As I predicted Tuesday evening, the Republican line of defense regarding President Trump s myriad foibles has boiled down to this: Trump is a victim of spineless Republicans who won t back him, who won't back his play, and the Deep State. Here is the sad truth: President Trump is the victim of himself, and all Republicans have to deal with basically the same enemies: the media, the deep state, and a bunch of sycophants who insist his only problem is that he s such a suffering martyr. I want to get to the bottom of this, and suggest that all of this seems to be a bit of a witch hunt, but we'll talk about what's really going on, and it's not about the witch hunt. I'm The Ben Shapiro Show, and I know, I know it's pretty harsh on Trump, but you know what? Well, well, you're not the only one who needs a special prosecutor in the Trump case, and you know who is? Special Counsel Robert Mueller. Ben Shapiro is the special counsel for the Trump/Russia investigation, and he's got a lot of good stuff to do, and we're going to do our best to find out what's going on in this case, right here in this episode of The Ben Show. I think you'll agree with me that Trump's problem is not that he's a bad guy, it's that he doesn't have a plan to fix it, he's just a guy who doesn't know how to do what he needs to do it the right way, so he just does it the way he wants to do things the right, which is what we're doing it the old-fashioned way, and that's what he does the way we need to do the thing that he wants, not how he does it, not what he's going to be doing it, right there in the White House, right in Washington, Washington, DC, and in New York, New York City, and Los Angeles, California, New Jersey, and New York. And that's not even close to being a good guy, is what it's all about, right? I mean, he just needs a scapegoat, not a guy like George W. W. Bush, not some guy who sipping on a glass of Gatorade and eating ice cream and drinking ice cream, not someone who s going to make him feel bad about it, and then he s gonna do it?
00:00:21.000Mitt Romney was targeted as a bad man for supposedly strapping a dog to the top of his car and forcibly cutting a gay kid's hair back in 1720.
00:00:28.000John McCain was allegedly a doddering old crazy person who wouldn't survive a term in office.
00:00:32.000George W. Bush was a war criminal who sold blood for oil and murdered hundreds of thousands of people to get Halliburton some walking around money.
00:00:50.000In fact, one of the spineless Republicans who jumped on the bandwagon against Bush was a fellow who had expressed tepid support for the Iraq war, then turned on Bush with a vengeance when things started to go south.
00:01:06.000Doesn't anyone remember the Bush administration actually launching an FBI probe to target leakers within the administration and in Congress?
00:01:13.000You remember Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald, appointed by one James B. Comey, to investigate the Bush administration leaks regarding Valerie Plame?
00:01:20.000In October 2003, Bush told his top officials to quote-unquote stop the leaks to the press, and that order promptly leaked to the press.
00:01:26.000Here's the difference between Trump and the rest of these Republican targets.
00:01:31.000But those enemies did not include Mitt Romney or John McCain or George W. Bush.
00:01:35.000Trump is better at directly confronting the media than any of these other Republicans.
00:01:38.000But his full frontal assault has really achieved not much, since he's unable to control himself.
00:01:43.000He substitutes his own fibs for theirs.
00:01:44.000He undermines his credibility dramatically.
00:01:46.000He undercuts the credibility of his own surrogates.
00:01:48.000Yes, he has helped rip down the media, which is great, but he's ripping himself down at the same time and thereby restoring American faith in the media.
00:01:56.000Over the last week, the New York Times and Washington Post have been much more credible than the Trump administration.
00:02:01.000Trump has a base of Republicans who won't support him, but it's far, far smaller than that of Bush or McCain or Romney.
00:02:06.000In fact, unlike Bush's base, Trump's base isn't dependent on anything Trump does.
00:02:10.000Bush's approval ratings dropped into the basement when he pursued bad policy, whereas Trump's remains really high among Republicans.
00:02:16.000Even as he pursues the Cleavon Little and Blazing Saddles strategy of negotiation, he's currently riding at 79% approval rating among Republicans, with just 16% disapproving.
00:02:25.000Spineless Republicans refusing to do his legislative bidding, that's really not the problem.
00:02:29.000The problem is that he doesn't have a legislative agenda, and that he has not a lot of leverage with which to bargain with Republicans thanks to the incompetence.
00:02:36.000Bush had his share of Republican naysayers, for sure, but he didn't spend his days offering them excuses to run for the hills.
00:02:42.000Bush had leaks, but Bush locked down leaks, as Peggy Noonan wrote at the time, quote, The Bush White House doesn't leak because George W. actively and affirmatively does not want it to.
00:02:50.000Trump hasn't filled the vast majority of top roles, meaning Obama holdovers likely still dominate his administration.
00:02:56.000Trump also has no habit of instilling loyalty in those around him by pursuing an agenda or listening to advice or demonstrating he'll stand by his people.
00:03:03.000Instead, he's showing he's willing to throw anybody under the bus at any time.
00:03:06.000It's an easy, silly game to pretend that Trump's main opposition is the same opposition all Republicans face, even if that opposition is amped up this time around.
00:03:14.000Trump's main opposition remains himself, and the sycophants who insist his only problem is that he's such a suffering martyr.
00:03:26.000Well, you know, they have now issued a special prosecutor, a special counsel in the Trump case, and this is entirely of Trump's own making.
00:03:34.000I want to get to the fact that all of this seems to be a bit of a witch hunt about nothing, but we'll talk about what's real and what's not in all of this.
00:03:42.000Again, I think it's important to note that Trump shot himself in the foot, and the only reason that his foot is now separated from his body is because he pulled the trigger.
00:03:49.000But we'll get to that in just a second.
00:03:51.000First, I want to say thank you to our sponsors over at Lyft.
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00:05:54.000Okay, so, the big news of the day is that a special prosecutor, special counsel, has now been appointed in this investigation of Trump-Russia.
00:06:02.000Again, I want to state, there is no evidence that Trump is guilty with regard to collusion with Russia.
00:06:30.000It looks like, if it's going to be a scandal, it's going to be much more like a Ron Contra, where it looks like a subordinate did something, and the president doesn't necessarily know about it.
00:06:37.000This is a case where Trump, it really looks like Trump is innocent.
00:06:43.000This morning, Trump was tweeting, if I were him, I'd be tempted to do it too, is the truth.
00:06:46.000Trump went out there this morning and he was tweeting that Hillary, there was never a special prosecutor associated with Hillary Clinton, there's never a special prosecutor under Obama, there's never a special counsel, he spelled it wrong but he's right, there's never a special counsel that was appointed for Benghazi or Fast and Furious, a case in which the DOJ clearly could not investigate itself, or on the IRS scandal.
00:07:07.000He's absolutely right about all of those things and if you're Trump and you're sitting there in the White House going, I didn't have anything to do with any of these things, why is everybody bothering me about this?
00:07:21.000The reason that this happened in the first place is because Donald Trump fired James Comey.
00:07:25.000That's why there is now a special prosecutor.
00:07:28.000Remember, James Comey was the guy in charge of investigating all of this stuff.
00:07:31.000Trump didn't like and was impatient with the fact that Comey wouldn't just say that Trump was innocent even if Flynn and Manafort and others were still involved in an investigation.
00:07:39.000So he fired Comey on the recommendation of Rod Rosenstein, the Deputy Attorney General.
00:07:43.000Because he had to come up with this cover of using the Deputy Attorney General's letter, Rod Rosenstein's letter to fire Comey, and then Trump came out two days later and came out, no, it wasn't about that letter at all.
00:08:03.000Because now Rod Rosenstein will probably be called in this case, if there is a case at all, it'll probably be subpoenaed and brought before Congress to talk about what he knows about the Trump-Russia investigation and whether there was an attempt to stifle it or why Comey was fired.
00:08:15.000So Rosenstein can actually be involved.
00:08:17.000So because Trump fired Comey, made up an excuse, and then debunked his own excuse,
00:08:21.000Now Rosenstein has to basically recuse himself.
00:08:23.000Sessions already had to recuse himself.
00:08:25.000Now Rosenstein has to recuse himself, which means that he basically has to appoint a special counsel.
00:08:30.000So this is all because Trump just decided to make a decision without a thought for the consequences.
00:08:48.000The reason that this could be a good thing for Trump is because the person who is in charge here is going to be a guy named Robert Mueller.
00:08:54.000Robert Mueller, if you recall, was the head of the FBI under George W. Bush, and then he was reappointed for a couple of years by President Obama.
00:09:01.000He worked in the Department of Justice for a dozen years as a U.S.
00:09:43.000Valerie Plame was working at the CIA, and her husband, Joe Wilson, ran a story about how there had never been yellow cake sold to the Iraqis, and it was kind of a shoddy story, but somebody leaked his wife's name to the press, Valerie Plame, and she was working for the CIA at the time.
00:09:58.000It turned out that it was Richard Armitage who was working for the administration, but
00:10:02.000Patrick Fitzgerald didn't prosecute Armitage, he went all the way to Scooter Libby and then prosecuted him for basically catching him in supposed perjury.
00:10:10.000So, the problem with special prosecutors, Kenneth Starr on the right, you know, with regard to the Lewinsky investigation, or Patrick Fitzgerald on the left, the problem with a special prosecutor is a special prosecutor's basic job is to dig and dig and dig until you hit bedrock, and if you don't hit bedrock, if you just
00:10:25.000You hit more dirt, you just keep digging.
00:10:27.000So they're going to dig until they find something, which is why the Wall Street Journal has come out against the appointment of the special counsel, the special prosecutor.
00:10:47.000So he is not going to be out there every day in the press talking about what his investigation is doing.
00:10:52.000And in fact, he's not even answerable under the law to the Attorney General as far as informing him as to what is going on on a regular basis.
00:10:58.000So, theoretically, Mueller could just say to everybody, okay, everybody calm down.
00:11:11.000And then, Trump, anytime somebody asks him a question, he can say, listen, there's a special prosecutor, a special counsel looking at this, and because the special counsel's looking at this, I have nothing else to say on this matter.
00:11:39.000So it could really be a good thing for Trump in a weird sort of way, but Trump has to stop shooting himself in the foot.
00:11:44.000So him going on Twitter, I understand why he's frustrated, but him going on Twitter this morning,
00:11:49.000In talking about how he's the most persecuted president in the history of presidents, it's not helpful.
00:11:53.000It makes him look like he's desperate, it makes him look like he's angry, it makes him look like he has something to hide.
00:11:58.000If he really has nothing to hide, his statement yesterday was the right statement.
00:12:00.000He made a statement yesterday from the White House where he said, listen, we'll do a full investigation and they'll come up with nothing, as I'm sure every other investigation will as well, and I'm focused on the work of the American people.
00:12:30.000If you're the president of the United States, your best bet now is to sit down, shut up, let the investigation take its course.
00:12:35.000They're not going to find anything on you, so let it go.
00:12:39.000Instead, it just seems like chaos is reigning.
00:12:41.000Even Tucker Carlson, who's obviously a fan of the administration, he was upset at the administration last night because they'd offered Kellyanne Conway to come on the air, and then Kellyanne Conway pulled out last second.
00:12:50.000Here's what Tucker Carlson had to say about it.
00:12:52.000They said, we want to send over Kellyanne Conway?
00:12:55.000And then not long before air, they canceled it for reasons that weren't exactly clear.
00:12:59.000Now, I think a lot of the descriptions in the press about what's going on at the White House are false, or they're animated by the hate the press has for Trump, which is totally real.
00:13:07.000But it does seem a little chaotic over there, I gotta be honest with you.
00:13:44.000And it's been easy every step of the way because self-created problems are also problems you can solve yourself.
00:13:48.000Trump is capable of solving these problems.
00:13:50.000All he has to do, appoint a director of the FBI who's going to be a bipartisan pick, and then appoint somebody and then let the special prosecutor do his job.
00:14:01.000We'll talk about whether he's going to do that in just a second.
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00:16:19.000They're focusing on the supposed cover-up of evidence that they have no proof exists.
00:16:23.000They're focusing on Trump firing Comey.
00:16:24.000As I said yesterday, what actually happened in the firing of Comey, in all likelihood, was that Trump thinks that Mike Flynn is innocent, and so he asked Comey, can you leave him alone, not because he thinks Flynn is guilty and wants
00:16:36.000Comey off his case, but because he thinks Flynn is innocent, she's like, can you leave him alone?
00:16:56.000So the Democrats are focused on bringing Comey before Congress and talking about Comey as much as possible.
00:17:01.000Mark Warner, senator from Virginia, he says that the American people want to hear from Comey.
00:17:06.000The real thing that the American public wants to hear is they want to hear from Jim Comey.
00:17:09.000They want to hear from him in an open hearing.
00:17:12.000And I think the appropriate venue is the Senate Intel Committee.
00:17:15.000If he chooses another committee, that's fine as well, but as long as he gets a chance to make his case.
00:17:21.000Okay, so the Democrats are jumping all over this, and the White House, again, is handling this about as badly as you possibly can.
00:17:26.000Sean Spicer, White House Press Secretary, at least for the moment, he says that the White House has nothing to say about the news that broke yesterday about the James Comey memo, the memo that suggested that he had been told by Trump to drop the investigation, or that Trump had suggested he drop the investigation.
00:17:41.000Here's Sean Spicer basically ignoring it.
00:18:01.000James Comey, like a week ago, talking about how he was never pressured to halt his investigation.
00:18:08.000If the Attorney General or senior officials at the Department of Justice opposes a specific investigation, can they halt that FBI investigation?
00:18:42.000Okay, so he said in open testimony people weren't trying to stop him.
00:18:46.000Now, people on the left are saying, well, he was talking about the Attorney General.
00:18:49.000You really think that if he was asked that question and he wanted to say the president's been trying to stop me from investigating, he couldn't have dropped it right there?
00:18:55.000So Comey himself is saying that he wasn't really pressured to drop this FBI investigation.
00:18:59.000Why isn't the White House pushing that line?
00:19:00.000The Democrats are out over their skis here.
00:19:04.000Jason Chaffetz, who's going to be retiring, this congressman from Utah, head of the House Oversight Committee, he says, and he's right, the Democrats don't have anything here.
00:19:11.000So do you think that the appointment of Robert Mueller as special counsel to look into this Russia question, whatever that question is, will stop the acceleration we've seen in the last week, talk of impeachment, of removing Trump somehow from office.
00:19:58.000Chaffetz is totally right that the special prosecutor isn't going to make the Democrats feel any better, but it's at least a good cover for the Trump administration if the Trump administration is willing to use it.
00:20:07.000Now, I do want to talk about where the Trump administration is vulnerable on all of this, but for that you're going to have to go over to dailywire.com and become a subscriber.
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