Javier Thompson, a left-wing reporter at The Intercept, was arrested Friday for making multiple threats to Jewish Community Centers across the U.S. in order to harass his ex-girlfriend. The FBI suspects he may have been a copycat who heard about the JCC phone calls and then set out to carry out his own campaign of anti-Semitic terrorism. But let s be real, this guy sounds like a complete nut job, not just a left wing journalist gone awry. And it's no coincidence that the guy behind the threats isn't a Trump supporter, but a fake news guy who hates Trump, who for weeks the left claimed this had to be an outgrowth of Trumpian anti-Semitism. And you just know that Trump s Twitter feed this morning will be totally epic. Today's After Show Was Hosted By: Ben Shapiro, Senior Editor at The Daily Wire, Ben Shapiro Ben Shapiro's Mother-in-law's Massage Therapy Service, Zakiya Zeel, is a Massage Therapist, Author, and Blogger, and Author of the book, . She's also the host of the podcast, , and is a regular contributor to the New York Times Magazine, New York Magazine, The Daily Beast, and the New Republic. Ben's new book is out now! and is available for pre-order on Amazon Prime Video, Blu-ray on Amazon, and also rental on Vimeo, iTunes, and Podchaser, so you can get a copy of his new novel, and subscribe to his podcast on Audible, too. . if you're looking for a good massage? you can have a free massages and massage? and you don't want to wait for a $25 to go to a spa appointment? You don't have to wait two weeks to get 20% off your first appointment, it'll be 20% less than going to a local spa or a 5-star spa appointment, they'll give you a 20% discount, they're going to give you $25, $50, you'll get it all that and they'll get a 15% discount plus a free copy of the entire book, plus a $5 discount, too, you get an extra $5,000 in the book is included in the ad-free version of the show, plus they'll also get an ad discount when you sign up to get the book?
00:00:00.000For the past two weeks, the Trump administration has been slammed for its supposedly tepid response to anti-Semitic attacks on cemeteries and threats to Jewish community centers.
00:00:08.000Trump himself was smashed over and over for suggesting that the threats might be coming from left-wing provocateurs attempting to cast a shadow on his administration.
00:00:16.000He was widely mocked for such an assertion,
00:00:18.000Pretty much everyone on the left assumed that the JCC threats had to be coming from Trump supporters, including The Intercept, a left-wing publication that headlined just two days ago, Trump can't accept his allies are targeting Jews, so he blames his opponents.
00:00:30.000It now turns out that the culprit, at one point, worked for The Intercept.
00:00:35.000On Friday, a Missouri man named Juan Thompson was arrested for making multiple threats to JCCs across the country in order to harass his ex-girlfriend.
00:00:42.000Thompson is suspected of being a copycat, of hearing about the JCC phone calls, and then conducting his own campaign of phone terrorism.
00:00:49.000According to the FBI, Thompson dated a Jewish woman.
00:00:51.000After their relationship ended, he sent defamatory emails and faxes to her employer.
00:00:57.000After that, he made, quote, at least eight JCC threats nationwide as part of his campaign against his ex-girlfriend.
00:01:03.000He then tried to blame the woman in order to have her prosecuted.
00:01:05.000He tweeted, quote, So, here's what we know about Thompson.
00:01:07.000He's a left-wing reporter who made up material while working at The Intercept.
00:01:19.000He was fired in February 2016 for fabricating quotes in his stories and creating, quote, fake email accounts that he used to impersonate people, one of which was a Gmail account in the name of the editor-in-chief of the publication.
00:01:32.000Thompson, who is black, tweeted just two weeks ago that Trump was attempting to, quote, remove black people from the South Side of Chicago.
00:01:38.000Naturally, folks on the right are triumphantly pointing out the irony.
00:01:41.000The guy behind the JCC threats isn't a Trump backer, but a left-wing fake news guy who hates Trump, who for weeks the left stated this had to be an outgrowth of Trumpian anti-Semitism.
00:01:54.000The guy sounds like a complete nutjob, not just a left-winger gone awry.
00:01:57.000According to the FBI, this was all designed to act out some sort of personal vendetta against an old girlfriend who was Jewish.
00:02:02.000The Jews were only involved insofar as they could be used as a tool against her.
00:02:05.000It doesn't make the guy's conduct any less egregious or anti-Semitic, but it doesn't really seem to connect to an ideology so much as a desire to hurt somebody he knew by using anti-Semitism.
00:02:14.000Furthermore, there's still another suspect out there.
00:02:16.000Dozens of JCCs have been called, and this terrorist was a copycat.
00:02:21.000This is evidence that while the left-wing media constantly accuses the right of jumping to conclusions about terrorism and ignoring right-wing terror involvement, the left has a major blind spot for its own extremists.
00:02:30.000And you just know that Trump's Twitter feed this morning will be totally epic.
00:02:40.000Okay, so we'll talk a little bit more about that story.
00:02:42.000I also want to talk about these Yemen raids and what we know about them, and why exactly it's ridiculous the way that the Democrats are treating this whole thing.
00:02:48.000But first, I want to say thank you to our advertisers over at zeel.com, Z-E-E-L.com.
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00:04:36.000I want to start off today talking a little bit about the fact that the Democrats have gone crazy over this Yemen raid.
00:04:41.000So a lot of that are upset over what happened the other night with Donald Trump and his speech to a joint session of Congress was that moment with Kerry Owens, who's the wife of the
00:04:52.000Karen Owens, the wife of Ryan Owens, who's the Navy SEAL, who was killed in this Yemen raid.
00:04:57.000And the left has been saying that it's just terrible.
00:04:58.000Donald Trump used her, he brought her out there and he used her.
00:05:01.000And I got a bunch of questions about this, people who were saying that it's just ridiculous he did use her, or is it bad that he used her?
00:05:08.000Here's my view of politicians, just to be clear about this, my view of politicians using victims to promote their political agenda.
00:05:17.000I don't know that's what Trump was doing with Karen Owens.
00:05:20.000If he was doing it in order to get the Yemen issue off the table, yeah, that's kind of yucky.
00:05:24.000At the same time, what it really was was him honoring a vet.
00:05:27.000And if the issue was we need to draw closer to our vets, then I'm all for it.
00:05:31.000So, it's not quite the same thing as bringing out the victim of gun violence issue, like Piers Morgan did, in order to claim that everyone who disagrees with you on gun violence is some sort of evil person who wants people to get shot.
00:05:43.000It's more, here's the widow of a hero, let's pay her tribute.
00:05:45.000That's not the same thing in my mind, whatsoever.
00:05:48.000But I want to talk about the Democrats' reaction to the Yemen raid, because it really is telling.
00:05:51.000So here's what you need to know about the Yemen raid.
00:05:52.000Let's go through what actually happened.
00:05:54.000We haven't talked at length about this, so I'm going to lay out the timeline.
00:05:56.000This is according to the Washington Post.
00:05:58.000So on November 7th of last year, CENTCOM, U.S.
00:06:00.000Central Command, told the Pentagon about a plan to raid al-Qaeda in Yemen.
00:06:04.000The Defense Department approved the plan December 19th, while Obama was still president, and the Obama administration apparently took a look at it.
00:06:10.000Then, once Trump was president, he was briefed, and Defense Secretary Mattis recommended support for the raid.
00:07:15.000One is there's an objection saying that Trump never should have greenlit the raid, that it was a risky raid, he did it in order to show that he was macho.
00:07:21.000I haven't really seen the evidence of that.
00:07:23.000It seems to me that if Mattis approves it, it's totally fair for Trump to rely on the judgment of a guy who should know much better than he should, General Mattis, who has been doing this sort of stuff his entire life.
00:07:41.000So I guess the idea here is that if Trump could have just roamed the site a la Obama and not risked American lives, that would have been better.
00:07:47.000And that would have been better specifically because no intelligence was found.
00:07:49.000So there's now a controversy over whether we found usable, verifiable intel at this place or not.
00:07:55.000So apparently the SEALs went in, they grabbed hard drives, they grabbed laptops, they grabbed cell phones, and there's now an argument from leakers versus the administration.
00:08:02.000The administration says there's intel that we can use, and the leakers say there is no intel that we can use.
00:08:34.000Because the idea seems to be that if somebody is part of a mission that fails, somehow their life was wasted, or somehow that's the fault of the president that the mission failed.
00:08:42.000That's a pretty dangerous standard, and to be fair, I think President Trump, when he was just Donald Trump, promulgated this.
00:08:50.000He's the sort of fellow who ripped the Bush administration and sort of implied that we had wasted thousands of lives in Iraq, which is really gross, because here's the truth.
00:08:59.000In a war on terror, in any war, there will be missions that are successful and there will be missions that are unsuccessful.
00:09:04.000You're not of more value because you were part of a mission that was unsuccessful than if you were part of a mission that was successful.
00:09:09.000If you died at the first battle of Bull Run as a Union soldier, that didn't make your life any less valuable than if you died as a Union soldier at the second battle of Bull Run, which the Union won.
00:09:18.000It's very, it's silly to try and say that if a mission goes bad, or a battle goes bad, the people who are in the bad mission are somehow less valuable, or they wasted their lives, or the botch was definitely the fault of the President of the United States, as though every mission is going to be successful.
00:09:32.000War isn't science, and not every operation is going to go as planned.
00:09:35.000Now, a lot of people on the left are saying, well, you know, Trump isn't getting the sort of flack over the Yemen raid that Obama got over Benghazi.
00:09:46.000There were a lot of military missions under Obama that went wrong.
00:09:48.000There were missions where SEALs got killed.
00:09:51.000And you really didn't hear the American people, or the people on the right, making too big an issue of it, because we understand, in a war, there are going to be some missions that go wrong, that are badly planned, badly coordinated, or where the crap just hits the fan.
00:10:03.000But that's not what happened in Benghazi.
00:10:34.000So equating Benghazi with the Yemen raid is really illogical and quite foolish, but it just demonstrates the extent to which the left is going to go in order to push this agenda.
00:10:43.000And it's really, I think, incredible the extent to which they'll go in order to push their agenda.
00:10:48.000The latest example of this is the attempt to go after Jeff Sessions.
00:10:51.000So as I said yesterday, I talked about the Jeff Sessions issue.
00:10:53.000Attorney General Sessions has now recused himself from any investigation of Trump-Russia connections or connections between the Trump campaign and the Russians.
00:11:02.000And the Democrats are saying it's not enough for him to recuse, he should resign.
00:11:06.000So I want to go through how this broke down, because the truth is, he should recuse, he should not resign.
00:11:12.000And it is very silly for the Democrats to claim this.
00:11:15.000And also, the Trump administration really has to get their comms office in order.
00:11:18.000They do need to get their communications office in order, because it just looks messy.
00:11:22.000And that feeling of chaos is not helpful.
00:11:34.000These documents also allegedly say, quote, there was a continuing exchange of information during the campaign between Trump surrogates and intermediaries for the Russian government.
00:11:51.000And if there is any evidence that anyone affiliated with the Trump campaign communicated with the Russian government in the course of this campaign, what will you do?
00:12:04.000Senator Franken, I'm not aware of any of those activities.
00:12:09.000I have been called a surrogate at a time or two in that campaign, and I did not have communications with the Russians.
00:12:19.000Okay, so people take this, there's two ways to read this exchange.
00:12:23.000One is that Sessions is saying, as a campaign surrogate, I did not have contact with the Russians.
00:12:27.000And the other is, I didn't have contact with the Russians and I was a campaign surrogate.
00:12:31.000And those are both plausible readings.
00:12:33.000It seems to me that the question was, do you know if anyone from the Trump campaign had contact with the Russians?
00:12:39.000And he is saying, I never had contact with the Russians.
00:12:42.000And then it turns out that he had two meetings with the ambassador, a guy named Sergey Kislyak.
00:12:47.000Which is just the typical Russian ambassador name.
00:12:49.000He's, by the way, Sergey Kislyak is getting more attention this week than he will up to the week that Putin murders him.
00:12:54.000But in any case, Stuart Smalley asked Sandy Griffith about this.
00:12:59.000And, you know, this becomes a big issue because the idea now is that somehow Sessions has something to hide, somehow he's working with the Russians to do something nefarious.
00:13:06.000Now, I think that that is wildly exaggerated.
00:13:09.000I don't think there's a lot of evidence that Sessions was doing anything nefarious.
00:13:13.000There are lots of senators who have met
00:13:18.000Whether there was anything to cover up is another issue.
00:13:21.000But just like in po- It seems everything in politics now boils down to, if you're not totally transparent and forthright at the very beginning, then you get smacked.
00:13:28.000Which is why it seems to me if you can't identify any wrongdoing, but all you can identify is that somebody, you know, misheard the question or answered wrong or even if he lied, you know, if he lied, I guess that's perjury and he should resign.
00:13:41.000But if it just looks like what it is, which is he answered the question as I was a campaign surrogate for Trump and I didn't have any meetings with the Russians and he never thought, well, I'm a senator and I had a meeting with the Russian ambassador.
00:13:51.000That seems to me, okay, recuse because it gives a scalp to the Democrats, I suppose, but the truth is that it looks mildly compromised.
00:14:00.000So recuse, let your deputy do all the work.
00:14:13.000I have said that Attorney General Sessions needs to recuse himself from any investigation into contacts between the President and his associates on the campaign and transition and Russia.
00:14:30.000For weeks, I made clear that I believe Attorney General Sessions' close relationship with the Trump campaign requires
00:14:40.000That he recused himself from the executive branch investigation into ties between the Trump campaign and Russia.
00:14:48.000Okay, and so this is over the top, obviously, because Democrats feel like there's blood in the water.
00:14:53.000Now, part of the problem here is how the Trump administration handled this.
00:14:56.000So, what they should have said is, Sessions should have answered more specifically.
00:15:00.000He didn't do anything wrong, but to avoid the appearance of impropriety, he's going to recuse himself.
00:15:04.000Instead, what you end up with, because this is always the way it works with the Trump administration, they need to get their common office in order.
00:15:10.000Instead, what you get is this mass confusion before Sessions recuses himself.
00:15:14.000So Trump comes out, he says, we have total confidence in Sessions, and he shouldn't recuse himself.
00:15:18.000Mr. President, do you still have confidence in the Attorney General?
00:17:08.000They should have come out yesterday morning, and as a body, they should have said exactly what I said, right?
00:17:11.000They should have said, he didn't do anything wrong.
00:17:14.000But he misremembered and that gives the appearance of impropriety.
00:17:16.000He's gonna recuse himself just so that everything looks perfectly clean.
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00:20:22.000If it's not true, then I'd like this cloud to dissipate, and if it is true, I'd like to know it, and I think we have a right to know it.
00:20:27.000Okay, so if you want to listen to the rest of the show, you're going to have to go over to dailywire.com.
00:20:31.000Watch the rest of the show at dailywire.com.
00:20:33.000Eight bucks a month will gain you access.
00:20:34.000We're going to talk about more today, including the Democratic narrative about Trump, how they're trying to destroy Trump, the Republican counter-narrative,
00:20:41.000And then shockingly, the media actually sort of got it right a little bit yesterday, which we'll talk about too.
00:20:46.000But you have to go to dailywire.com for all of that.
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00:20:49.000We have the Shapiro store coming soon.
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