The Ben Shapiro Show - Executive Time! | Ep. 776

00:00:00.000 President Trump declares executive privilege over the unredacted Mueller report, President Trump's tax returns from three decades ago spill out, and Democrats escalate impeachment talk.

00:00:09.000 I'm Ben Shapiro.

00:00:09.000 This is The Ben Shapiro Show.

00:00:10.000 Separation of powers fight.

00:00:18.000 Separation of powers fight! 0.91

00:00:19.000 I know, it's such exciting stuff when the President of the United States declares executive privilege in order to shield his Attorney General from possible impeachment.

00:00:26.000 Wow!

00:00:27.000 Things are getting so exciting for people who really love talking about the legal Vagaries of executive privilege.

00:00:34.000 We'll get to all that in just a second.

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00:01:53.000 Okay, so the rubber now meets the road.

00:01:56.000 The rubber now meets the road.

00:01:57.000 The President of the United States this morning declared executive privilege over the unredacted Mueller report.

00:02:04.000 So, here is the report from the New York Times.

00:02:06.000 They say, President Trump's asserted executive privilege on Wednesday in an effort to shield hidden portions of Robert Mueller's unredacted report and the evidence he collected from Congress.

00:02:15.000 So, to recapitulate, William Bott wrote a four-page synopsis of Robert Mueller's report.

00:02:21.000 He then released the entire report with certain sections blacked out.

00:02:24.000 The sections that were blacked out, there was not a lot of accusation that this hid super secret, really bad stuff that was going to end in President Trump's impeachment.

00:02:32.000 It looked, just politically speaking, it looked as though Democrats were trying to shove into the redacted portions all of their expectations that were unfulfilled in the actual Mueller reports.

00:02:42.000 They expected from the Mueller report damning evidence of obstruction of justice, damning evidence of collusion and conspiracy.

00:02:49.000 And none of that was in the actual unredacted Mueller report.

00:02:53.000 There was some bad behavior by the president of the United States.

00:02:55.000 There was some ugly behavior by the president of the United States.

00:02:57.000 There was nothing that rose to the level of criminally prosecutable behavior, even according to Mueller himself, who declined to say whether the president should or should not be prosecuted, kicked it over to Attorney General Barr, who said, I don't have the evidence to prosecute here.

00:03:09.000 So Democrats, instead of saying, OK, well, Mueller didn't do anything.

00:03:13.000 Barr didn't do anything.

00:03:14.000 We're done here.

00:03:15.000 Instead, Democrats said, You know what?

00:03:18.000 Probably the material that we've seen does not merit impeachment, right?

00:03:21.000 This is the implicit, the implicit acknowledgement of the Democrats putting all of their expectations on the redacted sections of the report is that they are implicitly acknowledging that the unredacted sections of the report are not enough to sustain any sort of impeachment push.

00:03:36.000 So instead, what they did is they said, well, probably the redacted sections, that's the part that's nefarious.

00:03:40.000 That's William Barr hiding material from us, from us!

00:03:45.000 And William Barr was like, well, no.

00:03:46.000 The reason that stuff is hidden is because it impacts ongoing investigations, number one.

00:03:50.000 Or number two, to release it would violate the federal rules of criminal evidence, because I cannot just release grand jury information into the public view.

00:03:58.000 And also, we have no responsibility to turn over grand jury information to the legislative branch.

00:04:03.000 If the legislative branch wants to do its own investigations, they can subpoena any witness they want and bring that witness to them, so long as the president doesn't assert executive privilege over that witness.

00:04:13.000 Now, from the Democratic point of view, they're saying, OK, well, here's the deal.

00:04:16.000 We want to talk to Robert Mueller.

00:04:18.000 We want to talk to Don McGahn, the president's personal attorney.

00:04:21.000 We want to ask them questions that we feel were unanswered in the Mueller report.

00:04:25.000 And they should come and they should sit before us.

00:04:26.000 And hopefully we can pry out of them some evidence that is impeachable because the report itself doesn't include that.

00:04:32.000 And President Trump is saying, guys, we've just gone through a $35 million process here, resulting in a 450 page report.

00:04:38.000 If it ain't there, it ain't there.

00:04:40.000 And subjecting people who worked for me or people who are members of the executive branch to more of your questioning that will just generate more headlines that will end in nothing.

00:04:50.000 All of this is just Machiavellian manipulation.

00:04:52.000 So this is where we end up with Constitution Fight 2019.

00:04:56.000 Because the question is, What can the president assert executive privilege over?

00:05:00.000 The Democrats have now subpoenaed the full Mueller report.

00:05:03.000 They want all the unredacted sections.

00:05:04.000 They even are asking for the grand jury testimony.

00:05:07.000 And William Barr is saying, I can't hand that stuff to you because to do so would be a violation of my obligations under the law to protect people who have not been accused of or convicted of any crimes, who are not being tried for any crimes.

00:05:19.000 It would be to subject them to scrutiny unwarranted by law, which is a proper position.

00:05:24.000 And Democrats are saying, no, if you won't hand us that material, then we are going to hold you in contempt.

00:05:28.000 And Barr says, fine, then I'll just ask the president of the United States to assert executive privilege.

00:05:32.000 And then I don't have to turn it over.

00:05:34.000 And you can't hold me in contempt because you have no cause to hold me in contempt because you can't legally get those documents.

00:05:39.000 So that is where we stand.

00:05:41.000 This morning, the Democrats pushing for some sort of contempt hearing on William Barr.

00:05:46.000 They were going to push forward for that this morning.

00:05:48.000 The President of the United States declared executive privilege over these documents.

00:05:51.000 Now, this looks a lot like what happened with Attorney General Eric Holder in Fast and Furious.

00:05:55.000 So, there are a bunch of documents in Fast and Furious.

00:05:58.000 Fast and Furious was a scandal that happened during the Obama administration.

00:06:01.000 I know.

00:06:01.000 There were no scandals during the Obama administration.

00:06:04.000 You've been told by the press.

00:06:05.000 That, of course, is a lie.

00:06:06.000 The Fast and Furious scandal was the DOJ working together with the ATF to allow guns to be bought by straw purchasers in the United States and then smuggled south to Mexican drug cartels Where they would be used and then presumably we would we would track where the guns went and this would help us uncover the chain of weapons provision to the Mexican drug cartels.

00:06:27.000 Some of those guns were then used in the killing of Border Patrol agent Brian Terry and this became a national scandal.

00:06:32.000 So Congress investigated and they investigated Holder and they said did you give the explicit go-ahead to the ATF to allow illegal sales of weaponry that you knew was going to be smuggled to Mexican drug cartels and that you could certainly foresee was going to be used in the murder of American citizens?

00:06:48.000 Eric Holder then asked the president, then Barack Obama, to use executive privilege to shield him from the exposing of documents.

00:06:55.000 Congress proceeded to hold Eric Holder in contempt.

00:06:58.000 That executive privilege contention by the Obama administration ended up being overturned by a judge.

00:07:04.000 Those documents eventually were turned over and it turned out that the documents didn't really show anything supremely damaging.

00:07:12.000 Beyond what they originally knew.

00:07:14.000 So, here's the problem.

00:07:15.000 Executive privilege is really a vague category of law.

00:07:19.000 It's really vague.

00:07:20.000 There have not been a lot of judicial rulings on executive privilege.

00:07:22.000 Executive privilege was only formally acknowledged by the Supreme Court of the United States in 1974.

00:07:27.000 There's nothing in the Constitution that explicitly says executive privilege exists, but there's also nothing in the Constitution that says that the executive power has to bend before every subpoena of legislative power.

00:07:37.000 There is a balance of power, and there is gridlock.

00:07:39.000 So the idea of executive privilege does have long roots in English common law.

00:07:43.000 It's not just an invention that's been made up in the last 50 years or so.

00:07:47.000 So this is where we stand, and I will get into the analysis of whether executive privilege applies here, because there are a couple of different types.

00:07:53.000 Again, information first.

00:07:54.000 Opinion always comes after.

00:07:56.000 So, the New York Times reports that Mr. Trump's first use of the secrecy powers as president, the executive privilege they're now calling secrecy powers, came as the House Judiciary Committee is expected to vote Wednesday morning to recommend that the House hold Attorney General William Barr in contempt of Congress for defying a subpoena for the same material.

00:08:12.000 Now, as I've been saying for a while, I think that this is all a game for Democrats.

00:08:16.000 I don't think that they actually care about the underlying material.

00:08:18.000 I think they are looking for an excuse to blame William Barr and cast him as an obstructor when, in fact, there's no evidence that he's obstructing anything at this point.

00:08:26.000 Justice Department official Stephen Boyd wrote on Wednesday morning, this is to advise you that the president has asserted executive privilege over the entirety of the subpoenaed materials.

00:08:35.000 Barr released a redacted version of the special counsel's 448-page report voluntarily last month.

00:08:41.000 Democrats say that is not good enough.

00:08:42.000 They've accused the attorney general of stonewalling a legitimate request for material they need to carry out an investigation into possible obstruction of justice and abuse of power by Mr. Trump.

00:08:51.000 And Barr says, well, listen, you're the ones buying votive candles of Robert Mueller.

00:08:55.000 He didn't recommend an indictment.

00:08:57.000 I looked at his report.

00:08:59.000 You looked at his report.

00:09:00.000 If you want to impeach him, go for it.

00:09:02.000 I'm not prosecuting him because the evidence does not sustain that.

00:09:05.000 And that's where we stand.

00:09:06.000 The House Judiciary Committee prepared to vote Wednesday morning to hold Barr in contempt, despite that threat issued late Tuesday night from the Justice Department.

00:09:14.000 Committee Democrats did not take kindly to the department's threat.

00:09:20.000 They said, Now the Trump administration says, what the hell are you talking about?

00:09:25.000 We let Mueller go through all of his paces here.

00:09:27.000 We spent $35 million.

00:09:29.000 He's a member of the executive branch.

00:09:30.000 The president of the United States could have fired him at any time.

00:09:33.000 At any time.

00:09:35.000 And the fact that he did not and let the report go forward.

00:09:37.000 The fact that Don McGahn did speak for hours on end to Robert Mueller and that Mueller interviewed him.

00:09:43.000 And Mueller, I promise you, is a better interviewer and a better lawyer than anybody who's on the House Judiciary Committee and the House Oversight Committee.

00:09:51.000 Why are you suggesting that Robert Mueller did an insufficient job, but Congress is going to do a wonderful job?

00:09:55.000 And if you think Robert Mueller did an insufficient job, well then subpoena the witnesses yourself. 0.89

00:10:00.000 Don't do this routine where you use his underlying materials and then suggest that he was too foolish to understand the materials he had already compiled.

00:10:07.000 Sarah Huckabee Sanders has released a statement.

00:10:10.000 She says the American people see through Chairman Nadler's desperate ploy to distract from the president's historically successful agenda and our booming economy.

00:10:17.000 Neither the White House nor Attorney General Barr will comply with Chairman Nadler's unlawful and reckless demands.

00:10:22.000 The AG has been transparent and accommodating throughout this process, including by releasing the no-collusion, no-conspiracy, no-obstruction Mueller report to the public and offering to testify before the committee.

00:10:32.000 These attempts to work with the committee have been flatly rejected.

00:10:35.000 They didn't like the results of the report, and now they want a redo.

00:10:38.000 Faced with Chairman Nadler's blatant abuse of power and at the Attorney General's request, the President has no other option than to make a protective assertion of executive privilege.

00:10:46.000 It is sad that Chairman Nadler is only interested in pandering to the press and pleasing his radical left constituency.

00:10:52.000 The American people deserve a Congress that is focused on solving real problems like the crisis at the border, high prescription drug prices, our country's crumbling infrastructure, and so much more.

00:11:02.000 There's a lot of truth to this.

00:11:03.000 There is no evidence that the redacted material is going to be providing Nadler and Democrats what they want here.

00:11:08.000 This seems like a manufactured controversy.

00:11:11.000 It does seem like a manufactured controversy.

00:11:13.000 Now, does the president actually have the power to assert executive privilege over all of this material?

00:11:18.000 We'll get to that in just one second.

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00:12:34.000 Okay, so...

00:12:37.000 The DOJ's letter to Jerry Nadler is worth reading in full.

00:12:40.000 It's not very long.

00:12:42.000 This letter was written by Stephen Boyd, the Assistant Attorney General.

00:12:44.000 Here's what he wrote.

00:12:45.000 We are disappointed that you have rejected the DOJ's request to delay the vote of the Committee on the Judiciary on a contempt finding against the Attorney General this morning.

00:12:53.000 By doing so, you have terminated our ongoing negotiations and abandoned the accommodation process with respect to your April 18, 2019, subpoena of confidential Department of Justice materials related to the investigation conducted by Special Counsel Robert Mueller.

00:13:07.000 As we have repeatedly explained, the Attorney General could not comply with your subpoena in its current form without violating the law, court rules, and court orders, and without threatening the independence of the Department of Justice's prosecutorial function.

00:13:18.000 Despite this, we have attempted to engage with the committee in good faith in an effort to accommodate your stated interest in these materials.

00:13:24.000 Unfortunately, rather than allowing negotiations to continue, you scheduled an unnecessary contempt vote, which you refused to postpone to allow additional time for compromise.

00:13:32.000 All of this is true, by the way.

00:13:33.000 Accordingly, this is to advise you that the president has asserted executive privilege over the entirety of the subpoenaed materials.

00:13:39.000 As I indicated in my letter to you last night, this protective assertion of executive privilege ensures the president's ability to make a final decision whether to assert privilege following a full review of these materials.

00:13:49.000 So it's effectively a prophylactic assertion of executive privilege.

00:13:53.000 The president will declare executive privilege and then they will analyze what can be released and then they will release what they think they can.

00:13:59.000 Regrettably, you have made this assertion necessary by your insistence upon scheduling a premature contempt vote, Stephen Boyd, Assistant Attorney General.

00:14:08.000 And all of this seems right.

00:14:09.000 Now, the problem for President Trump in all of this is that the president has made it look as though he actively wants to stop people from talking to Congress.

00:14:19.000 So the president has said that he doesn't want Mueller to talk to Congress.

00:14:23.000 And that is a problem.

00:14:24.000 Again, because Barr's case is not that nobody should talk to Congress.

00:14:29.000 Barr's case is, I came before Congress, I testified before Congress, I revealed as much of the material as I could legally speaking.

00:14:36.000 And then you guys want me to release material that is not releasable.

00:14:43.000 You guys want something from me that I cannot give to you.

00:14:47.000 And that is a perfectly plausible case, a case in which I basically agree with William Barr.

00:14:51.000 I haven't seen the unredacted materials, but I think that he would not commit perjury by going in front of Congress and then saying the unredacted materials are actually... I mean, the redacted materials.

00:15:03.000 are actually not necessary to redact.

00:15:07.000 I don't mean that he'd commit perjury on that score.

00:15:10.000 The problem is the image here.

00:15:11.000 So the image here is that President Trump is now asserting executive privilege.

00:15:14.000 This is what the press wants to push.

00:15:16.000 The press wants to push the image that the president of the United States is actually asserting executive privilege, not because Barr asked him to, in order to prevent Barr from violating the law and in order to prevent a contempt vote that is empty, meaningless, and politically motivated.

00:15:30.000 The image that is being drawn by the press and by President Trump in many reports right now is that Trump just wants to stop Congress cold in its investigations.

00:15:37.000 And that image is being painted by stories like this one.

00:15:40.000 So yesterday, before the president's asserted executive privilege, the president started tweeting out that he didn't want Robert Mueller to testify.

00:15:48.000 Well, there's no reason Robert Mueller shouldn't testify before Congress.

00:15:51.000 There's no legal reason that Robert Mueller can't testify before Congress.

00:15:54.000 Now, I understand the president being irritated.

00:15:56.000 I'm irritated.

00:15:56.000 I do.

00:15:57.000 I find all of this annoying.

00:15:58.000 I don't think that Mueller is likely to give Democrats anything they want.

00:16:02.000 I don't think that Mueller is going to go before Congress and say, you know, secretly, I wanted to indict the president.

00:16:06.000 But publicly, I just sort of decided to skip it because...

00:16:10.000 I don't think that Democrats are going to get that from Mueller.

00:16:13.000 I understand the president being like, this is dragging on forever.

00:16:16.000 This is just another sham by Democrats in order to prevent us from moving forward with my agenda.

00:16:21.000 I have a lot of sympathy for the president's position on that.

00:16:24.000 But it looks as though the president is trying to stop Mueller from talking publicly because he's afraid of what Mueller is going to say, not because he's irritated with Democrats.

00:16:32.000 And this has been a consistent problem for President Trump.

00:16:35.000 He fired James Comey, the former FBI director, because he suggested that James Comey would not simply say he wasn't under investigation.

00:16:43.000 And that annoyed him.

00:16:45.000 But for the press, it was because he was afraid of what James Comey might find.

00:16:48.000 Same thing here.

00:16:50.000 He's irritated that Democrats are asking Mueller questions.

00:16:52.000 He's like, guys, we spent $35 million.

00:16:54.000 You had 40 lawyers on this thing.

00:16:56.000 It produced a 450-page report.

00:16:58.000 Why do you need to talk to Mueller now other than some ginned-up controversy that makes no sense?

00:17:03.000 So screw it.

00:17:04.000 Not going to do it.

00:17:05.000 That's what the president is thinking.

00:17:06.000 The way the press is playing it is Mueller is going to testify to something deep and dark and perverse.

00:17:11.000 And Trump is super afraid of that.

00:17:13.000 You can listen to this New York Times piece from yesterday.

00:17:15.000 When President Trump declared that special counsel Robert Mueller should not testify before Congress, he contradicted Attorney General William Barr, who had already told lawmakers he had no objection to letting Mueller talk to them.

00:17:25.000 That clash has raised the prospect of a major test of Justice Department independence on Barr's watch, Defying Mr. Trump would be awkward for Barr, in part because he has long subscribed to a sweeping theory of executive power under which Trump may rightfully override and control any discretionary decision by a subordinate executive branch official.

00:17:42.000 Well yes, this is called the Unitary Executive Theory and it happens to be the case.

00:17:47.000 They say, while the Trump team has been pleased with Mr. Barr's handling of the Mueller investigation, disregarding Trump's desires, risks angering a mercurial president who turned on once-favored subordinates, including Mr. Barr's predecessor, former Attorney General Jeff Sessions.

00:18:01.000 Mr. Barr, citing his age and lack of further aspirations, promised Congress during his confirmation hearing, I will not be bullied into doing anything I think is wrong by anybody, whether it be editorial boards or Congress or the president.

00:18:10.000 I'm going to do what I think is right.

00:18:12.000 So as I say, the press is playing this as though Barr wants Mueller to testify and Trump doesn't want Mueller to testify because he's afraid of what Mueller will say.

00:18:22.000 And that is followed up by this report that President Trump doesn't want Don McGahn to testify.

00:18:28.000 So again, The president does have the ability to assert executive privilege with regard to internal communications with the White House counsel, obviously.

00:18:37.000 With that said, McGahn already testified in front of Robert Mueller.

00:18:40.000 Having McGahn go in front of Congress is not going to hurt the president.

00:18:42.000 McGahn knows how to handle himself.

00:18:43.000 He knows what his testimony will be.

00:18:46.000 He doesn't want to be seen as either lying to Mueller.

00:18:48.000 He has to repeat his testimony basically verbatim.

00:18:50.000 Right?

00:18:50.000 Because either he lied to Mueller, in which case lying to the FBI is a crime, or he would be lying to Congress, in which case he'd be committing perjury if he did not match his testimony.

00:18:59.000 Right?

00:19:00.000 So his testimony has to match.

00:19:01.000 Trump, again, is irritated that Congress is calling McGahn.

00:19:04.000 He doesn't want to rehash all of this again.

00:19:06.000 But the press is playing this as though Trump is afraid of McGahn spilling the beans on him.

00:19:10.000 So CNN reported yesterday the White House has instructed former White House counsel Don McGahn not to comply with a subpoena for documents from the House Judiciary Committee Jerry Nadler, teeing up the latest in a series of escalating oversight showdowns.

00:19:23.000 Between the Trump administration and Congressional Democrats.

00:19:26.000 McGahn's decision not to comply with the subpoena could push Nadler to hold McGahn in contempt of Congress, just as he is currently doing with Attorney General William Barr.

00:19:34.000 Nadler issued a subpoena to McGahn for documents and testimony related to the committee's obstruction of justice investigation, setting a Tuesday deadline for McGahn to turn over the documents, and proposing a May 21st hearing date.

00:19:45.000 Nadler threatened McGahn again with being held in contempt if he failed to appear in a letter sent Tuesday night.

00:19:50.000 He said, I fully expect that the committee will hold Mr. McGahn in contempt if he fails to appear before the committee unless the White House secures a court order directing otherwise.

00:19:58.000 He said, a letter from the White House in service of the president's apparent goal of blocking or delaying testimony that the president believes would be politically damaging is not a basis for McGahn to violate his legal obligation to appear before the committee.

00:20:10.000 The White House said it would not allow McGahn to turn over the documents.

00:20:13.000 The White House has not relayed its position on whether it would seek to block McGahn's testimony, too.

00:20:18.000 So, again, there's two plausible reasons that Trump doesn't want McGahn to testify or turn over the documents.

00:20:22.000 One is, I'm done with this.

00:20:24.000 This is a waste of time. 0.99

00:20:25.000 Mueller looked at all of this crap. 0.98

00:20:26.000 What are you people doing? 0.99

00:20:28.000 Not gonna do it.

00:20:29.000 McGahn, sit down. 1.00

00:20:30.000 Shut up. 1.00

00:20:31.000 That's possible reason number one. 0.96

00:20:32.000 Possible reason number two, and this is the one the Democrats are relying on, is Trump doesn't want Mueller to talk.

00:20:36.000 Trump doesn't want McGahn to talk.

00:20:37.000 Trump doesn't want Barr to talk.

00:20:39.000 He doesn't want any of them to talk or turn over the documents because there's something hidden.

00:20:42.000 Now, the reason I think Theory 1 is more plausible than Theory 2, the reason why I think that Trump doesn't want these people to testify or turn over documents, is because we've already had a Mueller investigation.

00:20:54.000 That Mueller investigation resulted in a 450-page comprehensive report with minimal redactions.

00:21:00.000 If there were no report at this point, I would say, yeah, it looks more like a cover-up than it looks like the president being frustrated with rehashing the past.

00:21:07.000 But the report's public.

00:21:08.000 We've all read the report.

00:21:10.000 Mueller wrote it.

00:21:12.000 Barr released it.

00:21:13.000 Don McGahn testified to Mueller.

00:21:15.000 So this is just a rehash.

00:21:17.000 I think that this is the president once again acting frustrated.

00:21:20.000 Why?

00:21:20.000 Because this is always how he has been.

00:21:23.000 He has always acted frustrated with the investigation because he feels he is innocent.

00:21:27.000 Democrats are playing that frustration as the president trying to engage in a cover-up.

00:21:31.000 So they say the reason he's asserting executive privilege is not because he's irritated or he's within his rights.

00:21:36.000 The reason that he is doing all of that is because he's trying to cover up evidence of a nefarious crime just like Richard Nixon.

00:21:43.000 The difference is that Richard Nixon actually engaged in an underlying crime.

00:21:46.000 There's no evidence that Trump engaged in underlying criminally prosecutable behavior.

00:21:50.000 And number two, Richard Nixon tried to obstruct the equivalent of the Mueller investigation itself.

00:21:55.000 He fired the special prosecutor Archibald Cox.

00:21:57.000 He fired his own attorney general in order to do so.

00:22:01.000 That would have been the equivalent of Trump firing Mueller and firing the AG in the middle of the investigation.

00:22:06.000 Trump didn't do either of those things.

00:22:07.000 So the attempt to link Trump asserting executive privilege to Nixon asserting executive privilege, as some have been trying to do today, I do not think that comparison holds.

00:22:15.000 It looks much more like President Obama asserting executive privilege on Eric Holder.

00:22:20.000 Maybe.

00:22:21.000 And even then, I think it's more plausible that Obama was trying to hide documents to protect Eric Holder than that Trump is trying to hide documents to protect William Barr.

00:22:30.000 In a second, we'll talk about how effective this assertion of executive privilege is likely to be.

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00:24:00.000 OK, so is the president of the United States likely to succeed in his assertion of executive privilege?

00:24:07.000 Well, here's some of the background on executive privilege.

00:24:10.000 This comes from the Brennan Center, which is a more left-leaning legal center doing legal analysis.

00:24:18.000 Aziz Houk, who's a columnist, I guess, over there for them, a lawyer for them, he wrote this going back to 2007.

00:24:23.000 This was not designed for President Trump or against President Trump.

00:24:28.000 And here's what it says.

00:24:29.000 The president's constitutionally based privileges subsume privileges for records that reflect, one, military, diplomatic, or national security secrets.

00:24:36.000 This would be the state secrets privilege.

00:24:38.000 So the president is negotiating with China, Congress subpoenas those records, Trump says no.

00:24:43.000 Two, communications of the president or his advisors.

00:24:43.000 Okay.

00:24:46.000 The presidential communications privilege.

00:24:48.000 Three, legal advice or legal work.

00:24:50.000 That'd be attorney clients or attorney work product privileges.

00:24:52.000 So presumably he asked Don McGahn for legal advice that is not subject to congressional oversight.

00:24:58.000 And finally, the deliberative processes of the president or his advisors.

00:25:02.000 The two most commonly invoked executive privileges are the so-called presidential communications privilege and the deliberative processes privileges.

00:25:09.000 The presidential communications privilege protects from disclosure any communications that are either by the president directly or by his immediate advisers in the office of the president to the president.

00:25:09.000 Privilege.

00:25:19.000 The Supreme Court did recognize this privilege in Nixon versus United States and Nixon versus administrator of general services.

00:25:25.000 The Nixon cases were about Nixon being subpoenaed by Congress for records of his internal deliberations over Watergate, basically, including the including the Watergate tapes, including the Oval Office tapes.

00:25:37.000 and the Supreme Court ruling that he had to turn them over.

00:25:40.000 The court grounded the privilege and the need for cancer and executive branch decision making and the supremacy of each branch within its own assigned area of constitutional duties.

00:25:40.000 over.

00:25:48.000 In the Nixon cases, the Supreme Court applied the term presidential communication privilege solely to communications involving the president.

00:25:56.000 So the president is talking with somebody and he wants to keep that communication secret.

00:26:00.000 That falls under executive privilege.

00:26:02.000 How do you However, the D.C.

00:26:04.000 Circuit cautioned that not every communication with a presidential advisor would be protected.

00:26:08.000 The privilege should apply only to communications authored or solicited and received by those members of an immediate White House advisor's staff who have broad and significant responsibilities.

00:26:17.000 So in other words, the janitor at the White House doesn't have executive privilege.

00:26:22.000 Once properly asserted by a qualified person, the Presidential Communications Privilege applies to documents in their entirety.

00:26:27.000 It covers final and post-decisional materials, as well as pre-deliberative ones.

00:26:32.000 Critically, it covers any factual matter contained in a communication, and in this regard sweeps broader than the Deliberative Process Privilege, which we will get to in just a second.

00:26:41.000 But the presidential communications privilege can be overcome by a sufficient showing of need.

00:26:45.000 So if this goes to court, expect that Congress will simply assert that they have a sufficient need because they are involved in a criminal investigation and they need to see these documents.

00:26:54.000 One of the first judicial recognitions of an executive branch secrecy claim was written by Chief Justice John Marshall.

00:26:59.000 He endorsed the idea that the privilege is defeasible.

00:27:01.000 In other words, however well established the privilege may be, it has never been absolute.

00:27:06.000 The Supreme Court has strongly suggested that the presidential communications privilege must yield whenever a coordinate branch's constitutional role is at stake.

00:27:14.000 Nixon, the Nixon case, concluded that President Nixon had to yield to a subpoena to preserve the function of the courts under Article 3.

00:27:22.000 Another Nixon case held that Congress could roll back a former president's privilege in light of the scope of Congress's broad investigative powers.

00:27:29.000 So Congress says this particular piece from the Brennan Center ought to be able to overcome the presidential communications privilege in any instance that it exercises its constitutional powers to legislate and conduct oversight.

00:27:39.000 So the question will be, is this legitimate oversight that Congress is attempting to engage in, or is this basically political posturing?

00:27:46.000 And that will end up in court.

00:27:48.000 Then there is a broader and more powerful deliberative process privilege.

00:27:52.000 In other words, President Trump is having a conversation with Don McGahn about what to do about the Mueller report.

00:27:56.000 And it's before a decision has been made.

00:27:57.000 It protects executive branch officers' communications that are pre-decisional and a direct part of the deliberative process.

00:28:05.000 A document is pre-decisional if it was generated before the adoption of a policy and reflects the give and take of the consultative process.

00:28:11.000 In other words, President Trump is having a conversation with Don McGahn about what to do about the Mueller report and it's before a decision has been made.

00:28:20.000 So this seems to fall squarely within that privilege.

00:28:23.000 The privilege has long been recognized by the Supreme Court The underlying rationale is that the disclosure of deliberative communications will chill future communications, like Trump will never talk with his lawyer ever again, thus diminishing the effectiveness of executive decision-making and injuring the public interest.

00:28:38.000 Now, properly invoked, the Deliberative Process Privilege is narrower than the Presidential Communications Privilege, primarily because the Deliberative Process Privilege does not extend to purely factual material, unless it is inextricably intertwined with policymaking processes.

00:28:53.000 In other words, if there is an investigation and it covers factual material, that's not a Deliberative Process Privilege.

00:28:58.000 Deliberative Processes began offering his opinion on the underlying materials.

00:29:01.000 It doesn't necessarily cover the underlying materials themselves.

00:29:06.000 It's also susceptible to congressional or judicial negation.

00:29:09.000 The privilege disappears when there is any reason to believe government misconduct occurred.

00:29:14.000 So, will this assertion of executive privilege hold up in court if the president tries to assert executive privilege over all of this?

00:29:21.000 Only if the court, having looked at the actual privileged material, which it will, only if the court, having looked at the material, finds that Don McGahn was involved in legal discussions protected by privilege, or looking at the unredacted Mueller report, finds that William Barr is speaking the truth, and that this material could not simply be released into the public.

00:29:43.000 In reality, this is more of a delaying tactic than it is a legal tactic designed to keep these documents secret.

00:29:50.000 In reality, I think the courts would be likely to rule against the Trump administration on executive privilege grounds, as they did, by the way, when it came to executive privilege for Eric Holder and President Obama.

00:30:02.000 Now here's the truth.

00:30:03.000 There's a long history of presidents using executive privilege.

00:30:07.000 That in and of itself is not impeachable.

00:30:09.000 Democrats have been trying to claim that the president, because he's asserting executive privilege, is indubitably trying to hide something.

00:30:15.000 As I said, there's a very plausible alternative theory where he's just frustrated and annoyed And where Don McGahn doesn't want to commit perjury by accidentally mis-answering a question, or where William Barr is trying to prevent himself from committing some sort of federal crime by violating the federal rules of criminal evidence.

00:30:34.000 That's a plausible theory.

00:30:35.000 A court will end up sorting this out.

00:30:37.000 Suffice it to say that the assertion of executive privilege alone, in this particular case, does not necessarily mean a Nixonian cover-up.

00:30:44.000 We'll get to more of this in just a second.

00:30:45.000 I'll talk about the differences between various types of exertions of executive privilege, historically speaking.

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00:32:28.000 OK.

00:32:28.000 More on executive privilege and where this is going.

00:32:31.000 Plus, a supposedly blockbuster report on President Trump not being good at business.

00:32:36.000 Ooh, got him!

00:32:37.000 That's where they're moving now.

00:32:38.000 We'll get to that in just a second.

00:32:39.000 First, you're going to have to go over to dailywire.com and subscribe.

00:32:42.000 When you do, you get the rest of this show live.

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00:32:51.000 By the way, helping us out, becoming a subscriber, it's one of the things that also prevents Prevents tech companies from cracking down on us if they disagree with our basic politics.

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00:33:42.000 So I want to go through a brief history of the use of executive privilege so we can see how President Trump fits in with precedent.

00:33:59.000 So we'll start with Richard Nixon because the prior invocations of executive privilege were a lot less controversial, obviously.

00:34:07.000 And Nixon is the one who people are trying to compare Trump to here.

00:34:10.000 I don't think that the comparison is apples to apples.

00:34:13.000 For a bunch of reasons, as I will explain.

00:34:15.000 The Constitution Center has a really good summary of all of this.

00:34:18.000 They say, In the landmark Supreme Court case U.S.

00:34:19.000 always been nominally used in defense of the public interest, Nixon attempted to use it to protect himself and other advisors during Watergate.

00:34:26.000 In the landmark Supreme Court case, US versus Nixon, the Supreme Court unanimously declared that executive privilege is constitutional and sometimes necessary for national security.

00:34:34.000 But the court also held it is not all encompassing.

00:34:37.000 If requested documents and testimonies are a key part of an investigation, they must be brought forward.

00:34:41.000 Therefore, the Watergate tapes were turned over to the special prosecutor shortly after this decision.

00:34:46.000 Nixon resigned because he was trying to stop those tapes from coming out because they showed that he had engaged in criminal activity.

00:34:52.000 According to the Constitution Center, Nixon forever changed how Americans view executive privilege.

00:34:57.000 His questionable use of the power led many Americans to believe that all uses are for the same undisclosed reasons.

00:35:03.000 This may have led Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, George H.W.

00:35:06.000 Bush to use the privilege sparingly, especially Ford.

00:35:09.000 Reagan was so cautious he didn't even use executive privilege during Iran-Contra.

00:35:14.000 The next controversy regarding executive privilege came with Bill Clinton.

00:35:17.000 The Clinton White House was mired in two scandals, Whitewater and Monica Lewinsky. 0.86

00:35:21.000 During those investigations, President Clinton used executive privilege 14 times.

00:35:26.000 14 times.

00:35:26.000 That included protecting First Lady Hillary Clinton from testifying during the Whitewater hearings and protecting himself from testifying in both of those cases.

00:35:35.000 His executive privilege claims, as well as his attorney-client claims in the Lewinsky investigation, were challenged in federal court.

00:35:41.000 Citing U.S.

00:35:41.000 v. Nixon, the courts determined that the prosecutors' needs outweighed the confidentiality of executive documents and discussions.

00:35:48.000 This ruling was not appealed to the Supreme Court.

00:35:50.000 The White House sought to avoid a headline-grabbing legal loss.

00:35:53.000 Clinton, of course, ended up being impeached.

00:35:55.000 Barack Obama used executive privilege during Fast and Furious.

00:35:59.000 As I mentioned, ATF, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms, had run an operation to sell guns to Mexico, trying to track the guns.

00:36:05.000 One of those guns was eventually used to kill Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry.

00:36:10.000 Representative Daryl Issa and Senator Chuck Grassley held hearings to determine what went wrong during the mission.

00:36:14.000 Obama and AG Eric Holder both said they didn't know about the mission until a few weeks prior to the killing and didn't authorize it.

00:36:20.000 Congress and the DOJ ended up in a standoff over the sharing of 1,300 documents, leading Obama to assert executive privilege in order to keep them private.

00:36:27.000 Congress voted to hold Holder in contempt.

00:36:31.000 Obama's claim of executive privilege was rejected by a federal court.

00:36:34.000 So as I say, the chances that this is held in, that these executive privilege attempts hold up are pretty low unless William Barr is telling the truth and this material simply cannot be released because this material would violate federal rules of criminal evidence.

00:36:55.000 So if Barr is lying, then the executive privilege will be struck down.

00:36:58.000 All of this will end up in the hands of Democrats, which means it will become public.

00:37:01.000 If William Barr is telling the truth, then a court will adjudicate that and executive privilege will have been properly applied.

00:37:07.000 Now, the way Democrats are taking that is that a mere assertion of executive privilege amounts to a cover-up.

00:37:12.000 As I say, I don't think that's correct, just as I don't think that the president's mere firing of James Comey amounted to an attempt to stop the Mueller investigation.

00:37:20.000 I don't think that the president, merely discussing with Don McGahn that he wanted to fire Mueller, amounted to a firing of Mueller.

00:37:27.000 The president is a volatile human being.

00:37:29.000 The president is a guy who doesn't like being bothered.

00:37:32.000 He doesn't like being under scrutiny.

00:37:34.000 So there's a very plausible explanation for not wanting Mueller to testify or McGahn to testify.

00:37:38.000 There's a plausible explanation for Barr asserting executive privilege here.

00:37:43.000 And even those are not for the same reason.

00:37:46.000 Right, Trump doesn't, I don't think Trump really cares whether the unredacted material comes out in the Barr, in the Barr version of the report, the redacted report.

00:37:55.000 I don't think Trump cares about the underlying material because, again, the report has found what it found, Barr found what he found, and we're done there.

00:38:02.000 I think Barr is really, I've seen no evidence that Barr is dishonest, in other words.

00:38:06.000 I keep hearing from Democrats that Barr is dishonest.

00:38:08.000 I don't see evidence that Barr is acting dishonestly here to cover for the president.

00:38:14.000 This seems manufactured to me on the bar front.

00:38:17.000 That said, the president has a unique gift for making innocuous headlines seem non innocuous.

00:38:23.000 And so instead of just saying, listen, my attorney general says Democrats are seeking material that he cannot publicize without violating the law.

00:38:30.000 So I'm asserting executive privilege.

00:38:31.000 At the same time, he's saying, I don't want Mueller to testify and I don't want McGahn to testify.

00:38:35.000 He should just say, listen, would I prefer that these guys not testify?

00:38:38.000 Sure.

00:38:39.000 I'm annoyed with this whole thing.

00:38:40.000 But if Democrats want them to testify, they'll come forward and testify.

00:38:43.000 We'll do this whole thing again.

00:38:45.000 If the president had been a little more quiescent during this entire process, it would have served him a lot better.

00:38:51.000 Instead, by thrashing around and struggling, it makes him look more guilty than he actually is, because I don't actually think that he's guilty of a crime here.

00:38:58.000 Well, this has left it to Republicans to explain.

00:39:00.000 Senator Mitch McConnell, the Senate Majority Leader, he points to the Democrats and says, these people are not serious.

00:39:04.000 Okay, Mueller is done.

00:39:05.000 This is not a serious party.

00:39:07.000 Seriousness is not what we've seen from the Democratic Party in recent days.

00:39:12.000 Not serious.

00:39:14.000 What we've seen is a meltdown.

00:39:16.000 An absolute meltdown.

00:39:19.000 An inability to accept the bottom line conclusion on Russian interference from the special counsel's report.

00:39:26.000 OK, and then he continues by saying, listen, this investigation is at an end.

00:39:30.000 Mueller is done.

00:39:31.000 So what exactly are you doing here?

00:39:32.000 And of course, McConnell is right about all of this.

00:39:35.000 That doesn't mean that Congress doesn't have an ability or a duty to investigate.

00:39:39.000 If they want to investigate, they can.

00:39:41.000 So McConnell is right on the substance.

00:39:43.000 I think that in process, the Republicans would be better off saying, listen, all the doors are open.

00:39:48.000 You want to interview whomever you want, go for it.

00:39:50.000 Can't give you these documents because that would violate the law.

00:39:52.000 But you want to interview Mueller, you want to interview McGahn, go for it. 0.99

00:39:55.000 William Barr already showed up and testified before you adults and made you look foolish. 0.94

00:39:59.000 I think it would look more like the same from Mueller and McGahn. 0.98

00:40:02.000 But here's McConnell rightly saying, listen, this Mueller thing is done.

00:40:05.000 And Democrats, really, we all know what this is about.

00:40:07.000 Democrats trying to dig scandal out of non-scandal.

00:40:10.000 They told everyone there had been a conspiracy between Russia and the Trump campaign.

00:40:16.000 Yet on this central question, the special counsel's finding is clear.

00:40:21.000 Case closed.

00:40:23.000 And then Democrats, of course, have responded to all of this by saying, no, no, no, no.

00:40:27.000 The reason that Trump doesn't want Mueller to testify or McGahn to testify is because he wants a cover-up.

00:40:32.000 Here's Chuck Schumer, the Senate minority leader, talking about all of this.

00:40:32.000 Because Trump wants a cover-up.

00:40:39.000 375 former federal prosecutors looked at the Mueller report and said publicly, The conduct of the president amounts to felony obstruction of justice.

00:40:48.000 And that, in any other case, were he not president, those prosecutors would recommend bringing charges.

00:40:55.000 So our leader says, let's move on?

00:40:58.000 It's sort of like Richard Nixon saying, let's move on, at the height of the investigation of his wrongdoing.

00:41:05.000 Of course he wants to move on.

00:41:07.000 He wants to cover up.

00:41:08.000 He wants to silence.

00:41:11.000 OK, so this is the Democratic take on all of this.

00:41:14.000 Is that reality?

00:41:15.000 Is this really about silencing?

00:41:16.000 No, but it's not smart of the president to grant the impression that the press would like to push forward, that he would like to cover things up.

00:41:24.000 Again, there's no underlying crime that's been uncovered here.

00:41:26.000 As far as that letter from prosecutors saying that they would have prosecuted President Trump, sure he would have.

00:41:31.000 Yeah, I'm sure.

00:41:32.000 Again, Mueller's people wanted to prosecute the president.

00:41:35.000 It is obvious when you read that report.

00:41:36.000 Mueller's people despise Trump.

00:41:39.000 There's no way to read that second half of the report about obstruction and not read prosecutors struggling to death to try and catch Trump in something prosecutable and not quite being able to and having to let it go.

00:41:51.000 All these prosecutors, they're not prosecuting Trump.

00:41:53.000 So it's easy for them to say, yeah, I'd prosecute him if I had the chance.

00:41:56.000 Sure you would.

00:41:57.000 Sure you would.

00:41:58.000 And meanwhile, Democrats are trying every other avenue to try and humiliate President Trump.

00:42:04.000 The latest example is, of course, this large report in the New York Times that back in the 1980s and 1990s, Trump lost a lot of money.

00:42:12.000 You got him, guys.

00:42:13.000 I guess he's not president anymore.

00:42:15.000 I mean, I can't believe it.

00:42:16.000 You've uncovered the great secret about President Trump.

00:42:19.000 That President Trump is not as rich as he says he is, and that he has long been, financially, a sort of con man who pastes his name on the outside of giant buildings that lose money but is great at branding.

00:42:29.000 You got him.

00:42:30.000 Nobody's ever brought this up before.

00:42:31.000 Nobody.

00:42:33.000 Nobody's ever mentioned that this guy somehow lost money in the casino industry and that he has a bunch of bankrupt companies.

00:42:38.000 So now that you got him, I am sure he will lose in 2020.

00:42:38.000 Nobody's ever mentioned that.

00:42:41.000 You have burst the bubble, fellas.

00:42:44.000 There's an article from Ross Buettner and Susan Craig, and this was getting all the press this morning until the assertion of executive privilege.

00:42:44.000 My goodness.

00:42:51.000 The piece from the New York Times says, by the time his master of the universe memoir, Trump, the art of the deal hit bookstores in 1987, Donald Trump was already in deep financial distress, losing tens of millions of dollars on troubled business deals, according to previously unrevealed figures from his federal income tax returns.

00:43:06.000 Trump was propelled to the presidency in part by a self-spun narrative of business success and of setbacks triumphantly overcome.

00:43:13.000 He's attributed his first run of reversals and bankruptcies to the recession that took hold in 1990.

00:43:18.000 But 10 years of tax information obtained by the Times paints a different and far bleaker picture of his deal-making abilities and financial condition.

00:43:24.000 The data, printouts from Trump's official IRS tax transcripts with the figures from his federal tax form for the 1040 for the years 1985 to 1994, represents the fullest, most detailed look to date at the president's taxes, information he has kept from the public view.

00:43:39.000 The numbers show In 1985, Trump reported losses of $46.1 million from his core businesses, casinos, hotels, retail space, and apartment buildings.

00:43:47.000 They continue to lose money every year, totaling $1.17 billion in losses for the decade.

00:43:52.000 In fact, year after year, Trump appears to have lost more money than nearly any other individual American taxpayer.

00:43:57.000 The Times found when it compared his results with detailed information the IRS compiles on an annual sampling of high-income earners.

00:44:04.000 His core business losses in 1990 and 1991, more than $250 million each year, were more than double those of the nearest taxpayers in the IRS information for those years.

00:44:14.000 Overall, Trump lost so much money that he was able to avoid paying income taxes for 8 of the 10 years.

00:44:18.000 It is not known whether the IRS later required changes after audits.

00:44:23.000 The White House's response to the findings has shifted over time.

00:44:27.000 Several weeks ago, a senior official issued a statement saying the president got massive depreciation in tax shelter because of large-scale construction and subsidized developments.

00:44:34.000 This is why the president has always scoffed at the tax system and said you need to change the tax laws.

00:44:39.000 On Saturday, A lawyer for the president wrote the tax information was demonstrably false and that the paper's statements about the president's tax returns and businesses from 30 years ago are highly inaccurate.

00:44:49.000 And then he added the IRS transcripts, particularly before the days of electronic filing, are notoriously inaccurate and would not be able to provide a reasonable picture of any taxpayer's return.

00:44:58.000 So a couple of things here.

00:45:00.000 Number one.

00:45:02.000 So what?

00:45:03.000 Number two, when it comes to the president's image, I love they say he has a self-spun image as this great dealmaker and very rich man.

00:45:10.000 Really, was it self-spun or did some people help him out in the media, guys?

00:45:14.000 There are a lot of people who portray themselves as very wealthy, who are not in fact very wealthy.

00:45:17.000 It's actually a fairly regular thing in the United States, in Europe as well.

00:45:21.000 A lot of people who are bankrupt, who have yachts.

00:45:23.000 But, does that mean that the press didn't help him out?

00:45:27.000 NBC put him on air for years, claiming that he was the greatest businessman in America.

00:45:34.000 If it had not been for The Apprentice, Donald Trump is probably not president right now. 0.95

00:45:37.000 And now you guys are like, wow, Donald Trump, what a con man. 0.67

00:45:39.000 I'm sure you got him.

00:45:41.000 Now, President Trump, this does answer the question as to why President Trump doesn't want his tax returns released.

00:45:45.000 It's always what I had thought, and I had been positing for years.

00:45:48.000 The president doesn't want his tax returns out there because he's not as rich as he says he is.

00:45:52.000 He's not worth $10 billion.

00:45:53.000 He may not even be worth $1 billion.

00:45:55.000 Does that matter at this point?

00:45:57.000 The answer, of course, is no.

00:45:59.000 The president, though, has tied his ego to the public perception of his wealth.

00:46:03.000 And so he tweets out, real estate developers in the 1980s and 1990s, more than 30 years ago, were entitled to massive write-offs and depreciation, which would, if one was actively building, show losses and tax losses in almost all cases.

00:46:13.000 Much was non-monetary.

00:46:15.000 Sometimes considered tax shelter, you would get it by building or even buying.

00:46:20.000 You always wanted to show losses for tax purposes.

00:46:22.000 Almost all real estate developers did, and often renegotiate with banks.

00:46:25.000 It was sport.

00:46:26.000 Additionally, the very old information put out is a highly inaccurate fake news hit job.

00:46:30.000 He's gonna have to choose between it's inaccurate, and also I did all these things.

00:46:33.000 Also, he's gonna have to choose between, yes, I was using legitimate tax shelters, and two, I was exaggerating my losses for purposes of taxes, which would be tax fraud.

00:46:42.000 Suffice it to say, None of this is going to damage the president in any serious way. 0.51

00:46:46.000 And the fact that Democrats continue to pretend that yelling at Trump about his wealth is somehow going to take him down is really, really silly. 0.90

00:46:55.000 It's really absurd. 0.90

00:46:56.000 All right.

00:46:57.000 Time for some things I like and then some things that I hate.

00:47:00.000 So things that I like.

00:47:01.000 I have started watching the HBO series Chernobyl, which is about, of course, the Chernobyl incident from the 1980s in the Soviet Union, a nuclear meltdown that has provided the impetus for a slowdown in the building of nuclear One of the good we did.

00:47:13.000 power plants, which is absurd.

00:47:14.000 If you are involved in the Green Movement, if you would like a Green New Deal, the first place you should begin is with nuclear power plants that represent a great plurality of the power provided in, for example, France.

00:47:24.000 The reason Chernobyl melted down is because it was in one of the worst places on planet Earth, the Soviet Union, and was botched from beginning to end. 1.00

00:47:32.000 But the series itself basically shows that.

00:47:34.000 Here's a little bit of the preview for Chernobyl.

00:47:49.000 See, a just world is a sane world.

00:47:56.000 There was nothing sane about Chernobyl.

00:47:59.000 I'm pleased to report that the situation in Chernobyl is stable.

00:48:09.000 In terms of radiation, I'm told it's the equivalent of a chest x-ray.

00:48:13.000 No.

00:48:14.000 Chernobyl is on fire.

00:48:18.000 And every atom of uranium is like a bullet.

00:48:23.000 Penetrating everything in its path.

00:48:26.000 Metal.

00:48:27.000 Concrete.

00:48:28.000 It's really horrifying.

00:48:29.000 And again, it demonstrates that third world countries, the USSR was treated as a developed nation because it spends all of its income on weaponry pointed at the United States. 0.71

00:48:37.000 But the fact is that the Soviet Union effectively was a third world country.

00:48:41.000 And this was proof of it.

00:48:42.000 The fact that environmentalists have used Chernobyl or Three Mile Island as an example of why nuclear power should no longer be engaged in is true foolishness.

00:48:54.000 Again, there's communist nations not famous for running well.

00:48:57.000 Okay, other things that I like today.

00:48:59.000 So, Georgia has now passed the Right to Life Act.

00:49:02.000 It prevents abortion. 0.55

00:49:03.000 It's basically a heartbeat bill.

00:49:04.000 It prevents abortion after the sixth week, which is when a heartbeat can usually first be detected.

00:49:10.000 Here is Governor Brian Kemp, the legitimate, duly elected governor of Georgia, Stacey Abrams, talking about the Right to Life Act.

00:49:17.000 This deserves all of our applause.

00:49:19.000 Some may challenge it in the court of law, but our job is to do what is right, not what is easy.

00:49:29.000 We are called to be strong and courageous.

00:49:34.000 And we will not back down.

00:49:36.000 We will always continue to fight for life.

00:49:39.000 OK, so this is great stuff.

00:49:41.000 Amazingly, of course, you have the entire left unified in outrage that babies are being saved.

00:49:47.000 So you've got Alexander Ocasio-Cortez tweeting out, six weeks pregnant equals two weeks late on your period.

00:49:54.000 Well, if you consider a pregnancy the equivalent, the moral equivalent of just being late on your period, I have something called science to show you.

00:50:01.000 This is a developing human life by every scientific measure.

00:50:04.000 It says most of the men writing these bills don't know the first thing about a woman's body outside of the things they want from it.

00:50:10.000 I've always found this contention particularly odd.

00:50:12.000 That what men desperately want from women is for them to be pregnant. 0.99

00:50:15.000 That the sexist men, what they desperately want is for women to be pregnant. 0.96

00:50:18.000 That's why men go to strip clubs with pregnant ladies, obviously. 1.00

00:50:20.000 Men love when women are pregnant. 0.99

00:50:22.000 Just their favorite thing in the world. 0.99

00:50:25.000 This is one of the dumber contentions that the left makes all the time. 0.99

00:50:28.000 First of all, this bill was written by three women. 0.99

00:50:30.000 She also says it's relatively common for a woman to have a late period and not be pregnant.

00:50:34.000 So this is a backdoor ban.

00:50:36.000 It's not a backdoor ban.

00:50:38.000 It's a ban.

00:50:39.000 Pretty front door, actually.

00:50:40.000 Like, they're just saying it.

00:50:41.000 As far as the idea that women need more time to detect whether they're pregnant so they can kill that baby, I'm pretty certain that the pro-lifers are not concerned with when a woman becomes aware that she is pregnant as much as they are with the protection of the unborn fetus.

00:50:57.000 It is also worth noting that by this point in the pregnancy, There are arms and legs forming, fingers and toes, and a heartbeat.

00:51:05.000 The moral blindness of all of this is truly astonishing.

00:51:09.000 It truly is.

00:51:10.000 But I guess that you can convince yourself of anything if you're on the hardcore left.

00:51:13.000 So, Christine Quinn, who's a pro-choice activist on the exorable Chris Cuomo's CNN show.

00:51:20.000 Chris Cuomo is a super objective journalist.

00:51:22.000 He loves journalism, just everywhere he journalisms.

00:51:25.000 Christine Quinn says, that's not a human being inside a pregnant woman.

00:51:29.000 I think she's been watching Alien too many times.

00:51:31.000 When a woman gets pregnant, that is not a human being inside of her. 1.00

00:51:36.000 It's part of her body.

00:51:38.000 And this is about a woman having full agency and control of her body and making decisions about her body and what is part of her body with medical professionals.

00:51:49.000 Those are the facts and that is the law of the land.

00:51:53.000 Okay, this is the- It's not a part- It's a part of her body.

00:51:57.000 It's not an independent human life.

00:51:58.000 I mean, this is just absurd.

00:52:01.000 It's just absurd.

00:52:02.000 Okay, time for other things that I hate, because that is obviously a thing that I hate. 1.00

00:52:09.000 Seth Meyers is garbage. 0.98

00:52:11.000 Seth Meyers is, he's supposed to be a comedian. 1.00

00:52:13.000 He's not a comedian.

00:52:14.000 He's a late night propagandist for the DNC.

00:52:17.000 He used to write comedy for Barack Obama.

00:52:20.000 So this is not somebody who's a comedian, first and foremost.

00:52:23.000 At one time, he was somewhat funny as the weekly correspondent on Saturday Night Live.

00:52:29.000 No longer.

00:52:29.000 He has not been for a long while.

00:52:31.000 Last night he interviewed Meghan McCain and decided to attack her.

00:52:33.000 Why?

00:52:34.000 Because Meghan McCain had quoted Ilhan Omar.

00:52:35.000 And that's very bad according to Seth Meyers.

00:52:37.000 Here is Seth Meyers with Meghan McCain who treats him with the appropriate amount of outrage and disdain.

00:52:41.000 Meghan McCain is doing yeoman's work out there. 0.99

00:52:43.000 Here is Seth Meyers making a fool of himself and Meghan McCain properly demonstrating this.

00:52:48.000 Is there a way for people to talk about differences in Israeli policy without getting framed as anti-semitic language? 0.90

00:52:54.000 Yeah, I just think you can't talk about Jews hypnotizing the world, talking about all about the Benjamins.

00:53:00.000 You do keep bringing up the two tweets that she's apologized for, and I think that's a little unfair to her, especially because we've established... Are you a publicist?

00:53:06.000 What?

00:53:06.000 Are you her press person?

00:53:07.000 No, I'm just someone who cares about the fact that there's someone out there who is in a minority, who has had death threats against her, and I think that we should all use the same language that you're asking her to be careful about her language, and I would ask everybody else to be careful about theirs.

00:53:22.000 Okay, you have to be careful about your language.

00:53:26.000 Really careful about your language.

00:53:27.000 She needs to be careful about her language and she's apologized. 0.64

00:53:29.000 First of all, she did not apologize for her latest round of anti-Semitism.

00:53:33.000 She sided with Hamas during the last outbreak of violence in the Gaza Strip.

00:53:37.000 She has refused to apologize several times for many of her remarks.

00:53:41.000 Including her downplaying of 9-11.

00:53:42.000 Seth Meyers doing this kind of woke scold.

00:53:46.000 Be careful about your language, Meghan McCain.

00:53:48.000 She quoted Ilhan Omar.

00:53:49.000 That is not the same thing as Ilhan Omar saying that the Jews hypnotized the world.

00:53:53.000 Or that people who are pro-Israel are suffering from dual loyalty.

00:53:56.000 Or that Americans are pro-Israel because of Jew money. 0.91

00:53:59.000 And it's not the same thing.

00:54:00.000 Ilhan Omar said a bunch of bad stuff.

00:54:02.000 She continues to say bad stuff.

00:54:03.000 She downplayed terrorism in 2016 and 2013.

00:54:06.000 She made light of 9-11, on tape, in front of an organization that was an unincited co-conspirator in the Holy Land Foundation terrorism trial.

00:54:14.000 And here is Seth Meyers, supposed comedian, lecturing... You know, I just have to lecture you, Meghan McCain, about your very bad language.

00:54:20.000 Because, you know, she's been the victim of death threats.

00:54:22.000 And if you quote her... I have a question.

00:54:24.000 Really, true question.

00:54:25.000 So last week, the FBI arrested a human.

00:54:28.000 They arrested a human because this human was making overt death threats against people ranging from Jared Kushner to Donald Trump Jr.

00:54:35.000 Some of these death threats were directly, directly sent to me, right?

00:54:39.000 I mean, they were sent at me.

00:54:40.000 They were sent to one of my employees. 0.65

00:54:42.000 They directly said that this person wanted to blow my brains out. 0.99

00:54:45.000 This person was posting publicly that somebody should kill me.

00:54:47.000 And if you go check, The 8chan boards on this guy.

00:54:51.000 Go check the Reddit boards on this guy.

00:54:53.000 All the comments underneath are, well, this guy just shouldn't have said this publicly.

00:54:57.000 He should have just gone and done it.

00:54:57.000 We'd all know why he had done it.

00:54:59.000 If he had shot Shapiro.

00:55:01.000 It's funny, I have not received a single question from, I have a lot of friends who work in mainstream media.

00:55:07.000 I have not received a question, not one, zero questions from anybody in the mainstream media about inciting, about incitement and inciting language against me that results in that sort of death threat.

00:55:21.000 Not one.

00:55:22.000 Incredible.

00:55:22.000 Where are they?

00:55:23.000 I mean, I thought that if you say bad stuff about somebody, then that's incitement of violence against them.

00:55:27.000 That's what I learned from Ilhan Omar.

00:55:29.000 That's what I've learned, that Donald Trump quoting her is an incitement of violence against her. 0.73

00:55:33.000 Because she's received death threats, so you shut your face.

00:55:36.000 And yet, when I receive not only a death threat, a death threat so bad that the FBI gets involved and then arrests somebody, When I receive that sort of death, when I have full, round-the-clock security, full-time, I have full, around-the-clock security all the time.

00:55:50.000 So just note to people who would potentially try to hurt me or my family, you do that, you're getting shot.

00:55:54.000 I've got full, around-the-clock security, full-time, because of death threats.

00:55:57.000 And yet, the media have asked not a question, a question about incitement, which suggests to me that they don't actually give a damn about incitement.

00:56:06.000 They gave a damn about incitement.

00:56:07.000 Al Sharpton would not be sitting on MSNBC.

00:56:11.000 Al Sharpton was involved linguistically in helping to incite a riot in Crown Heights against Jews in 1991 and incite the burning down of Freddie's fashion mart in New York City.

00:56:21.000 And he sits on MSNBC right now.

00:56:24.000 We didn't have a conversation about Bernie Sanders inciting violence after the congressional baseball shooting, did we?

00:56:28.000 Or Barack Obama inciting violence after the Dallas police shooting?

00:56:31.000 I have a very clear standard.

00:56:32.000 I think when people criticize me, it's not incitement.

00:56:34.000 I think when people suggest I should be shot, that is incitement.

00:56:37.000 But Seth Meyers doesn't have that standard.

00:56:39.000 Seth Meyers' standard is, if you criticize Ilhan Omar, you are responsible for violent death threats against her. 1.00

00:56:44.000 That's a bunch of crap. 1.00

00:56:45.000 It's a bunch of nonsense. 1.00

00:56:46.000 And he knows it's nonsense. 0.96

00:56:47.000 And the fact that he's accusing Meghan McCain, who has fought against President Trump's originally stated Muslim ban.

00:56:54.000 His actual ban on immigration is not a Muslim ban.

00:56:58.000 Only five of the seven countries named on that ban, legally speaking, are Muslim.

00:57:02.000 Most Muslim countries still can send people here, obviously.

00:57:05.000 But his originally stated statement about, we need a shutdown on Muslim immigration, all of that, Meghan McCain opposed that.

00:57:12.000 Meghan McCain, as far as I know, defended Ilhan Omar's right to wear hijab on the floor, and the congressional rules were changed because of that.

00:57:18.000 So did I. But Meghan McCain is an Islamophobe, according to Seth Meyers, who incites violence because he likes Ilhan Omar. 0.99

00:57:24.000 Now, why are members of the Democratic Party doing this?

00:57:26.000 Why are Democratic hacks, partisan tools, like Seth Meyers, doing this sort of thing?

00:57:30.000 Unfunny claptor advocates?

00:57:32.000 Why are they doing this?

00:57:33.000 Because here is the dirty little secret about the Democratic Party and anti-Semitism. 0.96

00:57:36.000 They do not give a damn, so long as they are politically allied with the anti-Semites. 0.90

00:57:41.000 They do not care, which is why all 20 Democratic presidential candidates said nothing as Hamas, a terrorist group that hates America and hates Israel and calls for the extermination of Jews across the world, fired 700 rockets into civilian areas. 0.91

00:57:56.000 Seth Meyers, you got anything to say about that?

00:57:58.000 About incitement?

00:58:00.000 About violence?

00:58:01.000 Nothing?

00:58:01.000 No, you're just mad at Meghan McCain?

00:58:04.000 Man, go perform some unspeakable acts on yourself, because that is just... What utter nonsense.

00:58:09.000 The reality is that the Democratic Party, and too many Democrats these days, are not willing to face up to the anti-Semitism in their own party, because they are perfectly comfortable with anti-Zionism, and are perfectly unwilling to condemn anti-Zionism as anti-Semitism, and they don't care if there are anti-Semites in their own party, ranging from Al Sharpton to Ilhan Omar to Rashida Tlaib.

00:58:28.000 They do not give any damns about that.

00:58:31.000 So long as they feel they can make hay while the sun shines.

00:58:33.000 If you're not willing to condemn anti-Semitism across the board, then you don't care about anti-Semitism.

00:58:38.000 And if you are playing active defense for Ilhan Omar and pretending that she... Oh, it's just a couple little tweets, guys.

00:58:42.000 It was just a couple... She backed Hamas in the latest Gaza conflict.

00:58:47.000 I don't know any other way to put that.

00:58:49.000 Every Democratic presidential candidate has said zero things about Israel's right to defend itself from attacks on civilian centers by a group that calls for genocide against Jews in their charter.

00:59:01.000 Yeah, I'm sure Seth Meyers takes incitement real seriously.

00:59:03.000 All right, we'll be back here a little bit later today for another two hours of content.

00:59:07.000 Otherwise, we'll catch you here tomorrow with more Breakdown.

00:59:09.000 This is The Ben Shapiro Show.

00:59:17.000 This is The Ben Shapiro Show.

00:59:18.000 Executive producer, Jeremy Boring.

00:59:20.000 Senior producer, Jonathan Hay.

00:59:22.000 Our supervising producer is Mathis Glover.

00:59:24.000 And our technical producer is Austin Stevens.

00:59:26.000 Edited by Adam Sajovic.

00:59:27.000 Audio is mixed by Mike Karamina.

00:59:29.000 Hair and makeup is by Jesua Olvera.

00:59:30.000 Production assistant, Nick Sheehan.

00:59:32.000 The Ben Shapiro Show is a Daily Wire production.

00:59:34.000 Copyright, Daily Wire 2019.

00:59:37.000 I'm Michael Knowles, host of The Michael Knowles Show, breaking major New York Times investigative exclusive.

00:59:43.000 Donald Trump was poor in the late 80s and early 90s.

00:59:47.000 The only other way you could have found this breaking information is if you read the whole book he wrote about it, or watched even one episode of his show, or read any newspaper in the 90s.

The Ben Shapiro Show - May 08, 2019

Executive Time! | Ep. 776

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