Trump kills the Iran deal. The West Virginia primary ends Don Blankenship s wild hopes. And Michael Cohen could be in even more hot water. All that and more on today s episode of The Ben Shapiro Show. Subscribe to the Ben Shapiro Podcast (RSS) Subscribe on iTunes Learn more about your ad choices. If you like what you hear, please HIT SUBSCRIBE and also consider giving a five-star rating on Apple Podcasts. They re the only place I get to test and review new products and services without having to go through a formal review process.And if you really like what they re selling, you can become a patron patron of the show by pledging a small monthly fee. It helps keep the show going and keeps us focused on our mission: to help people find quality, affordable, high-quality, affordable and inspirational content. Thank you so much to our sponsor FilterBuys. They carry over 600 different filter sizes, even custom ones, all shipped free within 24 hours. They use them here at the Shapiro Office in Delaware, we use them at The Shapiro House in the Delaware offices as well. We use them in the Shapiro Household as well! Go check them out! There s a reason we use it in the office, there's a reason that I use it here at The Shapiro House in my house! And that means that you never need to think about air filters again! - Filterbuys. Check it out here at FilterBuY. That s FilterbuY. It s a company that makes the best filters you can breathe better than you breathe better, too you can do it in your home and you save 5% more of the air filters you use in your house, you ve got it, you re gonna breathe better in the air that you breathe like that too, you ll get it, too that s not only that, you actually get it too, it s not just that in the rest of the world, you also gets it, right in the same place, you get it at the whole place, she s not even that, too she s got it everywhere, you even gets it all that you re not even needs that s even she s even that anywhere else, you have it, she gets it too is that s that s a good deal, you are not even just that, she has it, that s also that, right, you're not even it, it's that kind of stuff, she's not even a little bit of air, she also has it all she's even that type of thing...
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00:01:40.000The crying, the sobbing could be heard for miles around from President Obama's house in Georgetown.
00:01:47.000And my leftist tears tumbler just started filling up right to the top, magically.
00:01:51.000It just started filling up because of the leftist tears that were happening because of President Trump revoking the Iran deal.
00:01:55.000A strong move by President Trump, a correct move by President Trump.
00:01:59.000Here was President Trump, what it looked like yesterday, what it sounded like when he was revoking the Iran deal.
00:02:03.000Not only does the deal fail to halt Iran's nuclear ambitions, but it also fails to address the regime's development of ballistic missiles that could deliver nuclear warheads.
00:02:18.000The Iran deal is defective at its core.
00:02:23.000If we do nothing, we know exactly what will happen.
00:02:29.000In just a short period of time, the world's leading state sponsor of terror will be on the cusp of acquiring the world's most dangerous weapons.
00:02:40.000Therefore, I am announcing today that the United States will withdraw from the Iran nuclear deal.
00:02:49.000Okay, so here's the reason why this is great.
00:02:51.000Okay, what President Trump is basically doing is he's saying, listen Iran, you can have a nuclear program, or hopes, aspirations toward a nuclear program, or you can have an economy, you cannot have both.
00:02:59.000Because what this effectively is going to do is snap back sanctions.
00:03:02.000It's possible Congress may have to pass new sanctions, but that will happen.
00:03:05.000Congress will pass new sanctions against Iran.
00:03:07.000Already, foreign companies that do business with Iran are being put in the crosshairs of the U.S.
00:03:20.000Iran has been using billions of dollars provided to them by the United States in order to pursue terrorism around the world.
00:03:25.000Iran has been using all that money to build up its nuclear program, their missile program more specifically.
00:03:31.000Their nuclear program has sort of been on hold, but they've maintained all of their technology, and they were just going to relaunch that as soon as the deadline was up, which was going to happen in 2025 anyway.
00:03:41.000So Iran has been—they've built up their military, I believe, 40 percent since the Iran deal, all despite a massive decline in their economy.
00:03:50.000All of which goes to show that these were not a bunch of moderates.
00:03:51.000The lie that we were sold by the Obama administration is that there were a bunch of moderates in Iran.
00:03:55.000And if we could just reach out to those moderates in the Iranian administration, and if we could give them something, like money, if we could just give them money, then maybe they would be emboldened to make friends with us.
00:04:42.000The JCPOA, that's the joint coalition agreement, is in America's interest and has significantly rolled back Iran's nuclear program.
00:04:50.000It has not significantly rolled back Iran's nuclear program.
00:04:52.000All it has done is put it on hold briefly while Iran takes all of that money and builds up all of their other capabilities.
00:04:57.000Obama made sure that the Iran deal did not include restrictions on funding of terrorism or development of ballistic missile technology.
00:05:04.000Those are the two technologies that when hooked up to the bomb, boom, you have a nuclear weapon and at least two delivery mechanisms, ballistic missiles and terrorist groups funded by Iran.
00:05:13.000Obama then added that some of the countries of Europe have signed on to the deal in the belief that the Iranians can be trusted.
00:05:18.000Quote, walking away from the JCPOA turns our back on America's closest allies and an agreement that our country's leading diplomats, scientists and intelligence professionals negotiated.
00:05:27.000Okay, first of all, no one liked the deal when it was signed.
00:05:29.000The polls showed Americans did not like the Iran deal when it was signed.
00:05:32.000He could not get a majority of Congress to approve his deal.
00:05:35.000This was not a treaty because he could not get 60 senators to approve of the JCPOA.
00:05:40.000As for the notion that the Iran deal's abandonment turns our back on American allies, that's kind of weird because it seems like all of our allies in the region, like our actual allies in the region, are pretty excited that we're walking away from the deal.
00:05:50.000Here, for example, is Benjamin Netanyahu, the Prime Minister of Israel.
00:05:53.000Here was his response to the announcement.
00:05:55.000Israel fully supports President Trump's bold decision today to reject the disastrous nuclear deal with the terrorist regime in Tehran.
00:06:05.000Israel has opposed the nuclear deal from the start.
00:06:08.000Because we said that rather than blocking Iran's path to a bomb, the deal actually paves Iran's path to an entire arsenal of nuclear bombs, and this within a few years' time.
00:06:20.000Okay, and this of course is exactly true.
00:06:22.000By the way, it's not just Israel who supports Trump's move here.
00:06:30.000Jordan will support Trump's move here.
00:06:31.000Obama built an anti-Iranian alliance because he was so pro-Iran.
00:06:35.000This was the unintended consequence of Obama's foreign policy.
00:06:38.000From 2007 on, Barack Obama was pursuing a foreign policy, he wanted a foreign policy, that made Iran a regional power.
00:06:44.000This caused Saudi Arabia and Egypt and Jordan to look at Israel and say, we might need to make common cause with the Jews in order to fight off the Iranians.
00:06:53.000Okay, Obama is still out there defending the deal, of course.
00:06:56.000He says that the agreement was an agreement between my administration and the Iranian government, and look at all these other countries who are mad.
00:07:02.000Well, how about the fact that this was an agreement that was not approved by Congress in the first place?
00:07:06.000Again, a treaty must be approved by two-thirds of the Senate.
00:07:09.000Okay, it is not something that can be done just because the President of the United States signs a piece of paper, which is the reason that Trump could simply come out and rip up the piece of paper in the first place.
00:07:19.000Obama also argued that the JCPOA had worked in rolling back Iran's nuclear program.
00:07:25.000David Albright is the president and founder of the Institute for Science and International Security.
00:07:29.000He told Bloomberg after Israeli intelligence retrieved a warehouse full of documents related to the Iranian nuclear program, quote, the most significant thing is that this is a warehouse collection intended to be used later for reconstitution.
00:07:39.000They could have destroyed those documents, but these were being carefully protected and hidden with the intention to reuse them when they launched their weapons program.
00:07:48.000In other words, Iran is already looking at the possibility of ramping up their nuclear program.
00:07:52.000And as soon as this deal was killed, as soon as Trump said the deal was over, the Iranians immediately responded by suggesting that they were going to restart their nuclear program and also fund more terrorism.
00:08:01.000So that sort of gives the light of the idea these were a bunch of moderates who had been emboldened by Trump.
00:08:06.000If they're really moderates, then what you would have expected is that Trump kills the deal, and they say, oh, well, that's really terrible.
00:08:11.000You know, I really think that we should get rid of our nuclear program anyway, because we're moderate.
00:08:15.000Let's reach out to the Obama—let's reach out to the Trump administration, rather, and let's try to cut a new deal with the Trump administration.
00:08:21.000Instead, they said, nope, you know what, going to ramp that nuclear program right back up.
00:08:32.000flag on the floor of the Iranian parliament and chanting death to America in Farsi.
00:08:39.000And what you're watching here, what you're hearing, is the sound of them trying to use a lighter to light a flag and then they're chanting death to America.
00:08:46.000The entire parliament, chanting death to America.
00:08:51.000Okay, so number one, as Ben Dominick points out, they are garbage with lighters.
00:08:54.000They just don't know how they work, apparently, in the Iranian parliament.
00:08:57.000But second of all, these were the moderates, right?
00:09:16.000intelligence community has continued to find that Iran is meeting its responsibilities under the deal.
00:09:20.000Again, the point being that the deal itself was so fatally flawed that Iran could fund Hezbollah, Iran could fund Hamas, Iran could fund Al Qaeda, Iran could develop intercontinental ballistic missiles.
00:09:29.000None of that would have violated the deal because Obama signed a garbage deal because Obama was a garbage president.
00:09:34.000Finally, Obama argues that the JCPOA does not expire.
00:09:53.000Yeah, except that that's a complete lie.
00:09:55.000Everybody knows that as soon as this deal is up in ten years, which really means in eight years at this point, Iran was going to rush to build a nuclear weapon.
00:10:01.000And again, they say that that's exactly what they are going to do right now.
00:10:05.000It's not just Barack Obama making these idiotic claims.
00:10:07.000It's also members of his administration.
00:10:08.000The Pod Save Tehran crowd is very upset about all of this.
00:10:13.000All the people over at Pod Save America.
00:10:14.000I've invited people from Pod Save America on this program before, by the way.
00:10:42.000There's this really weird nostalgia that Samantha Power is talking about, where, you know, there was a dark and terrible time when Iran was a threat to the world, and then, then came the Iran deal, and the Iran deal solved all the problems.
00:10:53.000Okay, let's be real about this for a second.
00:10:55.000Samantha Power is a person who wrote a book, it made her famous, all about why the U.S.
00:10:59.000could not stand idly by during genocides.
00:11:01.000She then presided over a Syrian policy that resulted in the slaughter of half a million human beings in Syria, and she strengthened the regime that backed the Syrian regime, namely the Iranian regime.
00:11:29.000They've pushed Hamas into prominence again.
00:11:31.000They've pushed, in Yemen, Iranian-backed parties into power.
00:11:37.000And yet, Samantha Power thinks that Trump is the real problem here.
00:11:39.000Then there's Ben Rhodes, the former Obama national security aide.
00:11:45.000He tweeted, quote, First of all, Ben Rhodes is a former fiction writer who wrote fiction on the Iran deal.
00:11:53.000I mean, he's the one who went out and admitted to the American public that he lied over and over and over about the Iran deal and that so had Obama talking about moderates in Iran.
00:12:01.000In a second, I'm going to play you the inspiring words of John Kerry, whose face is in a stage
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00:13:34.000Use that slash Ben as they know that we sent you.
00:13:36.000Okay, so John Kerry, who had been spending the last couple of weeks running around the globe trying to gin up support for this garbage deal.
00:13:45.000He was very upset yesterday, and here he was ripping into President Trump.
00:13:52.000What the president has done by withdrawing unilaterally is placed the United States in breach of this agreement.
00:14:01.000He has literally taken a situation where there was no crisis and created crisis by transferring to Iran sanctions that were meant with respect to the nuclear agreement itself.
00:14:32.000Because you and your garbage administration decided to push this agreement through without the approval of the American public or the Congress.
00:15:25.000Today, Mike Pompeo is going to return to the United States with several detainees from North Korea.
00:15:32.000So the line was supposed to be that Donald Trump was going to blow up the world.
00:15:37.000Donald Trump was going to lead to nuclear proliferation everywhere.
00:15:40.000Donald Trump was going to lead to conflagrations that would consume millions of human beings.
00:15:45.000And the latest indicator of this was that he pulled out of the Iran deal and that North Korea would therefore say, well, we can't trust the United States to keep a deal we signed with them.
00:15:52.000Therefore, we must pursue nuclear weapons right now.
00:15:55.000Except that's not what's happening, is it?
00:15:56.000That's not what's happening in the slightest.
00:15:58.000Instead, it turns out that North Korea is trying to cut a deal with President Trump.
00:16:03.000That President Trump who just pulled out of the Iran deal?
00:16:06.000And North Korea is now trying to cut some sort of deal with President Trump.
00:16:10.000The latest evidence being that Mike Pompeo, the Secretary of State, a good Secretary of State, unlike John Kerry, is on his way to North Korea and he is expected to return with three Americans detained in North Korea.
00:16:21.000Two of the detainees, Tony Kim and Kim Hak-sung, have been held since 2017.
00:16:24.000The third detainee, Dong Chul Kim, was arrested in October 2015 and sentenced to 10 years in prison with hard labor for espionage.
00:16:32.000Pompeo said he'd be meeting with senior North Korean leaders.
00:16:34.000He didn't know if he'd be meeting with Kim.
00:16:35.000He said, we're prepared to meet with anyone who is speaking on behalf of the North Korean government and can give a solid answer, so we're prepared.
00:16:41.000I do have to say that the funniest part of this particular story is that that third detainee, Dong Chul Kim, he was arrested in October 2015.
00:16:48.000And he's presumably been held in solitary confinement.
00:17:13.000All the foreign policy geniuses, all the diplomats, they said, Donald Trump is gonna blow up the world.
00:17:19.000Just like George W. Bush, they're all cowboys, all these cowboys.
00:17:22.000The only two, the only example in the recent past, maybe it's North Korea now, that'd be the other one.
00:17:28.000The only example in the recent past of a country voluntarily giving up its nuclear weapons would be Libya during the Bush administration.
00:17:34.000The reason they gave up their nuclear weapons is because George W. Bush invaded Iraq and took down Saddam Hussein and the American military destroyed Saddam Hussein's military in three weeks.
00:17:46.000What if I just hand over this yellow cake to you right now?
00:17:48.000And the United States said, all right, sure.
00:17:51.000It turns out that dictators who are scared operate in ways that are much more conducive to the American public interest than dictators who are emboldened.
00:17:59.000Do you think the Iran deal emboldened dictators?
00:18:01.000Or do you think that the Iran deal made them more afraid of American military might?
00:18:04.000Do you think that it made them afraid of America's commitment?
00:18:07.000Or do you think that it made them seek America's pusillanimous
00:18:13.000Because if you were a country pursuing nuclear weapons, you would look at Iran and say, look, I'm going to pursue nuclear weapons as well, because Barack Obama will sign any deal with me.
00:18:27.000You think that North Korea wouldn't accept Obama's deal if Obama had put his deal on the table for North Korea?
00:18:32.000You think that North Korea wouldn't have said, listen, you lift all the sanctions, you give us hundreds of billions of dollars, and we'll promise, we'll cross our fingers and hope to die, we'll cross our hearts and hope to die, that we'll get rid of that nuclear program, Mr. President.
00:18:45.000Do you think that they wouldn't have accepted that deal?
00:18:46.000Of course they would have accepted that deal, and they would have been lying.
00:18:48.000They accepted the same deal from Clinton, they accepted the same deal from George W. Bush, and they would have accepted it from Obama anyway.
00:18:54.000But, with Trump, they don't get to accept that deal.
00:18:57.000We hope that President Trump is a stalwart with regard to North Korea, as he has been with regard to Iran.
00:19:03.000But it's pretty clear the North Koreans think that they're going to have to do something to please President Trump, which is the reason that they just released three North Koreans.
00:19:40.000And you know that I'm not a guy who idly gives credit to President Trump, but he gets a lot of credit for what he just did on the Iran deal.
00:19:45.000And so far, what he's been doing on North Korea, it's showing results.
00:19:48.000Now, I'm still skeptical that something great comes out of it, but we will find out.
00:19:51.000At least his strategy is a lot better than President Obama's.
00:19:55.000I'm gonna surrender it the first available opportunity to anyone who shows adverse interest to the United States.
00:20:00.000Okay, meanwhile, last night in West Virginia, there was a primary.
00:20:04.000And that primary in West Virginia was, shall we say, amusing.
00:20:08.000There was a guy named Don Blankenship, and Don Blankenship, you shall recall,
00:20:28.000I'm going to explain to you how that West Virginia primary went down.
00:20:30.000First, I want to say thanks to our sponsors over at PolicyGenius.
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00:21:40.000As I mentioned, the West Virginia primary happened yesterday, and Don Blankenship goes down in absolute flames.
00:21:46.000So Don Blankenship was, of course, this mine owner in West Virginia who had cut an ad suggesting that Mitch McConnell was, in fact, Cocaine Mitch, which would be amazing.
00:21:54.000If Mitch McConnell were on coke, that is the least effective coke of all time.
00:22:01.000And if you think that Mitch McConnell is—if that's Mitch McConnell on a high, I'd really hate—I mean, he'd be dead, right?
00:22:07.000I mean, then the answer would be that without cocaine, he'd be dead, if you're really Cocaine Mitch.
00:22:09.000But in any case, Don Blankenship had called him Cocaine Mitch, and then he had suggested that McConnell's campaign was funded by China people, which was great.
00:22:17.000There was a debate in which Blankenship apparently did pretty well, and there were a couple of polls that were leaked to the press.
00:22:21.000Now, the problem was that the polls leaked to the press about Blankenship didn't have any underlying details.
00:22:26.000So it's quite possible that it was Blankenship's rivals in the race who were leaking those polls out in order to drive down Blankenship's numbers, saying, OK, well, Blankenship might win.
00:22:35.000That means everybody has to show up because Blankenship is a crazy person.
00:22:39.000Well, Blankenship got blown out by double digits.
00:22:41.000He finished with about 20% of the vote.
00:22:44.000And this led Mitch McConnell to actually tweet out, it's pretty funny, to actually tweet this out.
00:22:51.000And it's a picture of Mitch McConnell surrounded by cocaine.
00:22:54.000To understand this joke, you have to have seen the show Narcos on Netflix, because here's the actual poster for the show Narcos on Netflix.
00:23:00.000So Narcos is about the distribution of cocaine by Pablo Escobar.
00:23:03.000So they just photoshopped Mitch McConnell into Pablo Escobar's body, basically.
00:23:09.000The slogan for Narcos, by the way, is there's no business like blow business.
00:23:12.000So Mitch McConnell trolling Don Blankenship.
00:23:15.000Now, is it appropriate for Mitch McConnell to do that?
00:23:35.000Blankenship lost for a couple of reasons.
00:23:36.000One is, clearly not, but also, it is true that Blankenship had no shot of winning in a general election.
00:23:43.000Now, people said the same thing about Roy Moore, but the truth is that sans the allegations about Roy Moore in Alabama of going after 14-year-old girls, Roy Moore would have won that race walking away, despite all of his toxic views, despite all of the things that he had said in the past.
00:23:56.000Don Blankenship, it was pretty clear that he wasn't going anywhere.
00:23:59.000Roy Moore probably was going somewhere if it had not been for that late-breaking scandal.
00:24:03.000Yeah, so Blankenship, let's put it this way, the Republican primary voter has not suddenly rediscovered moderation or sober republicanism.
00:24:12.000It's just that the Republican primary voter still understands that there are some candidates who are bound to lose because they're just too crazy for school.
00:24:18.000Roy Moore apparently does not break that barrier, but Don Blankenship did.
00:24:22.000Now, what is also hilarious is there's this one guy, and I have to analyze what he had to say, he's a West Virginia guy.
00:24:27.000His relatives died in the Blankenship mine disaster, and he said that he voted for Don Blankenship anyway.
00:24:43.000I want an honest crook and that's blankenship.
00:24:45.000Okay, so I think there's a lot to this.
00:24:48.000I want an honest crook and that's blankenship.
00:24:51.000Americans are so cynical about politics right now that they would rather have somebody who is obviously a gangster in a position of power than somebody who pretends to be genteel and they think is secretly doing something on the sly.
00:25:02.000So they'd rather have somebody who's just a crook outright than somebody who they think is hiding the ball.
00:25:08.000I think that this is the 2016 election in a nutshell.
00:25:10.000I think a lot of people saw that Donald Trump was Donald Trump, and they were like, okay, at least the guy's an honest crook, or at least Donald Trump is an honest Donald Trump.
00:25:16.000If not a crook, then Donald Trump's Donald Trump.
00:25:19.000But Hillary Clinton, you know, you don't know what she's doing behind closed doors because everything she says is a lie.
00:25:25.000So, honesty, authenticity now go a long way in American politics.
00:25:28.000The question is whether we've gone so far that utter cynicism means that nobody, even a sincere, decent person running for political office can be trusted.
00:25:37.000We may be at the point in American politics where anyone who is decent is seen as insincere.
00:25:43.000That anyone who is not a crook is seen as actually a crook in disguise.
00:25:50.000If that's the case, if we really go on that fire in American politics, it's going to be very difficult to elect anyone of decency ever again.
00:26:08.000I think the lie that everyone in Congress is obviously corrupt, and they're all hiding, and they're all attempting to gain personally, I don't think that's true.
00:26:17.000And the problem with an honest crook is that an honest crook is still a crook.
00:26:21.000An honest crook is still going to screw you.
00:26:22.000You can trust that they're going to screw you, actually.
00:26:31.000The widespread feeling of corruption has some pretty significant impacts on American politics.
00:26:35.000It also leads to suspicion where none may be warranted.
00:26:39.000If you think everybody is corrupt, Donald Trump was fond of saying this during the campaign.
00:26:42.000He used to say, he had this sort of world-weary attitude toward politics.
00:26:46.000If you've ever seen The Godfather Part 1,
00:26:49.000There's the scene where Michael Corleone comes back from Italy, and he had formerly dated Kay, Diane Keaton, the worst actress in human history, and he had formerly dated Kay, and he comes back, and he's having a conversation with Kay, and he's talking about how he wants her to marry him, and she says, but you're a gangster, and he says, well, Kay, senators have people, she says, senators don't have people killed.
00:27:12.000And Michael says, don't be so naive, Kay.
00:27:15.000OK, well, you know, it's a good line, but it's also not true.
00:27:17.000Senators don't routinely have people killed.
00:27:19.000OK, the reality is that when a senator does kill someone like Teddy Kennedy, it has pretty significant impacts on their public life.
00:27:25.000Senators do not have the power to have people killed.
00:27:27.000Governors generally do not have the power to have people killed.
00:27:29.000Huey Long might have been maybe the one exception, but it's not a typical thing in American politics.
00:27:34.000That would be crook Russian gangster politics.
00:27:37.000It is not true in the United States that you have to worry about you oppose Senator Kamala Harris in California, and there's going to be a dead fish on your doorstep the next day.
00:27:44.000But Donald Trump had this view of politics.
00:27:45.000The problem is, if all of America has that view of politics, then everybody is going to assume that there's corruption behind everything.
00:27:50.000And that actually redounds to Donald Trump's detriment now that he is a politician, now that he's President of the United States.
00:27:56.000So as an example, Michael Cohen is Donald Trump's personal lawyer.
00:27:59.000And there are a bunch of allegations out today from Michael Avenatti, Michael Avenatti is the lawyer for Stormy Daniels, that Donald Trump's personal lawyer engaged in something deeply corrupt.
00:28:06.000Now I'm going to tell you the details.
00:28:08.000There's no evidence that any of this was actually corrupt.
00:28:24.000The Daily Beast has now confirmed that Donald Trump's personal lawyer, Michael Cohen, received hundreds of thousands of dollars from a company connected to Russian oligarch Viktor Vekselberg.
00:28:33.000Okay, so this guy is apparently connected to Vladimir Putin.
00:28:37.000The allegations were initially made by Michael Avenetti, that Stormy Daniels is his lawyer.
00:28:41.000Apparently, a source familiar with the matter confirmed it.
00:28:44.000There's a dossier published by Avenetti on Tuesday evening, and here's what it said.
00:28:50.000And his cousin, Mr. Andrew Entrader, routed eight payments to Mr. Cohen through a company called Columbus Nova LLC beginning in January 2017 and continuing until at least August 2017.
00:28:59.000The funds Avenatti suggested may have been used to reimburse Cohen for the $130,000 payment made to Stormy Daniels in exchange for her silence about an alleged affair with Trump.
00:29:08.000Now, that's a dot that has not been connected.
00:29:10.000OK, so there are a couple of dots here that have not been connected.
00:29:12.000One, is this group Columbus Nova LLC a Russian front group?
00:29:15.000And two, were they paying Michael Cohen so that Michael Cohen would pay off Donald Trump's bills?
00:29:20.000Was it a bribe to Donald Trump, essentially, from a Russian source?
00:29:23.000We have three separate dots, and there are no lines connecting any of these dots.
00:29:26.000So you have dot number one, which is that there was a payment that was made by a company to Michael Cohen.
00:29:31.000Dot number two is that that company supposedly had to do with the Russians.
00:29:33.000And dot number three is that that money was used to pay off Stormy Daniels.
00:29:36.000But there's no actual lines connecting these dots, right?
00:29:39.000Because the only facts that we do know is that Michael Cohen got $500,000 from this company, Columbus Nova LLC.
00:29:45.000We don't have any of the other information confirmed, none of it.
00:29:48.000There's a serious ongoing debate over whether that company actually is a Russian front group or not, because Entrader was a donor to the RNC.
00:29:54.000In June 2017, Entrader donated $35,000 to a joint fundraising committee for the RNC and Trump's re-election campaign.
00:30:01.000He also gave a quarter million bucks to Trump's inaugural committee.
00:30:04.000So, Entrader and Vexelberg have been active participants in the U.S.
00:30:11.000They were the first and only outside investor in Gawker Media.
00:30:14.000Columbus also backed the record label of former Def Jam boss Lior Cohen, invested in the streaming music pioneer Rhapsody, and put money behind a gig economy site, a genetic risk firm, and a company called Tomfoolery Incorporated.
00:30:26.000It's not just a cutout that is being used by the Russians.
00:30:28.000And Columbus Nova lawyer Richard Owens of Latham & Watkins, which is a highly respected law firm, insisted that Vexelberg did not have a controlling interest in the firm.
00:30:56.000ColumbusNova's own website until Tuesday night said that the company was the U.S.
00:30:59.000investment vehicle for the Renova Group, which is Vexelberg's asset management firm.
00:31:05.000investment vehicle for the Renova Group.
00:31:07.000It doesn't mean that they don't have other money coming in.
00:31:09.000The site also noted that Intrader is a former director and current member of the executive board of Renova.
00:31:14.000Apparently the page of the site was removed Wednesday morning.
00:31:16.000So it's possible that Avenetti's theory is correct.
00:31:20.000Vexelberg was recently questioned by federal agents working with Robert Mueller, by the way.
00:31:24.000CNN reported that the queries involved the oligarch's payments to Cohen, but there's no hard evidence that this connection has actually been made yet.
00:31:30.000But because everybody assumes the worst about everybody in politics, the assumption has to be that Michael Cohen did something deeply, deeply wrong.
00:33:08.000I mean, there really is nothing like it, I think, in terms of something you can do for your parents, and Mother's Day is a perfect time to do it.
00:33:48.000Eastern, and I don't know why you think he has answers, but if you think he does, then you can go check it out, and you can ask him questions live, but only if you are a subscriber.
00:33:55.000The way it works is you can watch it live at YouTube or at Facebook, but you can only ask a question if you subscribe.
00:34:00.000To ask questions as a subscriber, you go over to dailywire.com.
00:34:02.000And then you go over to the page where you would watch a show, and you just type it into the chat box, and Elisha Krauss will sit there and curate the questions and ensure that he has asked all of your best questions.
00:34:12.000So you can check that out with the subscription.
00:34:14.000Also, you want the annual subscription, you get this.
00:34:16.000The very greatest in beverage vessels.
00:34:17.000The leftist year's hot or cold tumbler.
00:34:37.000We are the largest, fastest growing conservative podcast in the nation.
00:34:44.000So as I say, there's a lot of speculation going on with regard to Michael Cohen and this payment from a supposed Russian source.
00:34:51.000According to the Daily Beast, if Michael Avenatti, Stormy Daniels' lawyer, if his analysis is correct and the payments violated federal banking law, then Cohen could be in serious legal jeopardy.
00:34:59.000There are reportedly concerns in the president's inner circle that Cohen could begin cooperating with investigators and maybe he would flip on Trump.
00:35:05.000Now, what would he have to say about Trump if he flipped on Trump?
00:35:10.000I mean, there were rumors yesterday from New York Magazine that seem not completely illogical that the story about Elliot Broidy, who is the former RNC chair, that Elliot Broidy, you recall he was also using Michael Cohen as a lawyer, and the suggestion was that he had paid off a Playboy Playmate $1.6 million to go get an abortion.
00:35:28.000He had to resign his slot at the RNC, and he had used Michael Cohen as the go-between.
00:35:31.000There was a story from New York Magazine suggesting that maybe it wasn't actually Broidy at all.
00:35:36.000Maybe Broidy was taking the fall as a cover-up for Trump.
00:35:39.000I don't see any evidence to support that as of yet.
00:35:41.000But if Cohen flips, that could be a serious problem.
00:35:43.000But again, I don't know that the evidence is there yet that Cohen was actually paid off by the Russians to help out Trump or anything like that or that he did anything illegal.
00:35:51.000Speaking of other non-illegal activity that is apparently deeply disturbing to everyone, AT&T confirmed Tuesday evening that it paid Trump's personal lawyer, Michael Cohen, in 2017.
00:36:00.000For quote, insights into understanding the new administration.
00:36:20.000A document released by Avenatti stated that Essential received $200,000 in four separate payments of $50,000 in late 2017 and early 2018 from AT&T.
00:36:45.000It may turn out that none of this is illegal, that paying Trump's lawyer to talk to them about what Trump thinks is not illegal, but it does stink, doesn't it?
00:36:51.000I mean, there's something about this that stinks to high heaven.
00:36:53.000The AT&T thing, to me, is more disturbing than the reports about this firm paying Michael Cohen $500,000 until we know more about the firm and whether it, in fact, was a Russian front group.
00:37:02.000But AT&T handing over $200,000, and apparently that number might be higher, to Michael Cohen for nothing better than, please advise us on how President Trump thinks,
00:37:12.000You can buy Newt Gingrich's book for $11.
00:37:13.000Like, no, you don't need Michael Cohen to do that.
00:37:17.000This looks like influence peddling by Michael Cohen.
00:37:19.000Now, does that count formally as bribery?
00:37:31.000President Trump needs to extricate himself from the swamp as fast as humanly possible.
00:37:35.000I know that he's used to operating inside a different sort of swamp, the swamp of New York real estate, where you have to cut deals with
00:37:40.000With concrete manufacturers, wink, wink, nod, nod, in New Jersey in order to get things done.
00:37:45.000But it is time for Trump to cut the cord on all these folks.
00:37:49.000He should have cut the cord on Michael Cohen a long time ago.
00:37:51.000And the fact that Michael Cohen was taking a bunch of money from AT&T while AT&T was under the scrutiny of the Trump administration does not look good.
00:37:59.000It's not a good look for Michael Cohen.
00:38:00.000Again, that doesn't mean that everything here was illegal.
00:38:03.000But it does mean that there's some stuff here that should, at the very least, be somewhat troubling if you believe in honest, open government that is anti-swamp government.
00:38:11.000That would be, I think, something to point out.
00:38:15.000By the way, it is worth noting here that Michael Avenatti, who distributed all this information, not clear where he got the information.
00:38:20.000He could have violated the law himself in order to get all of this information, because where the hell did he get it?
00:40:19.000And Weiss starts talking, Barry starts talking about all the various members of the intellectual dark web, and listen to how Eddie Glaude responds.
00:40:26.000You wonder why the audience for shows like mine, shows like Sam's, shows like Jordan's, why the audience is increasing?
00:40:31.000It's because if you keep calling everyone you disagree with racially biased and racially motivated, a bunch of people are going to turn off.
00:40:37.000And they're going to instead turn to people who are honest about issues.
00:40:40.000So here's Barry, and watch what Eddie Glaude says, because this is a great window into the mind of the left.
00:40:45.000When you talk about Sam Harris and Ben Shapiro in one sentence, I could see the connection between those two.
00:41:27.000You have just made Barry Weiss's point that you disagree with the way Barry Weiss views the world, so you're going to help her view the world more the way you view the world.
00:41:45.000To have honest conversations with people and to not question their morality or their wisdom just because they don't view the world exactly the same way that you do.
00:41:59.000This is the way that people think who do not want to have a conversation.
00:42:03.000They say that identity politics, which says we can judge you by the nature of your ethnicity, by the nature of your skin color, that this is just a question of justice.
00:42:11.000And anyone who disagrees with that principle, anyone who says that race is something that should be irrelevant to the vast majority of discussions, that reason should be the basis of discussion, not experience, your personal life experience, anybody who says that is apparently now anti-justice.
00:42:26.000People like me and Sam, that's what we have in common, is that we're anti-justice.
00:42:29.000Good for Joe Scarborough, that's exactly right.
00:42:31.000The reason that the intellectual dark web exists is because the left has forced everyone into a box together.
00:42:37.000And so fine, if all the reasonable thinkers who disagree on everything are going to talk with one another, that's going to make the country better.
00:42:43.000Maybe they won't feature us on mainstream media all that often.
00:42:46.000Maybe they just do an occasional piece in the New York Times on us.
00:42:49.000Maybe we don't all have slots at MSNBC or CNN.
00:42:52.000But I do think that what's happening is changing the country, and I think it's making a very, very big difference.
00:43:34.000When you do something wrong, this is how you apologize.
00:43:36.000The guy is known on Twitter as Kai James, and he says in the video that he's truly sorry for his actions, and he says there's no excuse for it.
00:46:21.000But instead, I guess now we have to defend our kids even when our kids do garbage things.
00:46:25.000The footage was leaked to the local television station.
00:46:27.000The Aurora police didn't release the full video and they said in a statement, we will be conducting an internal investigation into this matter to determine the circumstances under which the video was released.
00:46:35.000Any member who is found to have violated departmental policies will be held accountable.
00:46:39.000Now the police are going to investigate the cop for releasing the video, but the kid is going to go completely free, no problem, for cursing out a cop this way during a traffic stop, for abusing a cop this way.
00:46:48.000Just, just wonderful that yet our standards aren't dropping at all in this country.
00:46:53.000So, I've decided that, you know, we went through, about six months ago, we finished up going through the entire five books of Moses, partial by partial.
00:47:00.000Every week, the Jews read a portion of the Bible, of the Old Testament, and we went through the five books of Moses.
00:47:05.000So, I've decided that it's time to start going through the prophets and the writings.
00:47:08.000So, we'll start with chapter one of the book of Joshua.
00:47:11.000So, as you recall, when last we left our story, Moses had died on top of a mountain, and the Jews were about to enter the land of Israel.
00:47:18.000They were looking for a new leader, and Joshua was appointed by God.
00:47:21.000He, of course, was Moses' right-hand man, which is interesting, of course, because Moses actually had a couple of sons, and they were passed over.
00:47:27.000God did not actually choose them because they were not the tool that God needed at the time.
00:47:58.000For the Lord your God will be with you wherever you go."
00:48:01.000And then Joshua orders the officers of the people, go through the camp and tell the people, get your provisions ready.
00:48:05.000Three days from now you're going to cross the Jordan here to go in and take possession of the land your Lord, the Lord your God, is giving you for your own.
00:48:10.000Now what's interesting about this is that everybody always says that Judaism is a theocracy, which
00:48:56.000Okay, and that concept of the law above all else, including the power of the leaders to change the law, is a unique one in the history of Western civilization, and has significant ramifications all the way down to our own day, when there are people who say that the law should be shifted to accommodate particularly powerful people, as opposed to the law ruling people and not man.