A day in 2021 is like 10 years in regular time, because a day in 2011 is like ten years in Interstellar time. We re living the plot of a sci-fi movie. Democrats push forward with impeachment again in the House, as Republicans argue over how to respond. Ben Shapiro provides a quick update on all the latest on the Capitol break-in and the DOJ considers sedition charges against some of the culprits. The Secret Service is planning a massive security operation to protect the January 20th Inauguration Day event, and the White House is getting ready for a possible assault on the Inaugural by members of the public, including members of Congress and the Vice President's security detail, as they prepare to attend the big day in Washington, D.C. on Jan. 20th, the day after the first day of the first week in office. And, of course, there s a lot of news about the Democratic National Convention, including a possible impeachment attempt by the House of Representatives. Ben Shapiro talks about it all on today s episode of The Ben Shapiro Show. Subscribe to Ben Shapiro's new show, "The Ben Shapiro Report," wherever you get your shows, wherever you re listening to the show. Don t like the government spying on you? Then visit ExpressVPN.me/BenShapirovp to stay safe, anonymous, and anonymous, to stay safely anonymous. That is a great site for anonymous tips, tricks, and tips on how to avoid getting spied on by the government. You ll get 10% off your first month, plus an additional 10% discount when you sign up for ExpressVPN when you become a new customer! - use coupon code PODCASTLEAGUE at checkout to save $10,000 and get 20% off the first month. If you like the show, you ll get 15% off for the entire year, plus free shipping when you shop at ExpressVPN, and get an extra $5,000 when you upgrade to PANDORA when you re-up the service starts in the second month, you get a maximum of $50,000, plus a FREE 2-day shipping offer when you enter the offer gets full-up to $99,000 gets full of VIP access, and a discount gets you a year, and you get an ad discount, and they get a discount on your first year of VIP membership starts in two months only gets you an ad-free membership?
00:00:38.000I know you haven't thought about it recently, unless you've been listening to this show.
00:00:41.000But if you have been listening to the show, you know you're spending way too much on your cell phone bill because you are paying for unlimited talk and unlimited text and unlimited data.
00:01:28.000Get the same coverage as the big cell phone companies, but don't pay the same bills that you would be if you were Okay, so we begin with the quick update on everything that is happening in terms of violence and prosecutions.
00:01:37.000Ben Shapiro saved 50% off your first month and a lot of money down the road.
00:01:41.000Okay, so we begin with the quick update on everything that is happening in terms of violence and prosecutions.
00:01:47.000The acting U.S. attorney Michael Sherwin said yesterday that from the DOJ that he's not sure that the federal government has seen something like this.
00:01:54.000The wide variety of crimes that took place during the Capitol riots.
00:01:57.000They are apparently considering sedition charges against some of the people who broke into the Capitol and were going in there to do bodily harm to members of Congress.
00:02:08.000The range of criminal conduct is really, I think, again, unmatched in any type of scenario that we've seen, the FBI or the DOJ.
00:02:15.000We're looking at everything from simple trespass, to theft of mail, to theft of digital devices with inside the Capitol, to assault on local officers, federal officers both outside and inside the Capitol, to the theft of potential national security information or national defense information, to felony murder, and even
00:02:39.000Okay, and apparently there's the possibility that this is not going to stop before the inauguration.
00:02:52.000According to the Houston Chronicle, the Secret Service is going to launch a massive security operation to protect the Biden inauguration.
00:02:58.000This is being reported actually from the Washington Post, Carol Lennig, Karen Demirjian, Justin Juvenal, and Nick Miroff.
00:03:03.000They say the Secret Service and federal law enforcement agencies are spending the final days of the Trump administration bracing for a possible violent assault against the January 20th inauguration, launching a security mobilization that will be unlike any in modern U.S.
00:03:15.000On Wednesday, the Secret Service will take command of security preparations at the U.S.
00:03:18.000Capitol and other federal buildings backed by as many as 15,000 National Guard troops, thousands of police and tactical officers, layers of eight-foot steel fencing.
00:03:25.000The high alert security posture is starting six days earlier than planned in order to coordinate rules for the FBI, National Guard, U.S. Marshals Service, and a host of other federal agencies that will fall under Secret Service command. One Secret Service official said everyone can just rest assured they're throwing the kitchen sink at this event. Now, the reality is that many of the people who would be interested in engaging in violence actually would like to engage in violence with members of Capitol Police, with members of the Secret Service, because they are looking for That, of course, is not a reason not to have the security there.
00:03:56.000Everybody who is involved in any act of violence, and this has been my consistent standard for literally my entire life, should be arrested and locked up and the key thrown away.
00:04:04.000Veteran Secret Service and Homeland Security officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity to share their worries described a level of concern unlike anything in their careers.
00:04:10.000Threats they fear include a plot by armed groups to encircle the White House or U.S.
00:04:14.000Capitol and the inauguration event, as well as the possibility that gunmen could stage coordinated attacks against less fortified targets in the city.
00:04:21.000Apparently, House Democrats were briefed.
00:04:23.000By the new Capitol Police leadership on Monday night about threats to the inauguration from groups supporting Trump, the new security measures they're putting in place to avoid a repeat of last Wednesday's riot.
00:04:31.000Apparently, the threats included promises to execute members of Congress.
00:04:34.000The most dangerous came from a handful of extremist groups.
00:04:37.000On Tuesday, police in the Chicago suburbs arrested a 45-year-old named Luis Capriotti, charging with making threats to lawmakers last year, in which authorities say he promised to kill any Democrat who attempted to enter the White House on inauguration day.
00:04:49.000Representative Jim Himes of Connecticut said in an interview the threats are real but will not stop the transfer of power, which of course is true.
00:04:55.000And Vice President Mike Pence is planning on attending the inauguration.
00:04:58.000President Trump, of course, has said that he is not going to attend the inauguration.
00:05:02.000Okay, so meanwhile, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs wrote a letter to members of the armed forces telling everybody that Biden would become the 46th president.
00:05:12.000This is not necessary, but the fact that people even think it's necessary is really sad, obviously.
00:05:17.000The Joint Chiefs wrote a letter to everybody in the armed forces saying, the violent riot in Washington, D.C.
00:05:22.000on January 6th was a direct assault on the U.S.
00:05:24.000Congress, the Capitol building, our constitutional process.
00:05:26.000We mourn the deaths of two Capitol policemen and others connected to these unprecedented events.
00:05:30.000As service members who must embody the values and ideals of the nation, we support and defend the Constitution.
00:05:35.000Any act to disrupt the constitutional process is not only against our traditions, values, and oath, it is against the law.
00:05:40.000On January 20th, in accordance with the Constitution confirmed by the states and the courts, certified by Congress, President-elect Biden will be inaugurated and will become our 46th Commander-in-Chief.
00:05:51.000So that is obviously the military basically just making clear to everybody, including the media, guys, there's not going to be a coup attempt here, right?
00:06:19.000Meanwhile, the big news of the day, of course, is the Democrats are pushing toward impeachment.
00:06:22.000They do have a majority in the House that will certainly support impeachment today.
00:06:25.000The real question is whether Republicans are going to support that effort.
00:06:29.000The impeachment resolution has only one charge.
00:06:32.000So that single article of impeachment is all about incitement.
00:06:37.000The actual text of the impeachment resolution suggests that President Trump is responsible for the riots because he incited the riots.
00:06:46.000The actual text suggests that he reiterated false claims that we won the election.
00:06:52.000He willfully made statements that in context encourage and foreseeably resulted in lawless action at the Capitol, such as, if you don't fight like hell, you're not going to have a country anymore, thus incited by President Trump, says the incitement charge.
00:07:02.000Members of the crowd he had addressed in an attempt to, among other objectives, interfere with the joint session's solemn constitutional duty to certify the results of the 2020 presidential election, unlawfully breached and vandalized the Capitol, injured and killed law enforcement personnel, menaced members of Congress, the vice president, and congressional personnel, and engaged in other violent, deadly, destructive, and seditious acts.
00:07:21.000Trump's conduct on January 6th, this is all in the incitement charge that's going to be used as the basis for the impeachment in the House.
00:07:28.000Followed his prior efforts to subvert and obstruct the certification of the results of the 2020 presidential election.
00:07:33.000Those prior efforts included a phone call on January 2nd, 2021, during which President Trump urged the Secretary of State of Georgia, Brad Raffensperger, to quote-unquote, find enough votes to overturn the Georgia presidential election results and threaten Secretary Raffensperger if he failed to do so.
00:07:46.000In all of this, President Trump gravely endangered the security of the United States and its institutions of government.
00:07:51.000He threatened the integrity of the democratic system, interfered with the peaceful transition of power, and imperiled a co-equal branch of government.
00:07:57.000He thereby betrayed his trust as president to the manifest injury of the people of the United States, says the impeachment charge, whereby Trump by such conduct has demonstrated he will remain a threat to national security, democracy and the constitution if allowed to remain in office and has acted in a manner grossly incompatible with self-governance and the rule of law.
00:08:14.000Trump thus warrants impeachment and trial removal from office disqualification to hold and enjoy any office of honor, trust or profit under the United States.
00:08:21.000Okay, so that is the charge that is being put forth for impeachment.
00:08:25.000And so this requires us to now take a close look at what exactly are the rationales for impeachment and what are the rationales against impeachment.
00:08:31.000Because what we just saw is indeed unprecedented in modern times.
00:08:36.000President Trump spoke to a crowd of tens of thousands, possibly hundreds of thousands of people in Washington, D.C.
00:08:42.000Some of those people then went and invaded the Capitol building with, in some cases, blood on their mind.
00:09:01.000Lies that the Congress of the United States had the power to overturn state-certified electoral results.
00:09:06.000So what happened on Wednesday, as we talked about all of last week, and we'll continue to talk about, was absolutely egregious in every way.
00:09:12.000The question is whether this amounts to an impeachable charge against Trump.
00:09:30.000So if you want to say that impeachment is for High crimes and misdemeanors, meaning that an actual legal violation has to be found, it's going to be difficult to impeach Trump along those lines, as we'll get to in just one second.
00:09:42.000If you say that it is a political remedy to a political breach by the president, well then, impeachment looks more legitimate.
00:09:55.000We're going to try and be as dispassionate as possible and try to steelman some of the arguments in favor of impeachment and not strawman them.
00:10:02.000We're going to try and suggest what exactly are the arguments that folks are making and why exactly are those arguments flawed if they are flawed.
00:10:22.000And what you really need is to go over to blinds.com and shop top quality blinds, shades, interior shutters from home with easy online ordering and free shipping.
00:10:31.000The experts at Blinds.com understand that window treatments are one of the household items you just don't think about.
00:10:36.000They can make an enormous difference on the look and feel of your home.
00:10:39.000You don't need to do a full renovation.
00:10:40.000By simply changing what's on the windows, you can create a totally different feel because it changes how light comes into the home, which is a huge thing.
00:10:48.000Faux wood blinds, cellular and roller shades, even outdoor shades.
00:10:51.000If you're nervous about trying them, there's really no reason to be.
00:10:53.000Blinds.com has helped millions of homeowners through the process, plus they guarantee the perfect fit, whether you do it yourself or have them measure and install everything for you.
00:11:01.000We've used Blinds.com before, they really do a fantastic, fantastic job.
00:11:04.000Go right now, see how much you can save at Blinds.com.
00:11:07.000When you check out online, don't forget to tell them you heard about Blinds.com from the Ben Shapiro Show.
00:11:40.000Article one, incitement of insurrection.
00:11:42.000The Constitution provides that the House of Representatives shall have the sole power of impeachment and that the President shall be removed from office on impeachment for and conviction of treason, bribery, or other high crimes and misdemeanors.
00:11:53.000Further, Section 3 of the 14th Amendment to the Constitution prohibits any person who has engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the United States from holding any office under the United States.
00:12:02.000So they're trying to link this with the 14th Amendment.
00:12:03.000The 14th Amendment was specifically written in the aftermath of the Civil War in order to prevent people who had been Confederate handmaidens from serving in the government.
00:12:12.000It was to prevent Jefferson Davis from coming back as a senator.
00:12:15.000The notion that Trump falls under the 14th Amendment is an extraordinary stretch, just legally speaking.
00:12:20.000He doesn't fall under the 14th Amendment, neither does Josh Hawley, neither does Ted Cruz.
00:12:24.000That does not amount to an insurrection under the 14th Amendment.
00:12:29.000And so Ilhan Omar makes the dumb person's case this way.
00:12:30.000United States in violation of his constitutional oath faithfully to execute the office of the United States and to the best of his ability, preserve, provide, protect, defend the Constitution, they say that Trump engaged in high crimes and misdemeanors by inciting violence against the government of the United States. And so Ilhan Omar makes the dumb person's case this way.
00:12:46.000She says that this is like holding a murderer accountable.
00:12:48.000I know that some have likened the reaction that we are getting, obviously, from the president and some of, you know, Democrats and some of Republicans in Congress to someone saying, you know, if we were to hold a murderer or someone who's committed violence accountable, there will be more.
00:13:15.000And to me, it is Okay, so first of all, there is some grave irony to Ilhan Omar, who went extraordinarily soft on riots around the nation, talking about holding murderers accountable because you just have to hold people accountable for their violent actions.
00:13:36.000It's also supremely ironic from Ilhan Omar, who literally wrote a letter to a judge recommending that a recruit of ISIS ought to be let out of prison early.
00:13:44.000Because that person had been impacted by their social circumstances.
00:13:46.000So it's always weird to hear Democrats talk about crime and punishment in this way.
00:13:51.000In any case, what is the actual legal standard?
00:13:54.000So, if you're talking about legal incitement, the standards on legal incitement are really, really loose.
00:13:59.000In order to be considered responsible for incitement of violence, there is something the Supreme Court put in place in Brandenburg v. Ohio in 1969.
00:14:09.000The Brandenburg test was established to determine when inflammatory speech intending to advocate illegal action can be restricted.
00:14:15.000In the case of Brandenburg v. Ohio, according to Cornell Law School, a KKK leader gave a speech at a rally to his fellow Klansmen.
00:14:21.000After listing a number of derogatory racial slurs, he then said, quote, Okay, the court found that this was not actual, the speech has to be directed to inciting or producing imminent lawless action.
00:14:36.000Like, it has to be pretty clear, right?
00:14:37.000You want to incite lawless action right now, and the speech is likely to incite or produce such action.
00:14:43.000So, examples of things that are not actually applied under the Brandenburg Test would be Hess versus Indiana, 1973.
00:14:50.000The Supreme Court said that an Indiana University protester who said, we will take to the effing street again, The Supreme Court said that that was protected under the Brandenburg test because the speech amounted to nothing more than advocacy of illegal action at some indefinite future time.
00:15:05.000And the court said since there was no evidence or rational inference from the import of the language that his words were intended to produce or likely to produce imminent disorder, those words could not be punished by the state on the ground.
00:15:13.000They had a tendency to lead to violence.
00:15:16.000In NAACP versus Claiborne Hardware, 1982, the Supreme Court found that a person named Charles Evers threatened violence against those who refused to boycott white businesses.
00:15:26.000The Supreme Court, applied Brandenburg, found that the speech was protected.
00:15:29.000They said strong and effective extemporaneous rhetoric cannot be nicely channeled in purely dulcet phrases.
00:15:34.000An advocate must be free to stimulate his audience with spontaneous and emotional appeals for unity and action in a common cause.
00:15:39.000When such appeals do not incite lawless action, they must be regarded as protected speech.
00:15:44.000So, the Supreme Court has had a pretty broad standard, and virtually all lawyers agree that what Trump did does not amount to legal incitement, right?
00:15:51.000You couldn't charge him in a court of law with incitement.
00:15:53.000That's specifically true because, again, you can argue that Trump was urging imminent action, right?
00:15:59.000He literally said, I want you to go to the Capitol building and march with me.
00:16:02.000But he also said, peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard.
00:16:05.000So he didn't say, I want you to go to the Capitol and invade the Capitol.
00:16:12.000None of this is to argue that what Trump has been doing for the past couple months is appropriate, decent, or good.
00:16:17.000But in order to meet the test of legal incitement, which is the crime that you would want under high crimes and misdemeanors, the test is a little bit higher.
00:16:24.000That test is, did he mean to incite imminent lawless action?
00:16:50.000I know that everyone here will soon be marching over to the Capitol building to peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard.
00:16:59.000Today we will see whether Republicans stand strong for integrity.
00:17:06.000Okay, so again, peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard is not quite the same thing as I want you to go over there, invade the Capitol building, and beat a police officer to death.
00:17:15.000That doesn't seem like quite the same thing.
00:17:17.000So in any Senate defense against impeachment, obviously that is going to be Trump's defense.
00:17:22.000Listen, if you wanted to impeach me for all the stuff that I've said since the election, then you'd have to find the grounds upon which you could impeach me.
00:17:31.000You can't find those grounds, and to suggest that I incited the violence as opposed to raising the temperature is a different thing.
00:17:37.000Now, listen, I've had that standard for a very long time, right?
00:17:39.000I've said this a thousand times on the show.
00:17:41.000When Barack Obama said over and over and over again that the police were racist across the country, that the policing had a systemically racist problem, that blacks in America were at existential risk, and then a Black Lives Matter supporter went and shot to death six Dallas police officers in 2016, I didn't say that Obama was responsible.
00:17:56.000I said that Obama was responsible for increasing the temperature in the country, and that was really bad.
00:18:00.000But was he responsible for the man shooting six police officers?
00:18:05.000Bernie Sanders spent years claiming that if you didn't back Medicare for All, it's because you wanted people to die.
00:18:10.000That Republican attempts to stymie Obamacare were designed at killing people.
00:18:13.000And then a Bernie Sanders supporter went and shot a bunch of members of Congress, including Steve Scalise, almost to death.
00:18:19.000I said at the time, Bernie Sanders was responsible for raising the temperature.
00:18:23.000Did he deserve to lose his office for quote-unquote incitement?
00:18:25.000No, that's not the way any of this works.
00:18:28.000Okay, so my standard for incitement has been completely consistent across time for Democrats and Republicans.
00:18:33.000I cannot say the same for most of the people in the political sphere.
00:18:37.000And again, it is worth noting, politics is replete with all sorts of, I would say, violent rhetoric, rhetoric that exacerbates the tensions, that raises the temperature, passionate rhetoric that Is it implicit with sort of violent imagery?
00:18:56.000I mean, how many times have you heard a politician say that we need to fight, fight, fight, fight, fight?
00:18:59.000I mean, that's Republican and Democrat.
00:19:01.000In fact, here's a little montage of various Democrats using some rather inflammatory language just over the course of the past couple of years.
00:19:08.000I just don't even know why there aren't uprisings all over the country, and maybe there will be.
00:19:13.000People need to start taking to the streets.
00:19:56.000So, as far as the first rationale for impeachment, which is that Trump committed a crime, it's going to be very difficult to meet that test.
00:20:02.000Okay, so that brings us to the second argument in favor of impeachment.
00:20:09.000The second argument in favor of impeachment Is that this was a challenge to the legislative branch, that the legislative branch of government cannot abide challenges from the executive branch of government.
00:20:20.000If the executive branch of government attacks the legislature in the way that Trump attacked the legislature, rhetorically speaking, that the legislative branch needs to fight back, particularly if that culminates in an actual attack by armed supporters of that person on the Capitol building.
00:20:36.000Our sole method of protecting ourselves against the executive branch is for us to strike back with impeachment.
00:20:40.000This is the angle that's being taken by Liz Cheney, the number three House Republican.
00:20:43.000A lot of people very angry at Liz Cheney today.
00:20:46.000Again, I think the differences, as always, my opinion on this is the differences of opinion are acceptable within the Republican caucus and within the Democratic caucus.
00:20:53.000I think we should we have to take the argument at least seriously, even if we decide at the end that the argument lacks.
00:20:59.000She said she's going to vote to impeach Trump today.
00:21:01.000She says on January 6th, a violent mob attacked the United States Capitol to obstruct the process of our democracy and stop the counting of presidential electoral votes.
00:21:08.000This insurrection caused injury, death and destruction in the most sacred space of our republic.
00:21:12.000Much more will become clear in the coming days and weeks.
00:21:36.000The argument here is that on a broad sort of causal level, without Trump, none of this happens, which is very likely true, right?
00:21:43.000On a broad causal level, it's true that James Hodgkin, the congressional baseball shooter, doesn't go and shoot a bunch of people if Bernie Sanders isn't saying what he's saying.
00:21:51.000Lots of rhetoric is endemic to violence that happens in the nature of politics.
00:21:59.000Right, so the reality here of what she's saying, which is that this is a challenge to the legislative branch that culminated in violence, that's an actual argument, and that's an argument that I've heard from a lot of good-hearted Republicans and a lot of conservatives who have called for impeachment.
00:22:11.000I heard the Wall Street Journal editorial board made a similar argument last week.
00:22:15.000Which of the legislative branch has to defend itself.
00:22:17.000And that's an argument worth taking seriously.
00:22:19.000Now what's sort of interesting about the argument is that the argument that Trump was making originally is that he was imputing powers to Congress that Congress does not actually have.
00:22:27.000It's sort of a bizarre situation because usually when the executive challenges the legislature, it's to deprive the legislature of powers that the legislature does have.
00:22:36.000Usually when you hear presidents attacking the legislature, it's the do-nothing Congress.
00:22:39.000If you don't do what I want to do, then I'm just going to use the pen and a phone.
00:22:42.000The legislature is an institution that is not worthy of respect, and so we're just going to take its authority and use it here in the executive branch.
00:22:49.000In this particular case, Trump was doing the very odd, bizarre, and constitutionally incorrect thing of suggesting that the legislature, the federal legislature, had the power to actually overturn state electoral results.
00:22:59.000He was imputing power to Congress that Congress doesn't actually have.
00:23:02.000Nonetheless, The president urging people to go march on the Capitol building, even if not to do violence, is a unique thing.
00:23:17.000Again, that comes down to whether Trump actually incited.
00:23:20.000So the broad causal argument, I'm not sure sustains all the way through.
00:23:26.000In other words, did Trump tell people?
00:23:28.000I think that the legal incitement standard is not just for me a legal incitement standard.
00:23:32.000I think it's sort of a moral incitement standard, too.
00:23:35.000When it comes to the issue of causation, you can say that, broadly speaking, Trump caused everything that followed.
00:23:40.000But I think that on a moral level, can you say that Trump is Responsible to the extent that he wanted people to go invade the Capitol building and attack Mike Pence physically and harm people.
00:23:53.000I think that is going to be a bit of a stretch.
00:23:56.000So, does that mean that it's completely out of bounds for Liz Cheney to say what she said?
00:24:01.000I don't think it's completely out of bounds.
00:24:02.000I just think that her argument is too strong and proves too much.
00:24:05.000Because you can certainly see a point in the past or in the future where the presidency attacks a co-equal branch of government in extraordinary language And as long as he's not urging people to openly attack that institution, that's still an attack on a co-equal branch of government.
00:24:18.000That sort of stuff happens pretty regularly in American politics.
00:24:20.000The issue here is that a bunch of fringe wackos decided that they were going to invade the Capitol building under those auspices.
00:24:27.000And then finally, we'll get to in just a second, the third, the third rationale for impeachment.
00:24:31.000And the third rationale for impeachment is just pure politics.
00:24:35.000So the first was something criminal happened.
00:25:04.000But It's hard to look at the actions of Democrats in leadership over the last 48 hours, last week, really, and not see an attempt to play politics.
00:26:30.000As I say, there are three reasons why impeachment is being pursued.
00:26:35.000One is that some people think that Trump actually committed a formal crime.
00:26:38.000I think that that's a very difficult standard to uphold.
00:26:40.000Very few lawyers would say that it counts as legal incitement what Trump did the other day.
00:26:44.000Number two is the overall challenge to the legislative branch.
00:26:47.000I think there is some legitimacy to the idea that Trump challenged the authority of the legislative branch who's sending people to march on the Capitol building.
00:26:53.000I also think that that has been a long time move by a variety of presidents.
00:26:57.000This is just a much more extreme version of it.
00:27:00.000I mean, FDR suggested that he was going to pack the Supreme Court because he didn't like the outcome of the Supreme Court.
00:27:05.000If his supporters had then gone and marched on the Supreme Court, it would look like something very similar.
00:27:09.000So, once you separate out the incitement issue and you get into the challenge to the legislative branch, then that looks bad and ugly.
00:27:17.000I'm not sure that it looks impeachable.
00:27:18.000I understand the countervailing logic, by the way, which is the Liz Cheney logic, which is the legislative branch cannot stand for this sort of infringement on its authority.
00:27:27.000And in fact, you know, I'm kind of happy to see if the legislative branch wants to stand up to the executive just on a broad level.
00:27:32.000My problem is I think it's partisan, but if the legislative branch wants to far more often stand up to the executive branch, I think that'd be a welcome development.
00:27:40.000Finally, there's the third rationale for impeachment, and this one seems like it's the most cynical.
00:27:45.000It's also probably the most accurate because we live in a very cynical time, and that is just pure politics.
00:27:49.000This is not really about principles so much as it is about the pure politics of the situation.
00:27:53.000The way that you can tell There's a lot of truth to this, is the way that the Democrats decided that they wanted to move forward with the impeachment.
00:28:01.000The first thing that they did is they pushed for Mike Pence to use the 25th Amendment.
00:28:06.000They passed a resolution trying to push Mike Pence to use the 25th Amendment.
00:28:11.000Okay, the 25th Amendment is an executive branch remedy for the president being incompetent.
00:28:16.000It was originally put into law after Woodrow Wilson essentially went brain dead while he was president of the United States, and his wife, Edith, was essentially running the country.
00:28:24.000And so, Congress, the states, they decided, you know what?
00:28:27.000We're going to need a solution to this, and that is the cabinet can declare that the president is incompetent and then replace him with the vice president.
00:28:32.000But that is an executive branch remedy.
00:28:34.000It has to then be greenlit by the legislative branch.
00:28:37.000It's a very complicated process, but It's generally not the legislative branch threatening that if the executive branch doesn't do what it wants, then they are going to impeach.
00:28:45.000That would be the legislative branch now encroaching on the territory of the executive branch, right?
00:28:52.000So it's sort of the reverse of the argument that was being made a second ago about why Trump needs to be impeached for violating the prerogatives of the legislature.
00:28:59.000So Nancy Pelosi tried to pass a resolution suggesting use of the 25th Amendment and Mike Pence slapped that down.
00:29:08.000He said he's not going to invoke the 25th Amendment.
00:29:10.000He said, Every American was shocked and saddened by the attack on our nation's capital last week.
00:29:14.000I'm grateful for the leadership you and other congressional leaders provided in reconvening Congress to complete the people's business on that very same day.
00:29:19.000It was a moment that demonstrated to the American people the unity that is still possible in Congress when it is needed most.
00:29:24.000But now, with just eight days left in the President's term, you and the Democratic Caucus are demanding that the Cabinet and I invoke the 25th Amendment.
00:29:31.000I do not believe that such a course of action is in the best interest of our nation or consistent with our Constitution.
00:29:35.000Last week, I did not yield to pressure to exert power beyond my constitutional authority to determine the outcome of the election.
00:29:41.000I will not now yield to efforts in the House of Representatives to play political games at a time so serious in the life of our nation.
00:29:46.000So Pence is saying, like, I can see the politics here, lady.
00:29:48.000Like, we know exactly what you're doing.
00:29:50.000As you know full well, the 25th Amendment was designed to address presidential incapacity or disability.
00:29:55.000Just a few months ago, when you introduced legislation to create a 25th Amendment commission, you said, quote, a president's fitness for office must be determined by science and fact.
00:30:02.000You said then, we must be very respectful of not making a judgment on the basis of a comment or behavior we don't like, but based on a medical decision.
00:30:27.000In the midst of a global pandemic, economic hardship for millions of Americans, and the tragic events of January 6th, now is the time for us to come together.
00:30:35.000I urge you and every member of Congress to avoid actions that would further divide and inflame the passions of the moment.
00:30:39.000Work with us to lower the temperature and unite our country as we prepare to inaugurate President-elect Biden as the next President of the United States.
00:30:45.000I pledge to you that I will continue to do my part to work in good faith with the incoming administration to ensure an orderly transition of power.
00:30:57.000I mean, Mike Pence has done what he was constitutionally supposed to do under heavy pressure from Trump to violate his constitutional oath of office.
00:31:06.000There are apparently now stories emerging that Trump had said directly to Pence when it came to whether he should count the duly certified electoral votes that you can either be a patriot or you can be a p-word.
00:31:17.000See how I say P-word even if it's not a Cardi B song?
00:31:19.000Apparently that's what Trump said to Pence, and Pence decided actually to be a patriot, which is to do his constitutional duty.
00:31:26.000Okay, but the fact that the Democrats were attempting the 25th Amendment, as opposed to impeachment first, suggests that politics were being played here.
00:31:33.000Also suggesting that politics are being played here, that this is a lot about democratic political game, is who Nancy Pelosi is now appointing to be the managers, the House impeachment managers.
00:31:44.000So, included among their number, Eric Swalwell.
00:31:48.000Who most recently was seen screwing Chinese spies, apparently, and being on the intelligence committee at the same time.
00:31:58.000Jamie Raskin of Maryland is going to serve as the lead impeachment manager.
00:32:03.000Jamie Raskin did indeed, in 2016, challenge 10 of 29's Of Florida's 29 electoral votes, saying that they violated Florida's prohibition against dual office holders.
00:32:13.000So it's interesting that, you know, the apparent push by Trump to challenge electoral votes.
00:32:20.000Jamie Raskin is going to be leading the way on the impeachment, despite the fact that Jamie Raskin did the exact same thing back in 2016.
00:32:26.000Meanwhile, as far as playing politics goes, the Democrats are not stopping at Trump, of course.
00:32:30.000Their suggestion is that it's time to expel members of Congress who challenged electoral votes.
00:32:36.000So, Democrats are now pushing that measure.
00:32:39.000According to the New York Times, Progressive House Democrats on Monday introduced legislation that would allow a committee to investigate and potentially expel Republican lawmakers who had participated in efforts to subvert the results of the November election.
00:32:49.000I don't like what they did either, okay?
00:32:50.000I don't think the electoral votes should have been challenged.
00:32:52.000issue a report on lawmakers who had sought to overturn the election and determine if they should face sanction, including removal from the House of Representatives.
00:32:59.000You don't like what they did, so now you're going to expel them.
00:33:01.000They're duly elected members of Congress.
00:33:03.000You're going to expel them from the House of Representatives.
00:33:05.000Now I don't like what they did either.
00:33:06.000OK, I don't think the electoral votes should have been challenged.
00:33:08.000I don't even think there's a ground for the challenge of the electoral votes.
00:33:12.000And this time apparently in the minority when it comes to the House of Representatives, where a bunch of Republican House members actually issued the challenges.
00:33:17.000But just because I don't like something doesn't mean that you get to expel the member.
00:33:21.000Again, Jamie Raskin did the exact same thing in 2016.
00:33:23.000I don't think he should lose his House seat because of that.
00:33:25.000He should if he's... I mean, I don't think he should hold a House seat based on electoral results, but I don't think he should be expelled.
00:33:31.000The Democrats' attempt to expand the definition of the 14th Amendment to include challenges to electoral votes is really, really crazy, and super political, obviously.
00:33:39.000Cori Bush, a Black Lives Matter Democrat, right?
00:33:42.000I mean, that's literally how she got her start, as a Black Lives Matter activist.
00:33:44.000She said, even if it's just a few, we have to make sure the message is clear.
00:33:47.000You cannot be a sitting Congress member and incite an insurrection and work to overturn an election.
00:33:52.000Okay, now we get into, like, super political territory, because the Democrats worked for four years to overturn the results of the 2016 election with all of the Russia nonsense.
00:34:01.000Democrats refused to accept that Trump had been elected President of the United States in 2016 in any serious way.
00:34:07.000So, like, this is the third rationale for impeachment and it seems like, frankly, the most obvious, which is the purely political.
00:34:14.000Sherrod Brown, the Senator from Ohio, he suggested that the Senate of the United States should move to expel Josh Hawley under the 14th Amendment.
00:34:43.000The public humiliation doesn't seem to matter much, even some of their allies.
00:34:47.000Senator Hawley, his sort of mentor, former Senator Danforth, has said that he wished he hadn't encouraged him to run for the Senate.
00:35:00.000They're hearing that, but the Senate as a body needs to take action, and I know Senator McConnell won't.
00:35:06.000But we should, if he's not going to resign, which of course they won't, they continue to be like Trump and take no responsibility for anything, even though we saw their words, we saw the picture of Holly, who George Will said there's a huge chasm between his ambition and his achievement, then we should take action on expulsion.
00:35:27.000Okay, so again, that looks super duper political.
00:35:30.000So those were the three rationales in favor of impeachment.
00:37:16.000Tomorrow night is a big night for The Daily Wire, for this company.
00:37:19.000Daily Wire makes its grand entrance into entertainment content.
00:37:21.000We've been talking for a long time about culture being upstream of politics and how Republicans, conservatives, people who are just not of the left need to fight the culture war.
00:37:55.000The movie follows a high school besieged by a quartet of school shooters when one young girl, 17-year-old Zoe Hull, uses her wits and survival skills to fight back.
00:38:02.000This is not like a typical conservative documentary about like George Washington's mother's cousin.
00:38:07.000We are excited to bring you excellent, edgy, cutting edge stories that Hollywood refuses to acknowledge.
00:38:12.000We hope you'll join us for the special event tomorrow night at 7 p.m.
00:38:35.000Secondly, a challenge to the legislative branch.
00:38:36.000It needs to be rebutted by the legislative branch.
00:38:39.000And third, this is just pure politics and we need the pure politics of the situation.
00:38:42.000Okay, finally, here's the rationales against impeachment.
00:38:45.000Okay, number one, and this is just true, there's no time, okay?
00:38:48.000Realistically speaking, the impeachment is not going to have any effect because it is already, by the calendar, January 13th, one week from today, Joe Biden will be the president of the United States.
00:38:57.000He will not be the president-elect, he'll be the president one week from today.
00:39:01.000The Democrats are slated to vote on impeachment today.
00:39:06.000The Senate is not supposed to come back into session until January 19th.
00:39:09.000Okay, like the day before the inauguration.
00:39:11.000Even if the Senate were to reconvene in order to hear the charges, you would then have to have an actual defense for due process purposes put up by the Trump team.
00:39:22.000Okay, so realistically speaking, there will be no impeachment before the actual inauguration of Joe Biden, at which point impeachment becomes a moot point.
00:39:29.000This is a point that's made by Michael Luttig, a former judge on the U.S.
00:39:31.000Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit.
00:39:35.000It's not even constitutional to impeach a former president.
00:39:37.000Some of the Democrats have been saying, you know what we should do?
00:39:39.000We should just keep the impeachment going, and then we'll impeach him after he is no longer in office, and that will bar him from running again.
00:39:46.000And now, first of all, that looks purely political, because at that point, Trump is not even in office.
00:39:51.000I guess you're passing a bill saying that he can't run for office again, kind of, but you don't need an impeachment in order to do that, presumably.
00:39:57.000You could theoretically just pass a bill to that effect, I think.
00:40:12.000The president, vice president, all civil officers of the United States shall be removed from office on impeachment for and conviction of treason, bribery, or other high crimes and misdemeanors.
00:40:21.000The House of Representatives shall have the sole power of impeachment.
00:40:24.000So judgment in cases of impeachment shall not extend further than to removal from office and disqualification to hold and enjoy any office of honor, trust, or profit under the The party convicted shall nevertheless be liable and subject to indictment, trial, judgment, and punishment according to law.
00:40:36.000It's pretty obvious that this is designed to remove the president from office.
00:40:40.000A secondary purpose is to disqualify a president from holding office.
00:40:44.000Again, Ludwig says it's the impeachment that is the authority for the disqualification.
00:40:48.000A former president cannot be removed from office because he is not in office.
00:40:52.000Also, the Constitution says that if you actually want to go after him, the Constitution says specifically he will still be liable and subject to indictment, trial, judgment, and punishment according to the law.
00:41:01.000Democrats are saying they can start this thing now and they can finish it later.
00:41:05.000Okay, so that is just not going to happen.
00:41:07.000So realistically speaking, there is no time to get this done, just on a purely realistic timeline level.
00:41:12.000So that is a prudential argument, it is also a legal argument.
00:41:15.000Okay, second, there's the sort of broader narrative argument.
00:41:18.000So the broader narrative argument, which is the counterpart to the argument in favor.
00:41:20.000The argument in favor is Trump did a bunch of bad stuff that resulted, broadly speaking, what happened at the Capitol building.
00:41:25.000The countervailing narrative is that the attempt to impeach Trump is really just the camel's nose, right?
00:41:31.000That what it really is about is not Trump.
00:41:33.000It's about trying to lump Trump in with every one of his supporters and then lump all of those supporters in with what happened at the Capitol riots.
00:41:40.000So the argument is, it goes something like this.
00:41:43.000What you guys are really trying to do with impeachment is you're trying to suggest that Trump's actions resulted directly in what happened at the Capitol building.
00:41:52.000And that because Trump has not changed over the past five years, all of that was 100% foreseeable.
00:41:57.000And that if you're saying that it's 100% foreseeable, that means that everybody who voted for Trump, anybody who backed anything Trump ever did, anybody who suggested that Trump would be better for the country than the countervailing Democrats, anybody who voted, all 75 million people voted for Trump, All of those people should have known, and in fact did know, what exactly was going to go down at the Capitol.
00:42:14.000Or at least, they were okay with what went down at the Capitol.
00:42:17.000Because of course, it was completely foreseeable.
00:42:23.000And so what impeachment is really about, politically speaking, is about smearing every Trump supporter with the stain of what happened at the Capitol building.
00:42:34.000That argument is not true for every Democrat.
00:42:36.000It's not true for everybody who's liberal.
00:42:37.000There are a lot of Democrats and liberals who say, listen, the people who did that, they're responsible for what they did.
00:42:42.000Trump's actions are unsustainable on a personal level, but I'm not going to suggest that every Republican knew this was coming.
00:42:47.000I'm not going to say that every Republican is responsible for this.
00:42:49.000Unfortunately, there's a lot of credibility to this argument for people who oppose the impeachment because Democrats keep saying over and over and over again that they're lumping all Republicans together, which, by the way, is extraordinarily dangerous for the country.
00:43:00.000There are many dangerous things happening in the country right now.
00:43:02.000One is a group of people who are disconnected from reality doing violence at the Capitol building and maybe threatening further violence down the road here.
00:43:17.000The other extraordinarily dangerous thing is labeling half the country people who support violence and then seeking to quash their ability to speak freely.
00:43:30.000Many dangerous things can happen all at once.
00:43:32.000So in favor of the argument that what impeachment is truly about is targeting his supporters, all you have to do is look at the Democratic side of the aisle where they keep saying this kind of stuff over and over and over again.
00:43:41.000So for example, AOC says that we need to rein in our media environment.
00:43:47.000The natural consequence of this should be to rein in our media environment.
00:43:50.000We need like a truth and reconciliation commission like South Africa.
00:44:05.000But AOC says we need to rein in the First Amendment, essentially.
00:44:07.000Well, that's lumping everybody in together, is it not?
00:44:09.000Here was the estimable Representative Alexander Ocasio-Cortez, D-Twitch.
00:44:14.000But what I can say is that there's absolutely a commission that's being discussed, but it seems to be more investigatory I'm in style rather than truth and reconciliation.
00:44:25.000And so I think that's an interesting concept for us to explore.
00:44:29.000We're going to have to figure out how we rein in our media environment so that you can't just spew disinformation and misinformation.
00:44:42.000She also said that we can only begin to heal if southern states become democratic.
00:44:45.000So it seems almost as though this is purely political and about targeting Trump supporters.
00:44:50.000Here was the estimable Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez once again.
00:44:54.000That southern states are not red states.
00:44:57.000They are suppressed states, which means the only way that our country is going to heal is through the actual liberation of southern states The actual liberation of the poor.
00:45:11.000The actual liberation of working people from economic, social, and racial oppression.
00:45:49.000And now, she's gonna be appointed, she's on the Supreme Court, put there by Trump.
00:45:53.000That means everything Trump ever did, anything he ever touched, anybody who's in favor of those things is bad.
00:45:56.000Right, so the case against impeachment here is that when you're impeaching Trump, what you're really doing is you are setting the predicate for an argument, which is that, again, not only is he responsible for quote-unquote incitement, but everybody who voted for him knew that this sort of stuff was gonna culminate in what happened at the Capitol building, which is an absurd contention.
00:46:13.000Okay, but that is, you know, what much of the Democratic left is pushing.
00:46:18.000You have Nicole Hannah-Jones saying the same thing, right?
00:46:20.000She basically just says, well, you know, those Capitol rioters, essentially, they're just reflecting the generalized Republican point of view, right?
00:46:26.000Because she believes that all Republicans are basically racists who are seeking to impose white supremacy on the nation.
00:46:30.000Here was the excreble, awful, terrible liar, Nicole Hannah-Jones.
00:46:36.000The racial divide has always been, since the American Revolution, when the British exploited the racial divide against the colonists, the sharpest tool in the arsenal.
00:46:50.000Reaction to the stoking of that racial divide.
00:46:53.000And it never benefits low-income white Americans.
00:47:29.000He says the insurrection was rooted in lies.
00:47:32.000He says, from day one at the White House, up has been down, yes has been no, failure has been success.
00:47:38.000He cites Sean Spicer and Kellyanne Conway.
00:47:41.000He says, as American democracy rebounds, we need to return to a standard of truth when it comes to how the government communicates with the governed.
00:47:47.000The easiest way to do that, from where I sit, is to create repercussions for those who don't follow the civic norms.
00:47:51.000Trump's lawyers lie gleefully to the press and public.
00:47:53.000Those lies magically almost never made it into briefs and arguments.
00:47:56.000So, what's the parallel in the dark arts of communication?
00:47:59.000Don't let the chronic liars cash in on their dishonesty.
00:48:01.000Press secretaries like Joe Lockhart, Ari Fleischer, and Jay Carney, who left the White House with their reputations in various stages of intact, made millions taking their skills and credibility to corporate America.
00:48:09.000Trump's liars don't merit the same golden parachute.
00:48:12.000Let it be known to the business world.
00:48:13.000Hire any of Trump's fellow fabulous above, and Forbes will assume everything your company or firm talks about is a lie.
00:48:20.000So Jay Carney is now the standard of truth, according to Forbes.
00:48:23.000So we're going to excise everyone who worked with Trump, not just Trump, everybody who worked with Trump is going to be excised.
00:48:30.000Meanwhile, YouTube is cracking down on Trump.
00:48:33.000According to the Washington Post, YouTube has now suspended Trump from uploading new videos to his official account for at least a week, joining Twitter and Facebook and shutting the president out of his account due to concerns his posts will incite violence.
00:48:45.000So again, they've not made the case that his post did incite the violence in any sort of legal fashion, doesn't matter.
00:48:52.000They're just gonna take what Trump says and they're just gonna remove it.
00:48:54.000Okay, and everybody on the right is going, okay, so you can now make the argument that anything that I say is going to incite violence as well and just remove that willy nilly.
00:49:02.000So when the left uses this as a tool, as a political tool to club into submission, all the people on the right, then I don't think the right is wrong to look sideways at impeachment and say, I'm doubting some of your motives here.
00:49:14.000I'm doubting some of your motives, which brings us to the third case against impeachment.
00:49:18.000OK, the third case against impeachment goes something like this.
00:49:22.000If you wish for the country to reunite, then Democrats are going to have to show some magnanimity and victory here.
00:49:36.000If we have criminal charges to bring, we'll bring them against the people who actually violated the law.
00:49:40.000And in order to move forward here, we're going to recognize there are a lot of Republicans across the other side of the aisle who disagree with us on impeachment, but who stood with us in the face of threats to democracy, right?
00:50:26.000This impeachment is causing tremendous anger.
00:50:30.000And you're doing it, and it's really a terrible thing that they're doing.
00:50:35.000Okay, so, you know, that is going to start generating more and more support the more that the left continues to lump in everybody with Trump.
00:50:41.000Tim Scott has put out a tweet thread suggesting why he is not in favor of impeachment.
00:50:47.000He tweeted, A lot of people saying, well, you know, if he deserves impeachment, then like you're talking unity, but nobody was talking unity last week.
00:52:05.000I think most Republicans agree with that.
00:52:08.000That unevidenced allegations are not sufficient to support action.
00:52:13.000I think that the right should agree with that.
00:52:15.000In fact, there have been some of us who've been saying this since the day of the election, when President Trump declared himself the victor.
00:52:19.000I said immediately, he does not have the evidence to back that.
00:52:22.000I got a lot of flack from the right for saying that.
00:52:49.000Especially in the midst of this massive backlash against people of the right on tech platforms, in the midst of removing Parler from Amazon Web Services, and all the rest.
00:52:59.000So what exactly would be the proper response here?
00:53:01.000Some people are like, okay, well, you're saying no impeachment.
00:53:05.000Well, it seems to me, number one, that the generalized sort of Republican leadership position, which is Republicans should vote whatever their conscience decides, is not a bad impulse.
00:53:14.000I think that when Republicans do that, I'm generally in favor.
00:53:18.000I don't think that you need a lot of top-down direction inside Republican circles.
00:53:21.000I think it sort of cuts against the nature of conservatism.
00:53:24.000So, you know, Mitch McConnell not rallying support against the cause again, because I think that there's some legitimate claims here.
00:53:49.000But what do I think is the actual proper response?
00:53:50.000I think the actual proper response is what Brian Fitzpatrick, the Republican congressperson from Pennsylvania, suggested.
00:53:57.000He was moving for an act of congressional censure.
00:53:59.000Kevin McCarthy, the House Minority Leader, was also pushing for congressional censure of President Trump's behavior.
00:54:05.000That seems proper to me because, again, the president did not commit a crime, but that doesn't mean you can't censure him for his language.
00:54:11.000You can't censure him for his actions.
00:54:17.000Democrats have rejected that out of hand because they want something obviously more dramatic.
00:54:20.000And again, a lot of this is about holding over the heads of conservatives the threat that if you ever say anything in the future, we just say, well, you voted for Trump and Trump resulted in the Capitol riot.
00:54:30.000That's going to be the line from Democrats from here to the end of time.
00:54:32.000Republicans know it, which is why so many Republicans are knee-jerk against what Democrats are trying to do here.
00:54:37.000Okay, meanwhile, one of the things that is forwarding a lot of the ire on the right is, again, that vast wave that you are seeing from the left.
00:54:45.000You're trying to lump everybody together and suggest that every Trump supporter knew this was coming, and that if you voted for Trump, this was part of the bargain.
00:54:51.000It was riots at the Capitol building, which is just not true.
00:54:54.000Again, if the policing had been sufficient, that would not have been the outcome there.
00:54:58.000A lot of people would have gotten arrested.
00:55:00.000In any case, the next move is the social media attempt to shut down all dissenting speech.
00:55:07.000And this is the thing that's scaring the hell out of everybody, right?
00:55:09.000We have seen YouTube and Twitter and Facebook all move in coordination to censor the President of the United States.
00:55:15.000You don't have to like what Trump says.
00:55:18.000That does not mean that the best move here is for social media to literally shut off the tap for the President of the United States.
00:55:25.000The social media companies should not be held responsible for people posting content that is then misused by fringe people to go do violence because that literally justifies the removal of any controversial speech ever.
00:55:39.000As somebody who's in the business of political speech, it is not difficult to find, for people who have very, very large audiences, nutjobs who will misuse their words to go do bad things.
00:55:49.000The left doesn't seem to care about it, though, because they know they're not going to be held accountable for it, so if they hold the right accountable for it, this means they can also deplatform sites they don't particularly like.
00:55:56.000So Amazon Web Services takes down Parler, and then Amazon Web Services put out a brief Pointing out all of the bad things that have been said on Parler.
00:56:03.000All the violent things that have been said on Parler.
00:56:16.000So Sheryl Sandberg of Facebook, she said, you know, these riots were not organized on our platform.
00:56:20.000Then she adds, as far as we know, I'm not sure how far that is.
00:56:23.000I would assume that many of the people who, I mean, stopped the steal was still on Facebook up until about 24 hours ago.
00:56:29.000So I assume that a lot of the activity actually was coordinated in places like Facebook because Facebook is a hell of a lot bigger than Parler is.
00:57:34.000I'm not sure Black Lives Matter was using Parler as its organizing weapon.
00:57:37.000If the idea is that platforms are now responsible for people misusing the platforms, that's the, I mean, honestly, that's a bigger argument against free speech.
00:57:45.000And that is the argument that people on the left are now making.
00:57:47.000They're basically saying free speech is inherently dangerous because free speech can be misused.
00:57:53.000The government cracking down on free speech or...
00:57:56.000In the cultural sphere, social media, which was supposed to be the public square, cracking down on free speech, particularly from apps that centralize conservatives.
00:58:05.000That is a very, very dangerous thing because there is no consistent standard.
00:58:30.000It is that when it is located in quote-unquote conservative or Trump-supporting circles, and it seems to centralize those supporters in one place, then it's super bad and becomes targeted by the entire tech bro infrastructure.
00:58:46.000And they do not have, overall, a great commitment to free speech.
00:58:50.000I think the most ironic tweet of yesterday, it was getting passed around an awful lot, was this tweet from Twitter Public Policy.
00:58:56.000So, according to Twitter Public Policy, ahead of the Ugandan elections, they said they were hearing reports that the internet service providers were being ordered to block social media and messaging apps.
00:59:03.000They said, we strongly condemn internet shutdowns.
00:59:05.000They're hugely harmful, violate basic human rights and the principles of the open internet.
00:59:08.000And then they added, access to information and freedom of expression, including the public conversations on Twitter, is never more important than during democratic processes, particularly elections.
00:59:23.000I was, I mean, I'm old enough to remember because I'm more than six months old.
00:59:28.000When you for a month suspended the New York Post in the run up to an election because you didn't like that they printed a true story about Joe Biden's son's laptop.
00:59:36.000And so do I trust you guys being a free speech outlet?
00:59:51.000Do I trust that Facebook is going to be consistent in its standards or that they are not going to morph their standards in order to excise conservative speech?
01:00:17.000And among those bad things is indeed the domination of social media, which is effectually our public square by the left.
01:00:23.000By the way, if you think that it is any sort of coincidence that Facebook and Twitter and YouTube all started doing the bidding of Democratic politicians the minute that Joe Biden won, You're a fool.
01:00:35.000It is purely obvious, and I know this from... I have many friends who work inside various tech companies.
01:00:42.000It is perfectly clear that the minute that Joe Biden won, and particularly the minute that the Republicans lost the Georgia Senate races, that the movement inside tech was going to be to please Democratic senators who are putting overt pressure on the tech bros to crack down on speech they don't like.
01:00:58.000So, when we're talking about threats to the Republic, people storming the Capitol building, yes, that is a threat to the Republic.
01:01:02.000It also happened to be a couple of hundred people who are violent and evil and ought to be put in jail.
01:01:08.000When you're talking about institutions that govern the lives and free speech patterns of hundreds of millions of people deciding arbitrarily what their free speech standards are, and doing so on the basis of politics and pressure from Democratic actors, Democratic senators claiming that they're gonna break up companies unless those companies do what they want, That seems to me like a threat to the Republic as well.
01:01:30.000And it is not a coincidence that so many members of the incoming Biden administration are tech bros.
01:01:35.000According to the Daily Caller, at least 14 people who Biden had picked to serve either in his administration or advise his transition have worked for big tech firms that cracked down earlier this week on President Trump.
01:01:44.000Apple's top lobbyist was a chief advisor to the Biden transition.
01:01:47.000A former Facebook executive will serve as staff director in the Biden White House.
01:01:50.000A former Twitter executive will serve as chief spokesperson for the National Security Council under Biden.
01:01:54.000Current and former executives at those firms and two others, Google and Amazon, fill out other positions in the incoming Biden administration.
01:02:00.000By the way, if you ever look at the donations of tech companies, I was looking this up the other day, donations by employees of the various tech companies, there is not a major tech company in the United States outside of Qualcomm, so far as I'm aware, that does not donate in extraordinary proportions to Democrats.
01:02:17.000There's a reason that Susan Rice, the Obama admin staffer who lies to the American public about Benghazi, now the newcoming domestic policy advisor for no reason in the Biden administration, she was on the Netflix board.
01:02:30.000Okay, as of 2018, 99.6% of all donations from Netflix employees went to Democrats.
01:02:33.000Adobe, 93% of all donations in 2018 went to Democrats.
01:03:23.000So why would you trust them to have any sort of consistent standard when they won't be transparent about those standards?
01:03:28.000And what we are watching, and all of this doesn't happen in a vacuum, right?
01:03:32.000When bad things happen on the right, very often there's a corollary on the left, and vice versa, and vice versa.
01:03:37.000There is a mishmash of bad information.
01:03:40.000And I will tell you the kind of lie that is the worst right now.
01:03:43.000There are lots of lies all over the place.
01:03:44.000There are lies told about this election by President Trump.
01:03:48.000There are lies told about this election by the media.
01:03:51.000The worst kind of lie is the double standard.
01:03:53.000The worst kind of lie is the double standard because it assumes that the person who is of your political ilk ought to be treated with absolute reverence and the person on the other side, for doing the exact same thing, ought to be torn down to the ground.
01:04:05.000It is double standards that undermine the Republic more than any other kind of lie.
01:04:11.000It's the double standard in American politics where you hold somebody to a different standard than you would if they were a member of the other party.
01:04:16.000That is the real danger to the Republic right now.
01:04:19.000And when that is applied formally in terms of policy at both the governmental and non-governmental levels inside major tech corporations that control how you speak and how you think and how you communicate with others, We are at an extraordinarily dangerous moment in the life of the American Republic.
01:04:33.000All righty, we'll be back here tomorrow with much, much more of the outcome of the House impeachment vote, which is pretty much a foregone conclusion.
01:04:40.000We'll also get to how the Senate is going to respond, I am sure.
01:04:43.000In the meantime, stick around for our other shows, as well as the second hour of The Ben Shapiro Show, coming a little bit later today.