The Ben Shapiro Show - Ep. 313 - Did Russia Hack The Election After All?

Ben Shapiro talks about Ontario's new anti-gay law, President Trump takes on the Mayor of London, and a leaker who was arrested. Plus, a new bill that could allow the government to strip a child of their parental rights if they come out as gay, and the latest in a growing list of anti-choice laws across the U.S. Ben also talks about the leaker, Reality Winner, and how to keep your kids from being spied on by the government. Music: Fair Weather Fans by The Baseball Project, Recorded in Los Angeles, CA and Recorded in Baltimore, MD Subscribe to "The Ben Shapiro Show" on Apple Podcasts and other podcasting platforms wherever you get your shows. Use the promo code "UPLEVEL" to receive $50 off your first pack of B-L-A-Day sheets, plus shipping and handling fees. You get 10% off your entire order when you enter the Promo Code: UPLEVEL when you purchase a pack of 10 or more boxes of your choice from Bull & Branch at $50 plus shipping plus shipping, plus free shipping, for a total of $50 or more, plus a free shipping discount, when you sign up for the offer of $5 or more! It's free shipping and free shipping when you place an order of $25 or more with promo code PROMO-LORD. at Promo code: B&B. Ben's Note: Ben Shapiro's Note is . and we'll send you a free pack of free sheets and a $25 shipping discount when you book your first box of your first delivery. to your local store or box of the show, you get $50+ shipping and receive $25+ shipping plus $50 shipping and an additional $25 off your shipping discount. Thanks for listening to Ben's Rate, it'll get you an ad-free rate on the show and a discount on your first week of promo code, and he'll also get an ad on the next week, and you'll get an extra discount on the second week of shipping that starts in two days! and sets that gets you'll receive an ad discount, and they'll get a FREE shipping, too gets an extra $25, plus an additional two-day shipping discount on a maximum rate of $75, plus they'll also receive an additional free shipping offer, plus two weeks of free shipping throughout the rest of the world gets a discount, plus he'll get $5,000 shipping starts starts on the third week of the ad is also gets an ad free on the fourth week of your ad goes two weeks, and gets an additional discount, too!

00:00:00.000 According to Heat Street, Ontario has now passed a law that would allow the government to invade your home and strip you of your child if your little Billy comes home from school one day and announces he's little Sally, and if you have the temerity to tell him that he is not in fact Sally.

00:00:13.000 By a shockingly broad margin of 63 to 23, the Supreme

00:00:16.000 We're good to go.

00:00:38.000 We're good to go.

00:00:53.000 If all of this sounds bizarre, that's because it is.

00:00:55.000 It is also fascism.

00:00:56.000 To remove a child from the home because the government disagrees with basic biology is beyond the pale of the reasonable.

00:01:02.000 Unfortunately, it's not going to be long before leftists in the United States push the same thing.

00:01:06.000 The first step on that road is the widely acclaimed spate of legislation banning so-called conversion therapy for children with homosexual tendencies.

00:01:13.000 This is not an argument in favor of the efficacy of conversion therapy, which is iffy in even the best circumstances, but

00:01:20.000 If a child is disturbed by homosexual feelings, and you bring that child to a therapist to talk it through, that would now be considered illegal in states including California and New Jersey.

00:01:28.000 As Scott Shackelford of Reason Magazine explains, quote,

00:01:41.000 Simply do not grasp.

00:01:42.000 This isn't a ban on particular dangerous technique like electroshock treatment, for example.

00:01:46.000 It's a ban on anything, even just speech, coming from a licensed therapist that suggests homosexuality can be cured. 0.67

00:01:52.000 It is dangerous to allow the government to control the classification of speech and to recast speech as something else just because commerce is involved.

00:01:59.000 The next step will undoubtedly be removing children from parents who pursue such therapy in spite of the ban, purportedly for the good of the child.

00:02:06.000 The left's next step could be to remove accreditation from schools that do not traffic in LGBT advocacy.

00:02:11.000 After all, California has attempted to remove non-profit status from the Boy Scouts.

00:02:15.000 Schools in California have now mandated that kids learn about LGBT history in public schools.

00:02:20.000 What happens when people homeschool, and the state decides that homeschooling is inappropriate for children if they aren't taught the state's educational approach?

00:02:27.000 It's not difficult to imagine Child Protective Services removing children whose parents won't teach them positively about the full spectrum of sexual orientation.

00:02:35.000 In the interests of the child, of course.

00:02:37.000 Or leftists could skip directly to the Ontario scenario.

00:02:40.000 They could claim that transgender children are being shackled by their bigoted parents and must be protected by the state.

00:02:46.000 This is scary stuff.

00:02:47.000 It's particularly scary not only for religious parents, but for anyone who understands that there is no evidence that transgender feelings among children are unchanging, the vast majority of children with such feelings grow out of them, or that boys cannot actually become girls.

00:03:01.000 In Ontario, the state has now placed itself in direct opposition to science and freedom.

00:03:05.000 In the United States, the movement to do the same must be stopped now, before families are torn apart on behalf of a propagandistic sexual agenda.

00:03:13.000 I'm Ben Shapiro.

00:03:14.000 This is The Ben Shapiro Show.

00:03:19.000 Lots to get to today.

00:03:21.000 President Trump is now taking on the mayor of London.

00:03:23.000 We are also going to be talking about this leak, this leaker who was arrested, whose name was Reality Winner. 0.92

00:03:28.000 Yes, that was actually the name of the leaker, Reality Winner, who was in reality a loser.

00:03:33.000 And also, if your last name is Winner, I'm just going to recommend a few ideas for you, for children.

00:03:39.000 Cross court, forehand, backhand, big, lottery, all of these would be preferable to reality.

00:03:46.000 But before we get to any of that, I want to talk about one of our sponsors, Bull & Branch.

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00:04:48.000 I don't know.

00:05:06.000 President Trump has been very worried about people inside the intelligence community leaking against him.

00:05:10.000 But this leaker was arrested after leaking material to a lefty publication called The Intercept.

00:05:17.000 The Intercept is sort of...

00:05:19.000 Sympathetic to the Edward Snowden position on intelligence.

00:05:23.000 And this leaker, whose name, as I say, is Reality Leigh Winner, 25, she was arrested by the FBI at her home on Saturday, June 3rd, and it was probably about, people are still not sure, but it was supposedly about this document that she passed on to The Intercept that showed that a couple of days before the election, the Russians were attempting to hack into actual voting machines in the United States.

00:05:45.000 Which would of course throw the entire election system into turmoil.

00:05:47.000 There have always been these conspiracy theories about how it happened in 2000, there are conspiracy theories in 2000 and in 2016 as well, that these voting machines were actually hacked and that's why Trump won is because the Russians were going in and actually manipulating the final voting outcome.

00:06:03.000 There's still no evidence that they succeeded in that.

00:06:06.000 The document from the NSA that was leaked by Reality Winner did not actually show that the Russians were successful in their attempts to hack.

00:06:13.000 It just showed that they tried to.

00:06:14.000 But she was arrested.

00:06:16.000 Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, he said, Exceptional law enforcement efforts allowed us to quickly identify and arrest the defendant.

00:06:22.000 Releasing classified material without authorization threatens our national security and undermines public faith in government.

00:06:28.000 People who are trusted with classified information and pledged to protect it must be held accountable when they violate that obligation.

00:06:34.000 So apparently, according to the criminal complaint, Reality Winner, I'm never going to get tired of saying that name.

00:06:39.000 I just feel like Reality Winner should have at some point dated Carlos Danger, and they should all touch the orb together and they should say, Covfefe. 0.94

00:06:47.000 We've now reached peak stupid, I think, in 2017. 0.99

00:06:50.000 But every time I say that, there's like another two weeks that go by and we're even stupider than that. 0.99

00:06:55.000 We're in the alternative timeline in which Marty McFly did not prevent Biff from using the Sports Almanac in order to bet on games.

00:07:02.000 In any case, the criminal complaint alleges that Winner, a contractor with Pluribus International Corporation, was employed at a U.S.

00:07:08.000 government agency facility in Georgia since roughly February 13th, and she held a top secret clearance sometime around May 9th,

00:07:15.000 She printed an improperly removed classified intelligence reporting, which contained classified national defense information from an intelligence community agency, illegally kept it, and then illegally transmitted the intelligence reporting to an online news outlet, which would be The Intercept.

00:07:30.000 And I guess the way that they tracked her down is The Intercept printed the actual copy of the document.

00:07:36.000 And it showed that the document had been folded, which looked like it had been an actual original document that was printed out at the facility, folded up, put in a pocket, and then walked out.

00:07:45.000 So then they were able to look at who exactly had access to these documents and who had printed it out, and they came up with her.

00:07:51.000 So well done, The Intercept, protecting your leaker.

00:07:54.000 Just genius job there.

00:07:56.000 Really well done.

00:07:57.000 But the amazing thing, the amazing thing is I think we're going to have to issue a ban on the importation of people into government service.

00:08:06.000 Until we know what

00:08:25.000 Not just a criminal background check and employment history, but also a background investigator verifies all the information, does a grueling and lengthy process of speaking to past employers, neighbors, spouses, ex-spouses, and acquaintances to determine whether you're trustworthy enough to be given clearance according to TheBalance.com, which is an employment site.

00:08:42.000 It covers a 10-year period, and they give you a polygraph in many cases.

00:08:45.000 But they didn't check her Twitter feed, okay?

00:08:48.000 Like, two days, literally two days before she started working for the federal government, she went on Twitter, and she responded to a tweet from Javad Sarif.

00:08:55.000 Javad Sarif is the dictator, or the foreign minister, rather, of the Iranian terrorist government.

00:09:02.000 He said,

00:09:08.000 Talking about nuclear use.

00:09:11.000 And Reality Winner tweeted back, Okay, she had top-secret clearance.

00:09:22.000 And she was saying, with top-secret clearance, that if the United States had to go to war with Iran, she would side with Iran.

00:09:29.000 Um... What?

00:09:31.000 How did she... Where's the extreme vetting? 0.82

00:09:34.000 Am I concerned about the ability of our government to vet people who are coming in from abroad? 1.00

00:09:37.000 Yes.

00:09:38.000 But I am even more concerned if we can't vet the people who are getting top sec- I don't have top security clearance, do you?

00:09:43.000 I don't think anyone in this room has top security clearance.

00:09:45.000 I doubt I'd be given top security clearance under the standards of the federal government because I'm very outspoken in my political views.

00:09:52.000 But this gal went on Twitter and she was just sounding off on whatever she felt like sounding off on. 0.98

00:09:56.000 There's one point where she tweeted at Kanye West, again this is after she was working for the federal government in February 2017, quote, you should make a shirt that says, being white is terrorism.

00:10:05.000 Hmm?

00:10:06.000 Okay, this person got top-secret clearance, so well done, federal government, as always, just doing a stellar job.

00:10:13.000 Now, the left is jumping on the arrest of reality winner to say a couple of things.

00:10:16.000 One, they're saying, oh, Trump is going after leakers.

00:10:19.000 How dare Trump go after leakers?

00:10:20.000 It's just so terrible.

00:10:21.000 Okay, first of all, let me just point out that Trump going after leakers

00:10:25.000 Obama would have gone after this leak or two.

00:10:27.000 I mean, the idea that this was in any way legal or acceptable is just nonsense.

00:10:32.000 Anyone would have gone after Reality Winner.

00:10:34.000 But what the Democrats are really jumping on is the fact that the document that she exposed said that these voting machines were hacked.

00:10:40.000 So Tim Kaine, the vice presidential candidate, along with Hillary Clinton in 2016, he said that he thinks that it's not out of the realm of possibility that Hillary actually won the election and that the Russians hacked the voting machines.

00:10:51.000 Do you think the vote count could have been affected by the Russians?

00:10:55.000 Oh, I definitely think so, and let's just make a distinction here.

00:11:00.000 I don't think anybody has suggested that the actual tallies on the machines were affected, although that's certainly something we should look at, but I haven't heard anybody suggest that there's evidence that that occurred.

00:11:13.000 But, when the combined weight of the intelligence committees say that Russia was engaging in a wide-ranging pattern of action to affect the election, to say we can determine that there was no effect, you'd be foolish to say that.

00:11:28.000 Especially when you add to the leaking of information the fact that they were sucking data about individuals outside of state boards of elections.

00:11:37.000 And again, Aaron, that is all publicly reported material that I'm giving you.

00:11:42.000 So, look, they intended to affect the outcome.

00:11:46.000 We have to get to the bottom of everything they did so we can protect future elections.

00:11:50.000 We won't rule out the idea that they actually hacked the election results.

00:11:53.000 I'm just wondering here, again, if you're moving without evidence on this thing to suggest that it's possible the actual election was hacked, which is what Democrats have been saying for a year now, is that the actual election was hacked, or since the election, they've been saying the actual election was hacked.

00:12:06.000 You should actually have to show some evidence of that, because otherwise you are just participating in exactly what Democrats were whining about leading up to the 2016 election, saying Republicans wouldn't accept the outcome.

00:12:15.000 We are now months and months and months beyond the election.

00:12:17.000 They still won't accept the outcome.

00:12:18.000 And they are again buying into the notion, without evidence, that the actual election results were hacked.

00:12:23.000 They keep saying the election was hacked.

00:12:25.000 It was not.

00:12:26.000 But I think the broader point here is not about the insanity of the Democrats, which is consistent.

00:12:30.000 It is that it is very difficult to vet people.

00:12:32.000 It's very difficult to vet people, which means we have to be extraordinarily strict, extraordinarily stringent about who we let into the country and give the priorities and privileges of citizenship. 0.55

00:12:43.000 So

00:12:45.000 Here's an example.

00:12:47.000 In the West, we are very cordial about our rights, obviously, and we should be. 0.99

00:12:51.000 But that very often veers into the stupidity of either granting top security clearance to people who shouldn't have it, as in the case of Reality Winner, or pretending that violent jihadis are not violent jihadis because they live in the West. 0.98

00:13:03.000 So, for example, there's this terrorist whose name is Butt. 0.99

00:13:08.000 That's really his name.

00:13:09.000 His name is Khurram Shahzad Butt.

00:13:11.000 And this is one of the London terrorists.

00:13:14.000 And he was featured in a documentary on the BBC about jihadis.

00:13:19.000 It was called The Jihadi Next Door. 0.98

00:13:21.000 And he was actually on that documentary.

00:13:24.000 And yet they still were not keeping tabs on him enough to stop him from helping commit this London Bridge terror attack.

00:13:30.000 Here is video of Khurram Shahzad Butt in The Jihadi Next Door.

00:13:42.000 Guys, determine the Qibla please.

00:13:44.000 Come on.

00:13:44.000 Somebody determine the Qibla.

00:13:46.000 Anyone got a smartphone?

00:13:50.000 He's just going to now find out the direction for prayer.

00:13:52.000 For us, so this is a type of Jihad for you. 0.73

00:13:54.000 That you came out to do Dawah.

00:13:56.000 In joining good and forbidding evil.

00:13:58.000 And don't be deterred.

00:14:00.000 B, you've got personal details on you.

00:14:02.000 We'd like to speak to you.

00:14:03.000 No.

00:14:03.000 I don't think so.

00:14:04.000 There's no personal details on you.

00:14:07.000 B, don't touch me.

00:14:08.000 Stop for a minute.

00:14:09.000 You're detained.

00:14:11.000 Detained for what?

00:14:12.000 You're detained for the purpose of search. 1.00

00:14:14.000 Are you insane? 0.99

00:14:15.000 What search? 1.00

00:14:15.000 You're not searching me. 1.00

00:14:16.000 Are you insane? 1.00

00:14:17.000 Search. 1.00

00:14:17.000 Search for what? 1.00

00:14:19.000 Why are you touching me?

00:14:20.000 What for?

00:14:20.000 You're detained for the purpose of search.

00:14:22.000 Okay, and you can see this actual terrorist being confronted by a cop, and then the cop is surrounded by a bunch of young Muslim guys. 0.89

00:14:30.000 Here is the question.

00:14:31.000 Why is it that the West seems so bad at vetting?

00:14:34.000 And the answer is because we in the West have a basic assumption, which is that all the people who live in the West are going to appreciate the privileges and values of the West.

00:14:40.000 That is absolutely untrue.

00:14:42.000 It's absolutely untrue.

00:14:44.000 And because we assume that, we make the mistake of granting privileges and immunities to people who ought not have them.

00:14:50.000 The fact that this guy appeared on a documentary called The Jihadi Next Door means he should have been under 24-hour surveillance.

00:14:55.000 This is insanity.

00:14:56.000 It's insanity.

00:14:57.000 You want to know about all the red flags?

00:14:59.000 A great piece by Aaron Bandler over at Daily Wire today about all the red flags on this particular terrorist, okay?

00:15:04.000 Not only was he on this Jihadi Next Door 1.00

00:15:07.000 Documentary.

00:15:08.000 But also, in 2015, the police were alerted about him when he attempted to spread Islamic propaganda to children in a park.

00:15:15.000 He was confronted by a mother after her two children came home and said, Mommy, I want to become a Muslim.

00:15:22.000 She passed along the information.

00:15:23.000 He was trying to radicalize the children, said the mother.

00:15:25.000 He would go down to the park and talk to them about Islam.

00:15:28.000 And he tried to recruit them to Islam.

00:15:30.000 And the police, of course, let that go.

00:15:32.000 A friend of Butt's also reported him to the police due to comments he made to justify a terror attack.

00:15:37.000 Apparently one of his friends phoned the anti-terror hotline and they told him about the conversation and why he was radicalized and nothing happened.

00:15:45.000 He was part of a radical Islamic organization known as Al-Muhajiron, which has lobbied for Sharia law and has been linked to 50% of all terror attacks in Britain over the past 20 years.

00:15:57.000 He wanted to wage jihad in Syria, according to a relative of Butt's wife.

00:16:02.000 Butt never acknowledged women in conversation.

00:16:05.000 He was kicked out of a mosque for arguing with an imam during a sermon.

00:16:08.000 They've been conducting surveillance of a terror cell in the London town of Barking, where Butt lived, since March, and they missed him.

00:16:13.000 The day of the attack,

00:16:14.000 We're good to go.

00:16:39.000 There are people who are attempting to get top security clearance who have political motivations.

00:16:43.000 Again, it's one thing just to be politically left.

00:16:45.000 That's not a big deal.

00:16:46.000 But if you are somebody who is expressing sympathy for the Iranian regime over the United States, I think that it's probably a mistake to give you top security clearance.

00:16:53.000 Vetting, vetting, vetting.

00:16:54.000 I know that the left has this basic principle that they never want to engage in risk calculation.

00:16:58.000 They think all risk calculation is profiling.

00:17:01.000 All criminal behavior can be profiled through risk calculation, but attempting to profile through risk calculation is considered racist, sexist, xenophobic, politically incorrect by the left, and that's why you end up with bad people slipping through the cracks.

00:17:13.000 Well, in just a second, I'm going to be joined by Senator Mike Lee of Utah.

00:17:16.000 He has a brand new book out, but before I get to that,

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00:18:08.000 Okay, so yesterday we had the opportunity to speak with Senator Mike Lee, and here is a bit of our conversation with the great senator from Utah, maybe the last honest man in the United States Senate.

00:18:19.000 Well, joining us here now on The Ben Shapiro Show is my favorite senator, the last honest senator in America, Senator Mike Lee of Utah.

00:18:27.000 He has the benefit of also being from a state that actually elects conservatives every once in a while.

00:18:31.000 So Senator Mike Lee has a brand new book out called Written Out of History, The Forgotten Founders Who Fought Big Government.

00:18:36.000 It's soaring up the charts at Amazon.

00:18:38.000 It was all the way up to

00:18:40.000 Thank you, Ben.

00:18:41.000 So, why don't we jump right into the book, because it's fascinating that everybody reads the Federalist Papers, nobody reads the Anti-Federalist Papers.

00:18:46.000 And if they'd read the Anti-Federalist Papers, they would understand that a lot of the debates that were had back then are being had today, except with a government that is much bigger.

00:18:53.000 Your book is about

00:19:10.000 Not necessarily the people who were writing in the anti-federalist papers, but people who were bringing a different point of view to bear, even at the time of the founding, about the overreach of federal government.

00:19:18.000 So let's run through some of these people, because I think it really is fascinating content.

00:19:22.000 So let's start with Aaron Burr, who's been portrayed as the great villain of American history.

00:19:26.000 Now, of course, Hamilton is a big hero to everybody, because there's a musical that very few people have seen, but everyone has heard of.

00:19:32.000 And Aaron Burr is portrayed largely by a guy who ended up as a traitor trying to destroy the country.

00:19:39.000 What exactly is the true story of Aaron Burr and how did he impact the building of the country?

00:19:43.000 Aaron Burr was himself a victim of an overreaching president, Thomas Jefferson, who had this political rage problem.

00:19:55.000 He became obsessed with his own power.

00:19:58.000 When Aaron Burr was vice president under Thomas Jefferson,

00:20:03.000 As vice president, he's also president of the Senate.

00:20:05.000 There were a number of people who were themselves the victims of Jefferson's political road rage, who found themselves at the receding end of impeachment proceedings.

00:20:16.000 Aaron Burr, as president of the Senate, afforded them due process and fairness.

00:20:21.000 This bothered Thomas Jefferson a lot.

00:20:23.000 It also bothered him that Aaron Burr was still kind of a political threat to him.

00:20:28.000 And so later, during Jefferson's second term, when

00:20:32.000 Uh, uh, Burr was no longer his vice president.

00:20:35.000 Jefferson went after him and accused him of treason, prosecuted him for treason, a capital offense.

00:20:41.000 So, but for some language in the Constitution, Burr would have lost his life at Thomas Jefferson's tavern.

00:20:47.000 Now look, Jefferson did some great things.

00:20:48.000 He was a great mind, the author of the Declaration of Independence, but he wasn't perfect.

00:20:54.000 And this story and the story of Aaron Burr's involvement in it is a lasting reminder to us that even

00:21:01.000 A wise, bright man.

00:21:03.000 Thomas Jefferson.

00:21:05.000 It's fascinating that you talk about that, because obviously, you know, now there's a lot of talk about whether it's necessary to have character in government.

00:21:16.000 There's a lot of talk after this last election cycle where a lot of people were concerned about the character of both major candidates for president of the United States.

00:21:23.000 And a lot of people, it seems, have basically come to the conclusion after the Clinton years that character doesn't matter in the president at all, and that we should just pick somebody.

00:21:31.000 The system will handle itself.

00:21:32.000 There's not really a great threat.

00:21:34.000 What do you make of that argument in light of American history?

00:21:38.000 Well, I think what we have to remember is that when even a good person is someone who might abuse power, we have to carefully cabinet that power.

00:21:51.000 I remember when I was a kid seeing a movie where there was this tyrannical king.

00:21:54.000 I don't even remember the name of the movie, but the tyrant king

00:21:58.000 Got really mad one day and said, that's it, I'm canceling Christmas.

00:22:01.000 I thought, what kind of society even gives power to the king to cancel Christmas?

00:22:06.000 They shouldn't ever do that in the first place.

00:22:08.000 You don't want to give power to a king to take away something as fundamental to people as their religious holidays.

00:22:15.000 And so regardless of where you start with the person, even a person who is an absolute saint should not be trusted with unlimited power.

00:22:24.000 The entire founding generation, including the people I focus on in my book, Written Out of History, were suspicious of government power.

00:22:30.000 Everyone expected George Washington to be our first president.

00:22:33.000 They all respected George Washington, but they still deliberately created a relatively weak presidency.

00:22:39.000 Meaning someone who wouldn't have too much power in the first place to abuse.

00:22:43.000 Well, the book is written out of history, The Forgotten Founders Who Fought Big Government.

00:22:46.000 Another name that people will know but may not know about him is Elbridge Gerry.

00:22:51.000 Everybody knows his name because of gerrymandering, of course, and there are so many lawsuits now about whether districts are being properly drawn because they are quote unquote gerrymandered.

00:22:58.000 But what exactly was Elbridge Gerry's role in the founding of the country?

00:23:03.000 Well, he was a delegate to the Constitutional Convention.

00:23:05.000 He was one of those who had some real serious concerns.

00:23:09.000 With the Constitution, even at the end of the drafting process, he was in many respects the forebear, the progenitor of the Bill of Rights.

00:23:19.000 He was the author of the language that became the Tenth Amendment.

00:23:23.000 Only his version of the Tenth Amendment would have been better.

00:23:27.000 It contained one word that's lacking in the Tenth Amendment as it was ultimately drafted and ratified, and that is expressly.

00:23:36.000 The way Jerry wrote it,

00:23:38.000 Originally, it would have been all powers not expressly granted to Congress or prohibited to the states or reserved to the states or to the people.

00:23:46.000 And James Madison took that out, took out the word expressly, thinking it was unnecessary.

00:23:52.000 Many decades later, about 150 years later, I think Elbridge Gerry was proven right in that.

00:23:57.000 We would have been better off had the word expressly been included.

00:24:01.000 So I want to talk a little bit about applying lessons written out of history to modern government.

00:24:05.000 So obviously the government has grown far more than any of the founders ever would have perceived.

00:24:09.000 The battles between the Federalists and the Anti-Federalists and the people who were critical of government power at the time, centralization of power, and the people who were in favor of that centralization of power.

00:24:17.000 John Adams, who was a big proponent of a stronger executive and a stronger federal government, even he would look at the situation now and probably vomit and never stop vomiting.

00:24:27.000 Because none of these guys were in favor of the overarching federal government that we have now.

00:24:32.000 How do we pare that back?

00:24:33.000 Because it seems like we have an incentive system where Congress has an incentive to pass incredibly vague laws and blame all of the implementation on the executive.

00:24:41.000 The executive has the incentive to continue accreting as much power to itself as humanly possible.

00:24:47.000 And the Supreme Court and the court system has as much incentive as possible

00:24:51.000 to increase their own power by green lighting federal power.

00:24:54.000 So where exactly can we stop this cycle?

00:24:58.000 Is it an Article 5 convention?

00:25:00.000 Is it we're just gonna have to wait for people to wise up and learn American history?

00:25:03.000 Because that may take a while.

00:25:04.000 What exactly can we do, not only as citizens, but what can you do in Congress to actually help effectuate this?

00:25:10.000 Okay, great question.

00:25:12.000 This is actually something that's at the heart of why I wrote this book.

00:25:16.000 Regardless of the mechanics,

00:25:18.000 Whether it occurs through an Article 5 Convention, which is an option, or whether it occurs through a series of legislative reforms or constitutional reforms brought about within Congress.

00:25:29.000 Regardless of how it happens, it's not going to happen until it has to happen, until the people insist on it happening.

00:25:36.000 But that, in turn, isn't going to occur until such time as people reacquaint themselves with our true founding story.

00:25:44.000 Our modern day accounts

00:25:46.000 of America's founding and of the founding of the Constitution have been sanitized.

00:25:50.000 They've been sanitized by an educational and political and media establishment that wants a single narrative, wants the sort of post-New Deal era narrative to dominate the discussion.

00:26:03.000 And so as a result, what we've all been taught in public school, in college, even in most private schools, is that those who advocated for a bigger, stronger national government are the ones to be revered.

00:26:15.000 The anti-federalists like Luther Markham, who I discuss in the book, have been sort of passed aside.

00:26:21.000 The problem is that we don't have both sides of the story being told.

00:26:24.000 Once the American people become reacquainted with the other side of the story, the one that's been written out of history, they can begin to exercise the political will and move forward with these movements.

00:26:36.000 Again, whether it's through an Article 5 convention or otherwise, the will has to be there on the part of the people.

00:26:41.000 But the people aren't going to have the will until they re-appoint themselves with these stories and until these become part of our national political discourse.

00:26:48.000 We're talking with Senator Mike Lee, author of Written Out of History, The Forgotten Founders Who Fought Big Government.

00:26:52.000 I'd be remiss, Senator Lee, if I didn't ask you a little bit about what's going on in the Senate right now, just in terms of politics.

00:26:58.000 We're looking at, we're now 150 days into the Trump administration, and aside from the Congressional Review Act, no major legislation has really passed through Congress.

00:27:09.000 Do you foresee there being a major tax

00:27:12.000 Right now it seems like in order to get a good tax reform bill through, they need to get some sort of health care reform through in order to build up the savings that they can use to pass on those savings to reconciliation for purposes of tax reform.

00:27:27.000 Do you think that we're going to get one of those, neither of those?

00:27:31.000 And a broader question as a follow-up.

00:27:34.000 Would it be better if we just stopped with all these omnibus packages in general and started passing three-page bills that everybody could vote up or down?

00:27:41.000 Yes.

00:27:42.000 So let me let me deal with your last question first.

00:27:45.000 Absolutely.

00:27:46.000 This is one of my biggest frustrations with the place is that for years and years, or at least the six and a half year period, I think Congress has not been appropriating this passing bills that spend money through the regular order process.

00:28:00.000 In other words, we wait until the deadline.

00:28:05.000 We run right up to the limit placed on a spending bill, usually September 30th.

00:28:12.000 And then we're told, you either pass this bill, either a continuing resolution or an omnibus spending package, or the government's going to shut down.

00:28:18.000 Take it or leave it.

00:28:19.000 And by the way, in this package, the CR or the omnibus or whatever it is, it's gonna fund Planned Parenthood, it's gonna fund all these bad things, it's gonna fund Obamacare.

00:28:28.000 But you have to do this, or you're going to get blamed for a shutdown.

00:28:31.000 That's how it's been working.

00:28:33.000 I wish we would take this in a step-by-step fashion, pass much smaller, more granular spending bills, so that we can bring the attention

00:28:41.000 Uh, to each individual area of government spending.

00:28:44.000 With respect to your other question about tax reform and Obamacare repeal.

00:28:48.000 Look, I believe both of those are going to happen.

00:28:50.000 I'm probably in the minority in saying that, at least from those who are speaking out in public.

00:28:55.000 The reason I think that is that we have to.

00:28:58.000 The Republican Party is going to be in serious, serious jeopardy if it doesn't pass both of these.

00:29:04.000 And most people seem to think that the Obamacare repeal needs to come first for tax reasons.

00:29:09.000 I'm agnostic on that point.

00:29:29.000 And with tax reform.

00:29:30.000 And I, therefore, think something will happen.

00:29:32.000 Senator Mike Lee, thanks so much for joining the show.

00:29:34.000 The book, again, is Written Out of History, The Forgotten Founders Who Fought Big Government.

00:29:38.000 You should definitely check it out.

00:29:39.000 You can hear, obviously, Senator Lee is super fluent, not only in American history, but also in governance.

00:29:44.000 And this is a must-read for people who are concerned about the future of government, just as they should be about the past of American government.

00:29:49.000 You can't understand where we are without knowing where we've been and what the arguments were on the other side, many of which were actually correct.

00:29:55.000 As time went on, it was proved that they were correct.

00:29:57.000 Senator Lee, thanks so much for joining the show.

00:29:58.000 Keep doing what you're doing.

00:29:59.000 Obviously, we're big admirers here at the show, so thank you so much.

00:30:03.000 Thank you very much.

00:30:04.000 Okay, so, I want to discuss President Trump's battle with the London mayor, Sadiq Khan, in just a second, but for that you're going to have to go over to dailywire.com, become a subscriber for just $8 a month.

00:30:16.000 You can be a subscriber at dailywire.com, see the rest of the show live.

00:30:19.000 You can also see the rest of Clavin's show live.

00:30:22.000 You can be part of the mailbag, which we're going to be doing on Fridays now, thanks to the addition of a fifth show a week.

00:30:28.000 Yes, that's right, we are now broadcasting every single weekday.

00:30:31.000 Yay! 0.99

00:30:32.000 Yay! 0.99

00:30:32.000 So, $8 a month will get you that. 0.99

00:30:33.000 Annual subscription will get you a free signed copy of the new book that I have out with my father, Say It's So, Papa, Dad, Me, and the 2005 White Sox Championship season.

00:30:43.000 It is a great Father's Day gift.

00:30:45.000 It's perfect for your dad.

00:30:46.000 I know because I wrote it with mine.

00:30:48.000 So it's a lot of fun.

00:30:49.000 Endorsed by Mark Levin and Dana Perino and Jerry Krasnick over at ESPN.com.

00:30:53.000 Really good baseball book.

00:30:54.000 Not political so much as it is just about relationships and father and son stuff.

00:30:58.000 You can get a free signed copy of that when you go over to dailywire.com and become an annual subscriber.

00:31:02.000 Even if you're a regular subscriber, if you upgrade to an annual subscription, then you can get a free signed copy as well.

00:31:08.000 Okay, we are the largest conservative podcast in the country.

The Ben Shapiro Show - June 06, 2017

Ep. 313 - Did Russia Hack The Election After All?

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