The Ben Shapiro Show - September 25, 2019


Impeachment Or Bust | Ep. 868

Topics
Bravo Company Manufacturing Ukraine military aid conversation Ukraine aid and investigations Ukraine aid investigation
Hosted by
Ben Shapiro
Mentioned
Donald Trump Vladimir Zelensky Hunter Biden Rudy Giuliani Joe Biden Nancy Pelosi Hillary Clinton Paul Manafort Andrew Lawton Show Dylan Miskiewicz Mitch McConnell Burisma Obama Barr Robert Mueller Angela Merkel James Comey Bing Kiev Bush and 41 more
Impeachment Is On The Table | Ep. 867 Whistleblower Comes Up Empty | Ep. 869

Episode Stats


Length

55 minutes

Words per minute

213.0

Word count

11,779

Sentence count

843

Harmful content

Misogyny

8

sentences flagged

Toxicity

15

sentences flagged

Hate speech

6

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

Dems tie themselves to the mast on impeachment, and President Trump fires back by releasing the transcript of his call with the Ukrainian President. Ben Shapiro talks impeachment and what it means for the future of the Trump administration. He also explains the grounds for impeachment and why he should be removed from office if they are found to be related to the Joe Biden-Hunter Biden-Biden-Burisma nexus. Finally, he explains why impeachment is a bad idea and why President Trump should not be allowed to serve as President of the United States if he is involved in a cover-up that obstructs the investigation of a whistleblower report that accuses President Trump of lying to Congress about his conversations with the Ukraine's President, Vladamir Putin. All that and much more on today's episode of The Ben Shapiro Show with Ben Shapiro! Subscribe to the show Subscribe on iTunes Learn more about your ad choices. Rate/subscribe in Apple Podcasts! Review, comment and subscribe to our new podcast CRITICIALS! Subscribe on your favorite podcasting platform so you get notified when a new episode is available. You can also become a supporter of our new show on Audible and other major podcasting platforms wherever you get your favourite podiatry and other forms of mass listening devices are available. Send us your voice messages and we'll send them to us so we can spread the word to the world wide. Thank you! Love, Ben Shapiro? Thanks for listening and support the show! Timestamps: 0:00 - - - 5: 5:30 - 6:15 - 6:40 - 7:00 7:20 - 9: What would you like to be impeached? 11: What are your thoughts on impeachment? 12:30 13:15 15:40 16:20 17:00 | 17:10 18:30 | 18:40 | 19:10 | 21:40 // 22:30 Is the President above the President Above the Law? 21:30 What s the Grounds for Impeachment? 27:00 / 22: What s your opinion of Trump? 26:00 & 27:15 | 27: Is he above the law? 35:00 + 33:00 ? 35:40 ? 36:00 Is he a croot? 36:40 Is he under the law now?

Transcript

Transcripts from "The Ben Shapiro Show" are sourced from the Knowledge Fight Interactive Search Tool. Explore them interactively here.
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
Toxicity classifications generated with s-nlp/roberta_toxicity_classifier .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
Topics generated with Qwen2.5-3B-Instruct.
Hosts, guests, and mentioned names generated with spaCy (en_core_web_sm), reconciled against Wikidata.
00:00:00.000 Democrats tie themselves to the mast on impeachment and President Trump fires back by releasing the transcript of his call with the Ukrainian president.
00:00:06.000 I'm Ben Shapiro.
00:00:07.000 This is The Ben Shapiro Show.
00:00:13.000 Man, oh man, a lot of news this morning.
00:00:16.000 So, we begin with the breaking news yesterday, which is Nancy Pelosi, the Speaker of the House, announcing that she has now opened an impeachment inquiry into the President of the United States.
00:00:24.000 Now, what does that mean practically?
00:00:25.000 The answer is pretty much nothing.
00:00:26.000 There are already several different committees in the House They were investigating the President.
00:00:30.000 Now she's just put them under the bigger umbrella of an impeachment inquiry. 0.99
00:00:34.000 In fact, there are some Democrats who are angry with Pelosi for not actually having given them any additional power to go after the President.
00:00:40.000 Nonetheless, this does represent a marked shift in terms of Pelosi's own position on impeachment.
00:00:46.000 It is now clear that the House, in all likelihood, will end up impeaching Donald Trump.
00:00:49.000 The Democrats do have a majority there.
00:00:51.000 There are already well over 200 Democratic Congress people Today, I'm announcing the House of Representatives moving forward with an official impeachment inquiry.
00:01:06.000 I'm directing our six committees to proceed with their investigations under that umbrella of impeachment inquiry.
00:01:14.000 The president must be held accountable.
00:01:16.000 No one is above the law.
00:01:19.000 And she continued by explaining that President Trump's actions here betrayed his oath of office.
00:01:23.000 Specifically, it is unclear what are the grounds for impeachment.
00:01:26.000 So there are three possible grounds for impeachment that have been presented by Democrats and the media.
00:01:31.000 Possible ground number one, Trump is stymying the whistleblowers.
00:01:34.000 Remember, there's a member of the intelligence community who issued a whistleblower report to the inspector general of the intelligence community.
00:01:40.000 The inspector general found that report Urgent enough to report its existence to Congress, at which point the Director of National Intelligence stepped in and said, hold up a second.
00:01:48.000 This does not fulfill the statutory requirements.
00:01:51.000 We can't turn over the whistleblower report.
00:01:52.000 Congress then said, well, no, actually you have to, according to the law.
00:01:56.000 So that is an actual conflict over executive privilege.
00:02:00.000 And what exactly is supposed to be turned over?
00:02:02.000 So, rationale number one is the possibility that Congress says President Trump is engaged in a cover-up, he should be impeached.
00:02:08.000 He won't release the whistleblower report, he should be impeached.
00:02:10.000 That's possibility number one.
00:02:12.000 Then there's possibility number two.
00:02:14.000 Possibility number two is that just the stuff that Trump has admitted to is already impeachable.
00:02:19.000 Meaning that President Trump has already admitted that he said to the Ukrainian president, Vladimir Zelensky, that he wanted Ukraine to investigate the Joe Biden-Hunter Biden-Burisma nexus.
00:02:30.000 So going back to 2016, for those who don't remember the story, Joe Biden was vice president.
00:02:35.000 His son, Hunter, was on the board of a natural gas company in Ukraine called Burisma.
00:02:41.000 And Hunter Biden shouldn't have been on that board.
00:02:43.000 There's no reason for him to be on that board other than the fact that Hunter Biden was related to Joe Biden.
00:02:47.000 Joe Biden then threatened to withhold $1 billion in American loan guarantees to Ukraine unless Ukraine got rid of a particular state prosecutor in Ukraine.
00:02:56.000 Now, to be fair to Biden, that prosecutor was well believed to be corrupt by the IMF, the International Monetary Fund, by the European Union, by the Obama administration.
00:03:05.000 And there are certain reports that suggest, Bloomberg, that the Burisma investigation being undertaken by that prosecutor was already defunct.
00:03:12.000 Nonetheless, Biden has openly bragged that he got that prosecutor fired.
00:03:16.000 Now, he didn't brag that he got him fired in order to protect his son.
00:03:19.000 That was sort of the conclusion that a lot of people took away from the story, although the evidence isn't totally there to support it.
00:03:25.000 So President Trump wanted Ukraine to investigate that.
00:03:28.000 So the grounds for impeachment, number two, that Democrats could be putting forward is that Trump merely by mentioning Joe Biden to the Ukrainians, by saying to the Ukrainians would be would be great if you investigate that just by doing that, he has stepped into impeachable territory.
00:03:42.000 That is very weak sauce.
00:03:44.000 Probably not.
00:03:45.000 Bad behavior?
00:03:46.000 President should not be going to foreign countries and asking for their help in investigating his political opponents.
00:03:51.000 But to be fair, Hillary Clinton did the same thing in 2016 when she worked with Wade Forth, the Ukrainian ambassador, in order to find information about Donald Trump's campaign manager, Paul Manafort.
00:04:00.000 So...
00:04:01.000 That is grounds number two, and it is a weak grounds.
00:04:04.000 And then there's grounds number three, and this is the one we are all sort of waiting to see if there's another shoe that drops, and that is the quid pro quo grounds.
00:04:10.000 Now, if President Trump went to Ukraine and said, listen, got a bunch of military aid right here, $400 million in military aid, and I'm not going to give it to you.
00:04:19.000 I know that you are under pressure from the Russians.
00:04:21.000 I know that you are fighting a proxy war with Russian backed insurgents in Ukraine.
00:04:27.000 And you know what?
00:04:27.000 I'm just not going to give you the military aid that you need unless you do what I want and investigate my political opponent.
00:04:32.000 That's impeachable.
00:04:34.000 That is a quid pro quo.
00:04:35.000 That is presumably bribery.
00:04:37.000 It's a violation of criminal statute.
00:04:39.000 It's a serious problem for Trump.
00:04:40.000 So Trump has already admitted that he talked to the Ukrainians about Biden.
00:04:43.000 The question is whether he connected that with aid, whether he was saying, OK, your aid is withheld unless you do what I want.
00:04:50.000 Okay, so that is the background to all of this.
00:04:52.000 We're gonna get to the rest of Nancy Pelosi's announcement, and then the big breaking news of the day.
00:04:56.000 President Trump has released the transcript of his call with Vladimir Zelensky, and it casts more shadow than light.
00:05:03.000 Let's put it that way.
00:05:04.000 Okay, it does not clear anything up.
00:05:07.000 It does not exonerate the president.
00:05:09.000 It also does not damn the president.
00:05:11.000 It is an absolute Rorschach test.
00:05:13.000 And I'm gonna read you nearly the entire transcript, so you can make up your mind for yourself.
00:05:17.000 So that you can understand what is going on and why two possible interpretations still exist of what Trump is saying in that phone call.
00:05:25.000 We'll get to that in just one second.
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00:05:42.000 That would be the Second Amendment. 0.57
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00:06:50.000 Okay, so Nancy Pelosi moves on with her announcement of this impeachment inquiry by suggesting that President Trump has taken actions that betray his oath of office.
00:06:59.000 The president has admitted to asking the president of Ukraine to take actions which would benefit him politically.
00:07:07.000 The actions of the Trump presidency revealed dishonorable fact of the president's betrayal of his oath of office, betrayal of our national security, and betrayal of the integrity of our elections.
00:07:21.000 Okay, so obviously the question is whether she comes up with the grounds.
00:07:25.000 Does Nancy Pelosi come up with the grounds?
00:07:26.000 Now, it is worthwhile mentioning, just as an aside, that Nancy Pelosi didn't used to be quite as gung-ho about impeachment when it was a Democrat in office.
00:07:34.000 Here's Nancy Pelosi circa 1998 talking about how impeachment is a terrible, terrible idea with regard to President Bill Clinton.
00:07:40.000 Today the Republican majority is not judging the president with fairness, but impeaching him with a vengeance.
00:07:48.000 In the investigation of the president, fundamental principles which Americans hold dear Privacy, fairness, checks and balances have been seriously violated.
00:07:59.000 And why?
00:08:00.000 Because we are here today because the Republicans in the House are paralyzed with hatred of President Clinton.
00:08:09.000 And until the Republicans free themselves of this hatred, our country will suffer.
00:08:13.000 Okay, well, you could easily flip Clinton for Trump here, and you could say the same thing about the Democrats.
00:08:18.000 They've spent two and a half years trying to impeach Trump over Russia allegations that turned out to be sheer nonsense, and now they're trying to go after Trump on this Ukrainian stuff.
00:08:26.000 So if you're a Republican, that is going to be your gut reaction to this latest crusade by Democrats.
00:08:31.000 Amazing how quickly they swiveled from Russia to Ukraine.
00:08:34.000 I mean, like, literally within a matter of weeks.
00:08:36.000 Okay, now.
00:08:37.000 The question remains, what exactly did President Trump do here?
00:08:41.000 Because again, we got to get the standards straight.
00:08:43.000 The Democrats are already shifting the standard.
00:08:45.000 They're moving the standard.
00:08:46.000 They've been saying things like nobody is above the law and President Trump has already engaged in bad behavior that he's admitted to.
00:08:53.000 AOC is already out there suggesting that Trump has admitted to impeachable offenses.
00:08:57.000 In other words, we don't even need to do an investigation.
00:08:59.000 He's already impeached.
00:09:01.000 Ultimately, I think what is going on is that the president has committed several impeachable offenses.
00:09:06.000 He himself, what he has admitted to, is already impeachable regardless of future developments.
00:09:13.000 What he has already admitted to is an impeachable offense, among others.
00:09:17.000 I anticipate and I believe there will be discussion as to whether when we draft or when the judiciary examines the question on filing potential articles of impeachment, what those articles will include.
00:09:29.000 OK, so the Democrats, the more radical Democrats are saying we don't even need an inquiry.
00:09:33.000 We don't need an investigation.
00:09:35.000 It's a done deal.
00:09:35.000 We're impeaching.
00:09:36.000 But the actual standard the Democrats set here is going to be the one that they are held to.
00:09:41.000 So if they believe that it's enough to impeach Trump just over he requested help on Biden from the Ukrainians, Go for it, man. 0.97
00:09:49.000 If you think the American people are going to go along with that, I really, really doubt it.
00:09:49.000 Really, have at it.
00:09:54.000 I really don't.
00:09:54.000 Now, Nancy Pelosi may think that, right?
00:09:57.000 I mean, Nancy Pelosi came out yesterday and she says the public understands the Trump-Ukraine allegations better than they did the obstruction of justice allegations.
00:10:03.000 So maybe we have a better case for impeachment here than we did on the Mueller report.
00:10:07.000 This is about the Constitution of the United States, and we have many other, shall we say, Candidates for impeachable offense in terms of the Constitution.
00:10:17.000 But this one is the most understandable by the public.
00:10:21.000 And it's really important to know this.
00:10:26.000 There is no requirement there be a quid pro quo in the conversation.
00:10:31.000 Okay, so she's shifting the standard.
00:10:33.000 Is there a quid pro quo?
00:10:34.000 Is there not a quid pro quo?
00:10:35.000 Unclear what she wants.
00:10:36.000 So she can try to impeach on the basis of no quid pro quo, right? 0.84
00:10:40.000 She can.
00:10:41.000 But I think that that is going to fail dramatically.
00:10:43.000 If she believes the American people are going to throw Trump out of office in ignom- in ignanimity.
00:10:49.000 Based on he asked Zelensky in Ukraine to look into Joe and Hunter Biden and Burisma.
00:10:56.000 I don't think so.
00:10:57.000 I don't think so.
00:10:58.000 It's only if people feel like Trump was using American taxpayer dollars from Democrats and Republicans from people all across the political spectrum in order to target his political opponent.
00:11:07.000 That he was actually withholding aid on the basis of this, that it turns into a real impeachable offense.
00:11:13.000 That is the line that I think is going to end up being drawn.
00:11:15.000 Now, that brings us to the release of the transcript today, because the Democrats and the Republicans in the Senate, actually, are pushing very hard for the Trump administration to release materials.
00:11:25.000 And Trump's response has been, okay.
00:11:27.000 Okay, sure.
00:11:28.000 I'm gonna release it.
00:11:29.000 So today, he released the full transcript of his call from July 25th, 2019 at 9.33am.
00:11:33.000 25th, 2019 at 9.33 a.m., from 9.03 to 9.33 a.m.
00:11:38.000 We'll release the full transcript of that call to the public with Vladimir Zelensky, the president of Ukraine.
00:11:44.000 We're going to go through it line by line in just one second.
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00:12:55.000 Okay, so now the President of the United States has responded to these calls for transparency by actually suggesting he's going to provide the transparency that is desired.
00:13:04.000 So this takes off the table.
00:13:06.000 The second of the, the first of the Democratic rationales for impeachment.
00:13:10.000 So first rationale was he's covering it up.
00:13:12.000 Second rationale was he asked Zelensky for help with Biden.
00:13:16.000 Third rationale is quid pro quo.
00:13:18.000 As I said, I don't think the second rationale, the he asked Zelensky for help with Biden, is enough for the Democrats to impeach Trump or for any Republicans in the Senate to go along with it.
00:13:27.000 The whistleblower coverup might've been a grounds, right?
00:13:29.000 The coverup is worse than the crime, as the saying usually goes, but Trump isn't covering it up.
00:13:34.000 So as it turns out, the White House is now going to work with Congress, not only to release the transcript of this conversation between Zelensky of Ukraine and the President of the United States, but also they're going to work to release the whistleblower complaint.
00:13:45.000 And we'll get to that in a moment.
00:13:47.000 But today the big news was that they dropped the full transcript.
00:13:50.000 And a couple of preliminary words about the full transcript.
00:13:54.000 How you interpret this transcript is almost entirely dependent on what you think of Trump as a human being.
00:14:00.000 This is true of nearly every conversation that you think about.
00:14:04.000 Any conversation you think about, if you were to read a transcript of that conversation and you'd remove the name of the person saying things, that would make a very big difference in how you interpret the conversation.
00:14:14.000 Right, whether I'm speaking to my wife or my business partner.
00:14:16.000 That makes a big difference.
00:14:17.000 They can say the exact same thing and it means two completely separate things.
00:14:20.000 So, your impression of Trump and what he is as a person.
00:14:24.000 Is he a scattered thinker?
00:14:25.000 Is he somebody who sort of just blorts out what is on his mind?
00:14:29.000 Is he somebody who says ill-advised things and then walks them back?
00:14:32.000 Or is he somebody who plans?
00:14:35.000 Is he a bully who plans?
00:14:36.000 Is he somebody who sits there and applies leverage, turns the screw on people?
00:14:41.000 And that's really what he desires to do.
00:14:43.000 Or is he just a guy who has sort of these fragmentary thoughts?
00:14:46.000 Maybe he's a bully, maybe he's a bull in a china shop, but he sort of has fragmentary thoughts, and he spits things out there, and he doesn't mean them seriously, and then he walks them back.
00:14:54.000 Now, the answer may be that he is both of those things, and it sort of depends on the time of day.
00:14:59.000 But that doesn't clear it up.
00:15:01.000 So as we will see from the transcript, your interpretation of who Donald Trump is really heavily affect how you're about to hear the transcript that we are about to read.
00:15:12.000 Okay, so here is the transcript.
00:15:14.000 We're gonna go through it so you have all the information because again, on this show, we try to provide you all the information and then I'll provide analysis, but you can make up your own mind because on major issues of the day, you should, you're an adult.
00:15:25.000 So here's the transcript.
00:15:26.000 The president opens the call by congratulating Zelensky on his big win.
00:15:30.000 You're absolutely right, Mr. President.
00:15:31.000 We did win Bing, and we worked hard for this.
00:15:32.000 And you did a terrific job.
00:15:34.000 The way you came from behind, somebody who wasn't given much of a chance and you ended up winning easily.
00:15:38.000 It's a fantastic achievement.
00:15:39.000 Congratulations.
00:15:40.000 Zelensky then says, you're absolutely right, Mr. President.
00:15:43.000 We did win Bing and we worked hard for this.
00:15:45.000 We worked a lot, but I would like to confess to you that I had an opportunity to learn from you.
00:15:49.000 We used quite a few of your skills and knowledge and were able to use it as an example for our elections.
00:15:53.000 And yes, it is true that these were unique elections.
00:15:55.000 We were in a unique situation that we were able to achieve a unique success.
00:15:59.000 I'm able to tell you the following.
00:16:00.000 The first time you called me to congratulate me when I won my presidential election and the second time you are now calling me when my party won the parliamentary election.
00:16:07.000 I think I should run more often so you can call me more often and we can talk over the phone more often.
00:16:11.000 Okay, so first thing to note.
00:16:12.000 It is obvious that Zelensky is trying to butter Trump up.
00:16:15.000 I mean, that is obvious.
00:16:16.000 And why wouldn't he?
00:16:18.000 If you are a foreign leader and you've watched President Trump do foreign relations for the last couple of years, what you know more than anything else is if you develop a warm personal relationship with Trump, he is more likely to give you what you want.
00:16:29.000 So this does add a wrinkle.
00:16:30.000 So people have been saying that Trump is requesting a quid pro quo.
00:16:33.000 What if it was Zelensky who was actually sort of requesting the quid pro quo?
00:16:36.000 In other words, what if Trump was holding up the Ukrainian aid for what he thought were good reasons, and Zelensky was trying to get Trump to release the aid by buttering Trump up?
00:16:46.000 Well, what if that was the actual case?
00:16:48.000 Because the transcript kind of reads like that.
00:16:51.000 I mean, from the very beginning, you've got Zelensky talking about how he learned from Trump in his election cycle and all this kind of stuff.
00:16:57.000 Like, it is obvious that his advisors told him, you know what you should do?
00:17:01.000 You should really massage Trump. 0.62
00:17:02.000 You should massage him, right? 0.97
00:17:03.000 Look how Kim Jong-un massages him.
00:17:06.000 Look how Bibi Netanyahu massages him. 0.85
00:17:08.000 Look how the Eastern European leaders in the area massage him. 0.95
00:17:14.000 The Orbans of the world massage him.
00:17:16.000 If you massage him, things will go better for you.
00:17:17.000 And Zelensky is taking that attack right from the outset.
00:17:20.000 Right from the outset, he is saying to Trump, You know, I want to be just like you, Mr. Trump.
00:17:24.000 And so there is that aspect of the conversation.
00:17:26.000 And the other side of the conversation does matter, because as we will see, some of the topics that are brought up in the conversation that have to do with things Ukraine can do for the United States are actually brought up by Zelensky, not by Trump.
00:17:38.000 Okay, so he butters him up and then Trump says, that's a very good idea.
00:17:42.000 I think your country is very happy about that.
00:17:44.000 And Zelensky said, well, yes, to tell you the truth, we are trying to work hard because we want to drain the swamp here in our country.
00:17:49.000 We brought in many, many new people, not the old politicians, not the typical politicians, because we want to have a new format and a new type of government.
00:17:55.000 You are a great teacher for us and in that, right?
00:17:57.000 Again, it's more buttering up of Trump on a personal level.
00:18:00.000 And he is the one who first mentions the drain the swamp kind of stuff.
00:18:03.000 Now, he's using Trump's phraseology because he is trying to butter Trump up.
00:18:07.000 Obviously.
00:18:08.000 100% obvious, right?
00:18:09.000 It is also true that he brings up the corruption stuff.
00:18:12.000 Well, that opens the door to Trump talking about corruption.
00:18:14.000 And in a second, we are going to get to the president talking about Ukrainian aid, right?
00:18:19.000 This is sort of the key aspect.
00:18:20.000 And how you read this paragraph, particularly, is going to inform whether you see this conversation as, if not proof of a quid pro quo, Then some sort of indicator that a quid pro quo was in the making and that you need more research on it.
00:18:34.000 We'll get to that in just one second.
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00:19:50.000 Okay, so now we get to the crux of the matter, or as my father says, the meat of the matter, Uncle Eddie.
00:20:00.000 Okay, so the President of the United States finally gets Ukrainian aid, and here's what he says.
00:20:06.000 That's very nice of you to say that.
00:20:08.000 I will say we do a lot for Ukraine.
00:20:10.000 We spend a lot of effort and a lot of time.
00:20:12.000 Much more than the European countries are doing, and they should be helping you more than they are.
00:20:16.000 Germany does almost nothing for you.
00:20:17.000 All they do is talk, and I think it's something that you should really ask them about.
00:20:21.000 When I was speaking to Angela Merkel, she talks Ukraine, but she doesn't do anything.
00:20:24.000 A lot of the European countries are the same way.
00:20:26.000 So I think it's something you want to look at, but the United States has been very, very good to Ukraine.
00:20:30.000 I wouldn't say that it's reciprocal, necessarily, because things are happening that are not good, but the United States has been very, very good to Ukraine.
00:20:36.000 Okay, so, couple of things here.
00:20:38.000 One, Trump has been saying the reason he withheld aid from Ukraine is because he wanted the Europeans to pay up.
00:20:43.000 He's making that pretty explicit in this paragraph.
00:20:45.000 So he wasn't lying about that, right?
00:20:46.000 That has been a bugaboo of Trump's for a very long time is that the Europeans don't pay their fair share when it comes to international arrangements, including foreign aid, right?
00:20:54.000 They don't pay their fair share in NATO is one of Trump's main complaints.
00:20:57.000 He believes they don't pay their fair share at the UN has been Trump's complaint.
00:21:00.000 And he believes they don't pay their fair share when it comes to Ukrainian aid.
00:21:03.000 He's saying the Europeans should do more.
00:21:04.000 Okay, so that part Trump is telling the truth about, right?
00:21:07.000 The Democrats keep saying that Trump has shifted his rationale on why he is holding back Ukrainian aid or why he held back Ukrainian aid.
00:21:13.000 They say the real reason is because he wanted to leverage the Ukrainians to research Joe Biden.
00:21:18.000 But Trump has said, well, there are a couple of reasons.
00:21:19.000 One is because the Europeans should pay more. 0.91
00:21:21.000 He says that explicitly in the call.
00:21:23.000 And the other is because of generalized concerns about corruption.
00:21:26.000 And that brings us to that last line right there.
00:21:28.000 He says, I wouldn't say that it's reciprocal necessarily, because things are happening that are not good, but the United States has been very, very good to Ukraine.
00:21:35.000 Now, when he talks about reciprocal, does he mean, I need you to give me something and then I'll give you something?
00:21:42.000 Which looks more like a quid pro quo.
00:21:44.000 Or does he mean, Simply, we give you a lot of aid, and you're not doing a great job over there.
00:21:50.000 There are corruption issues over there.
00:21:51.000 Because if that's the question, then that's exactly what Joe Biden said to Ukraine back in 2016, right?
00:21:56.000 Joe Biden said, you don't get a billion dollars in loan guarantees unless you clean up your act.
00:22:00.000 So it sounds like Trump could be saying that too.
00:22:03.000 So again, as I say, Rorschach test.
00:22:05.000 If you think going in that this is a quid pro quo conversation, it sounds like a quid pro quo conversation.
00:22:09.000 If you think that it's not, it kind of doesn't.
00:22:11.000 Okay, so Zelensky, continues to read this.
00:22:16.000 I think the fairest way to say this is that Zelensky is reading this as a conversation in which he can try to pry aid out of President Trump by buttering him up.
00:22:24.000 Now, does that mean that Trump himself perceived the conversation that way?
00:22:27.000 Or that Trump actually was withholding aid in order to be buttered up?
00:22:31.000 I mean, what does that mean?
00:22:33.000 Right, exactly.
00:22:33.000 Just because Zelensky wanted the aid to come forth, as we'll see, and because he was offering stuff to Trump, that does not necessarily mean that Trump was soliciting the stuff in exchange for the aid.
00:22:45.000 It's a bit murky.
00:22:46.000 It's a bit murky.
00:22:47.000 And as I say, there are a couple of different plausible reads, which is why this controversy is not going to end today.
00:22:52.000 The transcript is not going to end the controversy.
00:22:54.000 In fact, it's going to fan the flames of the controversy.
00:22:56.000 Okay, so Zelensky then responds, yes, yes, you are absolutely right.
00:23:00.000 Not only 100%, but actually 1,000%.
00:23:02.000 And I can tell you the following.
00:23:04.000 I did talk to Angela Merkel, and I did meet with her.
00:23:06.000 I also met and talked with Macron, the leader of France, and I told them they are not doing quite as much as they need to be doing on the sanctions with the sanctions.
00:23:12.000 They're not enforcing the sanctions.
00:23:14.000 They're not working as much as they should work for Ukraine. 0.57
00:23:16.000 It turns out that even though logically the European Union should be our biggest partner, but technically the United States is a much bigger partner than the European Union, and I'm very grateful to you for that because the U.S.
00:23:26.000 is doing quite a lot for Ukraine, much more than the EU, especially when we are talking about sanctions against the Russian Federation.
00:23:32.000 I would also like to thank you for your great support in the area of defense.
00:23:35.000 We are ready to continue to cooperate.
00:23:37.000 For the next step specifically, we are almost ready to buy more javelins from the United States for defense purposes.
00:23:41.000 Okay, so now he is explicitly bringing up the military defense issue, right?
00:23:45.000 At this point, like a week beforehand, Trump had instructed the Office of Management and Budget Director, Mick Mulvaney, to hold up the Ukrainian aid, $400 million in Ukrainian aid that was directed toward defense.
00:23:55.000 So now Zelensky is bringing it up, just openly.
00:23:58.000 He's explicitly asking for more Javelin missiles to defend against the Russian aggression that is occurring in Ukraine.
00:24:07.000 So now it's on the table.
00:24:09.000 And from here, the conversation goes into a bunch of things that Trump would like to see Ukraine get done.
00:24:17.000 And we'll get to those things momentarily.
00:24:19.000 But the question is, Zelensky seems to perceive this as, what can I do to get you to give the military aid?
00:24:27.000 And Trump seems to perceive this as, we can talk about military aid in a general way, and we should talk about military aid, and there may be certain preconditions that the country wants to set on the military aid, namely anti-corruption.
00:24:42.000 And then he mentions Biden, and so the question is, is he conditioning the aid on the Biden stuff, or is he conditioning the aid on generalized concerns about corruption, which is what he has said before, right?
00:24:52.000 That is the actual question here.
00:24:54.000 So, Zelensky finally brings up the actual military aid, and here is how President Trump responds.
00:24:58.000 He says, I would like you to do us a favor, though, because our country has been through a lot, and Ukraine knows a lot about it.
00:25:03.000 So the question now, again, the whole thing's a Rorschach test.
00:25:06.000 When Trump says, I would like you to do us a favor, Are people now gonna read that as, you just said military aid, now do me a favor, go after my enemies.
00:25:15.000 Or, is it, Zelensky says, I want you to give military aid.
00:25:21.000 And Trump says, well there's a bunch of stuff you have to do, among those things, I want you to fight corruption, and one of the aspects of corruption is X. Again, I keep emphasizing because I want to be as intellectually honest as possible, and I want everybody else to be as intellectually honest as possible.
00:25:37.000 That there are several different plausible reads of this particular conversation.
00:25:42.000 And it seems like Zelensky is, in fact, trying to butter Trump up.
00:25:47.000 So Trump opens his favor requests not by talking about Biden.
00:25:52.000 Now, if you were a full on open quid pro quo, you would expect at this point that Zelensky says, we're ready to buy more javelins from the United States for defense purposes.
00:25:59.000 And Trump says, first, I need you to prosecute Biden.
00:26:02.000 That's what you would expect.
00:26:03.000 That's not really where the conversation goes.
00:26:05.000 So where the conversation goes next is Trump says, I would like you to do us a favor, though, because our country has been through a lot and Ukraine knows a lot about it.
00:26:12.000 I would like you to find out what happened with the whole situation with Ukraine.
00:26:15.000 They say crowd strike.
00:26:16.000 I guess you have one of your wealthy people, the server.
00:26:18.000 They say Ukraine has it.
00:26:19.000 OK, so this is a reference to the firm that hacked Hillary Clinton's emails and the DNC.
00:26:25.000 So he's opening, not with the Biden stuff, but with a generalized point, which is basically correct, that Ukraine should investigate Ukrainian interference in the 2016 election, which is totally appropriate.
00:26:37.000 There's nothing wrong with Trump saying that.
00:26:39.000 So far, nothing in the conversation has been incredibly wrong.
00:26:43.000 He says, there are a lot of things that went on, the whole situation.
00:26:45.000 I think you're surrounding yourself with some of the same people.
00:26:48.000 I would like to have the Attorney General call you or your people.
00:26:50.000 I would like you to get to the bottom of it.
00:26:52.000 As you saw yesterday, that whole nonsense ended with a very poor performance by a man named Robert Mueller, an incompetent performance, but they say a lot of it started with Ukraine.
00:26:59.000 Whatever you can do, it's very important that you do it if that's possible.
00:27:02.000 And then Zelensky responds, yes, it is very important for me and everything that you just mentioned earlier.
00:27:07.000 For me as president, it is very important and we are open for any future cooperation.
00:27:11.000 We are ready to open a new page on cooperation in relations between the United States and Ukraine.
00:27:16.000 For that purpose, I just recalled our ambassador from the United States and he will be replaced by a very competent and very experienced ambassador who will work hard on making sure that our two nations are getting closer.
00:27:25.000 Now, the Ukrainian ambassador issue is presumably a reference to the article in Politico from 2017 in which the embassy, the Ukrainian embassy in Washington, D.C. was working with sources from the DNC to research Paul Manafort and release that information.
00:27:42.000 And the ambassador allegedly was involved in that.
00:27:45.000 So the Ukrainian president is saying, well, we're going to recall that ambassador.
00:27:47.000 That ambassador's out.
00:27:49.000 And then it's the Ukrainian ambassador who raises Rudy Giuliani, right?
00:27:52.000 It's not Trump.
00:27:53.000 The Ukrainian ambassador seems to be trying to wheedle Trump, right?
00:27:55.000 The whole thing is him trying to massage Trump.
00:27:57.000 That's the entire conversation.
00:27:58.000 So, he continues by then talking about Rudy Giuliani, who is the president's personal lawyer.
00:28:05.000 He says,
00:28:27.000 I also plan to surround myself with great people, and in addition to that investigation, I guarantee, as President of Ukraine, that all the investigations will be done openly and candidly.
00:28:36.000 That, I can assure you.
00:28:38.000 So again, this is Zelensky trying to butter up Trump.
00:28:40.000 Maybe this all falls under the broad rubric of corruption, of anti-corruption, right?
00:28:44.000 Of Trump saying the same thing that Biden said in 2016, and that the Obama administration said in 2016, aid is contingent on anti-corruption efforts.
00:28:52.000 And maybe this all falls under that rubric.
00:28:54.000 But once he brings up Giuliani, this is where things start to take the sideways turn that has created all the headlines.
00:29:00.000 So President Trump immediately picks up on the reference to Giuliani, and he starts talking about Giuliani and Biden.
00:29:07.000 Mr. Giuliani is a highly respected man, he was the mayor of New York City, a great mayor, and I would like him to call you.
00:29:10.000 Shut down and that's really unfair.
00:29:12.000 A lot of people are talking about that.
00:29:14.000 The way they shut your very good prosecutor down.
00:29:16.000 And you had some very bad people involved.
00:29:18.000 Mr. Giuliani is a highly respected man.
00:29:20.000 He was the mayor of New York City.
00:29:21.000 A great mayor.
00:29:22.000 And I would like him to call you.
00:29:23.000 I will ask him to call you along with the Attorney General.
00:29:26.000 Rudy very much knows what's happening.
00:29:28.000 And he is a very capable guy.
00:29:30.000 If you could speak to him, that would be great.
00:29:32.000 Now, again, this is where you start to cross streams that are inappropriate.
00:29:36.000 Not necessarily impeachable, because, again, is he conditioning aid on Rudy Giuliani being given information about Biden?
00:29:43.000 Not clear from the conversation.
00:29:45.000 Not clear.
00:29:46.000 Is it inappropriate for him to bring his personal attorney and campaign attorney into a conversation with the Attorney General about Joe Biden?
00:29:53.000 Yeah, that's pretty inappropriate.
00:29:55.000 And so he says, Rudy very much knows what's happening.
00:29:58.000 And he is a very capable guy.
00:29:59.000 If you could speak to him, that would be great.
00:30:01.000 The former ambassador from the United States, the woman was bad news and the people she was dealing with in the Ukraine were bad news.
00:30:06.000 So I just want you to know that.
00:30:07.000 The other thing, and here's where Trump decides to just go full bore on the Biden stuff.
00:30:11.000 He says, the other thing, there's a lot of talk about Biden's son, that Biden stopped the prosecution.
00:30:17.000 And a lot of people want to find out about that.
00:30:19.000 So whatever you can do with the attorney general would be great.
00:30:21.000 Biden went around bragging that he stopped the prosecution.
00:30:23.000 So if you can look into it, It sounds horrible to me.
00:30:27.000 And now, a couple possible reads.
00:30:29.000 One is the obvious read.
00:30:30.000 He doesn't like Biden.
00:30:31.000 He wants Biden out.
00:30:32.000 He wants Ukraine to go after him.
00:30:33.000 Is that explicitly connected to the aid?
00:30:35.000 Well, it is happening in a conversation that has mentioned foreign aid, including military aid, but is it conditioned?
00:30:42.000 Is it explicitly conditioned?
00:30:43.000 If Zelensky does not investigate Biden, Is the military aid going to continue to be withheld?
00:30:48.000 That's not clear from the conversation, because again, there's a lot in the conversation.
00:30:52.000 Another read is the sort of read that the Obama administration was using in early 2016, which is that if Ukraine was not going to investigate Manafort, then were they truly anti-corruption?
00:31:04.000 Is Trump subsuming the Biden stuff under the broader anti-corruption rubric?
00:31:09.000 That's a pretty flattering read for President Trump.
00:31:12.000 It doesn't sound particularly accurate to me.
00:31:15.000 But Trump brings up Biden and then Zelensky says, I wanted to tell you about the prosecutor.
00:31:20.000 First of all, I understand and I'm knowledgeable about the situation.
00:31:24.000 Since we have won the absolute majority in our parliament, the next prosecutor general will be 100% my person, my candidate, will be approved by the parliament and will start as a new prosecutor in September.
00:31:34.000 He or she will look into the situation specifically to the company that you mentioned in this issue.
00:31:38.000 The issue of the investigation of the case is actually the issue of making sure to restore the honesty.
00:31:43.000 So we'll take care of that and we'll work on the investigation of the case.
00:31:46.000 Right, so Zelensky is now putting this in the broader rubric, not of the campaign, but of anti-corruption efforts that he's trying to prove to Trump.
00:31:54.000 And he says, on top of that, I would kindly ask you if you have any additional information that you can provide to us, it would be very helpful for the investigation to make sure that we administer justice in our country with regard to the ambassador to the United States from Ukraine.
00:32:05.000 As far as I recall, her name was Ivanovich.
00:32:07.000 It was great that you were the first one who told me she was a bad ambassador because I agree with you 100%. 1.00
00:32:11.000 Her attitude toward me was far from the best as she admired the previous president and she was on his side.
00:32:17.000 She would not accept me as new president well enough.
00:32:20.000 And Trump responded, well, she's going to go through some things.
00:32:23.000 I will have Mr. Giuliani give you a call.
00:32:24.000 I'm also going to have Attorney General Barr call, and we'll get to the bottom of it.
00:32:28.000 I'm sure you will figure it out.
00:32:29.000 I heard the prosecutor was treated very badly, and he was a very fair prosecutor, so good luck with everything.
00:32:34.000 Your economy is going to get better and better, I predict.
00:32:36.000 You have a lot of assets.
00:32:37.000 It's a great country.
00:32:37.000 I have many Ukrainian friends.
00:32:39.000 They are incredible people.
00:32:40.000 Okay, and then Zelensky responds with continuing to butter up Trump.
00:32:44.000 I'd say you can tell that we're going to talk about the general dynamics in just a second of the call, what it means going forward, and really why this is sort of the opening of the investigation, not the end of the investigation.
00:32:52.000 Zelensky says, I would like to tell you, I also have quite a few Ukrainian friends that live in the United States.
00:32:56.000 Actually, last time I traveled to the US, I stayed in New York near Central Park and I stayed at the Trump Tower.
00:33:01.000 This is him again, trying to just massage Trump.
00:33:04.000 He said, So he is picking up on Trump's focus on the Biden stuff and saying, I would love to do that.
00:33:06.000 So it is possible, again, that there's a bit of a disconnect here, or it's possible there's no disconnect.
00:33:09.000 specifically Washington, D.C.
00:33:10.000 On the other hand, I also want to ensure you that we'll be very serious about the case and we'll work on the investigation.
00:33:16.000 So he is picking up on Trump's focus on the Biden stuff and saying, I would love to do that.
00:33:20.000 So it is possible, again, that there's a bit of a disconnect here or it's possible there's no disconnect.
00:33:24.000 So if there's a disconnect, the disconnect is Trump saying, talking about aid and then being like, also, you know, just as a general rule, there's a bunch of stuff I want you to do.
00:33:33.000 And then, Zelensky taking that as, oh, if you want the, if I want the aid, I have to do X, Y, and Z. Now, what you really need is more than the phone call.
00:33:41.000 What you really need is somebody, if you wanted to impeach Trump, if you're the Democrats, what you need is a smoking gun conversation where Trump said to somebody, guys, no aid to Ukraine until they investigate Biden.
00:33:51.000 Right?
00:33:52.000 You do need that smoking gun.
00:33:53.000 You need that final data point linked in order to get to the quid pro quo.
00:33:57.000 The conversation is not an explicit quid pro quo.
00:33:59.000 If you're reading it with a jaundiced eye about President Trump, if you think he's really corrupt, if you think a quid pro quo is there, then you read the conversation and it sort of supports the story.
00:34:09.000 If you think there's no quid pro quo, then it sounds like Trump basically talking about aid and then talking about stuff he'd like to see Ukraine do, but not conditioning one on the other.
00:34:17.000 That's just a friendly conversation about things we'd like to see you do, and also about aid, because these are issues that both are going to come up in a conversation.
00:34:25.000 Zelensky seems to- I mean, if you read Zelensky's side of the conversation, it sounds like he's trying to wheedle Trump into giving aid, right?
00:34:31.000 That does sound like what it is from Zelensky's point of view.
00:34:33.000 And Zelensky says, I believe we can be very successful in cooperating on energy independence with the U.S.
00:34:38.000 We are already working on cooperation.
00:34:40.000 We're buying American oil.
00:34:41.000 But I'm very hopeful for a future meeting.
00:34:42.000 Again, everything he says is attempting to pry something out of Trump.
00:34:46.000 He says, we'll have more time and more opportunities to discuss these opportunities and get to know each other better.
00:34:50.000 I'd like to thank you very much for your support.
00:34:52.000 And then Trump goes back to Rudy and Barr.
00:34:54.000 He says, I appreciate that.
00:34:56.000 I will tell Rudy and Attorney General Barr to call.
00:34:58.000 Whenever you'd like to come to the White House, feel free to give us a call.
00:34:58.000 Thank you.
00:35:01.000 Give us a date.
00:35:02.000 And then Zelensky talks about inviting Trump to Kiev and visiting Ukraine.
00:35:07.000 And then Trump says, OK, we can work that out.
00:35:09.000 And then they say goodbye.
00:35:10.000 So that is the content of the conversation.
00:35:11.000 We're going to get to analysis of that conversation in just one second.
00:35:15.000 First, let's talk.
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00:36:46.000 Okay, so we're gonna get to much, much more on impeachment 2019.
00:36:51.000 And the effects of this conversation and what comes next.
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00:37:33.000 All righty.
00:37:40.000 So the bottom line about this conversation, he had to sum it up in one line, is that this is the beginning of the inquiry, not the end.
00:37:46.000 Because it is a Rorschach test, because it is plausible to read the conversation as a sort of soft quid pro quo, a, if you don't hand over the, if you don't give me what I want, you don't get the aid, conversation.
00:37:56.000 And it is also plausible to read it as, let's talk about the aid, you gotta make some anti-corruption efforts, one of the things I'd like to see you do is investigate Joe Biden, but it's not conditional.
00:38:07.000 It is possible to read it in a variety of ways.
00:38:07.000 Right?
00:38:09.000 That means that the investigation is going to continue.
00:38:12.000 And it means that everybody who has had discussions with Trump about Ukraine and Ukrainian aid is going to be called as a witness.
00:38:19.000 Because the fact is that Trump did not give good excuses to Congress about why exactly he had not given aid to Ukraine.
00:38:26.000 Mitch McConnell was asked about this yesterday.
00:38:28.000 Mitch McConnell explicitly said, I don't know.
00:38:30.000 He said, I have no idea why the president didn't just give the aid to Ukraine.
00:38:35.000 It is not clear why he didn't give the aid to Ukraine.
00:38:38.000 Meanwhile, there's a report from the Washington Post today.
00:38:43.000 Reporters on that story, Greg Miller, Josh Dowsey, Paul San, Ellen Nakashima, so the Washington Post going all out on this story, of course, saying Giuliani ran shadowy Ukraine policy, sidelining and alarming officials.
00:38:54.000 According to the Post, President Trump's attempt to pressure the leader of Ukraine followed a months-long fight inside the administration that sidelined national security officials and empowered political loyalists, including the President's personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, to exploit the U.S.
00:39:07.000 relationship with Kiev, current and former U.S.
00:39:09.000 officials said.
00:39:10.000 The sequence, which began early this year, involved the abrupt removal of U.S.
00:39:13.000 Ambassador to Ukraine, the circumvention of senior officials on the National Security Council, and the suspension of hundreds of millions of dollars of aid administered by the Defense and State Departments, all as key officials from these agencies struggle to piece together Giuliani's activities from news reports.
00:39:30.000 Several officials described tense meetings on Ukraine among national security officials at the White House leading up to the President's phone call on July 25, sessions that led some participants to fear that Trump and those close to him appeared prepared to use U.S.
00:39:41.000 leverage with the new leader of Ukraine for Trump's political gain.
00:39:45.000 And now this is the Washington Post trying to suss out a smoking gun where the evidence does not back the smoking gun yet.
00:39:52.000 So yes, we know that Rudy Giuliani was in Ukraine.
00:39:54.000 We've known that for what, two years now?
00:39:56.000 That Rudy Giuliani was walking around Ukraine looking for dirt on Hunter Biden and Burisma and all the rest of this?
00:40:02.000 Does that mean that it totally overtook Ukrainian policy?
00:40:05.000 Not clear.
00:40:06.000 And if you are a disgruntled former employee, if you're somebody who is working in Ukraine and Trump fired you for any reason, you might have an interest in suggesting that Trump had gone out of his way to get rid of you so that he could do his political manipulation.
00:40:20.000 And we've seen this story before, right?
00:40:21.000 James Comey suggested the same thing.
00:40:22.000 When Trump fired him from the FBI, Comey then claimed that Trump did so for corrupt reasons as opposed to just because Trump was frustrated with him.
00:40:29.000 One of the problems with a governing strategy of chaos, which is what Trump does, is it leaves an awful lot up for speculation, and it leaves an awful lot of pissed off disgruntled people on the other end.
00:40:38.000 And this story would be no different.
00:40:41.000 According to the Washington Post, as those worries intensified, some senior officials worked behind the scenes to hold off a Trump meeting or call with the Ukrainian president, Vladimir Zelensky, out of concern that Trump would use the conversation to press Kiev for damaging information on Trump's potential rival in the 2020 race, Joe Biden and Biden's son, Hunter.
00:40:59.000 One former official said an awful lot of people were trying to keep a meeting from happening for the reason that it would not be focused on Ukraine-U.S.
00:41:05.000 relations.
00:41:06.000 The White House disputed the account saying no such concerns were raised in the Security Council meetings and that Trump's focus was on urging Ukraine to root out corruption.
00:41:14.000 So...
00:41:16.000 Again, lack of clarity, lack of clarity.
00:41:18.000 So where does this go from here?
00:41:19.000 So the Democrats and the Republicans have now issued a unanimous call from the Senate for the actual whistleblower report to be turned over.
00:41:27.000 The whistleblower report presumably includes something beyond the transcript of the phone call.
00:41:31.000 Presumably it would include information about other conversations that were had about Ukraine or other lower level conversations that were had between Ukraine and the Trump administration.
00:41:41.000 And so Congress wants to see that information.
00:41:44.000 Now this raises some pretty significant national security issues for the future.
00:41:49.000 Namely, the president is supposed to be able to conduct foreign policy.
00:41:52.000 Making every conversation that he has, subject to congressional review, Does destroy a lot of the constitutional order.
00:41:58.000 The commander-in-chief does have plenary power over the US's foreign policy.
00:42:02.000 He's the sole policymaker when it comes to having conversations with foreign leaders, for example, in shaping American policy along those lines.
00:42:10.000 Negotiating treaties, talking about foreign aid, and all the rest of it.
00:42:13.000 So this sort of new world where Trump is releasing transcripts, it's not great.
00:42:19.000 It may be necessary for Trump to do so at this point because of how this all went down.
00:42:24.000 But it isn't great for the office of the presidency.
00:42:26.000 John Yoo, the former lawyer for the Bush administration, now law professor at University of California, Berkeley, He has a piece in the New York Times talking about this today.
00:42:36.000 He says, we should be aware that rushing into an impeachment may do long-term harm to the presidency and our national security.
00:42:43.000 The Constitution vests the president with the authority to conduct foreign policy and the responsibility to protect the nation's security.
00:42:49.000 A president, even one who is possibly engaging in wrongdoing, must have confidence in the confidentiality of his communications or he will be unable to perform his constitutional duties and our international relations will fall victim to governance by committee.
00:43:03.000 So turning over transcripts of private phone calls with foreign leaders to Congress and making them public is not good policy.
00:43:10.000 You points out that George Washington in 1796 refused to provide the House with the Jade Treaty negotiating record.
00:43:17.000 Presidents have claimed the right not just to communicate with foreign leaders, but also to keep national security information secret.
00:43:24.000 And now we are violating all of that.
00:43:25.000 So on a going forward basis, this is pretty dangerous stuff, but it's pretty obvious at this point that Trump does not have much of a political choice.
00:43:33.000 Again, the Senate yesterday passed a unanimous resolution to hand the whistleblower complaint to the intelligence committees.
00:43:38.000 Presumably, whatever is classified will be kept behind closed doors.
00:43:43.000 McConnell bypassed normal Senate procedures to move Chuck Schumer's request on this to a vote without any floor debate.
00:43:49.000 So, this led a lot of people on the right to speculate, okay, there's nothing in the whistleblower report, and that is backed by a report in the Washington Times yesterday, and a Fox News report on Tuesday evening, citing a senior Trump administration official who said that the intelligence community inspector general who judged the complaint, the whistleblower complaint, found that the person who wrote it had political bias in favor of a rival candidate for president.
00:44:11.000 The rival candidate was not identified, according to Fox News, but the substance of Trump's conversation involved Joe Biden, So, will the whistleblower report actually cut against the accusations against Trump?
00:44:22.000 Will it make it look like a partisan hit job?
00:44:24.000 A witch hunt, as President Trump has suggested?
00:44:27.000 Trump has already tweeted out about all of this.
00:44:29.000 Trump tweeted out last night in the aftermath of the move by Pelosi to open an official impeachment inquiry. 0.92
00:44:35.000 He said, such an important day at the United Nations, so much work, so much success, and the Democrats purposely had to ruin and demean it with more breaking news witch hunt garbage. 0.78
00:44:43.000 So bad for our country.
00:44:45.000 And that obviously is gonna be how Trump treats this, because again, I mean, he treated all of this the same way with Trump-Russia and ended up being right on that.
00:44:53.000 So it is unclear where this is all going.
00:44:55.000 Hillary Clinton, for her part, is super excited about this.
00:44:58.000 Maybe she's unaware that if Trump is impeached, she does not become president.
00:45:02.000 Mike Pence does.
00:45:03.000 But she endorsed an impeachment inquiry.
00:45:05.000 She told People Magazine, which is still interviewing Hillary Clinton.
00:45:09.000 She said, I'm not in favor of moving toward impeachment.
00:45:11.000 I did not come to that decision easily or quickly.
00:45:14.000 Then I'm in favor of moving toward impeachment, rather.
00:45:16.000 But this is an emergency, as I see it.
00:45:18.000 This latest behavior around Ukraine, trying to enlist the president of Ukraine in a plot to undermine former VP Biden or lose the military aid he needs to defend against Trump's friend, Vladimir Putin.
00:45:27.000 If that's not an impeachable offense, I don't know what is.
00:45:29.000 Now, again, Hillary Clinton and her campaign worked with the Ukrainian government, with the Ukrainian ambassador to Washington, D.C., to dig up dirt on Donald Trump's campaign manager in 2016.
00:45:38.000 So if her complaint is working with foreign governments to dig up dirt, she has no complaint.
00:45:44.000 If the complaint is quid pro quo, that is a bit of a different story.
00:45:44.000 Really?
00:45:47.000 And then the question is, is the quid pro quo designed to benefit Trump's campaign?
00:45:52.000 Or is it really just Trump making a general anti-corruption point and he thinks that the Biden thing is a corrupt thing?
00:45:59.000 And so he is mentioning that as one point among many.
00:46:03.000 Now, the Senate GOP is moving to quash articles of impeachment.
00:46:09.000 Senator John Kennedy said, my response to Democrats is go hard or go home.
00:46:13.000 He said, if you want to impeach him, stop talking, do it.
00:46:15.000 Go to Amazon, buy a spine, do it.
00:46:16.000 And let's get after it.
00:46:17.000 He said, I think the public will feel like it is more harassment.
00:46:21.000 And President Trump himself suggested that it will be a positive for him.
00:46:24.000 He said impeachment will probably pay off to his benefit.
00:46:27.000 Clip nine.
00:46:28.000 He's doing the best it's ever done.
00:46:30.000 And I just heard that you'd like to impeach.
00:46:33.000 They're going to lose the election and they figure this is a thing to do.
00:46:36.000 This never happened where we're in the election.
00:46:39.000 And, I mean, if she does that, they all say that's a positive for me from the election.
00:46:44.000 You could also say, who needs it?
00:46:45.000 It's bad for the country.
00:46:47.000 Then they wonder why they don't get gun legislation done.
00:46:49.000 Then they wonder why they don't get drug prices lowered.
00:46:52.000 Because all they do is talk nonsense.
00:46:55.000 And as I say, Trump has flipped the tables on the Democrats by basically pursuing radical transparency.
00:47:00.000 He could have easily argued executive privilege over the transcript of the phone call.
00:47:04.000 He did not.
00:47:05.000 Chuck Grassley, senator from Iowa, Who's a senior member of the Judiciary Committee said correctly.
00:47:10.000 You can't tell me they're talking about impeachment when the president is cooperating with them 100% to release these things.
00:47:15.000 Said it's premature to talk about impeachment.
00:47:18.000 Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky said, I think the Democrats have made this such a partisan exercise that I think most of the public has discounted the idea of it.
00:47:24.000 I think most people believe it's become sort of a political attack on the president and nothing more.
00:47:30.000 Paul did hedge his bets a bit.
00:47:31.000 He said it's hard to predict exactly how events are going to unfold.
00:47:35.000 Now, President Trump's campaign is ramping up fundraising.
00:47:38.000 He sees this presumably as a big winner with his base because now it looks like they're coming after him and coming after him hard, which presumably they are.
00:47:47.000 The asks began as House Speaker Pelosi prepared her announcements.
00:47:50.000 There were emails, texts, tweets, a video directing Trump supporters to a new Republican portal designed to capitalize on Trump's army of online donors, according to the Washington Post.
00:47:58.000 There's an email to supporters Tuesday afternoon.
00:48:00.000 He said, "The Democrats thrive on silencing "and intimidating his supporters like you, friend.
00:48:04.000 "They wanna take your vote away. 0.98
00:48:05.000 "President Trump wants to know who stood with him "when it mattered most." So watch for Trump to pick up serious money in the aftermath of the Democrats pushing for impeachment.
00:48:17.000 Meanwhile, even Tulsi Gabbard in the Democratic Party, who just made the next Democratic debate, actually, which should be fascinating because she is just, she's a machine when it comes to destroying other Democratic politicians. 1.00
00:48:29.000 See Kamala Harris.
00:48:30.000 Tulsi Gabbard came out yesterday.
00:48:31.000 She said, I'm not so sure about this whole impeachment thing, guys.
00:48:34.000 My position remains the same.
00:48:35.000 I think that impeachment would be terribly divisive for our already very divided country.
00:48:41.000 Even on an impeachment inquiry?
00:48:43.000 I think Congress needs to exercise oversight over the information that's been leaked.
00:48:49.000 I think that it's important that this transcript is released to Congress.
00:48:53.000 I mean, the bottom line here is that that's probably correct.
00:48:55.000 Nancy Pelosi did not have much choice. 0.92
00:48:56.000 She was being bullied by her own caucus.
00:48:58.000 part an already divided country.
00:49:00.000 I think it's important that Donald Trump is defeated.
00:49:02.000 I believe I can defeat him in 2020, but it's the voters who need to make that choice unequivocally. - I mean, the bottom line here is that that's probably correct.
00:49:11.000 Nancy Pelosi did not have much choice. 0.92
00:49:12.000 She was being bullied by her own caucus.
00:49:14.000 And with the new reports, The momentum hit fever pitch and she just could not hold back the dam anymore.
00:49:21.000 She could not hold back.
00:49:22.000 She was standing there trying to hold back that dam and the Democrats have just overcome her.
00:49:26.000 So, likeliest scenario here.
00:49:28.000 Trump gets impeached in the House because the Democrats have a majority.
00:49:30.000 It goes to the Senate.
00:49:31.000 But are they going to uncover any real information about a quid pro quo here?
00:49:34.000 The Democrats are going to suggest that the transcript itself is dispositive.
00:49:38.000 It is not.
00:49:39.000 They need more information.
00:49:40.000 They need to connect all the dots.
00:49:41.000 All the dots have to be connected if you want to impeach somebody.
00:49:44.000 Otherwise, you know, you have an opportunity to get rid of him in 14 months if you don't like him.
00:49:48.000 If the Democrats shoot here and they miss, it's going to be really, really bad for them.
00:49:52.000 If Donald Trump survives an impeachment attempt and it looks like Democrats basically went out there on a limb and are mad because Trump mentioned Joe Biden to the president of Ukraine, I think most voters are jaded enough Okay, time for a quick thing that I hate.
00:50:06.000 There are no things I like today because there's really not much to like.
00:50:08.000 impeaching Trump for violation of constitutional duty, they're going to see it as Democrats being partisan hacks who are attempting to destroy the president of the United States.
00:50:14.000 Okay, time for a quick thing that I hate.
00:50:17.000 There are no things I like today because there's really not much to like.
00:50:19.000 It is time for a quick thing that I hate. 0.71
00:50:21.000 Okay, so you want to hear the most garbage story of the day, maybe of the week, maybe I mean, this is just a massively garbage story. 0.82
00:50:32.000 So, there was this guy named Carson King. 0.94
00:50:34.000 Carson King is a security guard who works in Iowa, and he's a fan of Iowa State.
00:50:41.000 So he went to a game, and at this game, he held up a sign.
00:50:46.000 On September 13th, the sign read, Bush Light Supply Needs Replenishing.
00:50:50.000 Venmo Carson King 25.
00:50:52.000 He did that, he held up the sign at ESPN College Game Day at Jack Trice Stadium in Ames.
00:50:57.000 And then the sign garnered national attention.
00:50:59.000 And people around the country started just randomly giving him money.
00:51:03.000 Within just, within a day, within two days.
00:51:07.000 People had given him over $1,000,000 for beer.
00:51:09.000 I mean, it's just like a funny social media thing.
00:51:12.000 People just gave him over $1,000,000 for beer.
00:51:14.000 And then he did something pretty incredible, right?
00:51:16.000 He's raised over $1,000,000.
00:51:16.000 I mean, that's enough to retire on in Iowa, right?
00:51:20.000 And Carson King took that money.
00:51:22.000 He's 24 years old.
00:51:23.000 He took that money and he gave it to the University of Iowa Stead Family Children's Hospital for cancer research.
00:51:29.000 He took that entire $1,000,000 and he handed it over for cancer research.
00:51:32.000 That's an amazing story, right?
00:51:33.000 That's an amazing story.
00:51:36.000 But because we live in the worst timeline, social media then decided to destroy this guy.
00:51:42.000 And so what did they do?
00:51:42.000 People went back into his Twitter account.
00:51:44.000 They found something that he tweeted that was racist eight years ago when he was 16 years old.
00:51:51.000 He made some sort of reference, quoting and referencing the show Tosh.0, which is the show on Comedy Central.
00:51:58.000 It's a racially charged message.
00:52:01.000 Okay, and he had a contract with Anheuser-Busch, which had announced that it would match his donation to the University of Iowa Stead Family Children's Hospital.
00:52:09.000 And they ripped away whatever they were doing with him.
00:52:13.000 They said they would no longer associate with him.
00:52:15.000 He held a press conference on Tuesday to discuss the post.
00:52:17.000 He said, eight years ago, when I was a sophomore in high school, I made some social media posts with my friends that quoted and referenced the show Tosh.0.
00:52:24.000 One of those posts was brought to my attention by a member of the media today.
00:52:29.000 He said the Des Moines Register, who uncovered this, has been nothing but kind in all their coverage.
00:52:33.000 I appreciate the reporter pointing out the post to me.
00:52:35.000 I want everyone to understand this was my decision to publicly address the post and apologize.
00:52:39.000 I believe that is the right thing to do.
00:52:41.000 Anheuser-Busch said Carson King had multiple social media posts that do not align with our values as a brand or as a company, and we will have no further association with him.
00:52:49.000 We are honoring our commitment by donating more than $350,000 to the University of Iowa hospitals and clinics.
00:52:56.000 The contents of the offensive post have not been released.
00:52:58.000 The Des Moines Register reports that the post compared black mothers to gorillas and made light of black people killed in the Holocaust.
00:53:03.000 Okay, so let's take it for granted that the posts are terrible.
00:53:07.000 He was 16 years old, a sophomore in high school.
00:53:10.000 He is only now famous because he just gave a million dollars.
00:53:12.000 He's not a wealthy dude.
00:53:13.000 He gave a million dollars he received in donations to cancer research, and so he must be cancelled.
00:53:19.000 So you just cancelled a guy.
00:53:21.000 Who, again, is like lower middle class, it sounds like.
00:53:24.000 You cancelled that guy for the great crime of having risen to public prominence on the back of doing something incredible.
00:53:30.000 And you cancelled him.
00:53:31.000 Because of something he said in high school when he was 16 years old. 1.00
00:53:35.000 Guys, your standard's garbage. 1.00
00:53:36.000 And you are garbage, frankly. 1.00
00:53:37.000 And if you're the Des Moines Register and you reported on this, you are garbage. 1.00
00:53:40.000 Hey, if you're a reporter who decided this was newsworthy, it's because you're a garbage human being. 1.00
00:53:44.000 It is simply not newsworthy. 0.99
00:53:45.000 And if you were really concerned about this sort of activity, you know what you would have done?
00:53:49.000 Honestly?
00:53:49.000 You would have gone to Carson King, and you would have said, dude, you have these old social media posts.
00:53:54.000 You might want to delete them, or you might want to address them publicly, but I'm not going to report on them because I don't think that's fair.
00:54:00.000 But that's not what happened.
00:54:02.000 It is gross. 0.58
00:54:03.000 It is disgusting. 0.51
00:54:04.000 It is wrong.
00:54:05.000 But this is the world we live in, where as soon as someone reaches any level of prominence, they must be canceled if they have ever said a wrong thing.
00:54:11.000 Just despicable.
00:54:13.000 So, this is the timeline in which we live, and it is gross.
00:54:16.000 Okay, later today, we'll have two more additional hours of content with all the breaking news, and then we'll be back here tomorrow with all of the breaking news.
00:54:22.000 I promise you, it's only a Wednesday, guys.
00:54:24.000 There's gonna be a lot of breaking news.
00:54:25.000 President Trump, sometime this week, will release the whistleblower complaint.
00:54:28.000 News breaking hot and heavy, so keep it right here.
00:54:30.000 here.
00:54:30.000 You're listening to The Ben Shapiro Show.
00:54:31.000 The Ben Shapiro Show is produced by Robert Sterling.
00:54:39.000 Directed by Mike Joyner.
00:54:41.000 Executive producer, Jeremy Boring.
00:54:43.000 Senior producer, Jonathan Hay.
00:54:45.000 Our supervising producer is Mathis Glover.
00:54:47.000 And our technical producer is Austin Stevens.
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00:55:00.000 Copyright Daily Wire 2019.
00:55:02.000 Hey everyone, it's Andrew Klavan, host of The Andrew Klavan Show.
00:55:05.000 And if only Democrat Congressman Wiley Coyote had listened to The Andrew Klavan Show this week, he would have known that that ACME impeachment plan was going to blow up in his face.
00:55:15.000 The Andrew Klavan Show is where tomorrow happens first, so tune in.