The Ben Shapiro Show - How the Media Are Turning America Trumpy | Ep. 541

00:00:00.000 President Trump's lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, says Robert Mueller is not going to indict President Trump, but Robert Mueller is still digging, Michael Cohen finds himself on the wrong end of leaks again, and the media lie about President Trump and immigration.

00:00:11.000 I'm Ben Shapiro.

00:00:11.000 This is The Ben Shapiro Show.

00:00:17.000 So today is the day, folks.

00:00:19.000 If you've not heard already, I'm taking the Ben Shapiro Show live to audiences in Dallas and Phoenix.

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00:01:22.000 Before I get into the news, and there's a lot of news to get into today.

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00:02:36.000 All right. 0.98

00:02:41.000 So the news of the day is that the media are just garbage. 0.99

00:02:44.000 I'm sorry. 0.98

00:02:45.000 I've been railing against the use of the term fake news for years on this program when it does not apply.

00:02:51.000 When President Trump says that it's fake news, for example, that the media are misreporting his crowd size, that's not fake news.

00:02:57.000 But this week,

00:02:59.000 I have to tell you, it's an amazing thing.

00:03:00.000 I'm getting notes from people, I'm getting texts from people, people who did not vote for Trump in the last election, who are now telling me, they're turning me into a Trumpkin.

00:03:06.000 The media are turning me into a huge Donald Trump fan.

00:03:09.000 Why?

00:03:10.000 Because the great arbiters of truth and decency, these wonderful arbiters of all that is good in the world, it turns out they are abjectly lying about issues ranging from Hamas to now MS-13.

00:03:21.000 So the Democratic new playbook, I guess, for 2018 is defend Hamas, defend MS-13, and rip on the NRA.

00:03:27.000 That's the new playbook from the Democrats, and the media are parroting that every step of the way.

00:03:31.000 What am I so hot and bothered about today?

00:03:32.000 Well, we'll get to the Hamas coverage in just a second, but here's what I'm really hot and bothered about today.

00:03:37.000 President Trump yesterday was doing an event with a bunch of sheriffs from all over the country, and one of the sheriffs mentioned MS-13.

00:03:43.000 And President Trump responded in this way.

00:03:45.000 Here's clip three.

00:03:46.000 We have people coming into the country, trying to come in.

00:03:49.000 We're stopping a lot of them.

00:03:51.000 But we're taking people out of the country.

00:03:53.000 You wouldn't believe how bad these people are.

00:03:56.000 These aren't people. 0.57

00:03:56.000 These are animals. 0.57

00:03:59.000 And we're taking him out of the country at a level and at a rate that's never happened before.

00:04:04.000 Okay, so here is the reality.

00:04:06.000 What Trump was specifically, specifically talking about was MS-13.

00:04:10.000 Because the line that led up to this was a sheriff saying, we can't actually deport MS-13 people.

00:04:14.000 The line leading up to this, there's a sheriff named Mims who said, thank you, there could be an MS-13 member I know about.

00:04:19.000 If they don't reach a certain threshold, I cannot tell ICE about it.

00:04:22.000 And then Trump responded to the MS-13 reference by saying, So how did the media cover this?

00:04:27.000 He's specifically talking about MS-13.

00:04:28.000 It is obvious that he's talking about MS-13.

00:04:29.000 It is clear that he's talking about MS-13.

00:04:30.000 MS-13's actual tagline, I mean, this is their actual marketing lines to their own members, is rape, steal, control. 0.94

00:04:46.000 These are not good people. 0.98

00:04:47.000 They are, in fact, as close to animals as you'll find in human beings.

00:04:50.000 So how do the media report this?

00:04:52.000 Let me show you how the media report this.

00:04:53.000 Here's the New York Times.

00:04:54.000 This is what they tweeted out.

00:04:55.000 No, he didn't.

00:04:56.000 He did not lash out at all illegal immigrants. 1.00

00:04:58.000 He lashed out at MS-13, and they are animals. 0.92

00:04:59.000 There have been several stories in the last couple of years

00:05:11.000 I don't know.

00:05:24.000 Descriptor, animal, does not apply to MS-13.

00:05:27.000 It legitimately applies to no one.

00:05:29.000 And yet the media are trying to play it as though Trump is not talking about MS-13.

00:05:32.000 Instead, Trump was talking about illegal immigrants at large.

00:05:34.000 Now listen, Trump has said some bad stuff about illegal immigration generally.

00:05:38.000 He's been overbroad in his language.

00:05:39.000 That's not what happened here.

00:05:40.000 What happened right here was that he was ripping on MS-13.

00:05:43.000 And the media decided to deliberately take him out of context.

00:05:46.000 And it wasn't just the New York Times.

00:05:47.000 It was C-SPAN.

00:05:48.000 It was CNN.

00:05:49.000 It was the New York Times.

00:05:50.000 It was the Washington Post.

00:05:51.000 They all decided

00:05:52.000 To report this as though Trump was talking about illegal immigrants more broadly.

00:05:55.000 They were lying.

00:05:56.000 They were lying.

00:05:58.000 And these lies have been very typical of the media this entire week.

00:06:01.000 This entire week we've heard from the media that innocents were killed on the border between Gaza and Israel.

00:06:07.000 Except for the fact that Hamas admitted yesterday that 50 of the 62 people killed were Hamas members and another three were members of Islamic Jihad.

00:06:13.000 So 53 out of the 62 people killed were active terrorists who worked for active terrorist groups designated as such by the State Department.

00:06:20.000 And the media covered it as though this was all Trump's fault. 0.97

00:06:22.000 That evil, evil Trump. 0.98

00:06:24.000 And Hamas. 0.99

00:06:25.000 Bunch of innocent folks.

00:06:26.000 And now it's MS-13.

00:06:27.000 Like, really?

00:06:28.000 This is the train you want to jump on, media?

00:06:29.000 You hate Trump so much that you're going to deliberately take him out of context?

00:06:33.000 And then you wonder why we don't trust the media?

00:06:36.000 And one of the great myths about President Trump is that people on the right don't like the media because Trump doesn't like the media.

00:06:41.000 Nonsense.

00:06:42.000 People on the right like Trump because Trump doesn't like the media.

00:06:44.000 Okay?

00:06:46.000 We didn't like the media a long time ago.

00:06:48.000 As I said at CPAC,

00:06:50.000 My entire career, we've spent thinking the media are totally full of it.

00:06:53.000 I remember my parents cancelling their subscriptions to Los Angeles Times in the mid-90s over their coverage of Israel.

00:06:58.000 The media has always been egregiously bad, but this last week has been just an incredible demonstration of how bad they are.

00:07:04.000 And this is why.

00:07:05.000 You wonder why people are resonating to President Trump?

00:07:08.000 You wonder why? 0.97

00:07:08.000 Because Trump will take a stand like MS-13 are a bunch of animals. 0.97

00:07:12.000 Or like Hamas is bad. 0.89

00:07:14.000 And when they put people in front, when they put terrorists behind human shields in an attempt to get people killed for the cameras, that's bad.

00:07:21.000 And he's right about both those things.

00:07:23.000 And the media, because they hate Trump so much, decided to side with Hamas and side with MS-13.

00:07:27.000 And then we're supposed to side with the media?

00:07:29.000 We're supposed to believe the media's narrative about Trump?

00:07:31.000 We're supposed to believe what the media have to say about truth and honor and how they're just firefighters running to the fire?

00:07:37.000 They have no agenda.

00:07:38.000 They're objective.

00:07:39.000 They're truthful.

00:07:40.000 Bull bleep, okay? 0.79

00:07:41.000 That is nonsense. 0.95

00:07:43.000 And everybody knows that's nonsense.

00:07:45.000 Members of the media, you want to regain your credibility?

00:07:47.000 You wonder why the American people don't trust you?

00:07:48.000 Because you don't deserve their trust.

00:07:50.000 Because you are not acting in trustworthy fashion.

00:07:53.000 Because you are acting, in many cases, as fake news, and in many other cases, as biased news.

00:07:59.000 This is really egregious stuff.

00:08:01.000 This is what's going to put people into Trump's camp.

00:08:03.000 Because this week, I gotta tell you, I was thinking about President Trump and what he did with regard to Jerusalem and what he's been saying about MS-13, and then I've been watching the media, and I gotta tell you, if the media want me to make a decision between Trump and Hamas, that's not much of a choice.

00:08:18.000 That's not much of a choice.

00:08:19.000 I've been very critical of President Trump's character. 1.00

00:08:21.000 But you can't lie about the guy to get him, members of the media, you idiots. 1.00

00:08:25.000 You can't lie about him. 1.00

00:08:26.000 You can't fib about him.

00:08:28.000 You can't manipulate events on the ground.

00:08:30.000 You can't ignore the truth about what's happening all over the world simply in order to slap at President Trump.

00:08:35.000 If you do, it's just going to drive people into Trump's camp.

00:08:38.000 I was talking to a top member of the Trump administration, this was a few months ago, and I was discussing, you know, how is Trump going to win the votes necessary in order to win re-election?

00:08:46.000 Like, do you have a plan for this?

00:08:47.000 Because George W. Bush lost the popular vote in 2000 by 500,000 votes, and then he won by about 1.5 million votes against John Kerry, but he had to pick up about 10 to 11 million votes between 2000 and 2004 in order to win re-election, because the electorate expands every year.

00:09:00.000 Well, President Trump lost the popular vote this year, or this election cycle, by about 2.5 million votes.

00:09:06.000 That means that he's going to have to make up probably 12 million votes in order for him to win re-election.

00:09:10.000 So I said to this member of the Trump administration, how do you plan on winning 12 million additional votes?

00:09:15.000 How do you plan on bringing a bunch of people over?

00:09:19.000 There wasn't a great answer.

00:09:20.000 So part of it is going to be good policy, obviously, but part of it is going to be shifting definitions of Trump.

00:09:26.000 Well, one of the ways that you can shift the definition of Trump is not by shifting who Trump is, but by the media making themselves so much worse than they already were that you feel like you're being forced to choose between the media and Democrats who are lying on a routine basis and defending the worst people on the planet and President Trump.

00:09:41.000 There's a case that was made during the last election cycle that it was a binary choice between Hillary Clinton and President Trump.

00:09:46.000 This was not a logical case that I agreed with.

00:09:48.000 I thought there was a third choice, and it was to stay home.

00:09:50.000 But the worse the Democrats get, the worse the media get, the more it looks like a binary choice.

00:09:56.000 And the better Trump governs, the more it looks like a binary choice.

00:09:59.000 You want to push people into Trump's camp, guys, you are doing an excellent job of it.

00:10:02.000 Speaking of doing an excellent job of pushing people into Trump's camp, there's a person named Juanita Scarlett. 0.95

00:10:08.000 Well, you know, Scarlett went to a party at Don Lemon's house, OK?

00:10:12.000 And Don Lemon had at his house Errol Lewis, who's a commentator at CNN, and Margaret Hoover, who's another commentator at CNN.

00:10:18.000 And Don Lemon is a reporter at CNN.

00:10:20.000 And guess who was over at Don Lemon's house?

00:10:21.000 And they all took a selfie together.

00:10:23.000 It was Michael Avenatti, the lawyer for Stormy Daniels.

00:10:26.000 There they are just grinning right there.

00:10:27.000 Look at that.

00:10:28.000 The objective journalist grinning with Michael Avenatti.

00:10:30.000 Now, imagine for a second that, say, Michael Cohen had been invited to Sean Hannity's house.

00:10:37.000 You think people might have gone nuts?

00:10:39.000 They did, okay?

00:10:40.000 There was that entire week where all we could talk about was the fact that Michael Cohen and Sean Hannity had been discussing issues.

00:10:45.000 But somehow, Michael Avenatti going to Don Lemon's house and hanging out there, right?

00:10:49.000 That's not a problem at all.

00:10:51.000 And then you wonder why we think the media are not objective?

00:10:53.000 You wonder why so many people are turning to President Trump and saying, not interested in inciting against Trump and with the media?

00:11:02.000 It's just, it's insanity.

00:11:04.000 It's total insanity.

00:11:05.000 And if the media wish to keep alienating people, maybe they do.

00:11:07.000 Maybe that's their goal.

00:11:08.000 Maybe their goal is to make President Trump president for another term.

00:11:12.000 They could do it.

00:11:12.000 They could make it happen.

00:11:13.000 All they have to do is continue being who they are.

00:11:16.000 I wrote a column earlier this week about comedy in culture and how the right-wing's response to comedy is not for us to generate our own comedians, it's to elect Trump.

00:11:25.000 Because Trump's a giant middle finger to the entire comedic establishment. 0.98

00:11:27.000 You make a bunch of jokes about Trump, you make a bunch of jokes about us, well screw you, we'll elect that guy!

00:11:33.000 Well, the same thing is true of the media.

00:11:35.000 Remember, in 2012, Newt Gingrich nearly won the Republican nomination based simply on ripping on an anchor at one of his debates.

00:11:42.000 That's how much we despise the media.

00:11:43.000 And we don't despise the media for no reason.

00:11:45.000 We despise the media because since 2001, when Bias came out by Bernard Goldberg,

00:11:50.000 There has been a 20-year campaign by the right against bias in the media, and the media's response has not been to try and moderate, to try and hire some people who are conservative, to try and hire some people who might balance things out.

00:12:01.000 Their goal has not been to strip out their own opinions.

00:12:03.000 It's been to exacerbate the involvement of their own opinions.

00:12:06.000 Now, maybe it helps their ratings.

00:12:07.000 Maybe it's good for CNN.

00:12:09.000 Maybe it's good for MSNBC.

00:12:10.000 But that just demonstrates once and for all that they care more about ratings than they do about truth.

00:12:14.000 Nowhere has that been truer than with regard to the situation along the border in Gaza.

00:12:18.000 I'm going to talk about that in just one second.

00:12:20.000 But first, I want to say thanks to our friends over at MyPatriotSupply.

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00:12:29.000 No matter where you live, there's always the possibility of natural disasters.

00:12:32.000 There's always that possibility.

00:12:34.000 And most of these strike with no warning.

00:12:36.000 The truth is, you are the best first responder.

00:12:38.000 The alternative is to wait for the government.

00:12:40.000 And, you know, that might not be the best idea.

00:12:42.000 Because the fact is that the chances that the government is going to show up on time?

00:12:46.000 Not really great.

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00:13:31.000 You will be very happy that you did.

00:13:33.000 OK, so speaking of the media coverage on the Gaza border, there is a piece today

00:13:40.000 From Kinley Tirpaz.

00:13:41.000 Kinley Tirpaz is a founder and CEO of the Kibbutz Hadati Educational Network in Israel, and he has a report at Times of Israel on what actually happened on the border with Gaza.

00:13:52.000 So he says, he says,

00:13:56.000 It was a tremendous supreme effort from our side to prevent in every possible way Palestinian deaths and injuries. 1.00

00:14:01.000 Of course, the primary mission was to prevent hundreds of thousands of Gazans from infiltrating into our territory. 0.88

00:14:05.000 That kind of invasion would be perilous, mortally dangerous to the nearby communities, would permit terrorists disguised as civilians to enter our kibbutz and mashab communities, 0.98

00:14:12.000 We're good to go!

00:14:38.000 When there is no alternative and live ammunition must be used to stop those who storm the fence, the soldiers make heroic and sometimes dangerous efforts not to kill and to only injure those on the other side, which is why you see so many leg wounds on the side of Hamas. 0.50

00:14:49.000 The IDF stationed senior commanders at every confrontation point to ensure that every shot is approved and backed up by a responsible figure with proper authority.

00:14:57.000 Every staging area has an especially large number of troops in order to make sure that soldiers are not put in life-threatening situations where they will have no choice but to fire indiscriminately.

00:15:05.000 A situation where thousands of people rush you is frightening, even terrifying.

00:15:08.000 It is extremely difficult to show restraint, and it requires calm, mature professionalism.

00:15:12.000 62 dead is an enormous number, but I can testify from first-hand experience, every bullet, every hit is carefully reported, documented, and investigated in Excel spreadsheets.

00:15:19.000 Literally.

00:15:20.000 I was there.

00:15:21.000 I saw it with my own eyes.

00:15:23.000 So, again, the media are reporting this as though it was an indiscriminate killfest over at the Gaza border, even while Hamas is admitting it was not an indiscriminate killfest over at the Gaza border.

00:15:33.000 And the Israelis didn't have much of a choice here.

00:15:35.000 Why do you want everybody to just run through the border?

00:15:37.000 Then you have to mow down hundreds of people?

00:15:39.000 Mow down hundreds of people?

00:15:40.000 But the media have covered it as though this is all Israel's fault.

00:15:42.000 And the media know.

00:15:43.000 The media know exactly what they are doing.

00:15:46.000 There's no doubt that the media know exactly what they're saying.

00:15:49.000 By the way, speaking of the media malfeasance, the AP has now deleted its tweet from Wednesday on Trump's Animals comments about immigrants because it wasn't made clear he was speaking after a comment about gang members.

00:15:59.000 So now the media are going to have to walk back all of this in real time.

00:16:02.000 They're going to have to walk back all of this in real time.

00:16:04.000 Again, not shocking.

00:16:06.000 But look how the Democrats played this up when it first came out.

00:16:08.000 Chuck Schumer, the Senate Minority Leader,

00:16:12.000 He tweeted out, I'm pretty sure Chuck Schumer's didn't either.

00:16:26.000 But the media malfeasance here is falling right into President Trump's hands, so I guess I should be happy about it.

00:16:31.000 I guess I should be happy.

00:16:31.000 It's making Republicans more popular.

00:16:33.000 But I'm more unhappy about untruth than I am happy about the effect of the untruth, even if they cut in my favor.

00:16:39.000 OK, meanwhile, there's a lot of news today breaking in the Mueller case, a lot of a lot of discussion about what's going on with Robert Mueller.

00:16:48.000 Rudy Giuliani, who is Trump's new lawyer, he was on Laura Ingraham's show last night, and he said that Robert Mueller has now announced that he will not, in fact, indict President Trump.

00:16:57.000 Uh, if they subpoena us, challenge the subpoena.

00:17:00.000 The same reason they can't indict him constitutionally.

00:17:03.000 Which Mueller agreed today.

00:17:04.000 He's gonna abide by no indictment of the president.

00:17:06.000 Right.

00:17:06.000 But I don't think they agree to the process question, which is the same reason they can't indict him, they can't issue a subpoena to him.

00:17:13.000 And remember, Clinton

00:17:15.000 So legally speaking, it is true that the president could be indicted by Robert Mueller.

00:17:26.000 Probably Robert Mueller said, look, I'd rather leave this to the political process as opposed to a criminal indictment, if in fact he has anything.

00:17:32.000 This doesn't mean that President Trump is off the hook with regard to Robert Mueller.

00:17:36.000 Rudy Giuliani says, listen, there's no collusion.

00:17:37.000 There's no evidence of collusion.

00:17:39.000 But he does say, well, there's kind of evidence that there is intent to collude, but that is not the same thing as collusion, which is, of course, exactly what I said on yesterday's show.

00:17:46.000 Their inability to reach a conclusion that is obvious and their unwillingness to recognize the damage this does to our country all over the world.

00:17:56.000 There's no reason for this investigation.

00:17:58.000 There never was a good reason for in the first place.

00:18:00.000 This was engineered by Comey.

00:18:08.000 So now I want to go through the full news about what Robert Mueller is doing, because there's a lot of news that broke yesterday on this.

00:18:18.000 Well, the news begins with the Senate Intel report.

00:18:21.000 So President Trump's son, Donald Jr., was responsible for setting up a meeting with a Russian lawyer named Natalia Veselnitskaya at Trump Tower.

00:18:29.000 Presidents of this meeting supposedly were Jared Kushner.

00:18:31.000 I believe Paul Manafort was present at the meeting, if I'm not mistaken.

00:18:36.000 And other members, top members of the Trump administration.

00:18:39.000 Apparently Kushner got up and left after about five minutes.

00:18:41.000 And there were other people who were there who also left, realizing the thing was a boondoggle.

00:18:45.000 But the original pitch by the Russian lawyer and her advocate, who was a friend of the Trump family, was that she was going to give them information about Hillary Clinton.

00:18:53.000 And Donald Trump Jr.

00:18:54.000 had written that they were very excited about that.

00:18:56.000 And the email exchange with this guy, who had been pitching the Russian lawyer, suggested that the Russian government was supportive of President Trump in the election cycle, and Trump Jr.

00:19:04.000 expressed his enthusiasm for that.

00:19:06.000 Well, the Senate interviewed Donald Jr., then they released hundreds of pages of interview transcript yesterday.

00:19:11.000 The Associated Press reports on it.

00:19:12.000 They say, questioned intently by a Senate committee, President Donald Trump's son struck a firmly unapologetic tone, deflected many queries, and said he didn't think there was anything wrong with meeting a Russian lawyer at Trump Tower in hopes of election season dirt on Hillary Clinton, according to transcripts released on Wednesday.

00:19:25.000 Trump Jr.

00:19:26.000 speaking in a closed door interview last year with the Senate Judiciary Committee said he did not give much thought to the idea that the June 9, 2016 meeting was part of a Russian government effort to help his father in the presidential race.

00:19:35.000 He said, I don't know that it alarmed me, but like I said, I don't know, and I don't know that I was all that focused on it at the time.

00:19:41.000 The committee released about 2,500 pages of interview transcripts and other documents tied to the New York meeting, which Trump Jr.

00:19:46.000 attended.

00:19:47.000 The transcripts also show some new details, and they show how the meeting was arranged and efforts afterward to mitigate the political damage from the meeting itself.

00:19:56.000 The transcripts also reflect an aggressive Russian outreach to Trump before and after the New York meeting, including an effort to arrange a follow-up get-together that November with a member of the transition team.

00:20:04.000 The follow-up never happened, however.

00:20:06.000 Rob Goldstone, who is the fixer-upper, he promised Trump Jr.

00:20:10.000 very interesting information from a well-connected Russian lawyer, including documents that would incriminate Hillary Clinton.

00:20:15.000 And Trump Jr.

00:20:16.000 responded via email, if it's what you say, I love it.

00:20:18.000 That came out last year.

00:20:19.000 Throughout the private Senate interview, Trump Jr.

00:20:21.000 said he didn't recall if he had talked with his father about it.

00:20:25.000 There was apparently a call in the call log several days before the meeting took place with a caller with a blocked number.

00:20:32.000 Trump Jr.

00:20:32.000 said he didn't recall who the person was and didn't know if his father used the blocked number.

00:20:36.000 I have to imagine that Mueller is going to find out whether that is the case or not.

00:20:39.000 In any case, there is no actual information that suggests that information passed hands between the Trump campaign and the Russian government or that there was open coordination or covert coordination between the Russian government and the Trump campaign.

00:20:51.000 However, however,

00:20:53.000 If he had this information, if this information was available to Robert Mueller or to James Comey or to anybody else, it would not be out of line to launch an investigation based on this information.

00:21:02.000 And there's a lot of talk today about witch hunt, witch hunt, witch hunt.

00:21:05.000 I agree.

00:21:05.000 There's been no actual evidence presented to date of serious collusion between the Trump campaign and everybody else.

00:21:10.000 But that's not the same thing as saying the investigation itself was initiated for bad reasons or that it's been conducted in the wrong way.

00:21:17.000 I'll explain what I mean in just a second, because I think that we have to stick to the facts as much as we possibly can when it comes to this Mueller investigation.

00:21:24.000 And I want to break it down for you in just a moment.

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00:22:28.000 Okay, so, as I say, a bunch of stories released from the sort of Mueller investigation.

00:22:32.000 One was the Senate Intel investigation of Donald Trump, or interview with Donald Trump.

00:22:36.000 And this was supposedly, this demonstrated, obviously, that Donald Trump Jr.

00:22:42.000 Was interacting with agents of Russia, maybe in an attempt to collude, but there's no actual evidence of collusion.

00:22:48.000 Then there was this other big story, and this is the one where a lot of folks on the right, I think, are misreading the situation.

00:22:53.000 Okay, this story is from the New York Times.

00:22:54.000 It says, Now, remember, the going theory here is that the FBI, under President Obama,

00:23:03.000 was interested in undermining the Trump campaign during the campaign by investigating and then presumably putting out information to undermine President Trump during the campaign.

00:23:13.000 This is the going theory, is that this was all trumped up, it was all put together on kind of spit and glue, that they just decided they were gonna get Trump in the middle of the election cycle, that they worked to let Hillary Clinton off the hook, and then they worked to go after President Trump with nothing to verify it, they worked to target his campaign.

00:23:27.000 He was wiretapped, in the words of President Trump, that he was targeted.

00:23:31.000 Now, even if President Trump was quote-unquote wiretapped, he was not wiretapped at Trump Tower, but even if there was surveillance of particular members of the Trump campaign, like Carter Page, that does not necessarily demonstrate that surveillance was inappropriate or that anything wrong happened with the surveillance.

00:23:45.000 Well, the story from the New York Times yesterday has a lot of people on the right saying that there is something deeply nefarious that was going on at the FBI during the campaign.

00:23:53.000 The biggest question that I have about this is if you really believe that the FBI and the CIA and the DOJ were all working very hard to try and discredit the Trump campaign and to put out information that Trump was in thrall to Russia, then why didn't any of this information come out during the campaign?

00:24:11.000 You were there.

00:24:12.000 I was there.

00:24:13.000 If they wanted to sink Trump during the campaign, wouldn't it have been useful for them to say that Paul Manafort was under investigation, like, from the very first day?

00:24:20.000 Wouldn't it have been useful for them to say that we suspect that there is collusion between the Trump campaign and the Russian government?

00:24:27.000 Wouldn't that be, like, a useful thing to have put out there on a routine basis?

00:24:30.000 Because it's consumed the news cycle ever since.

00:24:32.000 But most of this stuff broke after Trump was actually elected.

00:24:35.000 So if you were inside the quote-unquote deep state and you wanted to take down Trump during the election cycle, why wouldn't you put it out early?

00:24:40.000 Now, the theory is that they didn't put this out early because it was an insurance policy in case Trump became president and they thought Hillary was going to win anyway.

00:24:47.000 That makes no sense.

00:24:48.000 That doesn't make any sense.

00:24:49.000 It's not that this was an insurance policy in case Trump became president. 0.95

00:24:52.000 That's silly.

00:24:53.000 Instead, what it sounds a lot more like is if, in the theory of the right, these were arsonists. 0.85

00:24:58.000 They were trying to set a fire.

00:24:59.000 So if you're trying to set a fire, why wait till the guy's elected president to set the fire?

00:25:02.000 Why not set the fire in the middle of the campaign?

00:25:04.000 That's question number one.

00:25:04.000 Question number two is, can you point to any actual nefarious activity that you would have objected to if Hillary Clinton had been the target of it?

00:25:12.000 So I have a very simple rule that I've been using for years.

00:25:14.000 Put the shoe on the other foot.

00:25:15.000 So I'm going to read this story, and for a second, I want you to assume that it's about Hillary Clinton and not Donald Trump, and then think, are you angry that this investigation was going on in the first place?

00:25:24.000 Because I don't want to impugn people's motives or honor based on partisan concerns.

00:25:29.000 So here it is from the New York Times.

00:25:31.000 Within hours of opening an investigation into the Trump campaign's ties to Russia in the summer of 2016, the FBI dispatched a pair of agents to London on a mission so secretive that all but a handful of officials were kept in the dark.

00:25:41.000 Their assignment, which has not been previously reported, was to meet the Australian ambassador who had evidence that one of Donald Trump's advisors knew in advance about Russian election meddling.

00:25:49.000 After tense deliberations between Washington and Canberra, top Australian officials broke with diplomatic protocol and allowed the ambassador, Alexander Downer, to sit for an FBI interview to describe his meeting with the campaign advisor, George Papadopoulos.

00:26:01.000 The agent summarized their highly unusual interview and sent word to Washington on August 2nd, 2016, two days after the investigation was open.

00:26:08.000 The report helped provide the foundation for a case that, a year ago Thursday, became the special counsel investigation.

00:26:13.000 But at the time, a small group of FBI officials knew it by its codename, Crossfire Hurricane.

00:26:19.000 The name was a reference to the Rolling Stones lyric, I was born a crossfire hurricane, because obviously now everybody was under investigation, so it was CROSSFIRE HURRICANE.

00:26:28.000 Well, days after they closed their investigation into Hillary Clinton's use of a private email server, agents began scrutinizing the campaign of her Republican rival.

00:26:36.000 The two cases have become inextricably linked in one of the most consequential periods in the history of the FBI.

00:26:39.000 All of those questions, I think, are perfectly legit.

00:26:41.000 But here's what people are really worried about.

00:26:58.000 Not only did agents in that case fall back to their typical policy of silence, but interviews with a dozen current and former government officials and a review of documents show that the FBI was even more circumspect in that case than has been previously known.

00:27:09.000 Many of the officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the investigation publicly.

00:27:15.000 Agents considered, then rejected, interviewing key Trump associates, which might have sped up the investigation, but risked revealing the existence of the case.

00:27:22.000 Top officials quickly became convinced that they would not solve the case before Election Day, which made them only more hesitant to act.

00:27:27.000 When agents did take bold investigative steps, like interviewing the ambassador, they were shrouded in secrecy.

00:27:33.000 Fearful of leaks?

00:27:33.000 They kept details from political appointees across the street at the DOJ, so they weren't telling the DOJ.

00:27:37.000 Fearful that all this stuff was going to leak.

00:27:39.000 The facts, had they leaked, might have devastated the Trump campaign.

00:27:42.000 Trump's future national security adviser, Mike Flynn, was under investigation, as was Paul Manafort.

00:27:46.000 One adviser appeared to have Russian intelligence contact.

00:27:49.000 That would be Papadopoulos.

00:27:51.000 Another was suspected of being a Russian agent himself.

00:27:53.000 That would be Carter Page.

00:27:55.000 The FBI faces a lot of criticism, but here is the actual story, buried deep in this New York Times piece.

00:28:03.000 Crossfire Hurricane spawned a case that has brought charges against former Trump officials and more than a dozen Russians, but in the final months of 2016 agents faced great uncertainty about facts and how to respond.

00:28:12.000 So Crossfire Hurricane began exactly 100 days before the presidential election.

00:28:16.000 But if agents were eager to investigate Mr. Trump's campaign, as Trump has suggested, the messages do not reveal it.

00:28:21.000 I cannot believe we are seriously looking at these allegations and the pervasive connections," Struck wrote.

00:28:25.000 This is Peter Struck, who is one of the FBI agents who is anti-Trump, soon after returning from London.

00:28:31.000 The mood in early meetings was anxious, former officials recalled.

00:28:34.000 Agents had just closed the Clinton investigation they braced for months of Republican-led hearings over why she was not charged.

00:28:39.000 Crossfire Hurricane was built around the same core of agents and analysts who investigated Mrs. Clinton.

00:28:44.000 None was eager to re-enter presidential politics, former officials said, especially when the agents did not know what would come of the Australian information.

00:28:51.000 So the FBI investigated four unidentified Trump campaign aides in the early months.

00:28:55.000 They were Mike Flynn, Paul Manafort, Carter Page, George Papadopoulos.

00:28:58.000 Flynn had been paid $45,000 by the Russian government's media arm, the BRT, for a 2015 speech and dined with Vladimir Putin.

00:29:06.000 Manafort, of course, has deep and abiding ties with the Russian government via Ukraine.

00:29:09.000 Carter Page was well known to the FBI because he'd been previously recruited by Russian spies.

00:29:14.000 And then there was Papadopoulos.

00:29:15.000 The young, inexperienced campaign aide whose wine-fueled conversation with the Australian ambassador set off the investigation.

00:29:20.000 Before hacked Democratic emails appeared online, he had seemed to know that Russia had political dirt on Mrs. Clinton.

00:29:25.000 So, if you recall, Papadopoulos had apparently dined with a London professor who was an agent of Moscow, who said that he had access to all these emails, and then Papadopoulos was talking to the Australian ambassador, and he said, by the way, I know that the Russians have these emails.

00:29:37.000 And so the Australian ambassador called up the FBI and they said, um, guys, Russia's interfering in your election.

00:29:42.000 And then the FBI went over and interviewed this guy.

00:29:44.000 So, does it sound like the FBI has done anything wrong in investigating these people?

00:29:48.000 Are you looking at all the information?

00:29:49.000 Looking at what they knew at the time?

00:29:51.000 Let's say that it had been Hillary Clinton and a top campaign aide to Hillary Clinton.

00:29:55.000 Let's say that Hillary Clinton's future national security adviser had been paid by Russia Today.

00:30:00.000 Let's say that Hillary Clinton's campaign chair had been deep in bed with Vladimir Putin.

00:30:07.000 Let's say that a low-level foreign policy staffer had been working with the Russians to bring across material about Donald Trump.

00:30:14.000 Would you have said the FBI ought to investigate that?

00:30:16.000 Of course you would have said the FBI ought to investigate that because

00:30:18.000 The FBI ought to investigate that, right?

00:30:20.000 I mean, they didn't do anything wrong in launching the investigation, as far as I can tell.

00:30:24.000 Even if you believe that they used shoddy information to go after Carter Page, that is a slightly different contention than saying that the entire investigation never should have been launched and was a witch hunt from the very beginning.

00:30:34.000 Okay, now, what exactly did they do?

00:30:36.000 Apparently, they said that they had embedded an informant deep in this piece.

00:30:41.000 It says, The FBI obtained phone records and other documents using national security letters, a secret type of subpoena, officials said.

00:30:47.000 And at least one government informant met several times with Carter Page and George Papadopoulos, current and former officials said.

00:30:52.000 This has become a politically contentious point, with Mr. Trump's allies questioning whether the FBI was spying on the Trump campaign or trying to entrap campaign officials.

00:31:00.000 But the real question again is, were they not aggressive enough?

00:31:04.000 Were they too aggressive?

00:31:05.000 I understand the sort of right-wing talking point that the FBI was out to get Trump, but it doesn't wash for me.

00:31:10.000 You know, Kimberly Strassel makes the strongest case over at the Wall Street Journal. 0.95

00:31:13.000 She says a few important points on that new New York Times hurricane crossfire piece.

00:31:17.000 A story that, by the way, all of us following knew this had to be coming.

00:31:20.000 This is the DOJ-FBI leakers attempt to get out in front of the facts that Devin Nunes is forcing out to make it not sound so bad.

00:31:25.000 Don't buy it.

00:31:26.000 It's bad.

00:31:26.000 The biggest takeaway, government sources admit that, indeed, the Obama, DOJ, and FBI spied on the Trump campaign.

00:31:32.000 Spied, because she's saying they hadn't informed it.

00:31:34.000 NYT slips in confirmation far down in its story and makes it out like it isn't a big deal.

00:31:37.000 It is a very big deal.

00:31:39.000 In self-serving desire to get a sympathetic story about its actions, DOJ, FBI leakers are willing to provide yet more details about that top-secret source, namely that the spying was aimed at Page and Papadopoulos.

00:31:48.000 Making it all more certain that they will be outed, which is on them.

00:31:52.000 DOJ and the FBI have shredded what little credibility they have in claiming they cannot comply with Devin Nunes' subpoena.

00:31:57.000 So Devin Nunes, the chair of the House Intelligence Committee, he subpoenaed the DOJ and the FBI for all the information about the Trump campaign investigation, basically, and they've not been turning any of this over, saying that it's dangerous for them to turn it over.

00:32:07.000 They should turn it over.

00:32:09.000 This is a congressional oversight committee.

00:32:11.000 If it gets leaked, that's on the congressional oversight committee, but

00:32:14.000 The oversight committee exists for a reason.

00:32:16.000 That would be the conversation between Papadopoulos, the low-level foreign policy advisor, and the Australian ambassador.

00:32:32.000 This was convenient since it diminished the role of the dossier.

00:32:34.000 However, now New York Times tells us FBI did not debrief Downer until August 2nd.

00:32:38.000 And Nunes said no official intelligence from allies was delivered to FBI about that conversation prior to July 31st.

00:32:44.000 So how did the FBI get those details?

00:32:47.000 And what really did inspire the CI investigation?

00:32:50.000 Okay, so now the implication that she is drawing is that the real reason that the investigation was launched was not this meeting between the Australian ambassador and George Papadopoulos, that it was not Papadopoulos that launched the Russia collusion investigation, that what originally launched it was the politically motivated dossier that had been paid for by Fusion GPS at the behest of the Hillary Clinton campaign.

00:33:08.000 That still does not answer the question as to whether everything in that dossier is false.

00:33:12.000 That has still not been confirmed.

00:33:13.000 For people who say the dossier is all lies, all untruths, there's a bunch of stuff in there that is probably untrue.

00:33:18.000 There's some stuff in there that is probably not untrue.

00:33:21.000 And it's a mistake to simply dismiss facts because it's more convenient for the narrative to do so.

00:33:26.000 Finally, Kimberly Strassel says, So he says that she's basically suggesting that there are a bunch of people who are involved in this nefarious plan to take out Trump.

00:33:42.000 I am not seeing the evidence that there are a lot of people involved in a nefarious plan to take out President Trump.

00:33:46.000 Now, I will tell you in one second,

00:33:49.000 What the nefarious plan actually was.

00:33:50.000 Like, where it actually got nefarious.

00:33:52.000 I don't think it got nefarious during the campaign.

00:33:53.000 I do think it got nefarious after the campaign.

00:33:55.000 I'll explain in just a second.

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00:35:13.000 Alrighty, so, as I say, I am not fully convinced that this New York Times story about Hurricane Crossfire is this damning indictment of the FBI or the CIA, and that the FBI and CIA launched this investigation on zero grounds, and it was always a witch hunt designed to take down President Trump.

00:35:27.000 In the same way I don't believe the Russia collusion story, I also don't believe the FBI collusion story, that the FBI was colluding to take down Trump.

00:35:33.000 I just don't buy it.

00:35:34.000 Now, the DOJ is a different story, right?

00:35:35.000 This is why I think it's important to know who in the DOJ knew what, when.

00:35:39.000 Because Loretta Lynch's DOJ was corrupt through and through, just as Eric Holder's DOJ was corrupt through and through. 1.00

00:35:43.000 The Obama DOJ was just the most icely of law enforcement. 0.99

00:35:49.000 It was a wretched hive of scum and villainy, the Obama DOJ. 1.00

00:35:52.000 It was just a garbage place. 1.00

00:35:54.000 That's a different story than the FBI and CIA should they have launched an investigation again. 0.98

00:35:57.000 If Hillary Clinton had been surrounded by a bunch of people who appeared to be trying to do business with the Russians, and then Chelsea Clinton had had a meeting with a Russian lawyer promising dirt on Donald Trump, we'd all be like, uh, yeah, I'm glad there's an investigation going on.

00:36:09.000 So, I don't buy the investigation was launched under, for prurient, nonsensical reasons.

00:36:15.000 I don't buy that.

00:36:16.000 Now, here's where it does get dirty.

00:36:17.000 I think after the election happened, that a bunch of deep staters, meaning Obama holdovers, inside the FBI and CIA decided, you know, it'd be awesome.

00:36:24.000 It'd be great to undermine Trump's presidency by leaking out all of this information.

00:36:28.000 Now, the excuse that they used for leaking is that Trump was going to come in.

00:36:31.000 He was going to shut down the investigation and destroy the possibility of us uncovering all this collusion.

00:36:35.000 Yeah, I think the reality is more like there are a bunch of people who are ticked that Hillary had lost.

00:36:40.000 They did not expect Hillary to lose.

00:36:41.000 They could not believe that this dunder-headed Trump was president, and they were going to undermine him from day one by leaking a bunch of information that really was not criminal. 0.86

00:36:48.000 It was not criminal for Michael Flynn to be talking to the Russian ambassador, Sergey Kislyak. 0.97

00:36:52.000 That was not a criminal act.

00:36:53.000 When he lied to the FBI, that was criminal, but

00:36:56.000 It is not criminal for him to be on the phone with Sergey Kislyak about sanctions against Israel, for example. 0.96

00:37:01.000 That's silly.

00:37:02.000 But that's all the stuff that was leaking.

00:37:04.000 I do think there are Obama holdovers who are leaking that sort of stuff.

00:37:07.000 And I think that it is Obama holdovers who are now leaking a lot of the stuff with regard to Michael Cohen.

00:37:12.000 I want to discuss in just a second.

00:37:14.000 I don't know.

00:37:30.000 About the Michael Cohen financial file.

00:37:32.000 So there's a couple of stories about Michael Cohen that have come out in the last 24 hours.

00:37:36.000 One is from the Washington Post.

00:38:00.000 So, apparently Cohen was trying to go after South Korean cash, and now there's a story from The Intercept, which is a very anti-Trump outlet, saying, in the blink of a Michael Avenetti tweet, Ahmed al-Rumaihi has suddenly found himself internet famous.

00:38:12.000 It began on Sunday evening when the attorney for adult film star Stormy Daniels posted a screenshot of video footage from Trump's tower lobby recorded on December 12, 2016.

00:38:20.000 Viral speculation followed, with online detectives identifying al-Rumaihi, the former head of a $100 billion wing of the Qatari sovereign wealth fund, in the image,

00:38:28.000 And linking him to a Qatar-Russia deal to sell a portion of the oil company Rosneft, which had been referenced in the Steele dossier.

00:38:35.000 From there, Slate took over, headlining a piece.

00:38:37.000 Michael Cohen's meeting with Michael Flynn and a Qatari diplomat might be the key to unlocking the Steele dossier, the suggestion being that Qatar was trying to bribe Michael Cohen to broker basically a business deal for the sale of Rosneft.

00:38:49.000 Apparently, al-Rumaihi said that Cohen asked him for an upfront fee of $1 million for his services in the midst of their conversation about a potential Qatari investment in U.S.

00:38:57.000 infrastructure.

00:38:58.000 The question is, how's Michael Avenetti getting all this stuff?

00:39:01.000 Right.

00:39:01.000 How is it that all of these news outlets are obtaining the financial records of Michael Cohen?

00:39:06.000 And according to Ronan Farrow, the answer is that somehow people were afraid that these documents were going to be destroyed.

00:39:11.000 Now, this was the same excuse that was being used with regard to the leaks about the Mueller investigation before.

00:39:16.000 It was the Mueller investigation.

00:39:17.000 Well, it was just the FBI investigation into Russian collusion.

00:39:20.000 The excuse for leaks was, Trump's going to come in.

00:39:22.000 He's going to destroy all the documents.

00:39:23.000 Trump's going to come in.

00:39:24.000 He's going to shut down James Comey and the FBI.

00:39:26.000 Trump's going to come in.

00:39:27.000 And all this is going to come to a screeching halt.

00:39:29.000 So we've got to leak this stuff.

00:39:30.000 We've got to preserve the information and distribute it.

00:39:33.000 Well, now they're doing the same thing with regard to Michael Cohen's financial records.

00:39:36.000 There's only one problem.

00:39:37.000 There's not really a threat that Michael Cohen's financial records are disappearing.

00:39:40.000 Benjamin Wittes, who's a senior fellow at the Brookings Institute and the editor of Lawfare Blog, he is not a Trump acolyte.

00:39:46.000 He says, quote, I've been thinking about this New Yorker story on financial records missing from a government database.

00:39:52.000 I don't want to rain on anybody's parade here, but color me at least a little bit skeptical.

00:39:55.000 Assume for a moment that some records of Cohen's transactions are in fact missing.

00:39:59.000 That doesn't mean the transactions themselves have disappeared.

00:40:01.000 Only the Treasury Department's record of the back reports on the transactions are gone from the database.

00:40:06.000 So when Bob Mueller, or the SDNY, the Southern District of New York, subpoenas the bank, as they surely have done already, for the records of all of Cohen's transactions, those transaction records will still be there and they'll be turned over.

00:40:16.000 Moreover, the bank surely still has records of the transactions themselves.

00:40:20.000 So I doubt very much there's a material loss to Mueller or the SDNY in any pending investigation, even if there has been, in fact, some data loss within the government.

00:40:29.000 Moreover, were such a data loss to be discovered, and the destruction were intentional and malicious, that would be traceable, and that would be prosecutable, presumably.

00:40:35.000 So, this excuse that is being used to go after Michael Cohen is obviously an excuse as well.

00:40:40.000 So this is why I say, it's not that there's no corruption.

00:40:43.000 It's that the corruption is not where you're looking for the corruption.

00:40:45.000 The corruption is in the leaks.

00:40:46.000 The corruption is in distributing information to the press that should not be in the hands of the press.

00:40:51.000 The corruption is in the post-election attempt to destroy Donald Trump by leaking a bunch of information that has not been confirmed, that has not been verified, and that has not been traced to any sort of real collusion.

00:41:02.000 That's the real problem here, not the investigation itself.

00:41:05.000 So the investigation itself, I think, was probably generated along correct lines.

00:41:10.000 We'll see how it was how it was pursued.

00:41:30.000 The Carter Page FISA warrant came about after the election, so maybe that's true.

00:41:33.000 Maybe there's a possibility of that.

00:41:34.000 That's not the same thing as saying the investigation itself was launched in nasty fashion or for no reason at all.

00:41:40.000 It's not the same thing as saying the entire investigation is inherently tainted.

00:41:44.000 That's a different argument.

00:41:45.000 And I think we ought to be very specific about these arguments so that we can be as factual as possible.

00:41:48.000 None of this, of course, means that actual collusion took place.

00:41:51.000 There was intent to collude on the part of Donald Trump Jr., pretty clearly.

00:41:54.000 But that is not the same thing as a crime, because collusion itself

00:41:57.000 Meanwhile, the Democrats continue to struggle for air, so their generic ballot lead is now down to 4.7% in the latest RealClearPolitics poll average.

00:42:20.000 This is because the Democrats have staked everything on the Russia investigation. 0.99

00:42:24.000 What's amazing about the Democrats is how dumb they are. 0.99

00:42:26.000 So after Trump was elected, if the Democrats had any brains at all, what they could have done is they could have come around and said, hey, you know, Mr. President, you seem like a pretty swell guy. 0.99

00:42:35.000 You gave a lot of money to us in the past, and we feel like we can work with you.

00:42:37.000 You're a good guy and a gork guy.

00:42:39.000 We can get some deals done.

00:42:40.000 Here, look, let's just do some nationalized health care. 0.99

00:42:42.000 Just a little bit.

00:42:43.000 Let's do some nationalized health care. 0.94

00:42:45.000 The chance of the Trump sign that would have been about 53%, OK, because

00:42:49.000 Trump is not an ideological conservative.

00:42:51.000 He's governed as a conservative. 0.98

00:42:52.000 One of the reasons he has governed as a conservative is because the Democrats have decided that he is Satan and he must be destroyed from without. 0.62

00:42:59.000 Well, they have nothing else to offer other than we hate Trump and Russia and Michael Avenetti and Stormy Daniels. 1.00

00:43:04.000 Stormy Daniels, by the way, who is making a literal bare ass of herself. 1.00

00:43:08.000 I mean, she is she's literally going to go to a 1.00

00:43:12.000 There's apparently a statue of President Trump naked in Seattle or something, and she's going to go do a lap dance with the naked statue of Trump. 0.60

00:43:20.000 I can't imagine why people aren't taking the Stormy Daniels stuff seriously.

00:43:22.000 It seems to me that she's a very serious person deserving of nothing but intellectual respect. 0.98

00:43:27.000 And also, yeah, she's gonna go spank a naked statue with a magazine. 1.00

00:43:30.000 But other than that, I think totally, yes. 0.99

00:43:32.000 Michael Avenetti?

00:43:33.000 Sure, he's threatening journalists online who are merely reporting on him, but I think that he's a real legit figure.

00:43:39.000 These are all real legit people.

00:43:40.000 The Democrats have staked their entire fortune and their political fate on Michael Avenetti and Stormy Daniels.

00:43:46.000 Good luck with that.

00:43:47.000 Well, they don't really have much choice because their alternative is to say things like Keith Ellison.

00:43:51.000 So Keith Ellison, who is almost the head of the DNC, Democratic representative from Minnesota, he actually made the case yesterday we ought to regulate employer pay.

00:43:57.000 So we have a booming economy, incomes are rising, like in real terms they're rising, the economy is reaching historic heights, and Keith Ellison's solution is we should use the government to force employers to pay particular wages on the upper end and the lower end.

00:44:11.000 Yeah, I can't imagine why people don't trust Democrats to run the government.

00:44:14.000 I mean, this is not a big secret to shareholders.

00:44:16.000 It's not a big secret to boards of directors.

00:44:18.000 Don't you need direct government intervention?

00:44:20.000 Are you favoring the government actually regulating the relationship between CEO pays and the average worker?

00:44:27.000 I think it's a very good idea and I think we should start talking about it.

00:44:30.000 Okay, so great.

00:44:32.000 I'm glad the Democrats are coming out of the woodwork.

00:44:34.000 Well done, guys.

00:44:35.000 Just keep going.

00:44:35.000 Keep going.

00:44:36.000 It's amazing.

00:44:37.000 They're so far to the left that they don't even understand.

00:44:39.000 They're blowing their greatest opportunity for a re-entry to power that they've had in quite a while.

00:44:43.000 Okay, time for some things I like and then some things I hate and then a quick Bible review.

00:44:47.000 We're good.

00:45:07.000 Huge book was Bonfire to the Vanities.

00:45:23.000 I don't know.

00:45:47.000 Well, one of the things that is obvious about the Trump administration's decision to move the embassy in Israel to Jerusalem is that this should actually facilitate peace because it may take off the table an area of contention that should not be an area of contention.

00:45:59.000 Israel is not going to stop existing.

00:46:01.000 Israel is not going to give up Jerusalem.

00:46:02.000 Bibi Netanyahu makes that point yesterday on Vice.

00:46:05.000 Vice, of course, their coverage of Israel has been absolutely egregiously awful.

00:46:08.000 But here's Bibi Netanyahu making what is a very fine point on Vice.

00:46:12.000 Because a peace that's based on lies will crash on the rocks of Middle East reality. 0.98

00:46:18.000 And it's time to tell the Palestinians, abandon your fantasy of destroying Israel. 0.79

00:46:25.000 Abandon the fantasy that you will conquer Jerusalem. 0.95

00:46:28.000 Abandon the fantasy that says Israel will disappear.

00:46:33.000 It will not.

00:46:34.000 Good.

00:46:34.000 Well, he's exactly right.

00:46:36.000 The left would prefer a false peace based on false promises than they would a real peace based on realities on the ground because then they don't get to paint their false moral picture of what's actually happening in the Middle East.

00:46:46.000 Okay, time for a quick thing that I hate.

00:46:53.000 So good news.

00:46:54.000 The Democrats can't call Hamas terrorists.

00:46:56.000 They say that it was a bunch of innocent people shot on the border, even after Hamas suggested that it was not.

00:47:00.000 It was a bunch of Hamas terrorists.

00:47:01.000 They won't call MS-13 terrorists or animals. 0.74

00:47:04.000 They'll say that MS-13, they're just a bunch of natural illegal immigrants, I guess. 0.99

00:47:08.000 I mean, I don't know how else to take their interpretation of President Trump's comments.

00:47:12.000 And now, Debbie Wasserman Schultz has labeled the real terrorists.

00:47:15.000 She did an interview with the Huffington Post, and she says, quote, Good job, Democrats.

00:47:18.000 Well done.

00:47:18.000 So, just to get this straight, Hamas, not terrorists.

00:47:20.000 MS-13, not animals.

00:47:20.000 NRA members, terrorists.

00:47:36.000 No, you're not alienating the American public at all.

00:47:38.000 You're not alienating the American public at all when you say that law-abiding gun owners are the real terrorists, but Hamas terrorists who use babies as human shields are not terrorists.

00:47:46.000 By the way, there's that story about an eight-month-old baby that died in the crossfire in Gaza.

00:47:53.000 We're good to go.

00:48:16.000 Yes, you want to talk about political polarization?

00:48:18.000 It started before Trump.

00:48:19.000 It will last after Trump.

00:48:21.000 The left is pushing it in a really heavy way.

00:48:23.000 It ain't just Trump who's the creator of the sort of political polarization we're seeing.

00:48:27.000 OK, so it's a Thursday, which means that I'm going to do a little bit of Bible talk.

00:48:31.000 Normally I do that on Wednesday, but I'm a day late.

00:48:33.000 Tough deal with it.

00:48:34.000 So we're going through the Bible.

00:48:35.000 Last week,

00:48:37.000 We did the first chapter of Joshua, so I'm going through it chapter by chapter because we've already gone through the five books of Moses.

00:48:42.000 We did that, I think, last year.

00:48:43.000 So now we're going through the story of Joshua.

00:48:45.000 So Joshua 2 is the story of Rahab.

00:48:47.000 Rahab was the whore that was in Jericho, and Joshua and the Jews invade the land, and when they get to Jericho, which is a walled city, Joshua and some of his other spies 0.94

00:48:58.000 Well, some of the spies love Joshua.

00:49:00.000 They go into Rahab's whorehouse, essentially, and people are looking for them, and she advises them on how they can get into the city, and she says, now that I've advised you on how to get in the city, and how I'm going to hide you, and she hides them, then I'm going to need your protection.

00:49:18.000 And here's what it says.

00:49:18.000 This is Joshua 2, 8.

00:49:19.000 The reason that I read this is because

00:49:44.000 It's actually a really bad description of why you ought to believe in God.

00:49:48.000 There's this, you know, the reason that she is saying that people are believing in God is because God is demonstrating his mastery through human beings.

00:49:55.000 It is a bad reason to believe in God.

00:49:56.000 However, it is also a very common reason to believe in God.

00:49:59.000 And putting the fear of God in someone is not just a phrase.

00:50:01.000 Putting the fear of God in someone requires Western civilization to stand up for itself.

00:50:05.000 It is not just enough for you to say, my principles are my principles and I stand here on my principles.

00:50:09.000 When you are fighting evil people, you have to protect yourself.

00:50:12.000 When you are fighting evil people, you have to demonstrate that you are capable of winning.

00:50:16.000 That is why what Israel is doing, it's why what America does in the world, it matters. 0.96

00:50:19.000 It matters on a military level.

00:50:22.000 Truthful propositions are not self-evident.

00:50:24.000 And for the vast majority of people over the vast majority of history, they've not been self-evident.

00:50:28.000 That does not mean you should be an aggressor.

00:50:29.000 It does mean that if you strongly defend your own values,

00:50:33.000 Either rhetorically or if you're put under threat physically, people are more likely to believe that what you're saying is true.

00:50:38.000 OK, we'll be back here tomorrow with all the latest and with the mailbag.

00:50:41.000 I'm Ben Shapiro.

00:50:42.000 This is The Ben Shapiro Show.

00:50:47.000 The Ben Shapiro Show is produced by Senya Villareal.

00:50:49.000 Executive producer Jeremy Boring.

00:50:51.000 Senior producer Jonathan Hay.

00:50:53.000 Our supervising producer is Mathis Glover.

00:50:55.000 And our technical producer is Austin Stevens.

00:50:57.000 Edited by Alex Zingaro.

00:50:58.000 Audio is mixed by Mike Carmina.

00:51:00.000 Hair and makeup is by Jesua Alvera.

00:51:02.000 The Ben Shapiro Show is a Daily Wire Ford Publishing production.

00:51:05.000 Copyright Ford Publishing 2018.

The Ben Shapiro Show - May 17, 2018

How the Media Are Turning America Trumpy | Ep. 541

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