Ben Shapiro explains why Donald Trump tweets something that sets the world on fire, and why the media has completely lost their mind. He also points out that Trump's tweets are not a threat to the republic, and that if the left ever read the Constitution and respected it, there might be a shot at government of, by, and for the people, rather than an elected oligarchy every four years or so. Ben Shapiro is the host of the conservative podcast "The Ben Shapiro Show" and is a regular contributor to the conservative newsletter "The Weekly Standard" and the New York Daily News. He's also a frequent contributor to The Daily Wire and has been featured on CNN, NPR, CBS, and other media outlets. He is the author of the book, "American Idiot: How To Fix America's Most Disturbing Problem: The Inside Story of How To Overcome the Media's Fear Of Donald Trump." He is also the founder of The Ben Shapiro Project, and hosts the podcast, "Ben Shapiro's Most Ridiculous," which features his thoughts on everything from politics, pop culture, and the world, and everything else, and is available wherever you get your news and gossip. Click here to become a supporter of his work and listen to him on the airwaves wherever he is listening to his podcast, wherever he gets his news and information is available. Thank you for supporting his work: bit.ly/support-and-reviews/BenShapiroshares on social media? Thanks also for supporting the show: on Apple Podcasts, on Podcharts and on Instapids: on PODcharts and Instapods: . on Soundcloud: , on Yelp, is a podcast about politics and culture on the podcharts on the road on the web, and on the podcast on the podcast , and so much more! on , on Insta-takes on this podcast on in the podcast on all things politics and social media, and on on this platform, and more! Thanks for listening to Ben Shapiro's work on this episode on this epotes on the show? on his insta-says it's a lot of it's cool, and I hope you like it's great, thanks for listening on it's good, thank you so much, thanks to him's work and I really appreciate it!
00:00:22.000We have long since crossed a point where real Donald Trump is so dishonest, so unethical, that it is truly dangerous for our democracy.
00:00:28.000In layman's terms, what would it take for the USA to pass a constitutional amendment for a president recall like California has for governor?
00:00:37.000Apparently, Sean King was too busy tweeting to read the Constitution.
00:00:40.000You know, the document that answers this exact question many, many times.
00:00:44.000Impeachment is the only constitutional way of ousting a sitting president, of course, unless Trump is declared mentally unfit for office under the 25th Amendment by the VP and a majority of cabinet officers, or of such other body as Congress provides by law.
00:00:55.000But our constitutional system was designed to avoid the instabilities of parliamentary democracy, with its constant votes of no confidence, its constant elections, its shifting governmental powers.
00:01:05.000As for revisions of the Constitution, the Constitution also sets out how amendments work, but that would require, you know, actually reading things.
00:01:12.000It would also require Donald Trump to do something so bizarre that VP Pence or House Republicans had no choice but to initiate Trump's ouster.
00:01:34.000President Obama spent the last eight years undermining civic discourse in a far more sophisticated way than Trump does with his 140-character blasts.
00:01:41.000And Obama undermined faith in the government far more than Trump has, which is how Trump was able to sweep into the White House on the back of popular discontent.
00:01:48.000The left can keep dreaming that Trump will just disappear, or they can deal with reality.
00:01:52.000So long as they do the former, Trump will keep winning.
00:01:54.000It looks like Trump's winning streak will probably continue on that basis.
00:01:57.000But just as importantly, the left's lack of care about basic civics is one of the reasons politics breaks down.
00:02:03.000Our system is actually pretty durable.
00:02:06.000But the left doesn't care about the system, which is why the executive branch continues to accrue power.
00:02:10.000Civic ignorance leads to populism that favors powerful demagogues.
00:02:14.000If the left ever once read the Constitution and respected it, there might be an actual shot at a government of, by, and for the people, rather than an elected oligarchy every four years or so.
00:02:32.000Obviously Donald Trump tweeted something and that set the world on fire, and we'll talk about whether what he tweeted was accurate or inaccurate, or whether it matters, or if the media has completely lost their mind.
00:02:41.000A lot to get to on that score, but first, we have to say thank you to our sponsors over at Mack Weldon.
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00:04:34.000But to pretend that every tweet, and this is what the media is doing, to pretend that every tweet that Donald Trump sent is some sort of reflection of internal Donald Trump administration policy or reflects the best available intelligence.
00:04:47.000Donald Trump sends a series of tweets on Saturday morning.
00:04:50.000He's all mad because he saw a story in Breitbart that was basically a synopsis of all of the various actions taken by the Obama administration and the DOJ in the run-up to the election.
00:05:01.000And after the election, with regards to sort of the deep state going after Donald Trump, and here's what he tweeted.
00:05:06.000He tweeted, And then he tweets, let me find the exact text, because it's hard to see here a little bit.
00:07:34.000If this happened, once again, this would be the greatest abuse of power and overreach that's probably ever occurred in the executive branch.
00:07:43.000It's something that certainly deserves to be looked at.
00:08:36.000Okay, so James Comey, who's now- the left loves James Comey.
00:08:39.000So basically, James Comey just bounces around between being loved by various political parties.
00:08:43.000When he says that Hillary didn't commit a crime, then he's the best FBI director ever, according to the left.
00:08:47.000Then, he says that we've reopened the investigation into Hillary's email, and he is the worst person ever!
00:08:52.000And then, a week later, he says, well, we closed that, and then he says, oh, well, I guess he's okay.
00:08:56.000And now he's ripping on Trump, saying that this never happened, that Obama never ordered the DOJ to wiretap Trump, and suddenly he's everybody's friend again.
00:09:03.000Everybody looooves James Comey, right?
00:09:09.000And then, you know, and then you have people responding to James Comey, saying, so here's Kellyanne... Here's a White House spokeswoman, it's again Sarah Huckabee Sanders, this morning, saying that Trump doesn't believe Comey when Comey says that Obama didn't wiretap him.
00:09:23.000...asked by Sarah Huckabee Sanders, spokesperson for the president.
00:09:26.000Sarah, thank you for joining us this morning.
00:09:28.000So we now know that the FBI director has told the Justice Department that President Trump's explosive claims are inaccurate.
00:09:35.000Does President Trump accept the FBI director's denial?
00:09:39.000You know, I don't think he does, George.
00:09:40.000I think he firmly believes that this is a storyline that has been reported pretty widely by quite a few outlets.
00:09:48.000The wiretapping has been discussed in the New York Times, BBC, Fox News, and we believe that it should be looked at by the House Intelligence Committee.
00:09:55.000Sarah, I have got to stop you right there.
00:09:57.000Every single article you just mentioned does not back up the President's claim that President Obama had him wiretapped.
00:10:04.000Not a single one of those articles backs that up.
00:10:09.000It does back up the fact that the administration was wiretapping American citizens.
00:10:15.000There was a wide reporting suggesting that his administration, whether it was directly ordered by this president specifically, his administration could have done that.
00:10:24.000Okay, so there's a lot of wiggle room here now.
00:10:26.000I'm going to get to the wiggle room in a second and the fact of what actually happened here, but...
00:10:30.000But here's the reality of what basically happened.
00:11:15.000So basically you end up with one side saying everything Trump ever said is a lie, and the other side saying everything Trump ever said was true, when the truth is that Trump says really silly things on Twitter all the time that are summaries of a reality that is a little exaggerated, and then the left says nothing he ever says is true, which is also really silly and really stupid.
00:11:32.000So basically, it's a bunch of stupid people hitting each other with clubs.
00:12:51.000Reporting indicates that prior to 2016, the Obama Justice Department and FBI considered a criminal investigation of Trump associates, and perhaps Trump himself, based on concerns about connections to Russian financial institutions.
00:13:02.000Preliminary poking around indicated that there was nothing criminal involved.
00:13:05.000But rather than shut the case down, the Obama Justice Department converted it into a national security investigation under the FISA Act.
00:13:13.000Okay, FISA allows the government, if it gets court permission, to conduct electronic surveillance, which could include wiretapping, monitoring of email, and the like, against those it alleges are agents of a foreign power.
00:13:22.000FISA applications and the evidence garnered from them are classified.
00:13:26.000We would not know about any of this unless someone had leaked classified information to the media, which is a felony.
00:13:30.000James Barrett over at Daily Wire, he says, According to multiple reports during the 2016 campaign, the Obama administration allegedly submitted two requests with the FISA court targeting Trump or those associated with him.
00:13:41.000The first, submitted in June 2016, was reportedly a request to monitor several of Trump's associates.
00:13:47.000The Obama administration then allegedly submitted a second FISA request in October focused on the computer server in Trump Tower.
00:13:54.000Which they suspected had some connections to Russian banks.
00:13:57.000That request was granted, but nothing was found.
00:13:59.000And then there were some reports that the wiretaps of that computer continued nonetheless.
00:14:04.000Heat Street reported something similar on the issue.
00:14:07.000So, we really don't know the extent of the wiretaps.
00:14:09.000We know that the FISA court refused one application and granted another, or at least that's the report.
00:14:16.000We also don't know whether those wiretaps were trained at Trump's associates.
00:14:21.000They weren't trained at Trump himself by any of these reports.
00:14:23.000None of these reports say Trump himself was tapped.
00:14:24.000So we also don't know if the information is being gathered because we were wiretapping Russian sources and we caught Mike Flynn on the line talking with the Russians.
00:14:31.000So in other words, there's a lot of information that the intelligence community was concerned with the connections between Trump and Russia.
00:14:38.000But the idea that Obama himself was dictating from top down that this is the case, that you have to follow Trump and you have to dig all this up,
00:14:45.000Not any evidence of that, but by the same token, can you trust any of the people who are saying that?
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00:16:33.000Okay, so what is the big issue that the media are focused on here?
00:17:35.000Obviously I can't speak officially anymore, but I will say that for the part of the national security apparatus that I oversaw as DNI, there was no such wiretap activity mounted against the President-elect at the time as a candidate or against his campaign.
00:17:54.000I can't speak for other Title III authorized entities in the government or a state or local entity.
00:18:02.000I was just going to say, if the FBI, for instance, had a FISA court order of some sort for a surveillance, would that be information you would know or not know?
00:18:12.000If there was a FISA court order on something like this.
00:18:14.000So he's saying none of this ever happened, this is all nonsense.
00:18:17.000Okay, I would believe him except for the fact that here's what James Clapper had to say in 2013 in front of Congress under oath.
00:18:23.000So, what I wanted to see is if you could give me a yes or no answer to the question, does the NSA collect any type of data at all on millions or hundreds of millions of Americans?
00:19:05.000A lot of this is based, what Trump is basing this on, is Mark Levin did a good job on Friday of laying out all of the various attempts by the Obama administration to basically surveil members of the Trump campaign.
00:19:18.000Here's Mark Levin doing the same thing yesterday on Fox News and explaining the case.
00:19:23.000And it's a pretty solid case, what Levin says here.
00:19:53.000Head Street, two separate sources with links to the counterintelligence community have confirmed that the FBI sought and was granted a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act court, this is spying, in October, giving counterintelligence permission to examine the activity of, quote, U.S.
00:20:11.000persons in Donald Trump's campaign with ties to Russia.
00:20:34.000So, again, let me lay out the chain of events here.
00:20:37.000Donald Trump tweets something that isn't true but has a connection to reality.
00:20:40.000The left says it has no connection with reality.
00:20:42.000The right says, wait, no, it has some connection with reality.
00:20:45.000Plus, he's making a bigger point, and the bigger point is true.
00:20:47.000And the left goes, the bigger point isn't true and it has no connection to reality.
00:20:52.000Okay, many things can be true at once.
00:20:54.000The Obama administration could not be trusted.
00:20:56.000The Obama administration clearly had information on Trump and Russia, or wanted to gather information on Trump and Russia, and now they're saying they can't even find any real connection.
00:21:07.000They were pushing this story, I mean it was being leaked out at the time almost, and so the fact that they're saying now that nothing ever went on that was illicit is not trustworthy.
00:21:17.000So when people say Trump is the one who's quashing the public trust, no.
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