The fallout continues from Joe Biden pardoning his own son for pretty much every crime for a decade, including those that have been charged and those that remain uncharged. Joe Biden is not answering questions about this, and then he immediately went to Angola.
00:00:19.000Head on over to dailywire.com slash cyberweek and join the fight today.
00:00:23.000All 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.
00:00:30.000There'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.
00:00:43.000The note says the bearer has done what has been done.
00:00:46.000That's essentially what Joe Biden did with his son Hunter.
00:00:49.000He essentially wrote him a pardon brief that allowed him any crime for about a decade, which is an amazingly broad pardon.
00:00:57.000In fact, it's almost unprecedented in American history.
00:00:59.000The 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.
00:01:14.000The goal was get that off the American people's table and let them move on to the next thing.
00:01:18.000That is not true with regard to Hunter Biden.
00:01:21.000This is the President of the United States pardoning his son for any and all crimes, including those that were never charged.
00:01:29.000He'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.
00:02:00.000I mean, there's really no other way to explain this.
00:02:03.000According to Margaret Love, U.S. pardon attorney from 1990 to 1997, this is very broad.
00:02:07.000She called it unprecedented except for the Richard Nixon pardon.
00:02:10.000She 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.
00:02:19.000Mark Osler, professor of law at University of St. Thomas, said, quote, this is very unusual.
00:02:23.000It's unusual enough to grant clemency in a case where there hasn't yet been a conviction.
00:02:26.000It's rare still to have the breadth of this one.
00:02:30.000I mean, this is an insanely broad pardon.
00:02:32.000And it's meant to cover everything from violations of the Foreign Agent Registration Act to further tax crimes to the possibility of bribery.
00:02:40.000It's meant to cover pretty much everything for a decade-long period.
00:02:45.000Now, Joe Biden is not answering questions about any of this.
00:02:47.000He issued the pardon and then he immediately went to Angola.
00:02:51.000I 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.
00:03:02.000He's clearly no longer invested in being president of the United States.
00:03:05.000He's not been invested in being president of the United States since he was ousted from the nomination for re-election.
00:03:10.000This 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.
00:03:20.000Here was President Biden ignoring questions from the press yesterday.
00:03:50.000Dr. Biden, do you support the pardon of Hunter?
00:03:53.000of 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.
00:04:17.000Joe Biden had been claiming since July that he was not going to pardon his son, but he clearly wanted to pardon his son.
00:04:21.000CNN's Jake Tapper reported yesterday that Joe Biden has been discussing this pretty openly inside the White House since June.
00:04:28.000Sources told CNN today that President Biden did not go through the office of the pardon attorney at the Justice Department as is standard.
00:04:37.000In fact, President Biden has been discussing pardoning his son with top aides since Hunter's conviction in June, according to NBC News' reporting.
00:04:53.000Well, because there are two possible reasons.
00:04:55.000One is that Joe actually is guilty of further crimes, which certainly is plausible.
00:04:59.000And 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.
00:05:11.000That's while his father was vice president of the United States.
00:05:16.000Joe Biden has been venally using his office since he entered office.
00:05:20.000The reality of Joe Biden's corruption is the baseline of his career.
00:05:26.000The 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.
00:05:44.000This is really, you know, again, pretty clearly an attempt by Joe Biden to head off questions about his own corruption.
00:05:50.000But there's something else going on here.
00:05:54.000Right 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.
00:06:04.000One 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.
00:06:14.000So, 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.
00:06:21.000And 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.
00:06:31.000That the Biden issues aren't going to end with the Biden presidency.
00:06:35.000Why is Donald Trump saying any of that?
00:06:37.000Why is Joe Biden taking that seriously?
00:06:40.000Now, Joe Biden would say he's taking that seriously because Donald Trump is that kind of guy.
00:06:43.000But we know that Donald Trump actually is not that kind of guy.
00:06:46.000You 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.
00:06:54.000And Donald Trump said openly in debate that if he were president, Hillary Clinton would probably be in jail.
00:07:01.000The DOJ was not activated in order to get his political opponent who had basically been ended on the public stage in a presidential election.
00:07:11.000So after the 2020 election, it was Joe Biden's DOJ that decided to drill down on Donald Trump.
00:07:17.000And that was after four long years of career appointees inside the FBI and the DOJ drilling down on Donald Trump.
00:07:24.000So Democrats initiated this conflict, and now they are afraid of the blowback.
00:07:28.000They're afraid that Donald Trump will do the same thing to them.
00:07:30.000And so Joe Biden is now preemptively using the pardon power in a unique and unprecedented way in order to avoid this.
00:07:36.000Well, we have now entered an era where that norm has been broken, too.
00:07:39.000And 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.
00:08:54.000When Republicans have power, they're not doing those things.
00:08:57.000Republicans right now are not talking about nuking the filibuster.
00:08:59.000Only Democrats are talking about nuking the filibuster if they had a majority.
00:09:04.000Now, 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.
00:09:11.000So 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.
00:09:26.000A constitutional amendment requires two-thirds of the members present in the Senate and in the House in order to pass.
00:09:32.000So, 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.
00:09:49.000The 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.
00:09:56.000You don't have an arms race of breaking norms.
00:09:59.000But the problem is that it's actually a one-sided arms race.
00:10:02.000race, 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.
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00:12:33.000I mean, take, for example, the argument that the DOJ has politicized.
00:12:36.000So, So Democrats politicized the DOJ. They did.
00:12:39.000Democrats decided during the first Trump administration that insiders at the DOJ were going to initiate a completely spurious investigation into Donald Trump's team.
00:12:48.000That actually happened during the Obama administration originally.
00:13:21.000When Joe Biden says the DOJ selectively prosecuted his son, which isn't true, crickets, absolute crickets.
00:13:27.000Now, for his part, the special counsel, David Weiss, they push back.
00:13:32.000They said, quote, there was none and has never been any evidence of vindictive or selective prosecution in this case.
00:13:36.000In 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.
00:13:51.000And Robert Herr wrote a report saying that Joe Biden could not be prosecuted because he was senile.
00:13:55.000His senility was his get out of jail free card.
00:13:59.000Hunter 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.
00:14:08.000But 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.
00:14:16.000Does 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?
00:15:14.000The real reason that some Democrats today are upset with Joe Biden is not because Joe Biden pardoned Hunter.
00:15:19.000The 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.
00:15:27.000It's going to swing back around and hammer them directly in the head.
00:15:31.000Senator Michael Bennett, Democrat of Colorado, he ripped into Joe Biden yesterday.
00:15:35.000He 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.
00:16:26.000They 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.
00:17:20.000Repeatedly, he said he wouldn't do it.
00:17:22.000Again, the real reason she's upset is not because Joe Biden lied.
00:17:25.000The real reason she's upset is not because Joe Biden did it.
00:17:27.000The 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.
00:17:37.000That is the reality of what Democrats are doing right now.
00:17:40.000Full credit to Charlemagne the God who pointed this out.
00:17:42.000He says, listen, you guys have been saying that the Republicans are the norm violators.
00:17:45.000They're the ones who are breaking the systems, but you guys are the ones breaking the systems too.
00:17:51.000I 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.
00:18:01.000Stop acting like y'all the pure party and Republicans aren't.
00:18:05.000And it also shows me elected officials can do whatever they want as long as they have the political will and courage to do it.
00:18:10.000You know, that sort of hypocrisy eventually led even some members of the media to actually ask Democrats hard questions.
00:18:17.000Every so often, the media, when their agenda is exposed, in their own defense, they have to go after Democrats.
00:18:22.000So you'll remember they did this after Joe Biden was proved senile, live on stage in a debate with Donald Trump.
00:18:27.000They then had to pretend that they were shocked, shocked that any of this was happening.
00:18:31.000Well, the media knew full well that Joe Biden is corrupt.
00:18:34.000They'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.
00:18:45.000So yesterday, CNN's Breonna Keller made Democrat of New York Daniel Goldman watch video of himself saying that Joe Biden would not pardon Hunter.
00:18:56.000You went out on a limb backing up Biden when he said that there would not be a pardon.
00:19:03.000In July of 2023, just after that plea deal fell through, this is what you said.
00:19:11.000Do you think a pardon for his son would be a mistake?
00:19:16.000Yes, 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.
00:19:27.000And 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.
00:19:36.000If there is not an indication of the independence of the Department of Justice beyond that, I don't know what we could look for.
00:19:45.000What does that feel like, watching yourself back then reassuring people that Biden was not going to issue a pardon for his son?
00:19:55.000Yeah, and I think that if that plea agreement and that plea deal had gone through, there would be no pardon.
00:20:10.000When you reacted, this was when the deal had fallen through.
00:20:13.000And I hear what you're saying about the Kash Patel appointment, but, you know, you took him at his word.
00:20:20.000So what does that feel like knowing that he's gone back on it?
00:20:28.000Well, 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.
00:20:55.000I said many times that if Hunter Biden were not Hunter Biden, he would never be charged with these crimes.
00:21:02.000And 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.
00:21:36.000This guy was involved in both impeachment efforts of Donald Trump.
00:21:39.000But don't worry, the only politicization that happened is with regard to Hunter Biden.
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00:23:43.000Okay, 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.
00:23:51.000And that is what Donald Trump is pledging to do.
00:23:53.000Now, is that going to restore a sense of normalcy in the institutions?
00:23:56.000No, I think that it takes a long time for a sense of normalcy to ever be restored to these institutions.
00:24:01.000They may have to be completely torn to the ground and rebuilt in order for that legitimacy to return.
00:24:06.000I mean, that's how badly these institutions have been corrupted.
00:24:09.000And that predates what is happening here with Joe Biden and Hunter Biden.
00:24:12.000It's just that Joe Biden and Hunter Biden are making perfectly clear to everybody how corrupt all of this is.
00:24:18.000It's still fun to watch some Democrats try to defend Joe and Hunter.
00:24:21.000I mean, you have to give points to Whoopi Goldberg for efforts.
00:24:47.000Okay, why repeatedly say you're not going to and you do?
00:24:50.000And 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.
00:25:04.000It'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.
00:25:21.000So I think, for many, many reasons, This is very different than any other situation that we have averaged out with.
00:25:33.000Because 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.
00:25:44.000And 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?
00:25:58.000Okay, 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.
00:26:05.000He figured that Kamala Harris would commute a sentence after she was elected president of the United States.
00:26:09.000And then hilariously, because God has an amazing sense of humor, Kamala Harris somehow blew the election to Donald Trump in historic fashion.
00:26:17.000Okay, 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.
00:26:29.000It's a point I made yesterday on the show, seconded by Senator Tom Cotton, another Harvard Law School graduate from Arkansas.
00:26:37.000I 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.
00:26:55.000He 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.
00:27:13.000So that may be one unintended consequence of this pardon that Joe Biden didn't fully think through.
00:27:20.000Now, again, when it comes to the corruption of our institutions, that continues apace.
00:27:24.000And it really is crisis point in America with regard to the corruption of these institutions.
00:27:28.000See, as a conservative, I think that institutions are really crucial.
00:27:31.000They shape the people who go into them.
00:27:33.000There is a reliance for our liberty on functional institutions.
00:27:36.000And 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.
00:27:44.000For example, when it comes to free markets, you require a couple of things for free markets to function.
00:27:48.000One, private property, obviously, and two, consistent rule of law.
00:27:52.000If 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.
00:28:01.000Because you have no incentive to invest.
00:28:03.000You know that the money can get stolen at any time.
00:28:05.000You need workable, consistent rules with institutions that act in unbiased fashion.
00:28:10.000Well, all of this is now going by the wayside throughout our institutions.
00:28:54.000So, this insane judgment comes courtesy of a chancellor in Delaware named Kathleen McCormick, who voided a pay plan for Elon Musk.
00:29:04.000Now, 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.
00:29:17.000Would he be having $56 billion in values revoked from him?
00:29:21.000This is actually a major story because it is a confiscation of private property and an invasion of freedom of contract.
00:29:27.000So for those who don't know this story, the basic story goes like this.
00:29:31.000Back in 2018, Elon Musk took control of Tesla and one of the things that he put in place was zero compensation for himself.
00:29:40.000There 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.
00:29:52.000So, 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.
00:30:05.000That figure was more than 10 times the value of Tesla at the time.
00:30:09.000In fact, the New York Times' top business writer, Andrew Ross Sorkin, said it was the, quote, most radical compensation plan in corporate history.
00:30:16.000Sorkin said, quote, he gets no salary, cash bonus, equity.
00:30:19.000He gets only equity that vests over time, but only if he reaches these hurdle rates, which are, I dare I say, crazy.
00:30:26.000The 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.
00:30:34.000Nobody suggested this was a deal that was designed to bankrupt Tesla or that the deal was an insider deal or anything.
00:30:42.000The hot take, according to Nellie Bowles, was that the deal was technically kosher, but that Elon Musk must be an idiot.
00:30:47.000The board unanimously approved the compensation plan.
00:30:50.000Tesla shareholders then approved the grant with 73% voting in his favor.
00:30:55.000And then it turns out that Tesla became the largest, most high-value market cap car company on planet Earth.
00:31:03.000Except now, this chancellor is attempting to claw it back.
00:31:07.000According to CNBC... The package, worth about $56 billion, was the largest compensation plan in U.S. history for a public company executive.
00:31:15.000Tesla said in a post on social media, which Musk owns, that it plans to appeal the ruling.
00:31:19.000Musk called the ruling absolute corruption.
00:31:21.000In 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.
00:31:30.000So, Tesla then went back in June at its annual meeting in Texas and asked investors to ratify the 2018 CEO pay plan.
00:31:39.000Okay, and then the chancellor still voided the pay plan.
00:31:43.000McCormick wrote, quote, even if a stockholder vote could have a ratifying effect, it could not do so here.
00:31:48.000Were the courts condoned the practice of allowing defeated parties to create new facts for the purpose of revising judgments, lawsuits would become interminable.
00:31:55.000That is the stupidest argument in human history.
00:31:57.000So, if there is a trial, and then after the trial...
00:32:02.000You and I decide that we are going to have a settlement.
00:32:04.000Does the judge suddenly declare, or in the middle of the trial, we decide that we're going to go outside and have a settlement.
00:32:08.000Does the judge declare that settlement talks are bad because the settlement talks would somehow preclude a judgment from being found?
00:32:21.000As it turns out, money did change hands.
00:32:23.000McCormick 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.
00:32:33.000The lawyers got super rich, as always.
00:32:35.000Musk, for his part, suggests that this is corruption.
00:34:16.000It ends this week, 50% off new annual memberships to Daily Wire Plus.
00:34:19.000Let me say that again, 50% off for an entire year of Daily Wire Plus.
00:34:22.000That 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.
00:34:47.000Meanwhile, Pete Hegseth, President Trump's nominee for Secretary of Defense, has fallen under significant fire, particularly from the press.
00:34:54.000So there's another hit piece from The New Yorker that came out on Monday, making a wide variety of wild claims about Pete Hegseth.
00:35:01.000That 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.
00:35:10.000So what exactly are those allegations?
00:35:12.000Well, some of those allegations are manhandling of strippers, for example.
00:35:17.000The allegation that he went to some sort of club and was shouting about killing Muslims or something.
00:35:26.000Now, according to Compat Magazine, it is clear that they are probably untrue.
00:35:31.000Saurabh Amari writes, quote, in interviews with me, two former senior leaders of CVA have denied the whistleblower allegations against Hegseth.
00:35:37.000They insisted he left the organization voluntarily without any pressure bearing down on him from its funders.
00:35:41.000Unlike the New Yorker sources, one of Hegseth's CVA defenders spoke on the record.
00:35:45.000Sean 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.
00:35:57.000Parnell asserted the whistleblower claims had come from people who were let go as the organization was growing, weren't fulfilling their duties.
00:36:05.000Another veteran of the war on terror said, quote, These were false allegations made by a group of disgruntled employees fired by Pete.
00:36:11.000In some cases, according to this veteran, the complainants attributed their own carousing to Hegseth.
00:36:17.000Parnell 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.
00:36:25.000Parnell says, quote, That couldn't be further from the truth.
00:36:27.000This was right before President Trump began his first term.
00:36:29.000Pete and I were on media all the time talking about national security and foreign policy.
00:36:32.000He and I became big believers in Trump's vision of foreign policy.
00:36:35.000The funders of that organization didn't necessarily believe that.
00:36:37.000Because of that policy difference over what America's foreign policy and national security policy should be, Pete parted ways.
00:36:42.000It was 100% professional political differences.
00:36:46.000Parnell says he was already a Fox News contributor.
00:36:52.000But 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.
00:37:01.000And meanwhile, Hegseth apparently had a bit of a tête-à -tête with a Fox News reporter.
00:37:09.000According 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.
00:37:17.000And then apparently Hegseth addressed a press gaggle in the halls of the Capitol building.
00:37:22.000At 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?
00:37:30.000And Hegseth said, I won't dignify that with a response.
00:37:33.000Which, again, I think is the proper response from Pete Hegseth at this point.
00:37:37.000There'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.
00:37:43.000These sort of organic objections to Hegseth do not exist in the same way that they did with regard to Matt Gaetz.
00:37:49.000And meanwhile, it is clear that the Trump foreign policy is going to be very different from the Joe Biden foreign policy.
00:37:55.000Yesterday, Trump issued an amazing statement with regard to the hostages currently being held by Hamas.
00:38:01.000Here 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.
00:38:09.000Please 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.
00:38:20.000And 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.
00:39:03.000They do all of these things in order to shield themselves from criticism, but they effectively are an Iranian katspa.
00:39:09.000The 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.
00:39:16.000The 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.
00:39:29.000We 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.
00:39:41.000In 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.
00:39:51.000There are still things that the United States could do.
00:39:53.000Number one, the United States could theoretically relieve pressure on the Israelis to We're good to go.
00:40:17.000Their 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.
00:40:31.000So they don't care if Hamas-affiliated civilians or non-affiliated civilians die in the Gaza Strip.
00:40:36.000However, 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.
00:40:46.000If 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.
00:40:53.000And then there's a proposal that's been put forward by Eugene Kontorovich, who is a legal scholar from Israel.
00:40:59.000This is a proposal that I think would probably be the most successful proposal.
00:41:03.000This 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.
00:41:18.000If 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.
00:41:28.000See, the thing is that if you're going to exert pressure on Hamas, you have to find something they care about.
00:41:33.000They 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.
00:41:46.000But, 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.
00:41:58.000For every murdered hostage, 1,000 square dunam.
00:42:04.000A dunam is approximately a quarter of an acre.
00:42:08.000So 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.
00:42:23.000They become part of a buffer zone in which nobody lives in the Gaza Strip, and the territory just keeps shrinking.
00:42:28.000So Hamas would have achieved the reverse of its supposed goals in this war, which was to extirpate the state of Israel.
00:42:34.000Instead, they would be extirpating their own territory.
00:42:36.000This is easily the best suggestion by Kantorovich.
00:42:39.000The bottom line is that the entire orientation of the Trump administration is very different from the Biden administration when it comes to this conflict.
00:42:45.000The Biden administration keeps trying to play halfsies with terrorists over and over and over.
00:42:49.000In fact, it was the Biden administration playing halfsies with terrorists that led to the breakdown of the ceasefire between Hezbollah and Israel yesterday.
00:42:56.000So 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.
00:43:11.000And the Biden administration has been yelling at Israel for enforcing that.
00:43:16.000So 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.
00:43:30.000Well, 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.
00:43:40.000Which 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.
00:43:50.000The Israeli military said two Hezbollah projectiles fell in open areas without causing casualties.
00:43:55.000The 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.
00:44:05.000Now 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.
00:44:15.000The 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.
00:44:23.000They are jokes, and because they are jokes, Hezbollah is treating them as jokes.
00:44:26.000That is going to end the minute that Donald Trump enters office.
00:44:30.000In 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.
00:44:48.000Well, folks, meanwhile, over at the Supreme Court, there's a big case that is being heard all about, quote-unquote, transgender rights.
00:44:56.000Well, the case is called United States v.
00:44:58.000Scrumetti, and it's about whether a Tennessee law that bans gender transition, sex change techniques used on minors...
00:45:06.000The 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.
00:45:19.000Joining me on the line to discuss is Chloe Cole, detransitioner.
00:45:22.000So 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.
00:45:33.000So 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?
00:45:43.000So 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.
00:46:00.000I didn't know at the time that these were just normal developmental feelings.
00:46:05.000Instead, I was affirmed in this newfound male identity by the transgender community and by my doctors.
00:46:13.000And they had told me, they told me, my parents, that this was the way to go.
00:46:19.000That I would be happy and healthy and whole in pursuing a gender trench.
00:46:23.000And there never was any other alternative that was given to us.
00:46:28.000They 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.
00:46:35.000And 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.
00:46:48.000So my parents were completely emotionally manipulated into this.
00:46:51.000I started the process at a pretty young age.
00:46:54.000I 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.
00:47:04.000And weekly injections of male hormones.
00:47:08.000And at 15 years old I underwent my first and my only surgery during this time.
00:47:13.000I had a radical double mastectomy to remove my breasts.
00:47:18.000And it took less than a year after that for me to realize that this all was a mistake.
00:47:24.000That I never should have gone through this.
00:47:26.000That this was never actually going to turn me into a young man.
00:47:29.000I was just becoming a young woman with less parts of my body and less function in my body.
00:47:37.000That 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.
00:47:43.000But 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.
00:47:51.000And so at the age of 16, I stopped my transition following this major epiphany for me.
00:47:59.000That's really why this case is so dear to me.
00:48:03.000It's the culmination of this battle to protect children all the way up until this point.
00:48:08.000So, 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.
00:48:21.000In fact, it's now considered, quote-unquote, Sort of a gender conversion.
00:48:29.000It's forbidden to suggest that maybe you ought to rethink your presuppositions about what gender you are.
00:48:34.000In fact, we're supposed to just cut off healthy body parts or inject people with hormones.
00:48:38.000Well, since you decided to detransition, what's your mental health been like since then?
00:48:43.000I mean, I have been much healthier in every single way since then, both physically and psychologically and emotionally.
00:48:53.000I 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.
00:49:03.000And 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.
00:49:20.000I 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.
00:49:35.000I 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.
00:49:43.000There are gifts that come with being born as either male and female, and I was made this way for a reason.
00:49:50.000So 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?
00:49:59.000Obviously, you have a personal stake in this case.
00:50:00.000Well, it's not discrimination at all, actually.
00:50:02.000We're not discriminating against children of either sex or children who are trans-identified.
00:50:07.000We'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.
00:50:17.000And 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.
00:50:29.000A parent's rights end where it infringes on their child.
00:50:33.000This is very clearly developmentally dangerous for a kid.
00:50:40.000Whether 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.
00:50:53.000These are medications and surgeries that affect you permanently.
00:50:58.000They are not reversible in any capacity.
00:51:01.000We 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.
00:51:18.000I 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.
00:51:34.000So let's talk for just one second about the reaction to your own detransition.
00:51:38.000One 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.
00:51:53.000What's been the reaction of sort of transgender advocates to you?
00:51:56.000From 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.
00:52:08.000At 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.
00:52:20.000And 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.
00:52:33.000And as I've gone public, I mean going into it, I knew that I was going to experience a much greater form of that.
00:52:41.000I've had protests at pretty much every university that I've spoken at.
00:52:47.000I've had people send me threats of death, send me physical hate mail, and actively harass my family through their social media.
00:53:01.000My 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.
00:53:15.000But 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.
00:53:37.000All 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.
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