The fallout from the Mueller Report continues, Michael Avenatti faces handcuffs, but not the kind he likes, and Vice President Pence heads to AIPAC. Plus, breaking news about Jussie Smollett, and much, much more! Ben Shapiro is joined by Mark Meckler and Mark Gellman to discuss it all, and to call for a Convention of States to restore checks and balances to the United States . They also discuss why a Constitutional Convention is the only way to restore Checks and Balances to our government, and why you should sign the petition to do just that. Sign the petition here and join the conversation to help restore Checks & Balances. Go to ConventionofSons.org/ConventionofSees to join the petition and help restore the Constitution at the center of American life. And, as always, thank you for tuning into The Ben Shapiro Show! -Ben Shapiro Subscribe to the show on Apple Podcasts! Subscribe on iTunes Learn more about your ad choices. Like, comment and share the show with your fellow podcast go to bit.ly/TheBenShapiroShow and we'll be giving out 5% off your first pack discount when you shop at Caff or buy a copy of his new cookbook, The Testaments on amazon. Subscribe and review it on Audible! and rate it on Podcoin. Learn more at Audible.com/The Ben Shapiro's new book, "The Testimony" is out now! Get exclusive discount code: Ben ShapiroShoes, The Testimony: The Best of Ben Shapiro & Ben Shapiro will be giving you a chance to win $5,000 and Ben Shapiro s New York Times Bestowing an ad on The Testo's Testo will get $10,000, too get a discount on a VIP discount, and Ben will also get a VIP membership offer, too, and get an ad discount when Ben Shapiro gets the chance to review his book review and Ben gets a discount at VIP access to Ben Shapiro does all of that? and Ben helps Ben gets it all that and Ben also helps Ben does it all over at The Pitch Testo does it too, too autographed and Ben s autographed a promo code, too Ben s book review? Thanks Ben s full guide to Ben s podcast is Thank you, Ben Shapiro, too!
00:00:14.000So, there's a lot of news to get to today.
00:00:15.000There's some breaking news about Jussie Smollett that we will try to get to if time permits it.
00:00:20.000Lots and lots of stuff happening right this very instant.
00:00:22.000But before we get to any of that, let's talk about the fact that our federal government is out of control.
00:00:26.000It's been out of control for a very long time.
00:00:29.000And it's been out of control because the federal government has essentially been restructured to run roughshod over the checks and balances that were inherent in the Constitution of the United States.
00:00:36.000And this is why I am a big believer in calling a convention of states where we the people can propose amendments to the Constitution to protect the Constitution itself from the predations of the federal government.
00:00:46.000That means overreach by the executive branch.
00:00:48.000It means overreach by the legislative branch.
00:00:50.000It means the legislative branch kicking too much power to the executive, and the executive kicking too much power to the judiciary.
00:00:55.000It means Congress threatening to undo the power of the judiciary.
00:00:59.000It's time to protect the Constitution.
00:01:00.000That's why I'm a fan of the Convention of States.
00:01:02.000Can you imagine the look on the faces of members of the federal government when they realize their power has been limited, and that suddenly they have to go back to the original founding bargain of a limited government?
00:01:12.000Well, this is what a Convention of States can help make happen.
00:01:14.000In fact, a Convention of States may be the only way to get the job done.
00:01:17.000There are already 3.8 million people with us on this, more every day, so join me and my friend Mark Meckler.
00:01:22.000Go to conventionofstates.com slash ben to sign the petition today.
00:01:25.000That is conventionofstates.com slash ben.
00:01:28.000Let's re-enshrine the Constitution at the center of American life.
00:02:15.000Because, um, wow, like every 20 minutes there was a piece of news that was breaking for President Trump in favor of President Trump.
00:02:23.000Most of yesterday, of course, was consumed with the reaction to the William Barr Attorney General report on the Mueller report.
00:02:29.000It was a four page summation that we read on the podcast yesterday all about what exactly Mueller had found.
00:02:36.000And it is necessary at this point to point out that the reactions of the people who had overzealously suggested what was in the report are astonishing to watch.
00:02:45.000It is astonishing to watch as people double down on the confirmation bias that got them here in the first place.
00:02:51.000And this is unfortunately a typical typical human tendency.
00:02:53.000You are called out on something that debunks your original position.
00:02:57.000And instead of you starting to reconsider based on the evidence or take the evidence into account, instead, what you do is you simply double down on your original perception of the issue and you look for excuses as to why this is all somebody else's fault.
00:03:09.000Now, this does not mean that it is not hilarious because it is indeed hilarious.
00:03:13.000The most hilarious story of the day comes courtesy of The New York Times.
00:03:16.000Here's the headline, quote, disappointed fans of Mueller rethink the pedestal they built for him.
00:03:21.000It would take a heart of stone not to laugh at this.
00:03:24.000Quote, this is by Astey Herndon and Richard Fawcett.
00:03:27.000The The sense of mourning started to take hold over the weekend, after Attorney General William P. Barr said that Robert S. Mueller III, the special counsel, had not found coordination between President Trump's campaign and the Russian government's election interference in 2016.
00:03:42.000Over the nearly two years of the Mueller investigation, a segment of liberals and activists built up fervent hopes that it would bring Mr. Trump down.
00:03:48.000They elevated Mr. Mueller, a former FBI director, into an anti-Trump cultural icon, complete with T-shirts, scented candles, and holiday-themed songs like, For some of them, the report felt like a betrayal.
00:04:01.000To many others, it was a disappointment.
00:04:03.000That's a hell of a range of emotional responses there.
00:04:06.000I mean, from betrayal all the way to disappointment.
00:04:36.000Like, the whole time we've been laughing at you.
00:04:39.000Now, there are some of us who, daily, wear funny hats on top of our head because we want to be reminded of the providence of God in the universe.
00:04:46.000There are some of us Who wear shirts that proclaim political messages, you know, general political messages.
00:04:51.000And then there are some of us who elevated a person that we did not know anything about and who is just a prosecutor into a national icon in the fervent hope that he would be the deus ex machina who ended the Trump presidency.
00:05:05.000Jennifer Taub, a Vermont law school professor who had become known for punchy anti-Trump columns with titles like, yes, collusion, now what, said, there are definitely people who thought that Mueller would save us.
00:05:15.000And Mueller looked back at them and he said, No.
00:05:28.000How many articles since May 2017 have been published about Russia and Trump slash Mueller?
00:05:33.000Since May 2017, this is according to Axios, 533,000 web articles have been published about Trump and Russia, generating 245 million interactions.
00:05:44.000So the media did all of the election interference that the Russians didn't do in 2016, apparently.
00:06:00.000Those are the people who have like an hour a night to give you the network news.
00:06:03.000If you go to cable, then you are talking presumably in the tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands of minutes, because that's been basically CNN's main programming for the last couple of years.
00:06:13.000And it's not just that they have been programming this stuff up the wazoo.
00:06:17.000It's also that they've been breaking false bombshells for legitimately years on end.
00:06:21.000The Daily Caller has a really good piece about this by Amber Athey, their White House correspondent, pointing out all of the ways in which the media botched this story.
00:06:28.000You'll recall that CNN accused Don Jr.
00:06:44.000received an email with access to the stolen documents after they'd been released publicly.
00:06:48.000Remember that ABC tanked the stock market with fake Mike Flynn news.
00:06:52.000ABC was forced to suspend Brian Ross after he falsely reported that former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn was prepared to testify that then-candidate Donald Trump ordered him to make contact with the Russians.
00:07:03.000The stock market dropped a few hundred points at the news, but the news turned out to be fake.
00:07:14.000We publish legitimately 50 to 70 stories a day, and you do that over the course of several years, and you're talking about thousands and thousands of stories.
00:07:21.000The question is, in what direction do all the mistakes get made?
00:07:24.000So at our site, we're a conservative site.
00:07:26.000We openly acknowledge we're a conservative site.
00:07:28.000CNN, ABC, these are outlets that pretend to be objective.
00:07:32.000And yet, oddly, every error they ever make cuts in one direction and one direction only.
00:07:39.000You remember that CNN reported that the Mooch was under investigation.
00:07:43.000And the Mooch got an apology from CNN because the Mooch was not under investigation.
00:07:47.000First of all, the Mooch was in the administration for a grand total of 32 seconds.
00:07:52.000I'm not sure what he would have done in those 32 seconds to earn an investigation other than being the greatest guest star in the history of Trump the television show.
00:08:01.000Bloomberg suggested that Deutsche Bank was being zeroed in on by Robert Mueller.
00:08:06.000Jeff Sessions Jeff Sessions, it was reported, had botched protocol.
00:08:27.000I mean, people won Pulitzer Prizes for this stuff, guys.
00:08:30.000People in the media won Pulitzer Prizes.
00:08:32.000The Washington Post and the New York Times won the 2018 Pulitzer Prize for their national reporting of President Trump's alleged collusion with Russia.
00:08:41.000They received the award, this is Town Hall reporting, for quote, deeply sourced, relentlessly reported coverage in the public interest that dramatically furthered the nation's understanding of Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election and its connections to the Trump campaign, the president-elect's transition team, and his eventual administration.
00:09:02.000Not so much, because it turns out that half their stories were sourced incorrectly.
00:09:08.000There was an article, for example, they published on Jared Kushner.
00:09:11.000The report talked about Donald Trump Jr., Jared Kushner, and Manafort, Paul Manafort, meeting with a lawyer connected to the Kremlin.
00:09:17.000In reality, they met with Natalia Veselnitskaya, who is with Fusion GPS, the group behind the fake dossier.
00:09:25.000The Washington Post did the same thing.
00:09:27.000You'll remember it was the Washington Post reporting that Jeff Sessions had met with Russian Ambassador Sergei Kislyak, proving, proving that collusion was on the menu.
00:09:34.000It turns out that Sessions met with Kislyak because he sat on the Senate Armed Services Committee.
00:09:40.000And the media's malfeasance can be summed up in this one clip from Chris Matthews over at Harbaugh.
00:09:45.000Remember, Chris Matthews, coming into the show, rolling in here.
00:09:50.000In the middle of the Mueller investigation, Chris Matthews comes out there, comes into the show, rolls on in there, and he says, you know what?
00:09:56.000I like to think of an aquatic metaphor.
00:09:57.000I was at the aquarium the other day, with my wife Kathleen.
00:10:01.000We were at the aquarium, and I'd had too much to drink, as per my usual arrangement.
00:10:06.000I started thinking, there's a starfish, there's a clam, it's a Mueller and Trump, go!
00:10:11.000Watching Mueller and Trump go at it, I'm reminded of biology lab back in my sophomore year at LaSalle College High School.
00:11:16.000First, let us talk about life insurance.
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00:12:19.000Now, as I say, one of the beautiful things about the media is that when they make a mistake, they are happy to acknowledge it.
00:12:24.000They're really good about acknowledging the mistakes that they've made.
00:12:26.000So, for example, people like Jeff Zucker, the head of CNN, who came out and said, no, actually, we did great.
00:12:34.000CNN President Jeff Zucker, quote, we are not investigators, we are journalists, and our role is to report the facts as we know them, which is exactly what we did.
00:13:32.000There have been tipping points and bombshells, walls closing in and turning points, and there have been so, so many declarations of the beginning of the end that comedian John Oliver had a recurring satirical We Got Him segment on his late night HBO show, complete with jubilant marching band and sequined majorettes celebrating President Trump's downfall.
00:13:48.000But in the swirl of reporting and speculation about the 45th president, nothing has held viewers on the edge of their seats quite like the special counsel, Robert Mueller III, and his investigation into possible ties between Mr. Trump's 2016 campaign and Russian agents.
00:14:15.000Zucker said in an email, a sitting president's own Justice Department investigated his campaign for collusion with a hostile nation.
00:14:20.000That's not enormous because the media says so.
00:14:22.000That's enormous because it's unprecedented.
00:14:24.000Well, except if the media coverage helped drive the investigation in the first place.
00:14:28.000Bill Gruskin, a professor at the Columbia School of Journalism, where all good journalists go, said, Mueller and Barr need to prove beyond a reasonable doubt.
00:14:39.000In other words, Pulitzer Prize winning reports of alleged wrongdoing do not need to provide evidence of criminality in order to be factual, newsworthy and relevant to readers.
00:14:50.000The question is whether you blew all of this out of proportion and suggested that around every corner lay the end of the Trump presidency.
00:14:55.000Martin Barron, executive editor of The Washington Post, said, quote, the special counsel investigation documented, as we reported, extensive Russian interference in the 2016 election and widespread deceit on the part of certain advisers to the president about Russian contacts and other matters.
00:17:33.000Their total coverage over at CNN has... If you watch CNN, you could have come down on either side of the issue.
00:17:38.000Either Trump was a traitor, or he was also a traitor.
00:17:41.000Those were the two sides of the issue that you could have come down on if you regularly watch CNN.
00:17:44.000I know, because it was on at the gym all the time while I was working out.
00:17:48.000So it's not like I've never watched CNN, okay?
00:17:50.000I watched CNN for two years do this routine, and yet the media, are they going to take an introspective look, and maybe, maybe, whether they ought to have provided a couple of different perspectives, Maybe whether they ought to have taken a breath before they reported that the president was probably in league with Vladimir Putin.
00:18:06.000Maybe they should have stopped acting so overwhelmingly excited every time they appeared on TV with a new piece of bombshell breaking news.
00:18:15.000They're not going to do any of those things.
00:18:17.000The best example of confirmation bias at work was on The View yesterday, because the members of The View, like Joy Behar, are the bumper sticker version of CNN.
00:18:27.000They're the sort of people who do wear Mueller pins around the office.
00:18:31.000Here was Joy Behar beside herself yesterday.
00:18:33.000She couldn't deal with the fact that the Mueller report had not been everything that she had hoped that it would be.
00:19:37.000Let's make up our minds after we see all the evidence.
00:19:40.000It's always interesting to see when people say, let's wait for the evidence and when people are willing to jump beyond the evidence at hand.
00:19:46.000Always very interesting because it is a good way of revealing bias.
00:19:52.000Tendency toward this stuff, but the media are overwhelmingly biased in one direction now I will say that the media's bias is not any shock to me I think that the the greatest shock to me is the continuing malfeasance I mean true malfeasance of High-ranking members of the intelligence community is severely disquieting to me.
00:20:10.000That so many high-ranking members of the Obama intelligence community, these are people who are supposed to be tasked with protecting us from terrorism, protecting us from threats foreign and domestic, that these folks are so politically biased that they went on television night after night proclaiming that the elected president of the United States is a traitor and that he would be proved to be that these folks are so politically biased that they went on television night after night proclaiming I mean, John Brennan, the former head of the CIA under Barack Obama, he was head of the CIA when the Trump-Russia investigation was initiated.
00:20:38.000He was on MSNBC last night after spending legitimately two years proclaiming that he had secret knowledge that President Trump had committed some nefarious act of treason.
00:21:28.000You know, I've spent the last couple of years suggesting from my perch at the top of one of America's foremost intelligence agencies, using the expertise that comes along with that position, proclaiming that the president is a traitor to the United States.
00:21:40.000I guess I just got a little out ahead of myself.
00:21:42.000You know, it's understandable, really, to call the president, the elected president, a traitor.
00:21:46.000You know, we were investigating him during the campaign on the basis of scanty to no evidence.
00:21:51.000But sure, you know, everybody makes mistakes, guys.
00:21:55.000A former FBI official named Chuck Rosenberg was on Meet the Press, and he said that Mueller's decision not to come to a conclusion on obstruction, quote, strikes me as a little bit curious because, quote, prosecutors get paid to make determinations and recommendations.
00:22:09.000Or perhaps he didn't have the evidence to determine whether or not obstruction took place.
00:22:13.000But now we've got a former FBI official using the expertise of his position to proclaim that maybe something nefarious is going on there.
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00:23:56.000Okay, so it is not just John Brennan, of course.
00:23:58.000It is also James Clapper, the former head, the former director of national intelligence under Barack Obama, who has spent two years proclaiming loudly and proudly That doom was impending for President Trump.
00:24:09.000That we were moments away from the end of the Trump administration.
00:24:13.000Well, here he was yesterday saying, no regerts.
00:24:18.000Do you regret anything you have said in terms of raising questions about the president's behavior or some of the things the president has done or said?
00:24:29.000And I have put that in writing in my book as well.
00:24:34.000I have concerns, as do others, and I have tried to be factual and temperate and moderate about it, but I do have concerns, and no, I don't have any regrets.
00:25:53.000Many of the Democratic 2020 candidates are just remaining silent on this entire issue.
00:25:58.000Meanwhile, their backup plan is to proclaim that they don't have the full Mueller report, so they can't make a judgment on any of this stuff.
00:26:04.000Six Democratic committee chairs in the House, according to NBC News, Sent a letter to Attorney General William Barr on Monday requesting that he submit the full report from Special Counsel Robert Mueller's Russia investigation to Congress by April 2nd, which would be the beginning of next week.
00:26:18.000They say his summary is not sufficient for Congress.
00:26:21.000That's true, but he's going to have to redact presumably some material from thousands of pages under federal criminal regulations.
00:26:27.000There's criminal procedure, federal civil procedure rules.
00:26:30.000Again, under criminal procedure, federal procedure rules.
00:26:33.0006E is the one that was cited by William Barr in his letter.
00:26:38.000He has to redact information because otherwise it's illegal.
00:26:41.000Otherwise, he could be committing a criminal violation.
00:26:43.000And so the Republicans voted down a proposal to force him to release the entire report forthwith.
00:27:05.000Unless there is some buried bombshell that I think Mueller probably would have leaked by now, considering how much play this has gotten.
00:27:12.000This thing is over, and Democrats can't accept it.
00:27:15.000The dumbest senator in the Democratic caucus is Maisie Hirono from Hawaii, who's proved herself to be absolutely feckless and terrible over the past few years.
00:27:32.000She's Encyclopedia Brown of the Senate.
00:27:35.000Just because there was not enough evidence for a criminal charge of conspiracy does not mean that this very cozy relationship that Donald Trump has with Vladimir Putin, who, by the way, must be really happy that this came about, that this kind of cozy relationship that is not good for our country and that is not transparent, will continue.
00:28:02.000The doubling down is really astonishing.
00:28:04.000Sheldon Whitehouse, the senator from Delaware, he said the same thing.
00:28:07.000He says, you know, Mueller just didn't have enough power.
00:28:10.000That's the real problem here is Mueller didn't have enough power.
00:28:13.000Do you think it makes sense for Bob Mueller, who spends two years trying to discern the truth and the justice here, to turn it over to a guy who just got appointed Attorney General to make a ruling on, the final ruling on the issue of obstruction of justice?
00:28:28.000No, because the whole purpose of special counsel is to have somebody make prosecutive decisions outside of politics.
00:28:35.000So to take the prosecutive decision and hand it back to the top political appointee in the office defeats the whole purpose of being special counsel.
00:29:20.000I'm not Not well, but we'd had a couple of interactions.
00:29:22.000Everybody at the law school knew about her.
00:29:24.000She was actually an interesting person back then.
00:29:27.000Now she has basically just become Bernie Sanders with Native American background.
00:29:30.000So here she was explaining that the real problem here is Attorney General Barr on Stephen Colbert, who hopefully, hopefully, hopefully, I mean, he's just looking hopefully into Elizabeth Warren's eyes as they lock eyes and dream of the day that Robert Mueller comes back They're like the kid at the end of Shane, crying plaintively out to the planes.
00:30:38.000Do you now have to revise that to say not chargeable collusion?
00:30:42.000Again, when I have an attorney general, who in my opinion is suspect, filtering a report that I have not seen, I'm not willing to conclude anything yet based upon a letter that he wrote.
00:30:54.000OK, so that's, you know, he's not going to retract anything.
00:31:28.000This man heads the Intelligence Committee in the House.
00:31:31.000He said, quote, he believed that the scandal was of a size and a scope probably bigger than Watergate and that there's plenty of evidence of collusion.
00:32:06.000In a second, we're going to talk about how Trump's stay got even better.
00:32:08.000There was a cherry on top of the ice cream that was provided by a man named Michael Avenatti, who's turned out to be just the best thing that ever happened to Donald Trump.
00:32:17.000We'll talk about it in just one second.
00:32:18.000First, you're going to have to go over to dailywire.com and subscribe.
00:32:21.000For $9.99 a month, you can get a subscription to Daily Wire.
00:32:25.000First of all, if you get the $99 a year, the yearly annual subscription, you get this, the very greatest in beverage vessels, the leftist here's hot or cold tumbler.
00:32:32.000It was overflowing continuously yesterday, flooding houses around the nation.
00:32:36.000You can have one of these for $99 a year.
00:32:39.000And that comes with all sorts of goodies.
00:32:41.000It means that you get access to two additional hours of happiness and joy every afternoon because we are here every afternoon with you for two hours.
00:32:47.000It means I'll answer your questions in the mailbag and also during the breaks.
00:32:51.000It means that our Sunday special becomes not only the Saturday special for you, but you can get it on demand, commercial free, and you get extra questions with the guests afterward.
00:33:00.000I mean, all sorts of amazing goodies and wonderful stuff happening for you when you become a member over at dailywire.com.
00:33:08.000Also, I would remind you that my book is still number one in nonfiction at Amazon.
00:33:11.000It is still number one in nonfiction over at Barnes & Noble as well.
00:33:16.000So go get a copy of my new book, The Right Side of History, which continues to sell Like hotcakes because it is delicious and filling just like hotcakes.
00:33:50.000Winning so much winning that we would beg him to stop the winning.
00:33:53.000Well, yesterday was his winningest day.
00:33:55.000Now, I do have to note that when we say it was his winningest day, not politically, right?
00:34:00.000Not in terms of conservative priorities, but in terms of the schadenfreude of watching the entire left collapse in on itself like a dying star.
00:34:15.000And that's been very satisfying for a lot of members of his base.
00:34:17.000If you're a member of Trump's base, yesterday was pretty much the best day you've had since your first child was born.
00:34:22.000It was pretty spectacular, because not only was Trump cleared on the collusion stuff, not only did the media have to look themselves in the mirror and then ignore what they saw, but also Michael Avenatti, a man championed as a possible 2020 candidate, you know, the lawyer, the lawyer for Stormy Daniels.
00:35:27.000A federal magistrate judge in New York ordered Avenatti released on $300,000 bond in cases alleging that he embezzled money from a client and tried to extort millions of dollars from Nike.
00:35:38.000And then he claims, no, no, no, he was just standing up with the people.
00:35:41.000Also implicated, just to make this even better, was Mark Garagos.
00:35:44.000Mark Garagos, the celebrity attorney for Jussie Smollett, was named as a co-conspirator in a case accusing lawyer Michael Avenatti of trying to extort Nike.
00:35:52.000Both of these guys were CNN contributors.
00:35:54.000So remember when the media didn't have anything to apologize for?
00:35:57.000Avenatti appeared 59 times in one month, during one period, a couple of, like a year ago.
00:36:03.000There was a picture of him with Don Lemon, Celebrate yucking it up, and Chris Cuomo, and the whole gang over at CNN.
00:36:36.000He tried to go to Nike and then blackmail them with information about how a representative of Nike had been paying off recruits to use their shoes or something.
00:36:46.000But he was not quite that discreet about it.
00:36:50.000He went to Nike and he said that he represented an AAU coach whose team had previously had a contractual relationship with Nike, but whose contract Nike had recently decided not to renew.
00:36:59.000According to Avenatti, his client had evidence that one or more Nike employees had authorized and funded payments to the families of top high school basketball players and their families and attempted to conceal those payments, similar to conduct involving a rival company that had recently been the subject of a criminal prosecution.
00:37:15.000Avenatti said he planned to hold a press conference the following day to publicize the asserted misconduct at Nike.
00:37:21.000He said he had approached Nike now because he knew that the NCAA tournament was about to begin, and he knew that their quarterly earnings call was scheduled for March 21st, thus maximizing the potential financial and reputational damage his press conference could cause to Nike.
00:37:35.000He said that he would let it go if Nike paid his client 1.5 million dollars and then hire Avenatti to conduct an internal investigation of Nike with the provision that if Nike hired another firm to conduct such an internal investigation, Nike would still be required to pay Avenatti at least twice the fees of any other firm hired.
00:37:54.000So, then the attorney for Nike called up the cops.
00:37:58.000And they said, OK, let's have a meeting.
00:38:37.000So if that's what's being contemplated, then let's just say it was good to meet you and we're done, and I'll proceed with my press conference tomorrow.
00:38:45.000I'm not effing around with this thing anymore.
00:38:46.000So if you guys think, you know, you're going to negotiate a million five, you're going to hire us to do an internal investigation, but it's going to be capped at three or five or seven million dollars.
00:39:25.000Stormy Daniels put out a statement, quote, knowing what I know about Michael Avenatti, I'm saddened but not shocked by news reports he has made that he has been criminally charged today.
00:39:33.000When Stormy Daniels is now dumping on her own lawyer a person she called Michael Angelo of the legal Michael Angelo of the legal profession, you know, things have gone bad.
00:41:15.000According to the Cook County Prosecutor's Office, who apparently there were reports that they were interfering even in the CPD investigation.
00:41:22.000The Cook County prosecutors were deeply afraid this was going to go how it eventually went.
00:41:27.000They put out a statement, quote, Absolute crap.
00:42:00.000This is the statement of his defense attorneys.
00:42:02.000Jussie was attacked by two people he was unable to identify on January 29th.
00:42:06.000He was a victim who was vilified and made to appear as a perpetrator as a result of false and inappropriate remarks made to the public, causing an inappropriate rush to judgment.
00:42:14.000Jussie and many others were hurt by these unfair and unwarranted actions This entire situation is a reminder there should never be an attempt to prove a case in the court of public opinion.
00:42:36.000The Justice Department in Chicago is doing its best.
00:42:40.000The criminal justice... I mean, if you are the CPD head, you have just got to be enraged, right?
00:42:46.000If you are the head of the Chicago Police, the superintendent of the Chicago Police Department, who came out with all the evidence, you have got to be fighting mad today.
00:42:54.000Smollett continues to insist that he was innocent.
00:42:58.000That statement from his attorneys is, of course, a lie.
00:43:01.000Smollett was originally indicted on 16 felony counts for falsely reporting a hate crime by a grand jury.
00:43:07.000And the charges were summarily dropped because the guy is a celebrity and because he has connections inside the prosecutor's office is the best possible guess here.
00:43:15.000Federal prosecutors should now move forward full scale with prosecuting him.
00:43:34.000Tens of thousands of people show up, people from synagogues all around the country, because AIPAC is a pro-Israel lobbying organization.
00:43:43.000They don't give money to candidates or anything.
00:43:46.000But they do spend an awful lot of time talking to various members of Congress.
00:43:50.000And Mike Pence went directly after Representative Ilhan Omar and the burgeoning anti-Semitism inside the Democratic Party.
00:43:55.000Anti-Semitism has no place in the Congress of the United States of America.
00:44:02.000And at a minimum, anyone who slanders those who support this historic alliance between the United States and Israel should never have a seat on the Foreign Affairs Committee of the United States House of Representatives.
00:44:20.000Okay, and of course all of that is true.
00:44:21.000What now is hilarious is members of the media pretending like Ilhan Omar had never done any of this stuff and saying, oh, look at Pence, getting all, getting all partisan about this.
00:44:30.000On the Foreign Affairs Committee is an open anti-Semite.
00:44:33.000The Democrats decided to cover for her.
00:44:35.000It wasn't Mike Pence who made this partisan.
00:44:36.000It wasn't Bibi Netanyahu who made this partisan.
00:44:38.000It was Democrats who made this partisan.
00:44:40.000Now, I do have to give props today to Steini Hoyer, the House Minority Whip.
00:44:45.000When someone accuses American supporters of dual loyalty, I say, accuse me.
00:44:47.000This takes some spine, spine that Nancy Pelosi doesn't have.
00:44:51.000Here was Stiney Hoyer doing the right thing and coming after Elhan Omar.
00:44:55.000Sadly, he should have done this when it was up for debate in the House.
00:44:58.000He didn't then, but at least he's doing it now, better late than never. - When someone accuses American supporters of dual loyalty, I say, accuse me.
00:45:09.000So let's have debates on policy instead of impugning the loyalty of Israel's supporters.
00:45:17.000That is why I oppose those who push for boycotts, divestments and sanctions against Israel.
00:45:24.000By the way, there are 62 freshman Democrats.
00:45:50.000Her cowardice, however, rules the day in the Democratic Party.
00:45:55.000This month, The full house came together condemning the anti-semitic myth of dual loyalty and all form of bigotry with a resolution that, quote, rejects the perpetuation of anti-semitic stereotypes in the United States and around the world, including the pernicious myth of dual loyalty and foreign allegiance, especially in the context of support for the United States-Israel alliance.
00:46:23.000She didn't have any of the guts to actually come out against Ilhan Omar in any of this.
00:46:26.000And now would be a very good time, it turns out, to be an Israel supporter, considering that Hamas is randomly firing rockets into the middle of civilian centers in Israel.
00:46:34.000And Hamas is an evil, disgusting, vicious terrorist group that is interested in wiping every Jew out of the Middle East, if not across the face of the world.
00:46:43.000And the Democrats couldn't condemn Ilhan Omar.
00:47:15.000Ilhan Omar promptly tweeted back at Netanyahu, well you're under indictment for corruption, so obviously it is about the Benjamins.
00:47:20.000The words of a woman who is truly contrite about her anti-Semitism.
00:47:24.000Again, it wasn't the right that made Israel a partisan issue, it was the Democrats who decided to break with Israel.
00:47:29.000At least Steny Hoyer and some Democrats are now saying the right things, even if they're too cowardly to do so in public when it actually counts.
00:47:35.000Okay, time for some things I like, and then we'll do some things that I hate.
00:47:49.000The guy who directed it, I'm trying to remember his name, I believe it's Zoller, and he has made some really kind of weird and interesting movies.
00:49:31.000Quote, a major Greenland glacier that was one of the fastest-shrinking ice and snow masses on Earth is growing again, a new NASA study finds.
00:49:39.000The Jakobshavn Glacier around 2012 was retreating about 1.8 miles and thinning nearly 130 feet annually, but it started growing again at about the same rate in the past two years, according to a study in Monday's Nature Geoscience.
00:49:51.000Study authors and outside scientists think this is temporary.
00:50:06.000So, they keep suggesting that it is continuing to go, but they were surprised by all of this.
00:50:10.000Listen, maybe in the long term, their estimates continue to be correct, but it is weird how climate scientists keep getting surprised by the data every so often.
00:50:19.000Now, I'm not saying this as somebody who denies that climate change is taking place.
00:50:22.000I've said many times before that the IPCC estimates when it comes to climate change, I'm fine with accepting those.
00:50:27.000I don't have a general problem with all of that.
00:50:30.000However, When your computer modeling is wrong so often, you might need to think about your predictive capacity.
00:50:37.000Because the IPCC report does have a range of possibilities that it offers, and the IPCC report has consistently overestimated the amount of global warming that they thought was going to take place, particularly at the upper end of that estimate.
00:50:48.000Okay, time for a couple of things that I hate.
00:50:54.000So in the aftermath of proving that President Trump was a Russian tool, now the New York Times is on to proving that God doesn't exist.
00:51:14.000The idea of the deity most Westerners accept is actually not coherent.
00:51:18.000And then he proceeds to lay out, in about 850 words, a sophomoric argument that ignores, you know, probably 3,000 years of Western philosophy.
00:51:26.000The guy's a professor of philosophy, and he doesn't know the most basic Thomistic arguments about the existence of God, or Maimonidean arguments about the existence of God.
00:51:35.000In other words, he's a dilettante when it comes to religious philosophy, which is true for a lot of people who think that they know what they're writing about when it comes to religious philosophy.
00:51:42.000For those of us who spend a lot of our time studying religious philosophy, just as religious human beings, his complaints are nothing new.
00:51:47.000It's funny when you hear people who have spent no time examining religious philosophy go, well, you know, if God knows everything that's going to happen, then how do you have free will?
00:52:21.000Now, in my book, The Right Side of History, I do discuss these questions, and I give some very basic answers that virtually all Western philosophers, particularly in the Judeo-Christian tradition, agree upon.
00:52:32.000But this is basically, he legitimately raises the question, I'm not kidding you, he legitimately raises the, can God make a rock so large that he can't pick it up question, which is introduced in theology classes in like sophomore year of high school.
00:52:48.000For the record, there are two particular perspectives on this.
00:52:50.000Perspective number one is God can do anything, so he can even violate the laws of logic.
00:52:54.000And then there's the general Judeo-Christian view, the Thomistic view, and the Maimonidean view, which is that God cannot violate the rules of logic because he created the rules of logic.
00:53:01.000So God cannot be both something and not something.
00:53:04.000God cannot be both a square and a circle.
00:53:07.000Which is one of the reasons why Maimonides is constantly suggesting that you can't affirmatively describe God, you can only describe God in terms of what he can't be.
00:53:14.000So God does not take physical form, according to Maimonides, because that would actually contradict the rules of his existence.
00:53:21.000In any case, this article is just more proof that the New York Times, for them, this constitutes deep philosophy.
00:53:40.000He says, the standard defense is that evil is necessary for free will.
00:53:43.000However, this does not explain so-called physical evil, like suffering, caused by non-human causes, like famines, earthquakes, etc.
00:53:50.000Well, yeah, actually it does, because if it turned out that the universe actually just reacted in positive ways to you doing good things, there wouldn't be free will.
00:53:58.000In other words, there has to be the patina of chaos in order for you to make freely willed decisions.
00:54:10.000Philosophically, this presents us with no less of a conundrum, leaving aside the highly implausible idea that God knows all the facts in the universe.
00:54:48.000You can know what lust and envy are without, quote-unquote, experiencing them, and the experience or lust of envy does not necessarily connote evil.
00:54:55.000If you created the experiences themselves, then why exactly, I mean, that's, what?
00:55:00.000That doesn't even, that doesn't even match up.
00:55:02.000Also, there's the notion that virtue, and again, this is a Thomistic notion, that God created everything with an innate level of perfection, and then human beings with free will have detracted from that.
00:55:11.000So, for example, lust started off as healthful sexual desire for members of the opposite sex, and when we are not perfect, when we exercise our will in bad ways, or our desires in bad ways, then that turns into lust.
00:55:25.000Could God know what malice is like and still retain his divine goodness?
00:55:30.000All of this is so sophomoric, but unfortunately, sophomoric religious philosophy is stock in trade for the New York Times.
00:55:38.000Speaking of sophomoric, San Antonio has now barred Chick-fil-A from their airport because Chick-fil-A is owned by people who are pro-traditional marriage, and that's very bad.
00:55:46.000Chick-fil-A sells chicken sandwiches, if you didn't know.
00:55:49.000I wasn't aware that the chickens were gay or straight.
00:55:51.000I wasn't aware that they barred gay people from buying their chicken sandwiches.
00:55:54.000In fact, they didn't do any of that stuff.
00:55:55.000You'll recall that Chick-fil-A opened on a Sunday, which they don't normally do, in the middle of the Orlando Pulse shooting to help take care of people who are doing rescue and cleanup and protesting and all of that sort of stuff.
00:56:06.000But Chick-fil-A very, very bad, and so they must be shut down.
00:56:10.000People who don't know basic religious philosophy make assumptions about religious people that are simply false.
00:56:15.000That religious people think that if you sin, then this makes you an inherently bad human being in a way different from people who are religious.
00:56:22.000That religious people believe that only religious people can be good, which is obviously false.
00:56:26.000My new book, The Right Side of History, I've been asked about it a few times on left-wing podcasts.
00:56:31.000There was one from The Economist the other day where they asked me this, and the first question people always ask is, so what you're saying is that religious people are the only good people.