It's fight night at the White House. President Trump, Joe Biden going mano y mano. Plus, Mark Zuckerberg's week just got worse, and Republicans struggle to pass their big omnibus spending bill. We ll go through all of this stuff and an exclusive interview with Speaker of the House Paul Ryan. Plus, the greatest story of the last two years! Ben Shapiro is back in Washington, D.C. with a trip to meet with Speaker Paul Ryan, and we'll have our exclusive interview later in the program, which I'm very much looking forward to showing you, because it was a lot of fun. You can get that and much more by subscribing to The Ben Shapiro Show on Apple Podcasts and wherever else you get your shows. You'll get access to all the latest political news and analysis, including the latest breaking news and recaps from around the world. You can also get a free 4-week emergency food kit from MyPatriotSupply to keep you and your family prepared in case of a natural disaster. This is the week to build a foundation of safety, and you can do it with the experts at My Patriot Supplies. You're the only one who's prepared! You're not going to be better off than this! Don't miss it! Check it out now! Get that kit for $198 and an additional four-week food kit for free when you go to My PatriotSupply. That's right, you're getting it for only $198.99! Make sure that you & your family are indeed prepared in a little bit less than half the price, you don't have to worry about it. If something goes wrong, you'll be the whole time you need to be prepared for a disaster, you can get it for less than $200! And you're not gonna need it now, you re gonna be better than that, right? . You don t have to wait for it, right now, right here! That's 888-803-1413 or order online at PreparedWithBen. . Go to Preparedwithben.com/PrepareWithben. That s not gonna be much longer than that! Go to PrepareWithBen Shapiro: That s the Week To Build a Foundation of Safety! . That s The Week to Build a Forte with Ben Shapiro: the Week to Be Prepared With Ben Shapiro.
00:00:27.000We'll have our exclusive interview with Speaker Ryan a little bit later in the program, which I'm very much looking forward to showing you, because it was a lot of fun.
00:00:34.000We didn't talk a lot, actually, about kind of day-to-day politics.
00:00:36.000We talked more about broad things that he should be doing in Congress to change the nature of government, which I think is a little more important, because we talk day-to-day politics on the show.
00:00:43.000We'll get to all of that, plus the greatest story of the last
00:02:16.000Make sure that you and your family are indeed prepared in case of disaster.
00:02:19.000OK, so there is a lot of actual news to talk about, but the most important news, the thing that we all care about the most is that there's going to be a fight, fight, fight, fight.
00:02:27.000Fight between Joe Biden, the former vice president of the United States, in this corner.
00:02:32.000And in this corner, Donald J. McFace Trump.
00:03:04.000So it starts off, clip 13, Joe Biden yesterday saying that he would have beaten up Trump in high school, which is a real weird thing to say.
00:03:30.000When I was in high school, I beat the hell out of the President of the United States.
00:04:23.000Okay, so Joe Biden had threatened to beat Trump up actually several months ago, saying that if they got in a fight, he would take down Trump.
00:04:29.000And now you got the President of the United States.
00:04:30.000Imagine this, there's a very funny Twitter account that takes all of Trump's tweets and puts them in the format of presidential statements.
00:04:36.000Imagine the presidential statement, like you wake up from a coma and this is what you see.
00:04:40.000And you're like, oh, Donald Trump's in a fight with, wait, Donald Trump's the president and he tweeted that?
00:04:44.000So yeah, that's the thing that happened.
00:07:52.000The Congress, the House of Representatives, will go forward with appropriations bills.
00:07:56.000They will pass through the normal appropriations process.
00:07:58.000The way that you're supposed to do budgets is you are supposed to fund individual departments, and then you're supposed to send a bill to the Senate, and the Senate is supposed to fund that individual department, and then the President signs it.
00:08:07.000Instead, what has happened, because Mitch McConnell does not have a governing majority in the Senate, he has 51 votes, but they're all fractious, instead,
00:08:15.000They just slap everything together in a crap sandwich of a bill that's 2232 pages long.
00:08:21.000And then they give people 48 hours to read it and say, we got to vote.
00:08:24.000And they put a bunch of good stuff in there and they put a bunch of bad stuff in there.
00:08:26.000So some of the good stuff that is in there, OK, there is there is some funding for the wall, like a very, very, very little bit of funding for the wall.
00:08:35.000There's some things that are being pushed by sort of the left wing of the Republican Party.
00:08:40.000There's increased funding for the Child Care Access Means Parents in Schools program, which means that parents will have access to on-campus child care and this sort of thing if this is your stuff, if this is the stuff that you like.
00:08:51.000The funding is there for the military.
00:09:29.000Literally years at this point on this show.
00:09:31.000Democrats want to use illegal immigration as a hot-button issue when it comes to the elections, but they don't actually want to solve the problems for illegal immigrants.
00:09:39.000In fact, Paul Ryan went to the Democrats and he offered them a really sweetheart deal.
00:09:44.000He offered them three years of funding for the wall.
00:09:46.000So $25 billion over three years for the wall.
00:09:48.000And in exchange, three years of additional funding for the DACA program, right?
00:09:52.000We'd push off DACA, nobody would get supported.
00:09:54.000Democrats turned that down flat, okay?
00:09:57.000And they waited until the last minute to do it, and now they'll vote against the bill saying that Republicans didn't give enough.
00:10:01.000So Democrats were offered what they wanted on DACA and would have brought them past the next presidential election, actually, and they turned it down anyway because they just want to run on this issue.
00:10:09.000Here are some of the conservative concerns with all this.
00:10:11.000The Freedom Caucus, the House Freedom Caucus,
00:10:14.000I've spoken to a lot of members of the House Freedom Caucus, spoken to several senators who have opposed the bill.
00:10:19.000Senator Mike Lee in Utah is opposed to the bill.
00:10:21.000He says it's just unconscionable that Mitch McConnell is forcing through another one of these omnibus packages that is essentially a giant crap sandwich that nobody is going to read.
00:10:29.000Here's what the Freedom Caucus says in their statement.
00:10:32.000They say, Many of the policies in the bill are, in fact, the opposite
00:11:27.000Sure, because a majority of Republicans will vote for it, and then there will be a bunch of Democrats who vote for it because it's a big omnibus package.
00:11:33.000But there's a procedural hurdle they have to jump today.
00:11:35.000It'll be interesting to see whether they are able to do so, because in order for that procedural hurdle to be jumped, every Democrat's going to jump against it.
00:11:41.000It's possible that this bill gets voted down and is brought back for further changes.
00:11:46.000So one of the things that the Freedom Caucus talks about there is the fixed NICS bill.
00:11:52.000Jacob Solom over at Reason Magazine says this.
00:12:12.000But there are also substantive concerns about the bill raised by supporters of gun rights who worry that it will help block firearm sales to people who pose no threat to others.
00:13:29.000Again, LendingClub.com slash Ben lets them know that we sent you as well, and you can check your credit for free.
00:13:35.000And it doesn't impact your credit rating.
00:13:37.000You can check the rates that you receive for free.
00:13:38.000So, what exactly is the problem with the Fix NICS program that is embedded in this bill?
00:13:42.000Well, Senator Cornyn from Texas introduced this last November in response to the Sutherland Springs shooting.
00:13:48.000Cornyn's bill aims to prevent the screw-ups that prevented the sharing of information with the National Instant Background Check System.
00:13:56.000They would also encourage sharing of local and state records.
00:13:59.000But, for example, Senator Lee has due process objections to the bill.
00:14:02.000He argues that the Department of Veterans Affairs wrongly identifies veterans as mental defectives, which disqualifies them from gun ownerships when they need help managing their benefits.
00:14:10.000This was a serious problem with an executive order that Obama had tried to put out last year that was revoked by President Trump.
00:14:15.000That executive order was an attempt to prohibit seniors who had other people do their finances from owning weapons.
00:14:22.000Well, this sort of does the same thing because the Department of Veterans Affairs
00:14:42.000So, nobody's against more transparency in the National Instant Background Check system, but the question is what standard is going to be used to deny people a gun?
00:14:49.000And that standard does have to be changed.
00:14:50.000Other conservative concerns with this bill, aside from the process, aside from the fact that these omnibus packages stink, that they are garbage, and again, I think this is less on Speaker Ryan, because the House has consistently passed appropriations bills, and it's more on Senator McConnell.
00:15:04.000Now listen, it's up to Ryan to please McConnell, right?
00:15:08.000He could just tell McConnell, listen, Bob, you're on your own.
00:15:22.000My speech at Georgetown was canceled by actual snowflakes, not like the students, by like actual snow.
00:15:27.000I spent some time talking with a bunch of congressional staffers and a bunch of Congress people, including members of the Freedom Caucus, and this is the difficulty, okay?
00:15:34.000People like me actually have a relatively easy job.
00:15:36.000My job is to get on the air every day and to talk to you about the things that are going on and to explain what I think is right and wrong about these bills and to analyze and to stump for better bills.
00:15:43.000When you're in Congress, there's also a tendency to try and get things done, right?
00:16:07.000The easiest way to do this is to slap together a crappy omnibus package, and then you say to your constituents, listen,
00:16:12.000I didn't like a lot of the stuff in there, but I liked some of the stuff in there, and I needed to vote for it because of that.
00:16:17.000This is why it's up to Mitch McConnell to do a better job of keeping his members in line.
00:16:20.000Now, what's amazing is that a lot of senators are afraid of Senate Majority Leader McConnell.
00:16:23.000A lot of senators are afraid that he is sort of in de facto control of the National Senatorial Committee for the Republicans, the NRSC, that he is going to remove money from them or undercut them.
00:16:34.000And so they are willing to go along, get along with Senate Majority Leader McConnell.
00:16:39.000But the reality is that if they don't stand up at a certain point and say to McConnell, listen, we're not going to vote for these omnibus packages anymore.
00:16:46.000We're going to only vote for packages that we like.
00:16:48.000Then you're never going to get anything better.
00:16:49.000The government is just going to continue to grow.
00:16:51.000So the Republican Study Committee stayed up all night last night to try and read through this egregious bill.
00:16:56.000And some of the stuff that they found in there truly is not great.
00:17:17.000Particularly concerning is the increase in non-defense discretionary spending, which exceeds the cap by $63 billion, and fiscal year spending by $60 billion.
00:17:26.000The boost in non-defense discretionary spending represents the largest single-year increase in non-defense discretionary spending since the BCA caps, this would be the sequestration caps, were created.
00:17:36.000Conservatives may believe this is a reflection of the fact that Democrats have been successful in handcuffing NDD spending to fully funding the national defense.
00:17:43.000Together, the omnibus's increase in defense and non-defense spending will increase the deficit by $143 billion.
00:17:49.000This goes to a point that I've been making for a long time.
00:17:52.000Republicans are in the business of cutting taxes.
00:17:53.000They're not actually in the business of cutting spending.
00:17:55.000Too many Republicans don't care about cutting spending.
00:17:57.000See, it's fiscally hard to cut spending.
00:18:00.000It is politically hard to cut spending.
00:18:01.000You take a lot of crap for cutting spending.
00:18:03.000You never take crap for increasing spending.
00:18:05.000And this is one of the problems here, is that so many folks are focused on being popular and not enough focused on doing the right thing, especially in an off-year election, right?
00:18:15.000In 2018, there's a fear that Republicans are going to lose the House, and then what do you have?
00:18:18.000Then you have Nancy Pelosi in charge of making these laws.
00:18:20.000So, listen, I have a lot of sympathy for Republican staffers and Republican House members trying to figure out what to do here.
00:18:38.000It has large spending increases in the Agriculture Appropriations Division, which is idiotic.
00:18:42.000It funds the National Endowments for the Arts and Humanities.
00:18:45.000It funds the Refugee and Entrance Assistance Programs.
00:18:48.000It funds the Social Security Block Grant Program.
00:18:50.000It doesn't change Obamacare in any significant way.
00:18:52.000It does not include Dodd-Frank rollback language.
00:18:55.000It doesn't include a provision prohibiting funding for administrative expenses of an Obamacare multi-state plan that provides coverage for abortion.
00:19:01.000It doesn't include a provision to prevent federal funding for ICE enforcement to provide for abortions.
00:19:06.000The bill does not contain the Conscience Protection Act.
00:19:08.000The bill contains a Treasury forfeiture fund, no explicit prohibition on the Gateway Tunnel funding.
00:19:14.000The bill doesn't include a provision to prohibit the EPA from implementing greenhouse gas regulations.
00:19:18.000In other words, it's a garbage program to fund the government so that people don't actually have to do anything.
00:19:22.000And now again, is there some good stuff here?
00:19:58.000Meanwhile, Facebook is finding itself in additional trouble.
00:20:01.000So, Mark Zuckerberg has been on the hot seat for quite a while here, and he's continuing to be on the hot seat, but not for good reason.
00:20:08.000I think there are lots of good reasons for Mark Zuckerberg to be on the hot seat.
00:20:10.000I think as a conservative, the discrimination against conservative news outlets has been egregious over the past several months, and that's why you've seen traffic decline for every conservative website, like all of them.
00:20:21.000Okay, but the reason that he's really getting flack is because the left has decided that Mark Zuckerberg is responsible for Hillary losing.
00:20:26.000So, let's count all the people responsible for Hillary losing.
00:20:28.000According to the media, it's not Trump, right?
00:20:30.000Trump didn't win the election, he lost.
00:20:32.000The people responsible for Hillary losing are, in order, James Comey, the Russians, the conservative media,
00:21:38.000Yeah, so one of the most important things that I think we need to do here is make sure that we tell everyone whose data was affected by one of these rogue apps.
00:22:54.000He's doing what Democrats want so they don't regulate him.
00:22:56.000Okay, this is outside Democratic pressure in order to ensure that social media companies do what Democrats want.
00:23:02.000In a second, I'm going to give you the update on what Zuckerberg posted, because he posted this long, ridiculous letter about what's been going on with the Cambridge Analytica situation.
00:23:10.000I'm going to read it to you in just a second and analyze it.
00:23:12.000But first, I want to say thank you to our sponsors over at Zeal.
00:23:16.000So March is National Sleep Awareness Month.
00:26:17.000OK, Facebook is is increasingly a disastrous medium and Zuckerberg seems to have lost control of his own pet project, which is an amazing it's an amazing thing.
00:26:27.000I mean, there's a reason that the stock is dropping.
00:26:29.000OK, so yesterday I had the opportunity to sit down with Paul Ryan.
00:26:33.000And some of the folks who helped us make this happen were the folks, my friends over at Young America's Foundation, which is the exclusive home of my college tour.
00:26:41.000And even though the city shut down for the snow day, YAF helped us make sure that we were able to sit down with Speaker Ryan for a few minutes to talk about some of the issues Republicans are working on, as well as the future of the conservative movement.
00:26:53.000Well, we are here with Speaker of the House Paul Ryan, which is pretty awesome.
00:26:56.000And we are here in the ceremonial room outside the Speaker's office, where apparently they sign bills and have heads of state, which I'm sure you're honored to be here with me.
00:27:36.000But I feel like we're going to have a tailwind of accomplishments to get us into the midterms.
00:27:41.000We can get into all the agenda, but we've done so many things in such a short period of time that will actually make a positive difference in people's lives.
00:27:48.000And I think we're going to have a really good story to tell, not to mention the fact that our candidates, our members, are battle-hardened.
00:27:57.000So I feel very, very good about where we are.
00:27:59.000So I want to start by talking about some of those accomplishments, and then I want to get to sort of the tactics that you guys are going to use in the election campaign.
00:28:05.000So, obviously, the top of the list for accomplishments is the tax bill, and Democrats losing their minds over the tax bill did not look particularly good.
00:28:13.000So it's fair to point to Nancy Pelosi saying that you've given the American people crumbs and say that that's wrong.
00:28:18.000So how much do you think that will impact the election?
00:28:20.000That's going to be the gift that keeps giving, just that statement.
00:28:23.000But every single Democrat voted against this.
00:28:26.000I really think they did that because they thought they were going to psych us into defeating ourselves, particularly in the Senate.
00:28:33.000And when they kept pushing this line, they went so far left, so hard progressive, that every single Democrat voted against it.
00:28:39.000They're on the wrong side of history, and they're on the wrong side of results.
00:28:43.000I've been working on this issue a long time.
00:28:49.000So this is the first time in 31 years we've done tax reform.
00:28:52.000But it's much more profound than the tax reform we did back then in 1986.
00:28:57.000Because this completely changes the way we tax ourselves on an international competitive basis.
00:29:03.000And this will put such a strong foundation of growth and opportunity and free enterprise in America, more so than any kind of economic reform in my lifetime.
00:29:13.000And so, they're on the wrong side of history.
00:29:16.000This takes a tax system that was the worst in the industrialized world and gives us a tax system that we think is in the top three of the industrialized world's tax systems.
00:29:25.000That means more jobs in America, more opportunity in America, businesses coming back to America, bringing capital back to America, expanding.
00:29:31.000And that is a phenomenally good thing.
00:29:33.000It's going to get more careers, better wages, better benefits, more entrepreneurship, and the Democrats are against all of that.
00:29:40.000Well, one of the things that's really difficult in the job that you have, Mr. Speaker, is obviously that you are forced to do... I mean, your job is to do policy.
00:30:25.000I've always strongly believed that elections need to be about choices and about ideas.
00:30:30.000And that's why in 2016 I got our House Republicans together to come up with an agenda and to run on it.
00:30:36.000We called it The Better Way, so that we would have a game plan, we would give the country a very clear choice, and that if we won the election we would have earned the right to put that agenda in place.
00:30:45.000We're two-thirds of the way through doing that right now.
00:30:48.000And that gives us a good story to tell, which is, here's what we said we would do, here's what we did.
00:30:53.000This is what we did in Wisconsin, by the way, in 2010, the state legislature, our governor.
00:30:58.000It's a model that I believe in, that I saw work there.
00:31:00.000It's something we're trying to apply here nationally.
00:31:03.000And then we also have to go with new ideas in the election to continue this reform agenda, to disrupt it.
00:31:10.000Now, the point you made, I think, is important, but what about young people?
00:31:13.000The thing that bothers me the most, and I know you've talked about this a bit, is identity politics.
00:31:32.000I'm a big believer in using our core founding principles, applying to the problems, and show that there are solutions for everybody.
00:31:39.000And that, to me, is the kind of an agenda and temperament we have to have going into the 2018 elections.
00:31:46.000And so I wanted to ask you about that specifically, not in terms of, you know, efficiencies and economics, but about the moral differences that you see between right and left, because I think that's the real issue, particularly for young people, because, you know, you and I are both big fans.
00:31:58.000Obviously, you long before I was, and in a much more prominent way, but you're big on entitlement reform.
00:32:34.000Equality of opportunity means we want to make sure that we use these guiding principles that built this country, liberty, freedom, free enterprise, self-determination, government by consent, which gives you an open economy, which gives you freedom, which gives you the ability to chart your life the way you want to.
00:32:49.000And we strive to promote equality of opportunity so that the most people can get the most opportunities possible.
00:32:54.000And nowhere else is that ever made more clear than a free enterprise system, than a freedom
00:32:59.000Democratic capitalism like we have, like our system is built on natural rights.
00:33:03.000What the left believes in, and look, you're asking a conservative what the left believes in, but they believe in equality of outcome.
00:33:09.000The difference in the kind and size and role of government you have between what we're saying and what they're saying is enormous.
00:33:15.000Having an equality of outcome agenda means elites in Washington, unelected bureaucrats, micromanage our lives and everything we do in such a way that they believe they have to decide what the results of our lives are.
00:33:38.000I come from Wisconsin, which is the birthplace of the Progressive Party.
00:33:43.000They believe in all this early 20th century progressivism and Hegel and Bismarck and all these guys who basically
00:33:49.000I think that we're all rubes and dubes and we don't know enough, so we need to delegate our power to these smart bureaucrats that are insulated from elections so they can harmonize and micromanage our lives.
00:34:00.000And that is an equality of outcome philosophy.
00:34:02.000It's antithetical to our founding philosophy.
00:34:05.000And that, at the end of the day, is the big difference here.
00:34:07.000And so the fights we have up here, in many cases, not every one, but in many cases, are fights of that origin.
00:34:15.000And I think that, you know, I've been watching, obviously, your political ascent for my entire life because you're younger.
00:34:25.000But certainly over the last, you know, 15 years.
00:34:27.000And one of the things that I wish that you had the opportunity to speak more about that
00:34:32.000Because it seems like you're sucked more into speaking about the efficiency outcomes.
00:34:37.000Because we do need thought leaders in the conservative movement who are talking specifically about the roots of the left and talking specifically about the way that natural rights have been overcome by a different regime of how rights are thought about, right?
00:34:48.000The difference between positive and negative rights.
00:34:50.000So when I go to... I talk to schools all the time, young people.
00:34:53.000I always say, look, these are our rights given to us pre-government.
00:34:57.000You don't even have to believe in God to believe that they come from God.
00:35:18.000If you buy into that premise, then we're saying we're giving our power to our government to tell us how, when, where, and under what circumstances we get to exercise that right.
00:35:26.000We're giving the government way too much power than we should.
00:35:29.000That's what the left is saying when they say they want to grant us these new rights.
00:35:33.000The best thing that I've found when I talk to young crowds is if we do not get entitlements under control, which we can with more choice and competition and free enterprise and choice, if we don't get these things under control, we are going to bankrupt the next generation.
00:35:48.000We've run the federal government, I round the numbers, we've run the federal government
00:35:51.000For the last 60 years, by taking about 20 cents out of every dollar made in America, produced in America to pay for the federal government, if we do nothing, and no new programs do nothing, by the time my kids are having kids, we're going to have to take 40 cents out of every single dollar made in America to pay for this government at that time.
00:36:09.000Before they even get on to doing something else they want to do with their government.
00:36:12.000So we will bankrupt the next generation.
00:36:15.000I actually had the CBO run numbers years ago on what tax rates would have to be.
00:36:19.000It goes up as high as 88% for tax rates just to pay for this government at that time.
00:36:23.000So I try to explain to people in dollars and cents
00:36:27.000Just what's going to happen to them if the left gets their way, they produce this equality of outcome agenda, we don't reform entitlements, and we stick with these kind of command and control systems.
00:36:37.000So I try to find a way of explaining in dollars and cents what their future will look like from an economic and tax standpoint and how liberty and opportunity will be crushed if we stay in this particular path.
00:36:49.000Okay, so I also, while I have the opportunity, wanted to ask you about sort of the legislative versus executive balance, because one of the things that I've been critiquing for a long time in the country, and I was doing it under Bush, I was doing it under Obama, I'm doing it now under the Trump administration, is the increasing power of the executive branch, seemingly at the expense of the legislative branch, the growing bureaucracy, and the feeling that the legislative branch, over the last century and a half really, has abdicated its duty by kicking it over to the bureaucracy.
00:37:25.000How do you hope to, if you do, hope to reestablish the balance originally drawn?
00:37:32.000I wrote the Trade Promotion Authority law, which was to allow us to go get trade agreements.
00:37:35.000And we brought some of that power back into the Legislative Branch, but not nearly as much as we'd like.
00:37:40.000So I can go into the particulars of that.
00:37:42.000There's a couple of things that we're trying to do here that we've passed out of the House.
00:37:46.000The biggest complaint you'll hear from a House Republican is the Senate filibuster and getting things through the Senate.
00:37:52.000We have this thing called the REINS Act, which we think is sort of the catch-all of reclaiming Article 1, which is, 32 state legislatures do this.
00:38:01.000You pass a big law, it's vague, and then the bureaucracy fills in the details with its rules and regulations.
00:38:16.000So what we're saying with this REINS Act, which is you pass a law, the rules and regulations get published, and then those rules and regulations come back to Congress for a final vote, approval, or amendment before they go into effect.
00:38:29.000So that they're consented to by the elected branch of government, the people who are elected to write the laws before they go into effect.
00:38:37.000So to that end, what we do is we try to, in the bills we pass, since we can't get that through the Senate yet, we try to do it on an individual basis, on a bill-by-bill basis.
00:39:12.000So what I did was I promoted the guy who was head of the tax law writing department to run the entire legislative council department to train the other lawyers of the legislative council how do you write laws really prescriptively so that we can reduce the kind of open-ended discretion we end up getting the executive branch.
00:39:30.000So I'm trying to change sort of the culture of the way we legislate here so that we're far more detailed and prescriptive to not give all this discretion to the executive branch.
00:39:38.000I really appreciate you taking the time, and again, you have one of the hardest jobs in all of America.
00:39:43.000I do not envy you, but I appreciate that you're trying to make philosophical arguments in a time when it seems that a lot of people are caught up in tribal politics.
00:39:49.000It's actually the best part of my day, so thank you.
00:39:52.000Okay, so that was our sit-down with Speaker of the House Paul Ryan.
00:39:55.000We expect to do a longer sit-down with him sometime in the near future, and then I can ask him about things like today's budget bill, which is garbage.
00:40:02.000And we can talk a little bit more about what he intends to do to stop the overreach of the Senate, which seems to only want to pass these omnibus packages that should not really be passed.
00:40:13.000OK, so I'm going to talk a little bit about other scandals brewing.
00:40:16.000Apparently Stormy Daniels is going to be on 60 Minutes.
00:40:58.000Also, we do appreciate when you subscribe.
00:41:00.000I get a lot of letters from folks saying, how can you help?
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00:41:29.000All righty, so a quick roundup of other news.
00:41:31.000So, meanwhile, 60 Minutes is now ready to do its interview with Stormy Daniels.
00:41:38.000According to the Daily Mail, the head of CBS News said Tuesday that a 60 Minutes interview with Stormy Daniels, who is of course the porn star that Trump stopped, is on its way, but that more journalistic work needs to be done on the story.
00:41:47.000David Rhodes is the president over at CBS News.
00:41:50.000He's actually a reasonable fellow, I think.
00:41:52.000He said at a conference in Israel on Tuesday that the first time CBS had confirmed that it interviewed Daniels, who has alleged an extramarital affair with Trump before he became president, she passed a lie detector.
00:42:02.000Listen, of course he had an affair with her.
00:43:08.000Obviously very sensitive about comments made about Russia.
00:43:10.000A lot of people were very critical of the president, including me, when he congratulated the Russian president on his dictatorial victory in the new fake elections over in Russia.
00:43:21.000He'd been bashed by some people, including Ben Sasse, the senator from Nebraska, who I think says a lot of very intelligent things.
00:43:26.000Sasse said a couple of things on the floor of the Senate the other day.
00:43:29.000He said, number one, Trump obviously should not be praising Putin, and number two, that material should not be leaking from the White House.
00:43:37.000There's no way that there should be material leaking from the White House that says that people were telling Trump not to—that it was written on a memo in front of him, do not congratulate Putin.
00:43:45.000There are only a certain number of people in that room.
00:43:47.000If Trump really wants to be sure, he can just fire everybody who was in the room when he made the phone call, or everybody who had seen that memo.
00:43:51.000In any case, here was Ben Sasse saying what he said, and then Trump responding.
00:43:59.000The President of the United States was wrong to congratulate him, and the White House Press Secretary was wrong to duck a simple question about whether or not Putin's re-election was free and fair.
00:44:13.000The American people know that, the Russian people know that, and the world knows that.
00:44:19.000And yesterday, when the White House refused to speak directly and clearly about this matter, we were weakened as a nation, and a tyrant was strengthened.
00:44:29.000And Sass went on to talk about how none of this stuff should have been leaked from the White House anyway, which is of course true.
00:44:33.000Trump responded by ripping on everybody else about his own comments about Putin.
00:44:38.000So here were some of his tweets on this topic.
00:44:40.000He said, I called President Putin of Russia to congratulate him on his election victory.
00:44:49.000Okay, so far, this is all somewhat fair, right?
00:44:57.000They never would have called for Barack Obama to rip on Putin.
00:45:00.000In fact, they were fine with Barack Obama offering flexibility to Putin right before a presidential election, and then handing over control of Syria in the midst of a genocide to Vladimir Putin.
00:45:08.000So, he's not wrong to be critical of the media.
00:45:10.000But this is where he begins to go wrong.
00:45:41.000They cannot help us solve problems in Syria, where they've been bolstering the Assad regime and its genocide.
00:45:45.000They certainly cannot help us solve problems in Ukraine, which they invaded.
00:45:48.000They are not going to help us with problems with Iran, considering that they are fans of Iran.
00:45:52.000And as far as the coming arms race, it's Vladimir Putin who is currently testing long-range missiles again and talking about how they're upgrading their entire missile system to avoid missile defense.
00:46:01.000Trump ripping on Bush and saying that he didn't have the smarts is just yuck.
00:46:35.000When he says peace through strength, Ronald Reagan's peace through strength was that there would be peace because they knew that if they crossed the line, we'd bash them in the head.
00:46:42.000That's what peace through strength meant.
00:46:43.000Trump is saying nice things about Putin for no reason, then calling it peace through strength.
00:46:46.000That's not what that is, and it's foolish of President Trump to say that.
00:46:49.000Okay, time for a thing I like and then a thing I hate, and then we'll be back here tomorrow with the mailbag.
00:47:04.000Okay, it's like Game of Thrones-style nudity.
00:47:07.000Lots of lots of boobies on this particular show and it's not particularly necessary I guess you can make the argument that it's sort of artistically necessary because the whole point of the show is that there is a future in which human beings have a Have their personality embedded in essentially a computer chip
00:47:23.000And that computer chip is in the base of their skull and that computer chip can actually be removed and implanted in other bodies.
00:47:30.000So you actually don't die when your body dies.
00:47:32.000They just take that computer chip and they take all your memories and everything.
00:47:34.000They just stick it into another body and you're good to go.
00:47:37.000And so this body substitution regime is sort of the point of the series.
00:49:03.000It raises some interesting philosophical questions.
00:49:04.000So, worth watching if you can stand the NC-17 rated of it.
00:49:09.000Okay, time for a quick thing that I hate.
00:49:15.000Alrighty, so there are two quick things that I hate.
00:49:18.000First of all, apparently there's a student in the UK who is now alleging that he was reprimanded by his school for watching a video on a public computer of me talking with Dave Rubin.
00:49:29.000I got reported by someone for watching disturbing, hateful content in university premises and received an email from faculty course officer who wanted to be summoned for a student meeting.
00:49:37.000And apparently the student says that because they were watching this video of Rubin and me,
00:49:44.000That they were threatened with suspension from school.
00:49:48.000This is certainly crazy, but it is unfortunately not all that uncommon.
00:49:53.000The left likes to lump into the category of hate speech anyone that it doesn't like.
00:49:56.000This is why they're trying to say that Jordan Peterson is responsible for hate speech.
00:49:59.000It's that Harris, who's not even on the right, is responsible for hate speech.
00:50:04.000And it's why hate speech legislation like they have in Britain is insanely dangerous, because you can just start banning viewpoints that you don't like.
00:50:09.000OK, the other thing that I don't like is Ellen Dershowitz had a debate with Jeffrey Toobin
00:50:13.000Over on, I believe, CNN, about the Mueller investigation.
00:50:17.000And Dershowitz has been making—Dersh, as we used to call him at Harvard Law School—has been making the case that I think is a pretty solid case, that the investigation, the Mueller investigation, has exceeded its legal boundaries, and he's now digging in areas where he was not originally designed to go.
00:50:32.000Jeffrey Toobin, who's a former Dershowitz student, he says that Dershowitz is now a shill of the Trump administration.
00:50:39.000How has this come about that in every situation over the past year you have been carrying water for Donald Trump?
00:50:46.000This is not who you used to be and you are doing this over and over again in situations that are just obviously ripe with conflict of interest and it's just like what's happened to you?
00:51:18.000I'm saying exactly the same thing I said.
00:51:20.000Okay, and Dershowitz is exactly correct here, of course.
00:51:23.000You may disagree with Dershowitz's analysis, but it's getting tiresome to watch people who don't like Trump simply suggest that anyone who defends Trump at any juncture, even if we've been very critical of Trump at other junctures, that those people have now become shills for the Trump administration.
00:51:34.000This polarized political environment is really gross.
00:51:36.000Just because you defend Trump when he's worth defending does not mean that you like Trump overall or you think everything that he's doing is right.
00:51:42.000And just because you say that Trump does something wrong doesn't mean that you hate Trump overall.