a young man every day, when really I was just a tomboyish, outside-the-box thinking and traumatized young woman.

00:49:20.000 I found, I mean, I still experience discomfort around my sex and around my body to this day, but what has helped that more than lying to myself about who I really am is just accepting that there are things that I cannot change.

00:49:35.000 I cannot change the fact that I was born female, but even as difficult as it can be, there is a lot of beauty in that.

00:49:43.000 There are gifts that come with being born as either male and female, and I was made this way for a reason.

00:49:50.000 So when you look at this case and you hear the arguments that it would be some form of sex discrimination not to allow children to be transitioned, what do you make of that?

00:49:59.000 Obviously, you have a personal stake in this case.

00:50:00.000 Well, it's not discrimination at all, actually.

00:50:02.000 We're not discriminating against children of either sex or children who are trans-identified.

00:50:07.000 We're barring these treatments completely for the use of trying to transition children at all, regardless of how the child feels about it, how they identify it.

00:50:17.000 And sure, a lot of people on the left will claim that this is a subversion of a parent's rights and of children's rights, but no adult has the right to harm a child.

00:50:29.000 A parent's rights end where it infringes on their child.

00:50:33.000 This is very clearly developmentally dangerous for a kid.

00:50:40.000 Whether a child feels in the moment that they are of the opposite sex or they have this distress around their body, those momentary feelings should not dictate how the rest of their life plays out.

00:50:53.000 These are medications and surgeries that affect you permanently.

00:50:58.000 They are not reversible in any capacity.

00:51:01.000 We are arguing whether It's ethical to castrate or disfigure a gendered child is ridiculous enough, but also that we're arguing whether it's constitutional or not is insane. 0.98

00:51:18.000 I mean, when the founding fathers wrote the Constitution, there is no way that they could have foreseen that people in the future would be using it as an excuse to perpetuate the institutional abuse of children.

00:51:34.000 So let's talk for just one second about the reaction to your own detransition.

00:51:38.000 One of the things that I think is so amazing is that the same people who are arguing for tolerance and diversity are radically intolerant and indeed quite angry at people like you who are now making clear that it's a mistake to perform these radical procedures on children.

00:51:53.000 What's been the reaction of sort of transgender advocates to you?

00:51:56.000 From the very beginning of my detransition, before I was even in the public sphere talking about my experience, I received a lot of negative reactions, a lot of hatred.

00:52:08.000 At best, people in the transgender community were slowly distancing themselves from me or telling me that it was making them uncomfortable just as I was talking about my grief and the way that it was affecting me mentally and physically.

00:52:20.000 And at worst, I've had people go out of their way to harass me, to tell me that I should be ashamed of myself, that this is all my fault, that I only had myself to blame in attacking me or my family.

00:52:33.000 And as I've gone public, I mean going into it, I knew that I was going to experience a much greater form of that.

00:52:41.000 I've had protests at pretty much every university that I've spoken at.

00:52:47.000 I've had people send me threats of death, send me physical hate mail, and actively harass my family through their social media.

00:52:58.000 I mean, it's been scary at times.

00:53:01.000 My personal safety has been put at risk just for the fact that I'm talking about my own personal experience and advocating for the safety of children and for their families.

00:53:15.000 But what really shocked me is that I have received so much more love and appreciation and support than I ever have any hate in this journey.

00:53:28.000 Well, that's Chloe Cole. 0.92

00:53:29.000 Chloe, really appreciate your bravery in talking so openly about all of this, and good luck in everything you're doing.

00:53:35.000 Thank you so much.

00:53:37.000 All right, folks, coming up, we're going to get to the latest in the Daniel Penny trial, which is, in fact, just an insane, insane trial of not only an innocent man, but a hero.

00:53:46.000 If you're not a member, become a member.

00:53:47.000 Use Code Shapiro at checkout for two months free on all annual plans.

The Ben Shapiro Show - December 03, 2024

Democrats UNLEASH On Biden Over Hunter Pardon

Episode Stats

Summary

Transcript