The Ben Shapiro Show - Donald, Barr The Door | Ep. 954

00:00:00.000 Attorney General Bill Barr speaks out against President Trump's Twitter lawguria.

00:00:04.000 Trump goes after former Chief of Staff John Kelly.

00:00:06.000 And Joe Biden turns on Michael Bloomberg.

00:00:08.000 I'm Ben Shapiro.

00:00:08.000 This is The Ben Shapiro Show.

00:00:10.000 The Ben Shapiro Show is sponsored by ExpressVPN's Surf the web with peace of mind.

00:00:19.000 Signed up now at expressvpn.com slash Ben.

00:00:22.000 Alrighty, so the big story of the day is that President Trump now apparently, sort of, kind of, at odds with his Attorney General, Bill Barr.

00:00:29.000 Why?

00:00:30.000 Because Bill Barr finally had the temerity to tell Trump shut up.

00:00:32.000 I mean, that's basically what happened here.

00:00:34.000 President Trump has an unfortunate habit.

00:00:36.000 The unfortunate habit is he feels the need to sound off on every single topic ever.

00:00:40.000 Now, if you were doing a podcast, or if you were doing a radio show, or even if you were just a commenter on Daily Wire, this would all make perfect sense.

00:00:45.000 The problem is he's the President of the United States, and when he sounds off, it sounds as though he has utilized his authority to effectuate the things that he is sounding off about.

00:00:54.000 So the example that we must use is, of course, the case of Roger Stone.

00:00:58.000 So, CNN reported just a couple of days ago that all four federal prosecutors who took the case against longtime Donald Trump confidant Roger Stone to trial withdrew on Tuesday after top Justice Department officials undercut them and disavowed the government's recommended sentence against Stone.

00:01:11.000 You'll remember that Roger Stone during the campaign was acting as sort of a go-between for various sources who claimed that they had access to WikiLeaks.

00:01:19.000 And then he kept trying to funnel information to Trump.

00:01:21.000 And it was pretty clear that Trump wasn't actively coordinating with Stone to actually go after Hillary Clinton's emails with WikiLeaks or anything like that.

00:01:31.000 But Stone was basically – he kept trying to act as this go-between.

00:01:36.000 He kept trying to get information from WikiLeaks and then pass it on to Trump.

00:01:39.000 And Trump will be like, that's nice, Roger.

00:01:41.000 And then Roger Stone would go and tell witnesses to shut up.

00:01:45.000 I mean, that's what the evidence seems to show.

00:01:46.000 So he is convicted of lying to Congress and he is convicted of a couple of other crimes.

00:01:53.000 And he is given a recommended sentence by Justice Department lawyers of up to nine years.

00:01:58.000 And this was considered way too much by the Attorney General and by the top of the Department of Justice because, after all, there have been a bunch of people who have lied to Congress in the recent past.

00:02:07.000 There have been a lot of people who have lied to official government sources in the recent past, up to and including Andrew McCabe, who was fired from the FBI for lying to the FBI.

00:02:14.000 And yet Roger Stone was the only one who's looking at a decade in prison.

00:02:17.000 And so the generalized perception is that the reason that Roger Stone was being hit with this is specifically because he was an ally of President Trump and specifically because there are members of the jury who are biased against Roger Stone and hated President Trump.

00:02:30.000 So the real question here was, did these prosecutors recommend the correct sentence?

00:02:33.000 Had they run that up the flagpole at the Department of Justice?

00:02:36.000 Had it been approved by the top levels of the Department of Justice?

00:02:38.000 And then, had Trump stepped in to tell his own Attorney General, I want you to lower the sentence?

00:02:42.000 Because there are two possibilities here.

00:02:44.000 Possibility number one, Is that these DOJ lawyers who are on this case did not, in fact, run this thing up the flagpole.

00:02:50.000 They just decided to go rogue because they wanted to humiliate Trump, they wanted to humiliate Barr, and they wanted to humiliate Stone.

00:02:55.000 And they recommended a sentence that was way too long, specifically so that they could then set up a walkout when the AG decided to knock it down.

00:03:03.000 That's possibility number one, and that's basically what's been suggested by the Trump administration.

00:03:06.000 Possibility number two is the more nefarious possibility and troubling possibility, and that is that the President of the United States personally interfered after Barr had already greenlit the sentencing recommendation of Roger Stone.

00:03:18.000 So CNN reported that the rapid fire developments in the case of the prosecutor's withdrawal came one by one through court filings over the course of two hours on Tuesday afternoon, which certainly, by the way, looks pretty coordinated, right?

00:03:28.000 Generally, if you're going to have like a walkout like this, I would assume that's at least somewhat coordinated.

00:03:33.000 It spilled tensions between Justice Department brass and career prosecutors out into the open, raising questions about the Justice Department's independence from political pressure.

00:03:41.000 In a new filing on Tuesday, the U.S.

00:03:42.000 Attorney's Office in Washington revised the sentencing recommendation to be far less than the 79 years recommended on Monday.

00:03:48.000 It was not signed by any of the prosecutors who worked the case.

00:03:51.000 Ultimately, the presiding judge will have the final say on Roger Stone's sentencing.

00:03:55.000 Trump denied any involvement in the sentencing revision, but the turnaround grew howls from congressional Democrats.

00:04:00.000 They, of course, suggested that the DOJ inspector general needed to investigate.

00:04:04.000 Now, first of all, it is not criminal activity, even if Trump interfered with the DOJ, because the DOJ is supposed to have A certain level of independence, but they do work for the president of the United States.

00:04:12.000 The president does have the right to interfere in policy this way.

00:04:15.000 And if you don't like it, we have elections for that sort of thing.

00:04:18.000 Obviously we've had cases in the past in which the president has used his constitutional power in very questionable ways.

00:04:23.000 Most obviously with the Mark Rich pardon under Bill Clinton, which was sort of a similar situation, right?

00:04:28.000 Political ally of President Clinton and then non-senator, but about to be Senator Hillary Clinton, pardoned in the last days of the Clinton administration.

00:04:36.000 And there were a lot of howls of protest.

00:04:39.000 Calls about corruption and all the rest.

00:04:41.000 Which is kind of fascinating, right?

00:04:42.000 You would figure that if he is so anti the administration, he would resign from all of his federal offices.

00:04:46.000 Mike Miranda, Zelensky and Kravis also resigned from the D.C. U.S. Attorney's Office.

00:04:49.000 Zelensky did not resign from the Baltimore U.S. Attorney's Office, where he is based, which is kind of fascinating.

00:04:55.000 You would figure that if he is so anti the administration, he would resign from all of his federal offices.

00:04:59.000 He did not do that.

00:04:59.000 The mass withdrawal was set in motion on Monday when the prosecutors from the D.C.

00:05:04.000 U.S.

00:05:04.000 Attorney's Office, who are Justice Department employees, wrote in a filing that Stone should be sentenced seven to nine years in prison after he was convicted on seven charges last year that came out of the Mueller investigation, including lying to Congress and witness tampering.

00:05:15.000 And then Trump waited on Twitter overnight on Tuesday.

00:05:17.000 He called it a horrible and very unfair situation.

00:05:20.000 And then he tweeted out, the real crimes were on the other side as nothing happens to them.

00:05:23.000 Cannot allow this miscarriage of justice.

00:05:27.000 By midday Tuesday, a senior Justice Department official said the original sentencing recommendation from the prosecutors, transmitted to a judge and signed off on by the office's top prosecutor, had never been communicated to leadership at the DOJ.

00:05:39.000 So the official told CNN that the department was shocked to see the sentencing recommendation.

00:05:43.000 The department believes the recommendation is extreme and excessive and is grossly disproportionate to Stone's Offensive.

00:05:48.000 So the question was, was that coming courtesy of President Trump, or was that coming courtesy of Attorney General William Barr?

00:05:55.000 In just a second, we're going to get to William Barr and we're going to get to the reaction to all of this.

00:05:59.000 We'll get to that momentarily.

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00:07:10.000 Okay, so there's some other questions with regard to the Roger Stone case.

00:07:13.000 Most obviously, that the lead juror in the Roger Stone case ran for Congress as a Democrat in 2012 and spent the intervening several years criticizing Trump and, yes, tweeting about Roger Stone, which is a horrible job of jury vetting.

00:07:25.000 I mean, that is really not a great job of jury vetting by the Defense Council.

00:07:29.000 In this particular case.

00:07:31.000 With all of that said, the question is whether Trump himself interfered or whether Barr had made a decision and then Trump went public and was congratulating Barr on his decision, which again calls the sort of quasi-independence of the DOJ into question, makes it look like Barr is a political hack who's just doing the bidding of President Trump.

00:07:47.000 That's of course exactly how the Democrats wished to make it look. 0.99

00:07:49.000 So this is a giant, stupid stepping on a rake by the President of the United States, Senator Tim Kaine, Democrat of Virginia. 1.00

00:07:56.000 He says, this is how democracies die because Barr was instructed by President Trump to do X, Y, and Z. Again, number one, Trump does in fact have the legal power to do that. 1.00

00:08:04.000 But is it a bad look?

00:08:06.000 Yeah, it's definitely a bad look.

00:08:07.000 Here is Tim Kaine.

00:08:10.000 The president believes he's above the law.

00:08:12.000 This was a real concern after the impeachment was over last week, that the president would view acquittal as just a carte blanche.

00:08:18.000 He can do anything that he wants.

00:08:20.000 Anybody who was just trying to do their job and not fighting against the administration or being inappropriate, but were just raising questions, is now being mowed down with the sickle of this president who's out for revenge.

00:08:33.000 Do you think this is how democracies die?

00:08:36.000 Yes, I do.

00:08:39.000 Unless people snap back and say that's not what we want.

00:08:42.000 Okay, so Tim Kaine again making the case that the Republicans have perverted the Justice Department.

00:08:49.000 They've perverted it, as opposed to Eric Holder.

00:08:51.000 Again, every Republican right now is screaming, screaming to the wind, Eric Holder, Obama's wingman, fast and furious.

00:08:59.000 Loretta Lynch, Mueller investigation, Hillary Clinton, Tarmac, like the politicization of the Justice Department, Janet Reno, like the politicization of the Justice Department has been ongoing.

00:09:08.000 So for everybody to claim that Bill Barr is the first person to be hit with any sort of political pressure, obviously that's untrue.

00:09:14.000 Nonetheless, you have Nancy Pelosi out there saying, this is clearly an abuse of power, it's an abuse of power, except that probably it wasn't. 0.97

00:09:19.000 Again, the solution with President Trump, honestly, the most common answer to President Trump doing a wrong thing, or a thing that appears to be wrong, is he did something dumb.

00:09:28.000 But he didn't actually do the thing that Democrats are accusing him of.

00:09:31.000 This has been true in every situation where Democrats have accused him of a thing.

00:09:34.000 Every situation where Democrats accuse him of a thing, it's Trump has a big mouth is the answer, not Trump did this nefarious thing.

00:09:40.000 So Democrats always treat Trump, it's funny, Trump treats Trump as though he's playing 4D chess.

00:09:45.000 Democrats treat Trump as though he's playing 4D chess.

00:09:48.000 The truth is that Trump is almost never playing 40 chess, right?

00:09:52.000 Trump doesn't play chess.

00:09:53.000 He plays checkers.

00:09:54.000 Okay, and checkers is good enough.

00:09:55.000 That is not a rip on his political skill set.

00:09:57.000 That is not a rip on his instincts.

00:09:59.000 That's to suggest that Trump is nefariously coordinating with the Russians, as opposed to what is obvious.

00:10:02.000 He's going out in public and he is saying what he would say as a caller to this show, Donnie from Queens.

00:10:08.000 It's perfectly obvious.

00:10:10.000 That's what Trump was doing, right?

00:10:11.000 During the campaign, when Trump would go out in public and be like, Vladimir, if you got the emails, release them.

00:10:16.000 Was that Trump coordinating with the Russians, or was that Trump being a big mouth?

00:10:19.000 Which is what the man does.

00:10:21.000 As I've suggested one million times on this program and counting, President Trump's epitaph is going to say, Donald Trump, 45th President of the United States, he said a lot of stuff.

00:10:30.000 And everybody who follows Trump knows this.

00:10:31.000 And if the media were honest, they would understand this too.

00:10:34.000 And if Democrats were honest, they would understand this too.

00:10:36.000 And they could criticize Trump for saying the stuff that he says.

00:10:39.000 When they could say it's bad practice, they could say it's bad form.

00:10:42.000 But instead, they immediately jump to the most conspiratorial version of what Trump is doing here, which is that Trump told William Barr, you need to step in in the Roger Stone case, as opposed to William Barr, who is a career professional, did his job and then Trump proceeded to step all over it.

00:10:56.000 Like your dog having rolled around in the mud and jumping on your fresh carpet.

00:11:00.000 But here's Nancy Pelosi suggesting this is an abuse of power. 0.99

00:11:03.000 It's just Trump mouthing off.

00:11:03.000 It's not an abuse of power.

00:11:05.000 It's always Trump mouthing off.

00:11:07.000 How many times do I have to point out that when Trump mouths off, it rarely is backed by any sort of plan?

00:11:13.000 Trump is the joker of American politics, but like from The Dark Knight, there's no plan.

00:11:16.000 There's no plan. 0.84

00:11:17.000 He's a dog chasing a car.

00:11:19.000 Sometimes he catches the car.

00:11:20.000 There's no plan.

00:11:21.000 But according to his biggest supporters, there's always a plan.

00:11:24.000 According to his biggest detractors, there's always a plan.

00:11:26.000 Okay, politics is not House of Cards, guys.

00:11:28.000 Politics is Veep.

00:11:29.000 Politics is a joke. 1.00

00:11:31.000 Everybody who represents you is an idiot. 1.00

00:11:33.000 And make this absolutely clear, the people you vote for are morons. 1.00

00:11:36.000 They're the same morons you see in everyday life working at your office, except they decided to go into politics. 1.00

00:11:41.000 Which is even more moronic, because they're not even producing anything useful for the world. 1.00

00:11:44.000 This is true of everyone. 1.00

00:11:45.000 It's true of virtually everyone, in all aspects of life, is an idiot. 1.00

00:11:50.000 Always, always, you know, give people the credit of assuming they're dumb, not that they are nefarious or evil, because the vast majority of the time they are in fact dumb and not nefarious or evil. 1.00

00:12:00.000 And even when they are nefarious or evil half the time, it's because they're dumb in the first place. 1.00

00:12:04.000 Like, I think that Bernie Sanders is a dumb-dumb. 1.00

00:12:06.000 I think he believes nefarious and or evil things. 1.00

00:12:09.000 I think it's because he's a moron. 1.00

00:12:11.000 I don't think that Bernie Sanders is a highly intelligent human being. 1.00

00:12:13.000 There are people on the left who are highly intelligent and actually plan out what they're going to say, and they've thought through the theory, and then they come to exactly the wrong conclusions because they have been infused with the thought system that makes people worse.

00:12:25.000 The notion that like everybody in politics is sitting around and planning things, it's just not real.

00:12:30.000 But this is what politicians have an interest in, suggesting the evil nefariousness of the opposite party. 0.97

00:12:34.000 So here's Nancy Pelosi suggesting that President Trump was abusing power by tweeting crap, which is what he does on a daily basis. 0.88

00:12:40.000 This is, by the way, this is why the American people don't pay any attention to Nancy Pelosi when she says this stuff. 0.86

00:12:45.000 It's why the American people didn't pay attention during impeachment.

00:12:47.000 Because the American people were like, All right, so, like, your suggestion is that Trump coordinated an entire nefarious scheme in order to get Joe Biden in Ukraine utilizing Rudy Giuliani.

00:12:59.000 Alternatively, Trump is thin-skinned and says a lot of stuff and says to people things like, go get him, go get him, Rudy.

00:13:06.000 Which sounds more plausible to you?

00:13:08.000 Hey, here's Nancy Pelosi suggesting this is an abuse of power. 1.00

00:13:12.000 This is an abuse of power that the President is again trying to manipulate federal law enforcement to serve his political interests.

00:13:19.000 And the President is what he is.

00:13:23.000 He thinks he's above the law.

00:13:25.000 He has no respect for the rule.

00:13:26.000 But where are the Republicans to speak out on this blatant violation?

00:13:31.000 The Attorney General has stooped to such levels.

00:13:33.000 He's lied to Congress, for which he will be in contempt.

00:13:40.000 Okay, so now, this brings us to Attorney General Barr finally speaking out. 0.98

00:13:49.000 And it's about time, it's about damn time, seriously. 0.94

00:13:51.000 Because, I'll be honest with you, I know a lot of people who work at the White House, obviously. 0.97

00:13:55.000 I mean, like everybody in conservative politics knows somebody who works at the White House.

00:13:58.000 I know lots of people who work at the White House.

00:14:00.000 And a couple of days ago on the podcast, I suggested that this look really bad.

00:14:05.000 And some of my friends at the White House were like, well, did you see the statement that a senior official DOJ gave CNN saying that the lower down DOJ officials did not run this up the flagpole before it was approved?

00:14:14.000 They just kind of sort of went out there with the sentencing.

00:14:16.000 And I said to some of my friends who worked at the White House, like, so why don't you just say that clearly?

00:14:21.000 Why do you not send out Attorney General Barr to say very clearly that he was not manipulated by President Trump here and that Trump basically just decided to sound off like Donnie from Queens calling into the show about his opinion on this matter?

00:14:34.000 Well, yesterday, that's exactly what Attorney General William Barr did.

00:14:37.000 And good for him.

00:14:38.000 Good for him.

00:14:39.000 And, by the way, if you want, this is a great litmus test.

00:14:41.000 If you want to tell who in conservative circles actually is being honest with you, at least some of the time, and who in conservative circles is being entirely dishonest with you, and is just there to act as a sycophantic Press corps for the president.

00:14:54.000 Notice how they react to Barr.

00:14:55.000 Okay, Barr is an excellent civil servant.

00:14:58.000 He has done his job, in my opinion, as Attorney General of the United States.

00:15:01.000 I don't believe the nefarious conspiracy theories about the perversion of William Barr or the perversion of Rod Rosenstein.

00:15:07.000 I never believed that stuff.

00:15:08.000 I never believed about the perversion of Robert Mueller.

00:15:10.000 I didn't believe any of those things.

00:15:11.000 I didn't like Robert Mueller's report.

00:15:13.000 I thought that it was politically motivated, at least in how it was worded.

00:15:16.000 I thought that he exceeded his mandate, but I never thought that Robert Mueller was the bad guy, a nefarious bad guy.

00:15:22.000 And I don't think that William Barr is a nefarious bad guy. 0.90

00:15:24.000 Everybody who, one second ago, was saying, William Barr is the greatest thing since sliced bread, and now that he has crossed the president, they're like, Traitor! 0.98

00:15:31.000 Traitor! 0.98

00:15:32.000 Understand?

00:15:33.000 Those are people who do not have principles.

00:15:34.000 Understand that those are people who are not honestly analyzing politics.

00:15:37.000 They are just giving you the rah-rah Homer fanboy Trump case.

00:15:45.000 OK, even by the way, that case is not good for Trump.

00:15:47.000 It's not good for Trump. 0.99

00:15:48.000 Those fanboys are doing no service to Trump because all they are doing is incentivizing him to continue saying stupid things that undermine his own administration. 1.00

00:15:55.000 I'll get to this in one second. 0.95

00:15:56.000 First, let's talk about the fact that you would never, ever, ever use your Internet without a VPN.

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00:17:17.000 Okay, so finally, we get to William Barr.

00:17:18.000 So William Barr, the Attorney General, he does an interview with ABC last night. 0.88

00:17:22.000 And in this interview, he basically says to President Trump, shut up. 0.95

00:17:24.000 Like, just stop. 0.99

00:17:25.000 Stop.

00:17:26.000 I'm doing my job here, and here you are sounding off, and you're making it sound as though you pressured me into doing my job, when in reality, I'm just doing my job. 0.90

00:17:32.000 Could you just shut up? 0.79

00:17:33.000 Like, seriously. 1.00

00:17:34.000 Just stop.

00:17:35.000 Now, a lot of Trump fans are like, why would William Barr say this?

00:17:38.000 His Twitter is the greatest thing that ever happened to mankind!

00:17:41.000 And William Barr's like, okay, so, you already undercut your former Attorney General Jeff Sessions.

00:17:45.000 Then you brought me in.

00:17:47.000 And I have not recused myself from cases the way that Jeff Sessions did.

00:17:51.000 And by the way, I defended Jeff Sessions, like Ben Shapiro.

00:17:53.000 I personally defended Jeff Sessions.

00:17:54.000 I think he's an honest man.

00:17:56.000 I think William Barr is an honest man.

00:17:57.000 I think most of the people who have worked around Trump, with the exceptions of people like Michael Cohen, are honest men.

00:18:02.000 Okay, so, or, and women. 1.00

00:18:03.000 So William Barr, he finally goes out on ABC News and says, listen, I'm doing my job and it doesn't help when the president is out there making it appear as though I'm a corrupt politico.

00:18:11.000 I will make those decisions based on what I think is the right thing to do, and I'm not going to be bullied or influenced by anybody.

00:18:20.000 And I said at the time, whether it's Congress, newspaper, editorial boards, or the president, I'm going to do what I think is right.

00:18:26.000 I cannot do my job here at the department with a constant background commentary that undercuts me.

00:18:34.000 Tweets made about the department, Of course that's 100% true.

00:18:39.000 our people in the department, our men and women here, about cases pending in the department, and about judges before whom we have cases, make it impossible for me to do my job.

00:18:53.000 Of course, that's 100% true.

00:18:55.000 100% true.

00:18:56.000 And even close allies of the president are coming out and saying, yes, Barr is correct.

00:19:01.000 Barr is correct.

00:19:02.000 Because you're undercutting your own legitimacy as president of the United States when you make it appear that William Barr is like Michael Cohen.

00:19:07.000 That William Barr It's like Roy Cohn, that he's your fixer, right?

00:19:11.000 That is a bad look for the president.

00:19:13.000 And by the way, it's not even true.

00:19:14.000 Barr isn't doing that.

00:19:15.000 So Mitch McConnell, the Senate majority leader, he does this too.

00:19:18.000 He backs Barr. 0.96

00:19:19.000 He says, this is ridiculous. 0.96

00:19:20.000 Like, of course Barr is correct. 1.00

00:19:21.000 And of course Trump should stop tweeting about this crap. 0.99

00:19:23.000 And everyone knows this, okay? 0.99

00:19:24.000 This is not a secret.

00:19:25.000 Again, for all of those in the audience who are big Trump fans and think that it's MAGA MAGA, underwater, upside down, hungry, hungry hippos, whenever the president logs onto Twitter from the bathroom on top of the golden toilet, it's not true.

00:19:36.000 Everyone in the White House knows this.

00:19:37.000 This is not a secret.

00:19:39.000 I don't know who these people are who are treating President Trump's Twitter feed as though it is communi- as though it is filled with communicate from the Kremlin.

00:19:49.000 As though they're decoding Kremlinology.

00:19:50.000 Okay, President Trump tweets stuff that he feels like tweeting.

00:19:53.000 Sometimes that is a good idea.

00:19:55.000 Sometimes that is a very bad idea.

00:19:56.000 This is a case where it was a very bad idea.

00:19:58.000 Here's Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell defending Bill Barr correctly.

00:20:01.000 By the way, there's been no one who's gotten more of Donald Trump's agenda done than this guy right here.

00:20:06.000 Who is really responsible.

00:20:07.000 Like, Trump nominates the judges.

00:20:08.000 It's McConnell's job to ram them through.

00:20:11.000 President Trump has ideas about mitigating the effects of Obamacare.

00:20:14.000 It's Mitch McConnell who makes that happen.

00:20:16.000 President Trump has an impeachment that goes to the Senate.

00:20:19.000 It's Mitch McConnell who handles that thing.

00:20:21.000 So there's been no more beneficial politician in D.C.

00:20:23.000 for Trump than Mitch McConnell.

00:20:24.000 Here's McConnell saying to Trump, Dude, just stop.

00:20:27.000 Please stop.

00:20:27.000 Just stop.

00:20:29.000 The President made a great choice when he picked Bill Barr to be Attorney General.

00:20:32.000 I think the President should listen to his advice.

00:20:34.000 So you have a problem with the President's tweeting as well?

00:20:36.000 I think that if the Attorney General says it's getting in the way of doing his job, maybe the President should listen to the Attorney General.

00:20:43.000 Do you think the tweet about his opinion on the Roger Stone sentencing recommendations is inappropriate political interference?

00:20:50.000 The attorney general has said it's making it difficult for him to do his job.

00:20:54.000 I think the president ought to listen to the attorney general.

00:20:57.000 Of course, that's true.

00:20:58.000 Of course, that's true. 0.98

00:20:59.000 And politically speaking, the more that President Trump appears to be interfering in the process, the more the Democrats are going to be able to make the moral case As false as it is, that Trump is in fact a complete departure from the institution of the presidency, that Trump is a tyrant, that Trump is corrupt.

00:21:14.000 Like why would Trump give material to the left like this?

00:21:16.000 I don't understand.

00:21:17.000 And he doesn't understand either because he doesn't really think about what he's doing when he's on the Twitters.

00:21:22.000 All he would have to do is put one person between him and the enter button on Twitter.

00:21:26.000 That's it.

00:21:27.000 All he would have to do is have one person screen his tweets.

00:21:29.000 Listen, we all know, if you're on Twitter, you know the draw of just being able to fire something off that gives you a momentary sense of thrill.

00:21:35.000 And Trump obviously feels that when he's on Twitter, because that's how Twitter is built.

00:21:38.000 It's literally built to do that.

00:21:39.000 But that does not mean, as president, that this is the best way to do this.

00:21:42.000 Now meanwhile, you know what's another bad look, is attacking your former chief of staff.

00:21:46.000 Again, the best thing that the president can do when it comes to his chief of staff, when it comes to his attorney general, would be to just accept that they do what they do.

00:21:54.000 He's the president of the United States.

00:21:56.000 He doesn't need to respond to every single thing, particularly people he hired.

00:21:59.000 It's not a great look when you hire somebody and then you dump all over them, which he has now done to like half of his cabinet.

00:22:03.000 We'll get to more of this in a second.

00:22:05.000 But first, let us talk about why you need to keep your education going even after you leave school, even after you get a job.

00:22:13.000 So the marketplace is constantly moving, and one of the things you're constantly going to want to do is be upping your game in terms of your credentials, in terms of the amounts of education that you have.

00:22:21.000 But you don't want to spend a fortune.

00:22:22.000 You don't want to go to your local major university, spend a fortune on extension school, get a master's in lesbian dance theory. 1.00

00:22:30.000 No, what you want is a practical bachelor's or master's degree program you can do online, and you can learn at your own pace, and you can study wherever you're most comfortable learning.

00:22:38.000 And this is what Ashford University provides.

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00:22:43.000 Being enrolled in one course at Ashford means you're considered a full-time student.

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00:22:55.000 So get on the road to earning your degree and making your dream job a reality.

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00:23:00.000 Enroll now.

00:23:01.000 Go to ashford.com.edu slash Ben.

00:23:04.000 That's ashford.com.

00:23:06.000 Sorry, ashford.edu slash Ben.

00:23:09.000 Ashford.edu slash Ben to start your degree today.

00:23:12.000 Ashford.edu slash Ben.

00:23:14.000 Keep that education going even as you're earning a living for your family.

00:23:16.000 And go major in something useful.

00:23:17.000 Ashford.edu slash Ben.

00:23:19.000 Ashford.edu slash Ben.

00:23:21.000 Go check them out right now.

00:23:23.000 Okay, so as I say, the president doesn't have to sound off on everything.

00:23:26.000 Immediately after the AG rebukes him.

00:23:28.000 What Trump should do at this point is go silent.

00:23:30.000 Instead, he asserted on Friday that he had a legal right to intervene in federal criminal cases.

00:23:34.000 Because it is more important for him to be right than it is for him to do something smart, apparently.

00:23:38.000 In a morning tweet, Trump quoted Barr as saying the president has never asked me to do anything in a criminal case.

00:23:43.000 And then he said he had so far chosen not to interfere in a criminal case.

00:23:46.000 He says, this does not mean I do not have, as president, the legal right to do so.

00:23:50.000 I do, but I have so far chosen not to.

00:23:54.000 Defeating the point, Mr. President.

00:23:56.000 Obviously, you have the legal powers to do a thing.

00:23:58.000 The President has many legal powers to do things.

00:24:00.000 That does not mean they should be undercutting your Attorney General, who, by the way, is defending you from charges of corruption here.

00:24:06.000 That's what Attorney General Barr is doing. 0.99

00:24:08.000 This is just dumb. 1.00

00:24:09.000 It's just, I'm sorry, it's just stupid. 0.99

00:24:12.000 Stop it. 1.00

00:24:13.000 Just stop it.

00:24:14.000 And the reason you should stop it, by the way, we're gonna get to the Democratic race on the other side. 0.99

00:24:17.000 It's a complete crap show. 1.00

00:24:18.000 It's a crap fest. 1.00

00:24:19.000 Even Bernie Sanders' own supporters are now trying to back him off of his socialism. 0.99

00:24:23.000 We'll get to that in a minute.

00:24:24.000 Like, that's how scared they are that Trump is gonna win re-election.

00:24:26.000 As I have said, day in and day out for months at this point, the person who's most likely to beat Trump in an election is Trump.

00:24:33.000 And when Trump goes off on these tangents, the American people don't care about them.

00:24:36.000 It makes Trump appear petty. 1.00

00:24:37.000 It makes him appear foolish. 1.00

00:24:39.000 It's just, it's a waste of time. 1.00

00:24:40.000 It is stupid. 1.00

00:24:42.000 Another example of this. 1.00

00:24:43.000 So John Kelly, the former chief of staff, he had he had done a an interview with the Atlantic and he was described as defending Alexander Vindman for his testimony against Trump.

00:24:54.000 Saying he said that Vindman, Lieutenant Colonel Vindman, who is this guy who is working inside the White House and who reported the the sort of was involved with the whistleblower is probably the best available information that he had reported the contents of the Ukraine call to this whistleblower who then reported it up the chain.

00:25:09.000 Kelly said we teach them don't follow any legal order and if you've ever given one, you'll raise it to whoever gives it to you that this is an illegal order and then tell your boss.

00:25:16.000 So Trump fired back on Twitter Thursday morning.

00:25:20.000 morning.

00:25:20.000 He said, when I terminated John Kelly, which I couldn't do fast enough, he knew full well that he was way over his head.

00:25:25.000 Being chief of staff just wasn't for him.

00:25:27.000 He came in with a bang, went out with a whimper.

00:25:29.000 But like so many exes, he missed the action and just can't keep his mouth shut, which he actually has military and legal obligation to do.

00:25:35.000 His incredible wife, Karen, who I have a lot of respect for, once pulled me aside and said strongly that John respects you greatly.

00:25:40.000 When we are no longer here, he will only speak well of you.

00:25:43.000 Wrong.

00:25:43.000 OK, now, is this a purposeful conversation that Trump is having here?

00:25:49.000 Like, truly, is it purposeful?

00:25:51.000 Doesn't he have surrogates who just say, like, John Kelly had a different perception of this issue than everybody else.

00:25:54.000 Impeachment is over and Vindman got it wrong.

00:25:56.000 Vindman had serious policy disagreements.

00:25:59.000 But when you bring somebody in, and they are the person who is really sort of your main outlet to the world.

00:26:04.000 This is true.

00:26:05.000 When John Kelly was in the White House, he was reportedly the person who was deciding who would see Trump.

00:26:09.000 And then Trump just craps all over him.

00:26:11.000 He did the same thing with Bolton. 0.98

00:26:12.000 You make enough enemies and you're just waiting to be stabbed in the back. 1.00

00:26:14.000 It's just bad, stupid policy. 1.00

00:26:16.000 It really is. 1.00

00:26:17.000 And then the White House wouldn't stop.

00:26:18.000 So a White House spokesperson came out and contradicted John Kelly, said, I was in the room.

00:26:22.000 She says, Stephanie Grisham.

00:26:24.000 I was in the room with Trump when he backed Trump on things he now criticizes.

00:26:28.000 It's so great.

00:26:28.000 Let's escalate the debate so we can turn this into a week-long story as opposed to John Kelly sounds it off to the Atlantic and no one cared.

00:26:36.000 The Trump administration needs to start understanding the so-called Streisand effect.

00:26:39.000 The Streisand effect is named after Barbara Streisand, the famous singer.

00:26:42.000 There's a famous story where Barbara Streisand's estate in Santa Barbara, I believe, it was photographed in a book of sort of long-range photographs of the coast.

00:26:51.000 And she got mad because she didn't want there to be public photographs of her house.

00:26:55.000 And no one had seen this photograph.

00:26:56.000 It had been viewed like four times, but she was made aware of it.

00:26:59.000 So she actually filed a lawsuit against the photographer. 0.50

00:27:01.000 And immediately, that photo had now been viewed millions of times, so everybody knew what her house looked like.

00:27:06.000 You think anybody was deeply worried about what John Kelly had to say months after he left the White House?

00:27:10.000 Seriously?

00:27:11.000 But now we're just going to elevate the issue and turn it into a week-long story?

00:27:13.000 Like, they have a gift for turning gold into a sow's ear.

00:27:17.000 It's just like, what is the point of this?

00:27:19.000 Here's Stephanie Grisham going after John Kelly. 1.00

00:27:21.000 I was disappointed, obviously, especially I saw some of the comments that he made, and I was in the room with him when he actually backed the president on many of the things that he's now saying, you know, weren't great.

00:27:33.000 Talking about the media especially, I have heard John Kelly say some things about the media, so I thought it was a little disingenuous.

00:27:40.000 It's interesting that he's starting to poke his head out and speak a little bit more, just like John Bolton as we're getting close to an election, but I'll just end it with I was disappointed.

00:27:49.000 Again, there's no point to any of this, especially because the Democrats are imploding.

00:27:53.000 They're in the midst of a slow motion implosion that is delicious to watch.

00:27:56.000 I've been saying, really, for years, not months, years, that all Trump has to do is point like Donald Sutherland at the end of Invasion of the Body Snatchers at the Democrats and he will win re-election.

00:28:08.000 That's all he has to do.

00:28:09.000 Just this.

00:28:11.000 That's all he has to do.

00:28:12.000 No one wants to vote for Bernie Sanders.

00:28:14.000 It's like 25% of the population that likes Bernie Sanders.

00:28:17.000 No one wants Bernie Sanders to be president.

00:28:20.000 Joe Biden is collapsing.

00:28:22.000 Absolutely collapsing.

00:28:24.000 Like the people in the death dream scene from Terminator 2.

00:28:28.000 He is just blowing away with the wind.

00:28:30.000 I mean, he is finished.

00:28:32.000 The Democrats are falling apart.

00:28:34.000 And instead we get stories about Attorney General Barr and John Kelly.

00:28:36.000 What is the point of this?

00:28:37.000 What could possibly be the point?

00:28:39.000 You've got the best economy in the last 50 years.

00:28:41.000 Why is that not the only message coming out of the White House?

00:28:45.000 I keep saying this stuff, and I feel like it's going in one ear and out the other for a lot of folks, especially because everyone agreed that this was the real strategy after the State of the Union address.

00:28:56.000 Everyone agreed that that Trump wins 55% of the vote.

00:28:59.000 Instead, we don't get that Trump for two weeks.

00:29:00.000 We get Trump fighting with his own staff and or undercutting his own attorney general, who, by the way, is again attempting to defend him.

00:29:06.000 Silliness on every level. 0.98

00:29:06.000 Just silliness. 0.98

00:29:07.000 OK, in a second, we're going to get to the Democratic side of the race, where Democrats are now trying to define Bernie as a not socialist.

00:29:14.000 So after spending years Allowing Bernie Sanders to grab the mantle of the party as the socialist candidate.

00:29:19.000 They're trying to now claim that he is not a socialist and that he won't be a socialist as president.

00:29:23.000 Good luck with this.

00:29:24.000 We'll get to that in just one second.

00:29:25.000 First, let us talk about the auto parts that you need.

00:29:28.000 So have you frequently or ever had a situation where something is broken in your car?

00:29:33.000 You got to go to the local auto parts store, but you go there and they don't have the part you're looking for, or they have a generic part that is not perfect for your car.

00:29:40.000 And not only that, it is overpriced.

00:29:42.000 You should be using the power of the online interwebs.

00:29:45.000 This is why you need rockauto.com.

00:29:47.000 The prices at rockauto.com are always reliably low and the same for professionals and do-it-yourselfers.

00:29:52.000 Why would you spend up to twice as much for the same parts?

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00:29:58.000 Quickly see all the parts available for your vehicle and choose the brands, specifications, and prices you prefer.

00:30:03.000 rockauto.com has everything from engine control modules and brake parts to tail lamps, motor oil, even new carpet.

00:30:08.000 Whether it's for your classic or your daily driver, get everything you need in a few easy clicks delivered directly to your door.

00:30:12.000 RockAuto.com is a family business.

00:30:14.000 It serves auto parts customers online for 20 years.

00:30:17.000 Head on over to RockAuto.com right now.

00:30:18.000 See all the parts available for your car or truck.

00:30:21.000 Write Shapiro in their How Did You Hear About Us box so they know that we sent you.

00:30:24.000 Get the best auto parts.

00:30:25.000 Why would you possibly go down to that local auto parts store?

00:30:28.000 It's going to charge you a fortune.

00:30:29.000 You're going to wait in line. 0.98

00:30:30.000 It's going to be a pain in the butt. 0.98

00:30:31.000 Instead, just order the stuff. 0.98

00:30:32.000 It comes in the mail.

00:30:33.000 It's exactly what you need because they've got a great selection and the best price is rockauto.com and write Shapiro in there.

00:30:33.000 And it's great.

00:30:38.000 How did you hear about us box?

00:30:40.000 OK, in just one second, we're going to get into the Democratic side of the aisle, which, again, is just a complete mess.

00:30:44.000 It's a complete mess.

00:30:45.000 And Bernie is dumping out all of his oppo on Michael Bloomberg.

00:30:49.000 I don't know that it's going to make a dent, but the oppo is out there.

00:30:51.000 We'll get to that in one second.

00:30:52.000 First, it is that glorious time of the week when I give a shout out to a Daily Wire subscriber today.

00:30:56.000 It's Noah Johnson on Twitter.

00:30:57.000 He has two dreams, one of which is about to be realized in the pick.

00:31:01.000 Noah is holding his elite beverage vessel and having a cold, snowy winter's day in shorts and a Kansas City Chiefs t-shirt lounging back on what appears to be a plaque in front of his university.

00:31:10.000 The caption reads, My dream is to be featured on The Ben Shapiro Show and for it to go back to being 70 degrees like it was two days ago.

00:31:16.000 Hashtag Mizzou.

00:31:17.000 Hashtag Leftist Tears Tumblr.

00:31:18.000 Hashtag Ben Shapiro Show.

00:31:19.000 Well, today is your lucky day, my friend.

00:31:21.000 Featured, you are.

00:31:22.000 Now, go put on some actual winter clothes before you catch something.

00:31:25.000 Also, we, the Jews, will try and change the weather just for you, so keep a look out for your weather forecast today.

00:31:31.000 Thanks for the pic, really appreciate it.

00:31:32.000 Also, last week, I told you all about this new awesome podcast, The Cold War, what we saw.

00:31:36.000 Over the weekend, the podcast was number one in history podcasts and number five on all of Apple podcasts.

00:31:41.000 I'm not the only one saying it's great.

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00:31:43.000 By the way, stay tuned a little bit later on in the show and I'll show you a little brief interview with the guy who does this particular podcast.

00:31:49.000 The entire podcast is about, as you would imagine, the Cold War and all the big events from the Berlin Airlift and the Korean War to the Cuban Missile Crisis and the Space Race.

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00:32:31.000 So Bernie Sanders, obviously the Democratic front runner, which means that President Trump has a pretty clear road right here.

00:32:45.000 President Trump is in pretty good shape with regard to his opponent, because even Democrats, like mainstream Democrats, are going, this guy's a communist.

00:32:53.000 When I say mainstream Democrats, I mean James Carville, like the head of President Clinton's war room. 0.95

00:32:57.000 So Bernie Sanders slammed Carville, because a few days ago, Carville was on MSNBC, and then he did an interview with Sean Illing over at Vox, where he said, are you guys crazy?

00:33:04.000 Why are you nominating a communist?

00:33:06.000 So Bernie Sanders then slammed James Carville.

00:33:10.000 He fired back at James Carville.

00:33:12.000 And here is what Bernie Sanders had to say on CNN.

00:33:16.000 James, in all due respect, is a political hack who said very terrible things when he was working for Clinton against Barack Obama.

00:33:25.000 I think he said some of the same things.

00:33:29.000 Look, we are taking on The establishment.

00:33:32.000 This is no secret to anybody.

00:33:33.000 We are taking on Trump, the Republican establishment, Carville, and the Democratic establishment. 0.96

00:33:40.000 Okay, so he's terrible and he's a political hack.

00:33:43.000 So Carville responds to Bernie in a perfectly appropriate way.

00:33:48.000 You gotta love James Carville.

00:33:49.000 I mean, at least the dude is honest about who he is.

00:33:51.000 I mean, really.

00:33:52.000 So James Carville immediately tells Peter Hamby, he says, last night on CNN, Bernie called me a political hack.

00:33:57.000 That's exactly who the F I am.

00:33:59.000 I am a political hack.

00:34:00.000 I'm not an ideologue.

00:34:01.000 I'm not a purist.

00:34:02.000 He thinks it's a pejorative.

00:34:03.000 I kind of like it.

00:34:03.000 At least I'm not a communist.

00:34:05.000 I mean.

00:34:09.000 The man has a point.

00:34:10.000 The man has a point.

00:34:12.000 At least he is not a communist.

00:34:14.000 By the way, that should be Trump 2020.

00:34:15.000 Honest to God, that should be his slogan.

00:34:17.000 Seriously, it should be Trump 2020.

00:34:19.000 Not keep America great.

00:34:20.000 It should be Trump 2020. 0.63

00:34:22.000 At least I'm not a communist.

00:34:24.000 I swear, the man wins 60% of the vote.

00:34:26.000 Because Bernie can't even run away from that label.

00:34:29.000 Bernie has been embracing that label his entire career.

00:34:32.000 Trump 2020, at least I'm not a communist, is pretty fantastic.

00:34:35.000 Okay?

00:34:36.000 Suggested by James Carville right there.

00:34:37.000 And I agree.

00:34:40.000 Agree.

00:34:41.000 By the way, mainstream players in the Democratic Party are realizing this.

00:34:44.000 So the Nevada Culinary Union had basically issued a flyer saying that Bernie Sanders is the end of the world.

00:34:49.000 Well now, they announced they would not endorse a candidate ahead of the state's Democratic presidential caucuses.

00:34:54.000 They're considered an organizing behemoth in Democratic politics.

00:34:56.000 They have 60,000 hotel and casino workers across Nevada under their tutelage.

00:35:00.000 The decision came after months of aggressive courting from candidates eager to win support of the politically powerful group.

00:35:06.000 They said, we're not going to endorse any political candidate, but we're committed to people voting.

00:35:09.000 We're going to work really hard to defeat Trump.

00:35:11.000 The decision came a day after the union said it had been viciously attacked by supporters of Bernie Sanders.

00:35:16.000 For a flyer, the group issued this week that was critical of his proposed Medicare for All plan.

00:35:21.000 The union strongly opposes Medicare for All.

00:35:23.000 On Tuesday night, the union distributed a presidential scorecard to its members.

00:35:27.000 The flyer said that Sanders would end culinary healthcare, which led to what union officials described as hundreds of harassing phone calls and Twitter attacks from alleged Sanders supporters, including personal threats to the heads of the union.

00:35:38.000 So everybody started vying for their endorsement.

00:35:41.000 But the culinary union was like, they're the worst. 0.95

00:35:46.000 Sanders is the worst. 0.99

00:35:46.000 Yes, we're endorsing no one, but also Bernie is absolutely the worst. 0.99

00:35:49.000 And what you are starting to see now is even Bernie's own surrogates basically going out there and saying, he doesn't really mean it, guys.

00:35:55.000 He doesn't really mean it.

00:35:57.000 He's not really a socialist.

00:35:59.000 We keep saying he's a socialist, but he's not really a socialist.

00:36:02.000 Now, meanwhile, Bernie keeps claiming, and his surrogates are claiming at the same time, that he's going to do all of these major, ridiculous trillion-dollar plans.

00:36:09.000 We talked about it yesterday.

00:36:10.000 A hundred trillion dollars in new spending over the next ten years, according to Brian Riedel of the Manhattan Institute.

00:36:15.000 He's going to do all that through budget reconciliation, which is insane.

00:36:18.000 That he's going to do it with 51 votes and reconciliation?

00:36:21.000 Sure.

00:36:22.000 Sure he is.

00:36:23.000 Axios reports even with the expanding power of the presidency, Sanders would need Congress to approve the most ambitious ideas he's known for.

00:36:29.000 That's unlikely to happen even under the strongest election scenarios for House and Senate Democrats in November.

00:36:36.000 Says, Medicare for all, the Green New Deal, free college, and other Sanders proposals that excite the Democratic base would likely hit a logjam in the Senate, even with his plans to make expansive use of the power of budget rules to push his ideas through with a bare majority.

00:36:47.000 Okay, but now the Democrats are trying to soft-sell Bernie's socialism.

00:36:51.000 So after years of Bernie saying, what distinguishes me from the rest of the Democrats is that I am a socialist.

00:36:56.000 I think capitalism is bad.

00:36:58.000 And then as I pointed out many times before, he's wanted to have it both ways.

00:37:01.000 On the one hand, he will say things like, Free markets lead to very rich people and very poor people and we need less free markets.

00:37:08.000 And then you'll say, OK, so you're talking like actual communism now.

00:37:11.000 You're talking state owned, state ownership of the means of production.

00:37:16.000 Nope.

00:37:16.000 I mean, Denmark and Norway.

00:37:18.000 But those are capitalist countries.

00:37:20.000 No, but I'm a socialist.

00:37:21.000 I'm not a capitalist.

00:37:22.000 So he's just been redefining the word socialist to mean whatever he wants it to mean for a while.

00:37:26.000 Now, Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez, who is a, she was a member of the Democratic Socialists of America, right?

00:37:31.000 All profit margin is bad.

00:37:33.000 The free markets are terrible.

00:37:34.000 Now AOC is explicitly going out there and downplaying the possibility of Sanders ever effectuating his own agenda.

00:37:40.000 So the promise is that a socialist is different from everybody else because he's going to make revolutionary change.

00:37:45.000 But guys, don't worry.

00:37:46.000 He's not going to make revolutionary change.

00:37:48.000 It's not going to happen.

00:37:50.000 Well, doesn't this undercut the authenticity of the appeal?

00:37:53.000 If the idea is that you're a revolutionary, and then in the back room, you're like, I'm not really a revolutionary.

00:37:58.000 I'm basically like Hillary Clinton, just less hair and technically a man.

00:38:03.000 That's not quite the same pitch.

00:38:04.000 So AOC, AOC, she argued that the realities of governing were an actual argument for someone like Sanders.

00:38:12.000 She said the worst case scenario, we compromise deeply and we end up getting a public option.

00:38:16.000 Is that a nightmare?

00:38:17.000 I don't think so.

00:38:18.000 So Bernie wants to outlaw private insurance, and AOC is basically saying, well, as long as we get some moderate change here.

00:38:25.000 So she's now advocating for Pete Buttigieg's plan, or Amy Klobuchar's plan, or Joe Biden's plan, while Bernie is maintaining that those plans are insufficient and wrong.

00:38:35.000 Which means that someone is dishonest.

00:38:36.000 Ed Morrissey over at Hot Air correctly says, For someone who's selling the revolution on the stump for Sanders, this sounds like a mighty big retreat by AOC on the central plank in his platform, almost certainly an unauthorized walk back.

00:38:46.000 Sanders has other issues in his platform, but Medicare for All is central to his agenda.

00:38:50.000 His economic policies don't work without it, well they don't work at all actually, but especially not without a complete switch to socialized medicine.

00:38:56.000 Furthermore, Sanders has had plenty of opportunities to offer compromises, like Buttigieg's Medicare for all who want it.

00:39:02.000 Sanders has steadfastly refused to water down his vision by a single inch.

00:39:06.000 Don't be so sure that Sanders agrees with Ocasio-Cortez he can't get his agenda through Congress either.

00:39:10.000 But the fact that AOC is walking it back, and it's not just AOC.

00:39:13.000 Paul Krugman is doing the same thing.

00:39:15.000 So Krugman, over at the New York Times, he says that Republicans are constantly calling things socialists that aren't socialists.

00:39:20.000 But then he says, the thing is, Bernie Sanders isn't actually a socialist in any normal sense of the term.

00:39:26.000 Oh, really?

00:39:27.000 Oh, really?

00:39:28.000 Well, welcome to the real world, Democrats who have been claiming that socialism is... Listen to this.

00:39:33.000 He doesn't want to nationalize our major industries and replace markets with central planning.

00:39:36.000 He has expressed admiration not for Venezuela, but for Denmark.

00:39:39.000 He's basically what Europeans would call a social Democrat.

00:39:41.000 And social democracies like Denmark are, in fact, quite nice places to live with societies that are, if anything, freer than our own.

00:39:48.000 Who has been saying this for years?

00:39:50.000 Who?

00:39:51.000 Can I think of someone who's been saying for years that Denmark, Norway, that these are not socialist countries.

00:39:56.000 These are capitalist countries with heavy social welfare systems.

00:39:58.000 And Bernie is dishonest to call himself a socialist while constantly stumping for policies that in many cases are more business friendly than the policies of the United States.

00:40:05.000 Who's been saying that for years?

00:40:06.000 Who gave a speech on this?

00:40:07.000 Like, I think it was at Georgetown, like maybe three years ago.

00:40:10.000 Who's been saying this for years?

00:40:12.000 And then we get, no, no, no.

00:40:13.000 Socialism really is Denmark and Norway.

00:40:14.000 He's a socialist.

00:40:15.000 Those are socialist countries.

00:40:16.000 Socialism is...

00:40:20.000 Okay, so now that the election approaches, now you're going to acknowledge that Bernie isn't actually a socialist.

00:40:24.000 Yeah, I know.

00:40:26.000 I know.

00:40:27.000 Or are you just going to acknowledge that Bernie is in fact a socialist and he wants to nationalize things?

00:40:30.000 Because here's the dirty little secret about Krugman.

00:40:32.000 Bernie's split the baby the whole way.

00:40:34.000 Bernie's never come out against nationalization.

00:40:36.000 He has never come out against municipalizing industry.

00:40:40.000 He doesn't.

00:40:41.000 Krogman, I think, is right here.

00:40:43.000 He says, Why does Sanders call himself a socialist?

00:40:45.000 I say it's mainly about personal branding, with a dash of glee at shocking the bourgeois.

00:40:49.000 His self-indulgence did no harm, as long as he was just a senator from a very liberal state.

00:40:53.000 But if Sanders becomes the Democratic presidential nominee, his misleading self-description will be a gift to the Trump campaign.

00:40:58.000 Okay, so basically now, you have Sanders trapped between a rock and a hard place.

00:41:01.000 On the one hand, socialism is deeply unpopular, but socialism is also the only branding separation between Bernie and Biden.

00:41:08.000 Really?

00:41:09.000 Like the policies of Biden are not that far removed from policies of Bernie.

00:41:12.000 When people talk about a moderate lane in the Democratic Party, they are talking about the difference between Trotsky and Lenin.

00:41:17.000 There is no actual moderate lane in the Democratic Party.

00:41:20.000 Biden and Buttigieg are not far separated in policy from Bernie Sanders.

00:41:24.000 It's just that Bernie wants it immediately, and Biden and Buttigieg say they want it gradually.

00:41:28.000 The difference between Elizabeth Warren's second plan, which was gradually go to Medicare for All, and her first plan, which was immediate Medicare for All, was three years.

00:41:36.000 Biden, by the way, Biden says he's not in favor of Medicare for All.

00:41:41.000 But as a first step, do you think Biden's in favor of a public option that morphs into Medicare for All? 0.92

00:41:46.000 You bet your ass he is.

00:41:47.000 Within five years, Biden will be something for Medicare for All. 0.99

00:41:50.000 Within six months, if Bernie Sanders is the nominee.

00:41:53.000 So the fact is that the separation between the Bernie wing of the party and the rest of the party is not obvious and never was obvious.

00:42:00.000 So Bernie had to separate himself off by calling himself a socialist.

00:42:03.000 But the problem is if you do that, Americans don't like socialism because at least they're not communists.

00:42:08.000 And so now he's having to revise that.

00:42:10.000 And now he's having to say, oh, by the way, when I say socialism, I'm not actually a socialist.

00:42:14.000 Oh, really?

00:42:15.000 OK. 1.00

00:42:15.000 OK, so Democrats are trapped with this crap nominee, with this really bad nominee. 1.00

00:42:20.000 Meanwhile, Joe Biden, who has high name recognition, is well liked in the black community. 0.99

00:42:25.000 has had until the last five minutes, high approval ratings, has completely fallen apart in the middle of this race.

00:42:31.000 James Clyburn, representative from South Carolina, he says, listen, if Biden loses South Carolina, this is basically his last stand.

00:42:37.000 If Biden loses South Carolina, he's toast.

00:42:38.000 What happens if Joe Biden does not win South Carolina?

00:42:42.000 He would be in a very precarious situation.

00:42:46.000 in.

00:42:48.000 He needs to win South Carolina to demonstrate that his philosophy about the campaign is correct.

00:42:57.000 Okay, that is right.

00:42:59.000 That is right.

00:43:00.000 If Joe Biden loses South Carolina, he is done.

00:43:02.000 But Biden is also correct when Biden says that Democrats don't want to campaign with a socialist.

00:43:06.000 Biden's points about Sanders are exactly true.

00:43:09.000 I think the next president has to beat Trump.

00:43:11.000 They have to bring along a Democratic Senate.

00:43:14.000 I went out into 24 states for 66 candidates.

00:43:19.000 They're all the front-line candidates.

00:43:21.000 They're in purple states and red states.

00:43:23.000 We won back the House.

00:43:24.000 We increased governorships.

00:43:26.000 And best of my knowledge, I don't think anybody asked Bernie to come in and campaign there.

00:43:31.000 This is exactly right.

00:43:33.000 Bernie doesn't have it.

00:43:34.000 So the Democrats are freaking out, and they should be freaking out.

00:43:36.000 So who shall they turn to?

00:43:38.000 Who shall they turn to?

00:43:39.000 Well, as Biden fades, people are increasingly turning to Michael Bloomberg, which means that Biden is now turning on Michael Bloomberg.

00:43:45.000 He says he wants to debate Michael Bloomberg.

00:43:46.000 He wants to hit him on redlining and stop-and-frisk.

00:43:48.000 There's only one problem. 1.00

00:43:49.000 This is idiocy. 1.00

00:43:49.000 The reason that this is idiocy is because, number one, Biden was the guy behind the 1994 criminal justice bill. 1.00

00:43:57.000 So he was one of the people behind it, which is part of the same movement that was behind things like stop-and-frisk generally. 0.97

00:44:02.000 And Biden's own history working with people who are in favor of actual segregation obviously has come back to bite him once in the campaign.

00:44:09.000 But beyond that, what is the strategy here for Joe Biden?

00:44:12.000 You take out Michael Bloomberg, in which state exactly?

00:44:16.000 In which state?

00:44:16.000 Because it's either make or break for Joe Biden in South Carolina.

00:44:20.000 If Joe Biden loses South Carolina, he's out of the race.

00:44:22.000 He's toast.

00:44:23.000 If he loses South Carolina to Bernie Sanders, he's finished.

00:44:25.000 And that means he has to drop out.

00:44:26.000 Well, Bloomberg isn't technically even in the race yet.

00:44:29.000 Bloomberg doesn't get into the race until the following week.

00:44:31.000 Look at the calendar.

00:44:32.000 Bloomberg is not on any ballots until after South Carolina.

00:44:35.000 So if Biden were to fall in South Carolina and he simultaneously hurt Michael Bloomberg in this debate, how has that benefited the so-called moderate wing of the party that opposes Bernie Sanders?

00:44:44.000 Instead, you've knocked down the guy who's spending $300 million and rising in national polls and now, according to one poll, leading in Florida.

00:44:51.000 Leading in Florida.

00:44:52.000 Michael Bloomberg.

00:44:53.000 So this is, I mean, what Joe Biden is doing by going after Michael Bloomberg is basically the same thing that Chris Christie did to Marco Rubio in New Hampshire in 2016.

00:45:00.000 It's a murder-suicide.

00:45:01.000 It's a political murder-suicide.

00:45:03.000 He's trying to take out Michael Bloomberg in advance of presumably him losing South Carolina, followed by Michael Bloomberg being hit on all of the things that Joe Biden is bringing up.

00:45:12.000 So here's Joe Biden, for some reason, believing that his chief rival to the nomination is Michael Bloomberg, as opposed to Bernie Sanders.

00:45:20.000 Which again, that's putting an awful lot of stock in South Carolina.

00:45:23.000 Look, if Biden had any, if Biden had any wherewithal at all, he would get out of the race.

00:45:27.000 The chances that he's going to win, I think, I think he's a heavy, I think he's a heavy loser in South Carolina.

00:45:33.000 I'd be shocked if he wins South Carolina.

00:45:34.000 Here's Joe Biden going after Bloomberg nonetheless.

00:45:37.000 Well, one of the advantages and disadvantages, I've been the only guy through this process so far, a person who's been totally vetted.

00:45:43.000 I mean, I've been a target on my back since I got in.

00:45:46.000 I'm still standing.

00:45:48.000 And I'm going to get a chance to debate Mayor Bloomberg.

00:45:51.000 I'm going to get a chance to debate him on everything from redlining to stop and frisk to a whole range of other things.

00:45:57.000 Okay, so he's gonna go after Bloomberg again.

00:45:59.000 What is the strategy here?

00:46:00.000 This is the big problem for the Democrats.

00:46:01.000 If they don't mobilize their so-called moderate wing, that doesn't really exist.

00:46:06.000 If they don't mobilize that so-called moderate wing, then Bernie's gonna take the nomination. 0.56

00:46:10.000 So instead, you've got Joe Biden, who is strategically inept, going after Michael Bloomberg.

00:46:14.000 Again, if he wants to win South Carolina, hitting Michael Bloomberg isn't gonna help him one iota.

00:46:17.000 Seriously, if his strategy is to win South Carolina, he needs to knock down Bernie.

00:46:20.000 He doesn't need to knock down Bloomberg.

00:46:22.000 How the hell does it help him to hit Bloomberg?

00:46:24.000 Bloomberg isn't on the ballot in South Carolina. 1.00

00:46:26.000 It's massive, massive idiocy. 0.99

00:46:28.000 Meanwhile, Bernie Sanders is dropping every piece of oppo he can on Michael Bloomberg. 1.00

00:46:32.000 There's only one problem.

00:46:33.000 Some of the oppo on Michael Bloomberg actually cuts in favor of his ability to win in the middle of the country.

00:46:37.000 The fact that Michael Bloomberg was tough on crime is not a bad pitch to people who are living outside of New York City.

00:46:42.000 By the way, it wasn't a bad pitch for people living inside New York City.

00:46:44.000 The man was a three-term mayor of New York City.

00:46:47.000 So this is all amazing to watch.

00:46:49.000 This is why I say, President Trump, Stop with the Twitter.

00:46:53.000 Just point.

00:46:54.000 Just keep retweeting James Carville.

00:46:56.000 And again, take his suggestion.

00:46:57.000 Trump 2020.

00:46:58.000 At least I'm not a communist.

00:47:00.000 Pretty fantastically, fantastically good slogan.

00:47:03.000 Okay, time for a quick thing I like and then we'll get to a quick thing that I hate.

00:47:07.000 So, things that I like today.

00:47:08.000 I promised you earlier on in the program that I was going to play you a bit of an interview that I did.

00:47:11.000 A little bit earlier with Bill Whittle.

00:47:13.000 Bill is the host of The Cold War, a brand new podcast that we have been working on here at Daily Wire.

00:47:17.000 It went to number one in history on the Apple podcast.

00:47:20.000 It went to number five overall.

00:47:21.000 It really is fantastic.

00:47:22.000 It's great listening.

00:47:23.000 It's dramatic.

00:47:24.000 I sat down with Bill.

00:47:24.000 We talked about The Cold War and we talked about the implications for The Cold War in today's politics, particularly since we apparently are going to nominate an emissary of the USSR for the Democratic Party.

00:47:35.000 We're joined on set by Bill Whittle.

00:47:37.000 Bill, of course, is an author, public speaker, and he's provided political commentary for Fox News, National Review, among other things.

00:47:42.000 He's also the writer and performer of Apollo 11, What We Saw, the podcast series, which went to number one on iTunes, and is back with season two, The Cold War, What We Saw, which couldn't be more relevant today.

00:47:52.000 Bill, thanks for stopping by.

00:47:53.000 Great to be here, Ben.

00:47:54.000 So let's talk about The Cold War, What We Saw.

00:47:56.000 What is the actual scope of the series?

00:47:59.000 What's it about?

00:48:00.000 Well, it's a 42-year piece of history, and that's a lot of history.

00:48:03.000 And I wanted to tell the story from the point of view that I've never heard it told about before.

00:48:08.000 People talk about the conflict, and there's the economic, and the military, and all the rest of it.

00:48:12.000 But I wanted specifically to concentrate on the moral aspects, the moral differences between these two sides.

00:48:18.000 Because the way it's taught retroactively, it's kind of, oh, it's Coke versus Pepsi, and a team blue, team red.

00:48:24.000 More or less the same.

00:48:25.000 Big misunderstanding.

00:48:26.000 Two giant militaristic countries with these armies and missiles.

00:48:30.000 And they're more or less the same.

00:48:32.000 But they're not.

00:48:33.000 They're not more or less the same.

00:48:34.000 What I basically did was I decided, with all of the terms that have changed so much, liberals, conservatives, hawks, and so on, it's individualist versus collectivist.

00:48:42.000 That's the Cold War right there.

00:48:45.000 It's a collectivist ideology that's been here from the beginning of time, namely that the peasants are just dispensable pieces of people that you throw into the machine versus this brand new ideology of individualism.

00:48:59.000 And when the Cold War started, this collectivist idea just kind of limped and then started to run from the East, from Stalingrad, and then this individualist philosophy came ashore at Normandy.

00:49:09.000 And where they met at the end of World War II was what began the stage for World War III.

00:49:15.000 So with all of that said, we're seeing the Cold War obviously has great echoes today in the United States.

00:49:20.000 I mean, when the Soviet Union fell, there was a widespread perception that communism had been defeated.

00:49:25.000 Right.

00:49:25.000 And now we see Bernie Sanders, who backed literally every communist regime of the 20th century, you know, so long as he has been alive.

00:49:32.000 And he is in all likelihood going to be the Democratic nominee.

00:49:35.000 So what exactly has happened that Americans forgot about the moral conflict in which, by the way, the Democratic Party was on the right side of this during the Cold War?

00:49:42.000 Yeah, yeah.

00:49:42.000 Oh, absolutely.

00:49:43.000 Truman and Kennedy and yeah.

00:49:46.000 Bernie Sanders took his honeymoon, you know, if you really want to go someplace with your beloved, someplace where you can relax, kind of kick back.

00:49:51.000 What better than Moscow in early spring?

00:49:54.000 There's video of Bernie in a room with other Russians and he's singing, "This land is your land, this land is my land." Bernie Sanders must know that, well, Bernie Sanders supporters we saw on tape, some of his campaign organizers talking about how swell the Gulag was and how swell the White Sea Canal is.

00:50:10.000 The worst of the places in the Gulag was a camp called Colima.

00:50:15.000 Where the temperature in the winter, coincidentally, is the only place where Fahrenheit and centigrade match.

00:50:20.000 It's 40 degrees below zero.

00:50:22.000 And Bernie's position would be, well, it wasn't a death camp like the Nazis.

00:50:26.000 It was a work camp.

00:50:28.000 It was a work camp.

00:50:28.000 And your life expectancy was about a year.

00:50:31.000 And if you lived, if you were working in the gold mines, it was four months.

00:50:35.000 We think that probably 800,000 people, maybe a few more, died in Colima.

00:50:40.000 That's one camp in the entire 300 plus camps of the Gulag.

00:50:45.000 That means that Colima, on the leaderboard from hell, is probably third.

00:50:50.000 Auschwitz first, Treblinka second, Colima third, in terms of number of people who've been murdered in one particular patch of land.

00:50:57.000 Bernie Sanders goes over to this place and sings, this land is your land, this land is my land.

00:51:02.000 One of the guys who was in his campaign said, socialism, well, first of all, after he talked about putting political opponents in the gulags, which he then went on to defend, He also said, and they got together and built this canal.

00:51:14.000 The people got together and just built a canal.

00:51:17.000 Well, Genghis Khagoda, who was head of the secret police, had attempted to impress Stalin by building a canal from the Baltic to the White Sea.

00:51:26.000 And he used 125,000 laborers from the prisons.

00:51:32.000 25,000 of them were killed on the job.

00:51:35.000 That's 177 individual human lives per mile.

00:51:39.000 And when the canal was finished, it was built so quickly that they couldn't put any ships through it.

00:51:45.000 And this is what Bernie's campaign people and Bernie himself think of as the model society.

00:51:51.000 The reason we're even talking about having a socialist today is because we have never had a consistent, ongoing, factual, pointing out point by point of how many people have to die to make this thing work.

00:52:09.000 And the final, final, final thing is this.

00:52:11.000 Fidel Castro is a man of the people.

00:52:13.000 He was a man of the people.

00:52:15.000 When he died, he had $800 million in his personal bank account.

00:52:21.000 Lennon didn't go back to being a failed lawyer.

00:52:23.000 Trotsky didn't do this.

00:52:24.000 And Bernie Sanders, who's talking about income inequality, has three houses.

00:52:28.000 I mean... Well, Bill Whittle, the series is The Cold War, What We Saw.

00:52:31.000 As you can tell, Bill is an expert in American history and in world history.

00:52:35.000 His last podcast, Apollo 11, What We Saw, is fantastic.

00:52:38.000 If you haven't listened to that, you should.

00:52:39.000 And make sure you tune in for The Cold War, What We Saw.

00:52:42.000 I'm sure it's going to be brilliant and well-produced, as always.

00:52:44.000 I know, because we help.

00:52:45.000 Pleasure, Ben.

00:52:45.000 So go check it out right now, The Cold War, What We Saw.

00:52:48.000 Bill, thanks so much for stopping by.

00:52:49.000 Pleasure, Ben.

00:52:49.000 Good to see you.

00:52:50.000 It's always great to be here.

00:52:50.000 So I agree with me, obviously.

00:52:52.000 Go check out The Cold War, dailywire.com slash coldwar.

00:52:55.000 All righty, time for a quick thing that I hate.

00:52:58.000 So there's a person named Dana Schwartz, an American journalist and author who was previously a correspondent at Entertainment Weekly.

00:53:07.000 Yesterday, she was trending on Twitter.

00:53:09.000 Why?

00:53:09.000 Well, because she was attacking South Park.

00:53:11.000 South Park is bad.

00:53:13.000 South Park is canceled.

00:53:14.000 South Park is mean and cruel and bad and canceled.

00:53:17.000 She tweeted out, in retrospect, it seems impossible to overstate the cultural damage done by South Park, the show that portrayed earnestness as the only sin and taught that mockery is the ultimate inoculation against all criticism.

00:53:27.000 Okay, couple notes on this.

00:53:30.000 It is extraordinary, and she continues, that smugness is not the same as intelligence, provocation isn't the same as bravery, the lesser of two evils aren't the same.

00:53:38.000 So I generally agree with the principle that mockery is not a substitute for actual values.

00:53:44.000 But I'm not going to hear that from a bunch of people on the left who worship at the altar of Jon Stewart.

00:53:48.000 Jon Stewart spent years just making smug faces at cameras with a live audience.

00:53:54.000 By the way, Jon Stewart's show was so reliant on the live audience that if you actually removed the live audience, his show would lose all the laughs.

00:53:59.000 It's like a sitcom from the 1980s.

00:54:01.000 You remove the laugh track, and it just ain't funny anymore.

00:54:03.000 And Jon Stewart was heavily dependent on that live audience.

00:54:06.000 But the fact is that smugness and mockery have been the hallmark of the Comedy Central left for a very long time.

00:54:11.000 And South Park was on Comedy Central, too.

00:54:13.000 The real problem that Dana Schwartz has is she doesn't like the people that South Park attacks. 0.98

00:54:17.000 She doesn't like the fact that South Park attacks quote-unquote victims, according to the left.

00:54:23.000 Now what South Park has really done is it's focused in on the insufferable, the insufferable smugness of the left.

00:54:29.000 So it's not smug about people on the left with values, it's smug about people on the left who are cynically attempting to use faux values in order to cram down a particular version of society. 0.92

00:54:41.000 The most famous sort of image from South Park along these lines is a bunch of San Francisco liberals smelling their own farts, right?

00:54:47.000 That's sort of the South Park message.

00:54:49.000 But that is the reality of the situation.

00:54:52.000 Trying to rip on South Park as sort of a sign of Western civilization's decline is pretty amazing.

00:54:58.000 Again, if you want to make the case that South Park is crude and rude and lewd, all of that is true.

00:55:04.000 But I don't remember the left ever objecting to crude, rude, and lewd, so long as it was siding with them. 0.99

00:55:09.000 What they don't like about South Park, the reason they're angry about South Park, is because South Park dares to speak some truths about politically correct stupidity. 0.97

00:55:15.000 And therefore, it is bad, and therefore, it is cancelled. 0.96

00:55:17.000 So, by the way, South Park is... I never watched it as a kid, because it was too lewd, rude, and crude for me.

00:55:24.000 As an adult, I've watched some episodes.

00:55:26.000 It's quite brilliant.

00:55:27.000 I mean, for adults, it's really funny.

00:55:29.000 The writing on it is hysterically, hysterically funny because Matt Stone and Trey Parker are actually extremely talented people, much more talented than any of the comedy writers who ever worked for Jon Stewart.

00:55:40.000 And meanwhile, quick update on coronavirus.

00:55:42.000 Just to make your weekend brighter, I feel like we should do an update on coronavirus.

00:55:45.000 So China has now announced 5,000 new cases and 121 new deaths.

00:55:49.000 It's really fun to watch.

00:55:50.000 As the Chinese government stifles all information about coronavirus and then immediately suggests that they are being transparent with the people of Earth and that everything is under control.

00:56:00.000 They've basically turned into Kevin Bacon in Animal House, shouting that everything is under control while they're running after people in the streets, tackling them and dragging them away.

00:56:11.000 It's pretty astonishing stuff.

00:56:13.000 The latest from China is that their coronavirus outbreak showed no signs of peaking, with health authorities on Friday reporting more than 5,000 new cases, while passengers on a cruise ship blocked from five countries due to virus fears finally disembarked in Cambodia, which is a great place to disembark.

00:56:27.000 Policymakers pledged to do more to stimulate Asian economies hit hard by the virus, helping Asia's stock markets edge higher, with Chinese shares headed for their first weekly gain in four.

00:56:35.000 This is really slowing the economy.

00:56:37.000 I know people who do business in Hong Kong, and they've just stopped doing business in Hong Kong, basically, because of all of the fears about all of this.

00:56:45.000 The new figures gave no indication the outbreak is nearing a peak, according to Adam Kamrat-Scott, an infectious diseases expert at the Center for International Security Studies at the University of Sydney.

00:56:54.000 Meanwhile, the United States CDC is saying that they are trying to keep this thing under control.

00:56:57.000 The problem, of course, is that the thing is basically silent until you obtain it.

00:57:02.000 So it's silent even when it comes to transmission.

00:57:05.000 When it comes to for a full on two weeks, everybody is is incredibly like the symptoms don't actually you don't have to be symptomatic to transmit the disease in other words, which means that it is very, very difficult to get people to sign on to to get people to Um, to get people to, you know, limit this thing, to limit the transmission of this thing.

00:57:27.000 So this, the good news is that China has this under control.

00:57:30.000 China's Hubei and Wuhan Communist Party chiefs are removed amid the epidemic.

00:57:33.000 So they blew the whole thing because the government insisted on top-down control.

00:57:37.000 And then they are presumably going to be sent to some sort of labor camp for having tried to shield the party from the blowback from coronavirus.

00:57:45.000 The same thing, by the way, has happened to many of the doctors who are trying to document this stuff, according to dnyuz.com.

00:57:52.000 The beige van squatted outside of a Wuhan hospital, its side and back doors ajar.

00:57:55.000 Fang Bin, a local clothing salesman, peered inside as he walked past.

00:57:58.000 He'd grown so many dead, he counted five, six, seven, eight body bags.

00:58:01.000 This is too many.

00:58:02.000 That moment in a 40-minute video about the coronavirus outbreak that has devastated China propelled Mr. Fang to internet fame.

00:58:07.000 Then, less than two weeks later, he disappeared.

00:58:10.000 China, great place to be.

00:58:12.000 When you're not dying of coronavirus, they are arresting you for announcing that coronavirus actually exists.

00:58:17.000 So exciting stuff, as always, from our friends in the evil Chinese Communist government. 1.00

00:58:22.000 Truly, truly evil.

00:58:23.000 Okay, now, quick note, since it is a Friday, I haven't done a Bible thing in a little while, so let me do a quick Bible study segment with you right now.

00:58:30.000 I know we're running a little bit late.

00:58:31.000 It's okay, it's okay.

00:58:32.000 We're gonna end the week on an up note.

00:58:34.000 So, This week's Torah portion for the Jews is the portion that contains the Ten Commandments, the Parsha of Yitro, which is kind of fascinating because the Parsha with the Ten Commandments is actually named after a non-Jew. 0.58

00:58:45.000 Yitro is the father-in-law of Moses and was considered sort of the high priest of Midian.

00:58:51.000 And he supposedly, he kind of supposedly, according to various commentaries, converts to Judaism after the splitting of the Red Sea.

00:58:58.000 He approaches Moses.

00:58:58.000 He explains to him how a hierarchical judicial system should work with a court of appeals with Moses sitting at the top.

00:59:03.000 And all of this in the Parsha is named after him, which is a suggestion as to some of the interesting things about the Ten Commandments.

00:59:10.000 OK, so the Ten Commandments, obviously the most important statement of morality, probably in the most impactful in the history of humanity.

00:59:17.000 And there's always been this interesting sort of tension Between how much of the Ten Commandments is discernible by human reason and how much of the Ten Commandments needed to be handed down by God.

00:59:27.000 How much of it needed to be handed down as revelation.

00:59:31.000 There's even some interesting commentary in Jewish sources as to whether God actually announced all Ten Commandments or whether He only announced... So in the Torah, God only announces the first two commandments and then the people say, okay, we can't handle this.

00:59:43.000 God is too much for us.

00:59:43.000 We need Moses to tell us the rest of these things.

00:59:46.000 So...

00:59:47.000 Maimonides in Guide to the Perplexed specifically talks about what exactly it was that people were given at Sinai in terms of the Ten Commandments from God directly, right?

00:59:57.000 Because this is the time in Jewish history when God speaks directly to the people as a corporate entity, right? 0.98

01:00:03.000 It's 600,000 Jews supposedly standing in front of Mount Sinai.

01:00:05.000 So what exactly did God do?

01:00:07.000 So apparently God was so awesome, according to Maimonides, that people immediately intuited There is a God and they shan't have any other gods before him.

01:00:14.000 So the first two commandments were even understandable simply from the mere presence of God, the mere power of standing in front of God.

01:00:20.000 So how much of the Ten Commandments is discernible from natural law?

01:00:23.000 And how much of the Ten Commandments is something that has to be handed down and inculcated and taught?

01:00:27.000 How much could we just sort of discover on our own?

01:00:30.000 Well, the first two, right, the first two commandments, I'm the Lord your God who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the land of bondage, That basic concept is of course something that has to be handed down from God, because you can logic your way to the idea of a creator of the universe, but that logic doesn't necessarily carry over into a God of history who cares about you every single day, who cares about what happens to you.

01:00:51.000 And so God's involvement with the world is a core assumption that the Ten Commandments makes and then hands down to you.

01:00:55.000 And then you can discern some of the other of the Ten Commandments from that, right?

01:00:58.000 Like the obligation not to murder would be a pretty obvious one.

01:01:01.000 Because if every human being is made in the image of God, Which is, in Genesis, and God is a God who cares about individual human beings and cares about history, then you can certainly intuit the idea that you're not supposed to kill or kidnap or steal from other people, right?

01:01:14.000 The basic idea that you have an individual right against other individuals, that sort of stuff does spring from the Ten Commandments.

01:01:20.000 But there are certain aspects of the Ten Commandments that are, I think, necessary to be given.

01:01:26.000 That are necessary to be given.

01:01:28.000 So, some of those, for example, the Sabbath, necessary to be given, right?

01:01:32.000 There's nothing that suggests that we shouldn't be working all seven days per week.

01:01:36.000 But what that really is, in essence, is a recognition that we are in control of our own time.

01:01:40.000 That we are not to be slaves to the collective.

01:01:42.000 In the end, the Ten Commandments, which are given collectively to the Jewish people, corporately, right? 0.98

01:01:47.000 The Ten Commandments are a ringing endorsement of individual rights.

01:01:51.000 Because when you look at the Ten Commandments, they are nearly all about individual rights that you have against other human beings.

01:01:56.000 First, you have to acknowledge God.

01:01:58.000 Second, you have to acknowledge that nothing else can supplant God, right?

01:02:02.000 Government cannot take over for God.

01:02:03.000 That is, thou shalt have no other gods before me.

01:02:06.000 Government can't take the role of God.

01:02:07.000 Government can't fix all cosmic injustices.

01:02:10.000 That is not the role of any collective to do.

01:02:11.000 And any collective that attempts to do so violates the first commandment and the second commandment.

01:02:15.000 And then there's the third commandment that you shan't take the name of the Lord your God in vain.

01:02:20.000 Which really is a specific demand not to pervert the words of scripture.

01:02:22.000 My friend Dennis Prager, I think, has a really great take on this.

01:02:26.000 He says, does God really care if you say GD?

01:02:28.000 Does God really care if you say a bad curse word that has God's name in it?

01:02:32.000 He says, well, you know, probably shouldn't do it, but is that really what the commandment is about?

01:02:35.000 Is it really about cursing?

01:02:36.000 And the answer is no.

01:02:37.000 The answer is that what you really shouldn't do is supplant your own agenda for God's and then call it God's.

01:02:42.000 You've got to be very careful about what you're doing, Pete Buttigieg.

01:02:45.000 Trying to suggest that the Bible backs your particular vision of the world in contravention of God's explicit word is an attempt to take God's name in vain.

01:02:53.000 The fourth commandment, remember the Sabbath to keep it holy, is again a statement of your individuality and your individual right to your own time.

01:03:00.000 That the Sabbath is between you and God, but nobody else can force you to work on the Sabbath.

01:03:05.000 You gotta have breaks, right?

01:03:06.000 Slavery is about other people being in control of your time.

01:03:10.000 So the fourth commandment, which is the Sabbath, the idea there is that you are now in control of your own time, honoring your father and mother, right?

01:03:18.000 This is about understanding that your rights and duties are handed down parentally, not from a society that starts anew every single generation.

01:03:27.000 And this is a real conflict between left and right.

01:03:28.000 The left in the United States believes that every single generation, we have to remake our morality as brand new and reject the morality of our parents.

01:03:35.000 Honoring your father and mother acknowledges That you have a duty to examine the past and you have a duty to examine your forefathers because your rights come, in the words of Edmund Burke, not just from these kind of new version of enlightenment rights, but also handed down via history.

01:03:49.000 The sixth commandment, you shouldn't murder, obviously that springs from natural rights.

01:03:52.000 You shouldn't commit adultery, that springs from natural rights.

01:03:54.000 Because you're violating the sanctity of an oath that you took to another human being when you commit adultery.

01:04:00.000 Contra the New York Times, which by the way has an article this week about sexually open marriages again.

01:04:04.000 It's amazing.

01:04:04.000 I don't know how repressed they are at the New York Times, but like every other day there's an article in the New York Times about how you should be able to cheat on your spouse and your spouse should be okay with it.

01:04:12.000 Like a plea for something from the editors of the New York Times.

01:04:15.000 The Eighth Commandment, you shouldn't steal.

01:04:16.000 Obviously an acknowledgement of individual rights.

01:04:19.000 Because if you have a right to something, people don't have a right to steal it from you.

01:04:22.000 The ninth commandment, you shouldn't bear false witness against your neighbor.

01:04:24.000 Again, an indication of individual rights.

01:04:27.000 And this does come up fairly regularly.

01:04:29.000 People who suggest that due process does not apply based on your social group, those people are violating your individual rights.

01:04:34.000 They're bearing false witness against neighbors based specifically on their social distinctions.

01:04:39.000 And finally, you shouldn't covet.

01:04:40.000 That is the greatest indicator in favor of individual rights, because you don't have a right to somebody else's property or somebody else's life.

01:04:47.000 You can hope to have a life as good as theirs, but you certainly do not get to covet other people's property, which is the basis of the Bernie Sanders campaign and the socialist left.

01:04:56.000 Okay, so the Ten Commandments.

01:04:58.000 I think largely discernible from the basic idea that God is present in the universe, cares about you, and believes in you as an individual.

01:05:04.000 The single most important statement of morality, presumably in human history.

01:05:09.000 The most impactful, certainly.

01:05:10.000 So go check it out this week, since it is that week in the Jewish calendar. 0.98

01:05:13.000 And we will see you here a little bit later today, or barring now, we'll see you here next week with all of the latest as we approach the Nevada caucuses.

01:05:20.000 You're listening to The Ben Shapiro Show.

01:05:26.000 The Ben Shapiro Show is produced by Colton Haas.

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The Ben Shapiro Show - February 14, 2020

Donald, Barr The Door | Ep. 954

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