A series of lies the media are telling to undermine President Trump. One story about illegal immigration went totally viral and turned out to be totally untrue. Updates on the Ahmed Khalil story. You remember that student who the Trump administration tried to deport? Well, he just exposed himself on CNN last night.
00:00:11.000You remember that student who the Trump administration tried to deport?
00:00:14.000Well, he just exposed himself, pants himself on CNN last night.
00:00:18.000But first, we are celebrating a decade of the Daily Wire.
00:00:20.000That's 10 years of saying the quiet part out loud and building something that actually matters, something the left can't cancel or burn down.
00:00:48.000So we obviously live in an age of narrative.
00:00:50.000Narrative matters more than the facts.
00:00:53.000And many of the people who know that are in the media.
00:00:55.000Many of them are opponents of Donald Trump's agenda.
00:00:57.000And that means that anytime President Trump tries to forward his agenda, he may face down actual false stories that are promulgated by that media that are antithetical to his actual agenda items.
00:01:10.000The latest example is this insane example that has been totally undercovered, but is indicative of the way that so many in the media actually cover these stories.
00:01:19.000They don't actually have personal knowledge of the story.
00:01:21.000They just report out a story and it turns out the story is not true.
00:01:24.000So according to the UK Guardian, this was reported on Sunday, an 82-year-old man in Pennsylvania was secretly deported to Guatemala after visiting an immigration office last month to replace his lost green card, according to his family, who said they have not heard from him since and were initially told he was dead.
00:01:39.000According to Morning Call, which first reported the story, longtime Allentown resident Luis Leon, who was granted political asylum in the United States in 1987 after being tortured under the regime of the Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet, lost his wallet containing the physical card that confirmed his legal residency.
00:01:55.000So he and his wife booked an appointment to get it replaced.
00:01:58.000When he arrived at the office on June 20th, however, he was handcuffed by two ICE officers who led him away from his wife without explanation, she said.
00:02:05.000She said she herself was kept in the building for 10 hours until relatives picked her up.
00:02:09.000And then they tried to find him and they couldn't figure it out where he went.
00:02:12.000And then on July 9th, according to Leon's granddaughter, the same woman called them again, claiming that Leon had died.
00:02:19.000That'd be an immigration lawyer supposedly who called claiming that Leon had died.
00:02:22.000A week later, they discovered from a relative in Chile, Leon was alive after all, but now in a hospital in Guatemala, a country to which he has no connection.
00:02:33.000This was reported by a wide variety of left-wing sources, ranging from The Hill to Newsweek to The Guardian.
00:02:42.000It went totally viral on X because, of course, the left is looking for a case of blatant mistreatment of an innocent person in order to discredit President Trump's entire immigration agenda, which remains incredibly popular.
00:02:54.000In fact, President Trump's success on the immigration agenda is so complete that the immigration issue is dropping off people's radar as a chief issue.
00:03:01.000He was elected to clean up the border, and he did it so unbelievably quickly that people are forgetting that he even did it.
00:03:07.000Now, President Trump said yesterday that no people came in last month.
00:03:40.000Well, because Trump has been so successful on this issue, the left has been looking for some sort of horror story to tell.
00:03:46.000And so they've been telling horror story after horror story.
00:03:48.000Something terrible is happening at Alligator Alcatraz.
00:03:51.000The person who was deported as a suspect in MS-13 wasn't, in fact, an MS-13 suspect.
00:03:56.000He was, in fact, an innocent Maryland father.
00:03:58.000And it turns out that wasn't true either.
00:04:00.000Well, this story about the 82-year-old Chilean man deported for trying to renew his green card or get a fresh green card because he lost his old one.
00:04:09.000The Department of Homeland Security, according to Newsweek, has denied reports an 82-year-old Chilean man was deported from the United States to Guatemala after losing his green card.
00:04:20.000The DHS denied it as completely false.
00:04:24.000Apparently, again, his family had told that paper morning call they couldn't locate him and they were told he died and then he turned up in Guatemala.
00:04:30.000A DHS statement issued to Newsweek late on Monday said, quote, the DHS set the record straight on misleading and false reporting that ICE secretly deported a so-called Allentown grandfather to Guatemala.
00:04:40.000Additionally, reporting claimed he died in ICE custody.
00:04:43.000The DHS said the article had been published without any fact from DHS about major allegations made against law enforcement.
00:04:50.000The department statement said, quote, the family of the individual allegedly told reporters he was handcuffed and taken by federal officers at a green card appointment in Philadelphia.
00:04:59.000There is no record of the man appearing at any green card appointment in or around the area of Philadelphia on June 20th.
00:05:05.000Furthermore, says DHS, ICE has not deported Luis Leon, a Chilean national to Guatemala.
00:05:11.000ICE's only record of this individual entering the United States is in 2015 from Chile under the visa waiver program.
00:05:16.000So the idea that he entered in 87 as a refugee from Pinochet is not even true.
00:05:21.000According to reporting by the Associated Press, the Guatemalan Institute of Migration, which coordinates with ICE on all deportations to Guatemala, claims they have not received anyone matching the name, age, or nationality of Luis Leon back into Guatemala.
00:05:34.000According to the report, says the DHS, the family alleges a woman claiming to be an immigration lawyer called and offered to help them, but did not disclose how she knew about the case.
00:05:42.000The family claims this individual also told them Leon died in ICE custody.
00:05:47.000DHS Assistant Secretary Trisha McLaughlin said, ICE never arrested or deported any Luis Leon to Guatemala, nor does ICE disappear, people.
00:05:54.000This is a categorical lie being peddled to demonize ICE agents who are already facing an 830% increase in assaults against them.
00:06:01.000So again, why is this story important?
00:06:03.000This story is important because it demonstrates how information flows in the modern world, especially in the online world, where this went totally viral on X. And why?
00:06:13.000Because X is a machine built for instantaneous response.
00:06:16.000Mark Twain famously suggested that a lie has its chance to make its way all the way around the world before the truth has a chance to put its pants on in the morning.
00:06:24.000That was somewhat true when Mark Twain was saying that back in the late 19th century.
00:06:28.000But it is much more true now When the online world means that lies are promulgated at an extraordinary rate, a truly extraordinary rate.
00:06:36.000And it's true over and over and over again.
00:06:38.000All right, folks, tons coming up on the show.
00:07:05.000Fortunately, thanks to Pure Talk, your cell phone is something you can replace without feeling guilty.
00:07:09.000When you switch to Pure Talk this month, they're going to give you a Samsung Galaxy 836 for free with a $35 qualifying plans, just $35 a month for talk, text data, and a free Samsung phone with scratch-resistant Gorilla Glass and battery that lasts all day long, all on America's most dependable 5G network.
00:07:45.000Again, that's PureTalk.com slash Shapiro to switch to my wireless company, America's wireless company, PureTalk.
00:07:51.000Also, the administration is doing an awful lot of good, positive work on the economy, but it's kind of tough for them to take your personal finances into account when they're trying to do all of that.
00:08:02.000That's why I recently re-opt on my gold purchases from Birch Gold.
00:08:06.000Over the past 12 months, gold's value has surged by 40%, driven by central banks purchasing record quantities and global instability reaching really high, high levels.
00:08:14.000Luckily, Birch Gold has made owning physical gold remarkably straightforward, allowing you to easily convert existing retirement accounts like IRAs or 401ks into tax-sheltered gold IRAs or simply purchase gold for secure home storage.
00:08:57.000Text the word Ben to 98.98.98 to get started.
00:09:00.000Take, for example, the case of Mahmoud Khalil.
00:09:02.000So Mahmoud Khalil was freed by a court after the Trump administration tried to deport him.
00:09:07.000He was, of course, a person who had garnered a student visa under false pretenses.
00:09:12.000He got a student visa claiming that he was coming to the United States to study when, in fact, he was coming to the United States in order to act as a professional agitator.
00:09:21.000He came to work with Students for Justice in Palestine and various other groups on the Columbia College campus, where he was going to promote wild anti-Semitism and pro-Hamas sentiment.
00:09:30.000And so Secretary of State Marco Rubio said, this is not what we are looking for in our immigrants.
00:09:41.000We get to decide who comes in the country.
00:09:43.000We have the plenary power at state to decide whether someone is violating the edict that we make the decision as to whether someone is of net benefit to the United States.
00:09:52.000And the entire media came to Khalil's defense, suggesting that Khalil was just, you know, a normie student who had no support for terrorist groups.
00:10:00.000All the talk about him supporting terrorist groups, all of that was just false.
00:10:02.000He never would do something like that.
00:10:03.000He's just a normal left-wing guy who just really, really doesn't like what Israel is doing in Gaza.
00:10:09.000Well, he blew all of that up yesterday.
00:10:25.000It's just that the Trump administration is using anti-Semitism as a way of throwing out people they don't like.
00:10:31.000This is simply weaponization of anti-Semitism to silence the speech.
00:10:36.000And Wolf, as you've mentioned, I've been always, whether publicly or privately, against any form of discrimination and of racism, including anti-Semitism.
00:10:45.000But they want to use that as smokescreen so they can just benefit from that, unfortunately, that very hateful speech that's happening.
00:11:04.000And so the Trump administration was super wrong to try to deport him, except later in the same exact interview, he was asked multiple times whether he condemned Hamas, a designated terrorist organization in the United States, for what they did on October 7th and beyond.
00:11:20.000And over and over again, he refused to denounce Hamas.
00:11:24.000Supposed moderate, supposed victim of the Trump administration on matters of immigration, just saying the quiet part out loud, which is that he will not condemn Hamas.
00:11:33.000Just to be clear here, though, do you specifically condemn Hamas, a designated terrorist organization in the United States, not just for their actions on October 7th?
00:11:45.000I condemn the killing of all civilians, full stop.
00:11:50.000But what I don't want to get into is I'm very clear with condemning all civilians.
00:11:59.000I'm very straight in my position in that part.
00:12:04.000But it's disingenuous to ask about condemning Hamas while Palestinians are the ones being starved now by Israel.
00:12:11.000It's not condemning October 6th, where 260 Palestinians were killed by Israel before October 7.
00:12:19.000So I hate this selective outrage of condemnation.
00:12:24.000Okay, so again and again and again, he's not going to condemn Hamas.
00:12:27.000Do you need people in the United States who don't condemn State Department labeled terrorist groups?
00:12:34.000Are those the kinds of people you need?
00:12:48.000Sure, you suck, but lots of people suck in the United States and have terrible views in the United States.
00:12:54.000We don't get to kick you out for having terrible views in the United States if you are a citizen.
00:12:57.000However, if you lie about why you came To the country, and you came here as a political agitator on behalf of terrorist organizations.
00:13:05.000Well, at that point, we should probably kick you out.
00:13:07.000But remember, the entire media went along with the idea that he was a wounded innocent who was merely parroting the rhetoric of mainstream Democratic officials.
00:13:59.000The claims that are currently being made by mainstream media, just parroting, for example, the Gaza Ministry of Defense, which is to say, Hamas, about Israel supposedly for no reason shooting people who are trying to get food from the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation.
00:14:14.000What is happening is that Hamas is infiltrating those lines and they are literally shooting at the IDF soldiers, trying to draw fire in response.
00:14:21.000Israel is attempting to separate off Hamas terrorists from civilians.
00:14:25.000Hamas is literally killing people who are taking the aid from Israel because they wish to hijack the aid.
00:14:30.000In fact, there was a report just yesterday that Hamas may be going bankrupt because they can no longer steal the aid and then sell it back to the Palestinians at inflated prices, thus to fund their ongoing war machine.
00:14:41.000Okay, but that's not the only lie that is currently being told.
00:14:44.000Obviously, there's the generalized genocide lie, but one of the big lies that was told last week was this lie that extremist local Jewish West Bank residents had set fire to a 1,500-year-old church of St. George in the Palestinian village of Taiba.
00:14:57.000Now, this is part and parcel of a broader attempt right now by some to claim that Israel is targeting Christians, which is not true.
00:15:04.000They're doing this based on this false report and also the lie that Israel purposefully targeted a church in the Gaza Strip.
00:15:10.000They did not purposefully target a church in the Gaza Strip.
00:15:13.000That would be a moral, intellectual, and strategic absurdity.
00:15:25.000Clearly, it was, in fact, an accident.
00:15:27.000But it's been run with by many of the people who are now trying to generate outsized pressure on Israel by claiming somehow that Israel is filled with people who hate Christians, which is very strange considering that Israel is literally the only place in the entire region where Christians can live safely and securely practicing their religion.
00:15:46.000So they are linking that story up with another story suggesting that extremist Jews in the West Bank, in Judea and Samaria, set fire to this church in Taibat.
00:15:58.000Well, it turns out that that's not true either.
00:16:01.000It turns out that the press service of Israel did an independent investigation.
00:16:05.000And again, this report was spread so wide that there were American officials repeating it before investigating.
00:16:12.000Well, it found that local Jewish residents were fighting the fire, that there was a fire nearby the church and that local Jewish residents were going up there to fight the area near the church.
00:16:23.000But in case you don't believe me, here's actual footage of the church.
00:16:57.000So it doesn't look like the church has been burned down.
00:17:00.000But not far from the church, there was shrub that was most probably burnt in the fire.
00:17:06.000This happens all over Judea and Samaria.
00:17:08.000You can see that these stones would have stopped the fire.
00:17:11.000And I still believe it's important to find out who set the fire.
00:17:14.000So who has the interest to display this bonfire as the settlers burning down the church?
00:17:21.000Someone is behind this, that the Jews are burning down the church.
00:17:25.000Someone has an interest for you to believe that.
00:17:29.000Okay, now the reality is that there is contemporaneous footage that is now showing young men from nearby farms running up the hill with fire extinguishing equipment, according to the Jerusalem Post and Reflective Vest, attempting to put out the flames.
00:17:41.000So, again, this is just another one of these narratives that runs out of control, that runs out of control very, very quickly and is spread on services like X that do a pretty terrible job of separating the wheat from the chaff in terms of what is true and what is false.
00:17:56.000And it is that exact thing that leads to wild distrust on every issue.
00:18:00.000It is very difficult to lock down the facts.
00:18:02.000And one of the things that I try to do on the show is to take enough time when a controversial claim is made to determine whether or not it is true.
00:18:10.000And so I might wait a few hours to determine what actually happened in a given situation or even a couple of days in murky circumstances.
00:18:17.000But that is not what the internet favors these days.
00:18:19.000What the internet actually favors is immediate response right now without information.
00:18:24.000And if you wait, you are condemned for waiting because the idea is that if you wait, you must have some secret sympathies in some way or another.
00:18:31.000Whereas if you just react and jump to your preferred conclusion that backs your narrative, somehow this means that you are more honest in some way.
00:18:39.000Waiting is frequently the best thing to do in unclear circumstances so as to allow time for the truth to arise.
00:18:48.000That is the thing that actually should matter.
00:18:50.000And again, you can speculate, you can theorize, but people aren't in the business anymore, even speculating or theorizing.
00:18:55.000They're not even clear that they are speculating or theorizing anymore on any topic.
00:18:59.000They simply jump to whatever conclusion is the most advantageous for their narrative and for their position.
00:19:05.000And then they insist that position is true, regardless of the next set of facts that comes out.
00:19:10.000That is true across the political board.
00:19:13.000It also happens to be true with regard to, for example, the Epstein case.
00:19:16.000So Democrats continue to fan the flames on the Epstein case, suggesting without evidence that there is tons of evidence that is still out there that has yet to be uncovered by the Trump administration.
00:19:25.000Now, again, the Trump administration has an ongoing case in federal court asking for release On documentation in the Epstein case.
00:19:35.000The Trump administration also has made clear at this point that there are no quote-unquote Epstein tapes, tapes of Epstein or anyone else having with children in the actual bedrooms because those tapes are actually just they have enough evidence to know that Epstein was doing all this stuff.
00:19:51.000But the idea that there were tapes of third parties who were engaged in this activity, apparently those do not exist.
00:19:57.000And the DOJ and the FBI, while saying they're going to try to release more information as much as they can legally, are also saying that their original conclusions are correct.
00:20:05.000Epstein was not a member of intelligence.
00:20:07.000He was not a member of intelligence, either foreign or domestic.
00:20:10.000He was not blackmailing third parties according to the evidence they had.
00:20:13.000Now, again, maybe there's evidence that exists somewhere out there in the ether that he was, but the FBI and the DOJ do not have it.
00:20:19.000And so calling on them to release evidence they don't have is obviously dishonest.
00:20:23.000Here is how you know whether someone is telling you the truth or not.
00:20:26.000If they can cite evidence to their proposition and they're willing to tell you when they don't have evidence to cite their proposition, they're probably being more truthful.
00:20:34.000If they simply throw out conclusions, conclusory statements without evidence to back it, that is not someone who's telling you the truth.
00:20:42.000That is someone who's lying to you for a political purpose.
00:20:44.000That is what Democrats are currently doing.
00:20:46.000And yes, some horseshoe theory Republicans and pseudo-MAGA who are attempting to batter President Trump so as to seize control of the MAGA movement, which is a thing that is happening right now.
00:20:56.000Coming up more on President Trump and the Epstein pressure and all the rest of that.
00:21:00.000Plus, President Trump actually signing some trade deals to avoid that August 1st deadline.
00:21:04.000First, feeling overwhelmed by back taxes, you're not alone.
00:21:07.000Maybe you missed that April deadline or your financial records are all over the place.
00:21:10.000Whatever the situation, don't put it off any longer.
00:22:08.000Also, you may have noticed that I'm traveling a lot.
00:22:10.000My work schedule has been really, really busy.
00:22:12.000I still need to make time to hit the gym, maintain my health, spend time with the family.
00:22:17.000Well, you know, when you're younger, you think you can just down a bunch of caffeine and make that happen, but it actually requires peak nutrition to make your life work.
00:22:22.000And that means eating fruits and veggies throughout the course of the day, wherever that may take me.
00:22:27.000That's why I'm thankful to have Balance of Nature, which fits right into even the busiest of days.
00:22:31.000Imagine trying to stuff 31 different fruits and veggies into your gullet every day.
00:22:34.000That sounds miserable, time consuming.
00:22:36.000With Balance of Nature fruits and veggies, there's never been a more convenient dietary supplement to ensure you get a wide variety of fruits and veggies daily.
00:22:42.000Balance of Nature takes fruits and veggies, they freeze dry them, they turn them into a powder, and then they put them into a capsule.
00:22:47.000You take your fruit and veggie capsules every day, and your body knows precisely what to do with them.
00:22:50.000It's kosher, which means I pop it right in the protein smoothie.
00:23:03.000Promo code Shapiro for 35% off that first order as a preferred customer and the free bottle of fiber and spice.
00:23:09.000According to Politico, it's a fixation of Washington.
00:23:12.000Now Democrats from coast to coast are plotting how to capitalize on the Jeffrey Epstein saga.
00:23:16.000An ongoing furor around the government's investigation of the disgraced financier has done more than fracture President Donald Trump's base.
00:23:22.000It has also injected a volatile new element into midterm elections and created an opening for Democrats scrambling to exploit any perceived Republican weakness as they work to retake the House.
00:23:31.000And again, Democrats continue to maintain that Trump is hiding something.
00:23:34.000They know he is not, or at least they suspect he is not, because they literally didn't care about this, like during the entire Biden administration.
00:23:43.000And there are Republicans who are doing this too.
00:23:46.000Now, there are questions that certainly remain in the case.
00:23:48.000Like, for example, where did Jeffrey Epstein get his money?
00:23:55.000Like, there's no question that we have no idea why he got his money from Les Wexner, why he got his money from Leon Black, like why he was being paid these outsized amounts of money.
00:24:04.000Sure, there can be absolutely credible suspicion on those matters, but that is not the accusation when you say that Trump is covering it up.
00:24:12.000Meanwhile, there are open questions right now on Ghelain Maxwell.
00:24:15.000So the DOJ is now being pressured to re-interview Ghelene Maxwell.
00:24:20.000Politico has a rundown on why this is happening.
00:24:22.000The answer is, of course, because of all the outside pressure and the suggestion that maybe Maxwell knows something she's not talking about or hasn't in the past.
00:24:30.000According to Politico, Maxwell has apparently never given her version of events to federal prosecutors.
00:24:35.000During pretrial proceedings in her criminal case, government prosecutors and Maxwell's defense attorneys acknowledged they never even broached the subject of plea negotiations where such an interview might have occurred.
00:24:45.000Maxwell's attorney claimed at the time plea bargaining was not an issue because her client maintained her innocence.
00:24:49.000She did decline to testify in her own defense at trial.
00:24:53.000What could she know that she hasn't told the DOJ?
00:24:58.000She argued in court papers ahead of her trial that the allegations against her and Epstein were so old, stretching back to the 90s, that there's little reliable information left to disclose.
00:25:06.000She contended witnesses may have died or their memories faded, and corroborating documents she might be able to rely on to prove her version of events have long been destroyed.
00:25:14.000That filing includes categories labeled dead witnesses and lost testimony, lost and missing witnesses, witnesses whose memories have failed or corrupted, lost or destroyed records.
00:25:23.000While Maxwell, theoretically, could name her own memories, what the hell are prosecutors supposed to do with that if there is no supporting evidence of it, especially because Maxwell might lie in order to try and receive some sort of pardon or some sort of deal.
00:25:37.000So, again, in the absence of information, the internet tends to run wild, and that is not a particularly good thing.
00:25:44.000And I mentioned there are people on the right who are glomming onto this with both hands.
00:25:49.000One of those, of course, is Thomas Massey, the representative from Kentucky, who is essentially a declared enemy of the president of the United States, Donald Trump.
00:25:57.000Speaker Johnson was asking, what the hell is going on with Massey That he keeps signing on to these discharge petitions, trying to put pressure on Trump to release documents.
00:26:05.000In disobedience of FBI regulations and DOJ regulations and the law?
00:26:16.000Thomas Massey could have brought his discharge petition anytime over the last four and a half years, over the last four years of the Biden administration.
00:26:24.000And now he's clamoring as if there's some sort of timeline on it.
00:26:26.000It's interesting to me that he chose the election of President Trump to bring this, to team up with the Democrats and bring this discharge petition.
00:26:37.000Okay, and Speaker Johnson absolutely should.
00:26:39.000And you should too, because what is the motivation?
00:26:42.000The answer is the Venn diagram between the people who are very, very exercised about the Epstein case and the people who are very, very upset about President Trump's Iran policy, Ukraine policy, the Big Beautiful Bill.
00:26:57.000And when I say overlapping, I mean that there's a bigger circle of people who think something is missing in the Epstein files and are wondering why Pam Bondi retailed what she did.
00:27:06.000But the group of people who do not like Trump's policy have decided to go right in the center of the Epstein circle and just sit there and build a campfire because their goal is actually to undermine President Trump's agenda.
00:27:17.000They're glomming onto the Epstein thing in order to undermine his credibility with the base and his credibility personally so as to try and take control of MAGA away from President Trump.
00:27:26.000It is pretty clear that this is what's going on right now.
00:27:29.000And by the way, it's not as though everyone who promoted RussiaGate is out of the government even now.
00:27:32.000I mean, we're talking about deep state people, people who have been longtime government officials who have been involved with this sort of stuff.
00:27:39.000According to Luke Roziak reporting for The Daily Wire, quote, a top lawyer for President Donald Trump's NSA previously worked for Senate Democrats on their discredited probe attempting to tie Trump to Russia, personally urged for Trump to be permanently banned from social media for staging an insurrection, attacked Republicans for opposing a crackdown on disinformation, and defended the treatment of Trump aides Carter Page and Michael Flynn at the hands of the intelligence state.
00:28:00.000April Falcon Doss is the current general counsel for the NSA.
00:28:04.000She worked as an NSA intelligence lawyer from 2003 to April 2016, when she took a job at a private law firm.
00:28:10.000But a few months into President Trump's first term, she took a high-level job working for Senator Mark Warner of Virginia on the Senate Intelligence Committee, investigating supposed Russian interference in the 2016 election.
00:28:23.000I mean, who did the hiring on this one?
00:28:25.000I want to know the answer on this one.
00:28:28.000Apparently, June 2022, the NSA, again, under Joe Biden, rehired DOS in a top role without announcing or acknowledging the hire because it didn't want to stir up a hornet's nest among Capitol Hill Republicans, according to the record.
00:28:40.000That's because in the interim, Democrats, experts, and Intel officers had decried it as improper and ultimately blocked it when Trump had attempted to name a Republican House Intelligence Committee staffer to the same exact role.
00:28:51.000Still pretty unbelievable that this person has a job under the Trump administration.
00:28:54.000I would imagine that that is not going to be the case for very long after Luke's article here.
00:28:58.000Meanwhile, an actual piece of scandal.
00:29:01.000According to the New York Post, the FBI failed to provide key thumb drives in the Clinton email probe.
00:29:07.000This is according to the DOJ watchdog files.
00:29:11.000According to the New York Post, the FBI barely glanced at potentially crucial evidence in its investigation of Hillary Clinton's use of a private email server while she was Secretary of State, according to a portion of a watchdog report made public on Monday.
00:29:22.000A confidential source gave thumb drives to the FBI that contained State Department data acquired via cyber intrusions, including emails from President Obama and others, according to a declassified appendix to a June 2018 DOJ Inspector General report.
00:29:35.000But the feds declined to comprehensively analyze those drives due to concerns about individual data caught up in the hack, despite an internal draft memo concluding it was necessary to assess the national security risks pertaining to Clinton's private server use.
00:29:50.000Essentially, it means that the FBI, when they were investigating how Hillary Clinton was handling her emails and mishandling highly classified information, the FBI basically decided to ignore thumb drives showing that she had basically exposed emails from people, including President Barack Obama, apparently.
00:30:11.000That report was penned by then DOJ Inspector General Michael Horowitz, who holds the same position at the Federal Reserve Board and the Consumer Finance Protection Bureau.
00:30:20.000During that 2016 campaign cycle, the FBI cyber division had sought to obtain access to the hard drives to conduct targeted searches for information relevant to the Clinton probe, and they were rebuffed.
00:30:31.000Then FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe asked then-U.S.
00:30:34.000Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates in a memo if he could refer to the drives for the Bureau's probe of Russian interference in the 2016 election, and that was shot down.
00:30:43.000So essentially, they didn't do basic investigative work, and they left key pieces of evidence on the cutting room floor, according to Senator Chuck Grassley.
00:30:51.000Grassley said the Comey FBI's negligent approach and perhaps intentional lack of effort in the Clinton investigation is a stark contrast to its full-throated investigation of the Trump-Russia collusion hoax, which was based on the uncorroborated and now discredited Steele dossier.
00:31:04.000You know, it was on the basis of that, by the way.
00:31:06.000It was on the basis of Comey not wanting to look at what was actually in those thumb drives, at least partially, that he decided to dismiss the case against Hillary Clinton and claim that there was no violation of law.
00:31:17.000Another notable detail in the appendix is that the FBI stumbled upon Russian language intelligence, alleging that then U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch and Comey were interfering in the Clinton email investigation to help the Democratic and Republican presidential candidates, respectively.
00:31:30.000That intel also included claims that the then DNC chairwoman, Representative Debbie Wasserman Schultz, had communicated with two individuals who worked at the Zoros Open Society Foundations and told them she was confident the FBI did not have evidence against Clinton because data was removed from the mail servers just in time.
00:31:45.000At the very least, there's a lot of information here that basically it looks like the FBI and DOJ decided to ignore because it was inconvenient to Hillary Clinton in 2016.
00:31:54.000She, of course, was let off the hook by James Comey over at the FBI.
00:32:01.000The other story that is being retailed by Tulsi Gabbard is, frankly, less amazing.
00:32:06.000So recall yesterday on the program, we talked about Tulsi Gabbard suggesting that the Obama administration had specifically gone back on an intelligence community report.
00:32:16.000That intelligence community report had said that there was no manipulation of the electoral tools, like actual voting machines, for example.
00:32:26.000And the allegation by Tulsi Gabbard is that the Obama administration basically went back on that and then tried to rewrite it to suggest that there was Russian interference.
00:32:35.000I read that entire thing on the air just a couple of days ago.
00:32:39.000Again, she had claimed that in the run-up and immediate aftermath of the 2016 election, Obama intelligence officials, including then DNI James Clapper, took the position, according to Andrew McCarthy, that Russia was probably not trying to influence the election by using cyber means.
00:32:52.000But later, as top Obama administration officials huddled and executed rapid-fire completion of the IZA, she says they changed their tune to try and sandbag Trump with a bunch of Russian interference memes and nonsense.
00:33:04.000Now, as we talked about again a couple of days ago, there is no question the Obama administration from the very earliest days of the Fusion GPS steel dossier scandal were looking for a rationale for linking the Trump campaign to a supposed Russian collusion scheme.
00:33:21.000They were issuing illegal FISA warrants against Carter Page.
00:33:24.000They were using the steel dossier as the basis for things like the FISA surveillance warrant.
00:33:28.000And then they were leaking that into the public view.
00:33:31.000All of that is well substantiated and scandalous in the extreme.
00:33:35.000Gabbard is saying she has something new, and that the new thing is that basically the Obama administration and Obama himself changed an intelligence community ruling in order to suggest that there was Russian interference with actual election infrastructure.
00:33:49.000But that's not actually what the document said.
00:33:51.000What it said is that the Obama administration concluded there was no hacking of election infrastructure and that later statements had to deal with Russian interference in the election.
00:34:00.000Now, was there Russian interference in 2016?
00:34:03.000I mean, there certainly was memory online.
00:34:14.000I'm old enough to remember when they interfered on behalf of Barack Obama.
00:34:18.000You'll remember in 2012, Barack Obama literally sat next to Dmitry Medvedev and was caught on a hot mic saying that if Vladimir could simply cool his heels, cool his jet for the next couple of months, we'll have something to talk about on the other side of the election.
00:34:31.000Okay, so I'm not sure exactly what the DNI is attempting to accomplish with this sort of new accusation.
00:34:38.000She says that there are more Russia hoax documents that will be released later this week.
00:34:41.000We can hope they substantiate her accusations better than the current documents do.
00:34:46.000He's saying that none of this makes any sense, that this is a distraction.
00:34:53.000It's the art of deflection coming from former President Obama, as well as his friends who are still in Congress today, and Senator Warner and Congressman Jim Himes, really all basically saying that exact same statement, which doesn't actually address the issue that was revealed in great detail in the over 100 documents that we released last week,
00:35:14.000in the documents that we will be releasing later this week, that point to the undeniable fact that you laid out in your introduction to this segment.
00:35:24.000Okay, so again, did the Obama administration try to interfere on behalf of Hillary Clinton and against Donald Trump in the 2016 election?
00:35:35.000If there was violation of law, it was on the part of FBI directors, deputy FBI directors, and all the rest.
00:35:41.000The president is sort of immune from a lot of this sort of stuff simply because he has an enormous amount of executive power to have these sorts of conversations, right?
00:35:49.000This was a Supreme Court decision that actually recently came out with regard to President Trump.
00:35:54.000You'll recall that there was a Supreme Court decision that suggested that there is executive decision-making that lies out of the domain of, for example, lawsuits.
00:36:04.000And this probably falls into that particular category.
00:36:07.000So I asked my friends and sponsors over at Perplexity, what did the Supreme Court recently rule about executive immunity and how would it protect President Obama with regard to accusations his IC report was skewed?
00:36:17.000Well, as Perplexity says, on July 1st, 2024, the U.S. Supreme Court issued a landmark decision in Trump versus United States regarding presidential immunity from criminal prosecution.
00:36:26.000The key points of the ruling are absolute immunity.
00:36:29.000Presidents are absolutely immune from criminal prosecution for actions taken within their core constitutional powers.
00:36:34.000They are also presumptively immune for official acts.
00:36:38.000Those would be actions taken as president that are neither purely personal nor at the core.
00:36:42.000And there is presumed immunity, and you can try to overcome the presumption.
00:36:46.000So when it comes to the IC report accusations, would the Supreme Court ruling shield Trump?
00:36:51.000Well, again, as perplexity notes, if the actions involve official duties like overseeing, ordering, or approving IC assessments or reports while acting as president, President Obama would enjoy at a minimum a presumption of immunity from criminal prosecution.
00:37:04.000And absolute immunity could apply if the conduct was seen as a direct exercise of the president's core constitutional authority, like managing the IC.
00:37:12.000So very difficult presumption to overcome for criminal prosecution.
00:37:14.000Obama is responding via his spokesperson, quote, out of the respect for the office of the presidency.
00:37:19.000Our office does not normally dignify the constant nonsense and misinformation flowing out of this White House with a response, but these claims are outrageous enough to merit one.
00:37:26.000These bizarre allegations are ridiculous and a weak attempt at distraction.
00:37:29.000Nothing in the document issued last week undercuts the widely accepted conclusion that Russia worked to influence the 2016 presidential election, but did not successfully manipulate any votes.
00:37:39.000Now, again, there is another widely accepted conclusion that really Trump is correct to hit President Obama over, and that is the widely accepted conclusion that Obama's entire team was essentially incepting into being a collusion scandal between Trump's team and Russia that supposedly turned the nature of the election and was complete with,
00:38:02.000again, falsely issued FISA warrants, as well as the mainlining of absolute nonsense via the Steele dossier, which was a Clinton campaign compendium that somehow ended up spurring a full intelligence investigation.
00:38:18.000It is kind of fun to watch the Potsdam of America boys get really mad about this.
00:38:22.000Jon Favreau came out and suggested that if you don't like it, you can go arrest Barack Obama.
00:38:26.000Well, I mean, let's just put it this way.
00:38:28.000It's really Democrats who have been attempting to arrest prior presidents of recent vintage.
00:38:32.000I mean, they tried to do this to Donald Trump many, many, many times, like a lot of times.
00:38:36.000So I feel you don't have like a moral high horse to stand on so much here because I don't remember you speaking out about any of that as an abuse of justice.
00:38:44.000The positive America bros are in a bad mood, however, because Hunter Biden attacked them the other day.
00:38:49.000When it comes to the attacks on Hunter himself, like, okay, let's just, what if we just stipulate for the hypothetical?
00:38:56.000Like, yes, okay, all your business dealings were above board and legal.
00:38:59.000All your paintings were purchased by art lovers who loved the product and didn't know your name.
00:39:40.000I'm amused that the positive American boys are now telling the truth about Joe Biden after spending a very long time defending Joe Biden's absolute salenility.
00:39:48.000But it's only when they are threatened, of course, that they speak up loudly and proudly against the corruption inside the Biden administration.
00:40:03.000Like, I was worried at the very beginning about the tariffs.
00:40:05.000And then President Trump backed off a lot of it because he moved control of the tariff talks essentially from Commerce Secretary Howard Luttnick over to Treasury Secretary Scott Bessons.
00:40:14.000And so it is not a surprise that a bunch of deals have now been announced.
00:40:18.000President Trump announced yesterday a trade deal with Japan.
00:41:12.000Well, apparently, the massive deal includes reciprocal tariffs of 15% on the country's exports to the United States.
00:41:18.000Auto duties will reportedly be lowered to that level as well.
00:41:22.000Japan is going to supposedly invest $550 billion in the United States.
00:41:26.000According to President Trump, the United States will receive 90% of the profits that presumably to counter any sort of trade deficit.
00:41:34.000Trump says Japan will, quote, open their country to trade, including cars and trucks, rice and certain other agricultural products and other things, and that it would create hundreds of thousands of jobs.
00:41:42.000Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba, who is up for re-elect in just a couple of days and so wants to get this off the table, said auto tariffs on Tokyo will be lowered to 15% from the current 25% levied across countries.
00:41:54.000Auto exports to the United States are a major cornerstone of Japan's economy.
00:41:58.000They make up 28.3% of all shipments in 2024, according to customs data.
00:42:04.000So, again, that is higher than it was.
00:42:07.000However, it is much lower than it could have been.
00:42:09.000Shortly after Tuesday's announcement, Japan's top trade negotiator, Ryose Akazawa, said mission accomplished in a post on X. So that trade deal is designed again to strengthen the ruling coalition in Japan just before an election.
00:42:22.000The stock market popped in Japan on the basis of the announcement.
00:42:26.000Jeremy Schwartz, the global CIO at asset manager at Wisdom Tree, told CNBC's Squawk Box Asia the size of the market reaction meant the market got pessimistic on how things were going and that the goal is to drive again more direct foreign investment in American product.
00:42:41.000So that's a big win for President Trump.
00:42:44.000Another big win for President Trump, an announcement of a trade agreement with Indonesia.
00:42:48.000According to President Trump, it is agreed.
00:42:50.000Indonesia will open its market to American industrial and tech products and agricultural goods by eliminating 99% of their tariff barriers.
00:42:57.000The United States of America will now sell American-made products to Indonesia at a tariff rate of zero, while Indonesia will pay 19% on all of their products coming into the United States of America, the best market in the world.
00:43:07.000In addition, Indonesia will supply the United States with their precious critical minerals as well as sign big deals with tens of billions of dollars to purchase Boeing aircraft, American farm products, and American energy.
00:43:16.000The deal is a huge win for our automakers, tech companies, workers, farmers, ranchers, and manufacturers.
00:43:21.000Again, whether you like the tariffs or you don't like the tariffs, this is better than what the alternative would have been if the deal didn't get cut.
00:43:27.000Again, as a free trader myself, I'm not generally in favor of the idea that we are tariffing Indonesian goods at nearly 20% while they tariff us at zero.
00:43:35.000It seems to me that that's a tax on American consumers.
00:43:37.000With that said, is that a lot better than it was going to be?
00:43:40.000If no deal had been reached, the answer there is yes.
00:43:42.000Another deal has been announced also with Philippines.
00:43:45.000According to President Trump, the Philippines is going open market with the United States, zero tariffs.
00:43:50.000The Philippines will pay a 19% tariff.
00:43:52.000In addition, we will work together militarily.
00:43:54.000It was a great honor to be with President Ferdinand Marcos.
00:43:57.000He's a highly respected person in his country, as he should be.
00:43:59.000He is a very good and tough negotiator.
00:44:02.000So, you know, again, there are two ways of viewing all this.
00:44:05.000One is, do we really need a trade war with anybody but China at this point?
00:44:32.000The markets were up at 180 points yesterday, the Dow Jones Industrial Average.
00:44:36.000The S ⁇ P 500 was also up a little bit yesterday.
00:44:41.000The markets have baked into the cake the idea, I think, already, that President Trump is going to cut a bunch of these deals.
00:44:46.000Now, where President Trump could go astray is if he attempts to go after Jerome Powell.
00:44:50.000Now, he has already said he's not going to, the head of the Federal Reserve.
00:44:52.000I think it would be a mistake for President Trump to do so.
00:44:56.000With that said, he still seems to be thinking about it at least a little bit.
00:45:00.000So he is ripping on Jerome Powell's allowance of the renewal of the federal building, the rebuilding of a lot of the federal building, which is going to cost something like $2.7 billion.
00:45:12.000Unless Jerome Powell is owner of one of the contractors who's making money hand over fist on all of this, it's hard for me to understand exactly why Powell would get anything out of a massive rebuild of the Fed sufficient to justify his removal.
00:45:51.000So what you're seeing right now is some of the Republicans in Congress trying to, I guess, provide the pretext for President Trump to go after Powell if he wants to are pushing this.
00:46:00.000Representative Ana Paulina Luna, who is from Florida, referred to Powell to the Justice Department on an accusation he lied under oath to Congress last month about the building project.
00:46:10.000He told senators some of the more controversial parts of the renovation plan, like a VIP dining room or rooftop beehives, aren't being built, although they were included in the original zoning application.
00:46:20.000I mean, is that really, is that going to be the criminal case against Jerome Powell here?
00:46:39.000He continues to push forward on many of his signature issues, including his signature issue with regard to transgenderism, no men in the women's sports.
00:46:48.000According to the New York Times, the United States Olympic and Paralympic Committee quietly changed its eligibility rules on Monday to bar transgender women from competing in Olympic women's sports and now will comply with President Trump's executive order on the issue.
00:47:25.000Why don't more people in your party just say that?
00:47:27.000Because I'm now going to go into a witness protection plan.
00:47:32.000Okay, so Ron Manuel moving away from it.
00:47:34.000Gavin Newsom kind of flirting with moving away from it.
00:47:37.000Because, again, this is such a losing issue for the Democrats.
00:47:40.000Joining us on the line to discuss the U.S. Olympic committee barring transgender women from women's competition is my friend Clay Travis, founder of AtCec and host of the Clay Travis and Buck Sexton Show.
00:47:53.000Well, Clay, it looks like the winning continues on this issue.
00:47:57.000It is incredible how the vibe has shifted, as the kids say, on this issue over the course of the last four or five years.
00:48:04.000I'm old enough to remember when people were getting kicked off of various social media platforms for saying that men should not play against women in sports.
00:48:11.000And now you have the U.S. Olympic Committee saying that they are not going to allow men to play against women.
00:48:17.000I think that what Donald Trump's victory did was enable cowards to blame him for decisions that they know they should have made years ago.
00:48:26.000And I really think that's what all of this represents.
00:48:28.000I mean, University of Pennsylvania didn't know that a six foot three dude had an advantage that used to swim on the men's team and switched over to the women's team.
00:48:40.000They were just afraid of bearing the onus themselves, and they're looking for someone to come and save them.
00:48:47.000And I actually think one of the really interesting decisions going forward is what are Democrats going to do about this?
00:48:52.000Because next year, we're going to hear the Supreme Court decision.
00:48:57.000I would expect it'll go 6-3 that you can say, hey, compete against your biology, compete against the name, the gender on your birth certificate.
00:49:06.000And then Democrats and crazy leftists will have a decision.
00:49:09.000Do they say, oh, that's just the Trump Supreme Court?
00:49:13.000We don't like it, but let's just go ahead and pretend this issue doesn't exist anymore.
00:49:18.000Or will they double, triple, quadruple down on crazy?
00:49:22.000Will they take the off-ramp that the Supreme Court and Trump have given them?
00:49:26.000Or will they make this an issue that prevails and continues into 2028?
00:49:31.000I actually don't know, but I think that's where we're headed here.
00:49:35.000It'll be interesting to see what Democrats do.
00:49:37.000It seems like the smarter Democrats are already attempting to move beyond this issue.
00:49:41.000At the very least, they're trying to have the baby on it.
00:49:43.000You saw Governor Gavin Newsom of California do this publicly when he suggested that men should not play in women's sports and then, of course, use the law to attempt to allow men to play in women's sports.
00:49:52.000Rahm Emanuel, who clearly wants to run for president in 2028, he said, as we played on the show a little while ago, that he's going to have to go into witness protection because he believes that men and women should be playing different sports.
00:50:02.000Seth Moulton, who we've had on the show, Democrat from Massachusetts, was ripped up and down for suggesting that men are not women and women are not men.
00:50:08.000But the dam is breaking and you can see it inside the Democratic Party.
00:50:11.000It seems to me that they want to get beyond this issue because it is such a terrible issue for them.
00:50:16.000Yeah, and also because men, white, black, Asian, Hispanic, if you play sports or you're a fan of sports at all, this is a non-negotiable issue.
00:50:26.000I don't think any dads out there, I don't think any men who played high school, college, or pro sports, every NFL locker room, every NBA locker room, they know this is a joke.
00:50:35.000And Democrats are looking at themselves hemorrhage male support.
00:50:39.000And I think they recognize they have to step off the crazy train.
00:50:43.000And one way to do that is what Rah Emanuel did, what Gavin Newsom has tried to do, what Seth Moulton, I think, who represents of all places, the Salem witch trial area of Massachusetts.
00:50:53.000I mean, there is definitely a witch trial component to this for Democrats.
00:50:57.000I think they're saying we can't win elections and stand for this.
00:51:00.000And I think other people will get in line.
00:51:01.000Remember, even according to the New York Times, 67% of Democrats disagree with men and women's sports.
00:51:08.000This is actually a huge majority issue, even for them.
00:51:14.000I think it's such a big issue for them, especially because for the Democrats, I think that all normies look at them and they say, we're not even going to listen to you on any other issue that you have something to say if you continue to maintain this totally insane position.
00:51:27.000It is one thing to make an argument about a tax policy or about Medicare or Medicaid or foreign policy.
00:51:32.000It is another thing to argue the patently, obviously stupid notion that men are women and women are men and they can just interchangeably switch places, bodies, and lives.
00:51:41.000And I think that a huge majority of voters look at Democrats, and this is like a gateway issue for them.
00:51:46.000It's like, I will not even look at the rest of what you have to say if you maintain this position.
00:51:50.000I can't tell you the number of people that I know from the world of sports who have come up to me and said privately, you're 1 billion% right on this, But because of the politics inside of my company, whether it's an ESPN, whether it is even a Washington Post, a New York Times, where they have men covering sports, they all think it's ludicrous, and yet they feel compelled as a member of that party to try and stay in good graces.
00:52:20.000They're afraid of getting athwart that issue.
00:52:23.000But I actually think we're seeing a major cultural shift.
00:52:26.000And I think basically men across the board, like I said, I think this is a white, black, Asian, Hispanic.
00:52:32.000Ben, I'm sure you read the article, The They Them ad, which I think was probably the most influential ad that Trump ran.
00:52:39.000When they said it was really interesting was it moved white women.
00:52:42.000And for people who don't remember, it was Trump's for you, Kambala's for They Them.
00:52:47.000It moved white women in his favor, many of whom have daughters that they're traveling to sporting events with.
00:52:52.000It also moved Hispanic and black men in his favor.
00:52:56.000So I think that speaks to the degree to which an ad like that crosses over so many identity politics lines and just registers for sane people, regardless of what they might think, as you mentioned, on tax policy or other issues with which we might disagree.
00:53:12.000So Clay, I would be remiss if I didn't ask you about the other women's sporting issues of the day.
00:53:17.000Obviously, the WNBA is having a bit of a moment right now, specifically because of Caitlin Clark.
00:53:23.000And they seem to have created this sort of WWE situation between Angel Rees and Caitlin Clark or the rest of the league and Caitlin Clark.
00:53:30.000I don't know if the WNBA is creating it or if just all the women hate Caitlin Clark because they're being catty and petty.
00:53:36.000But what do you make of the status of the WNBA?
00:53:39.000Do you think there's any future here or is this sort of a flash in the pan because Caitlin Clark is interesting and popular and a whole narrative world has now been built up around her?
00:53:47.000Yeah, so I like to look at Caitlin Clark in the historical context of sport for those of us out there who are big fans.
00:53:52.000Sometimes you catch proverbial lightning in a bottle and your sport can go to a different level because one particular athlete is so transcendently popular.
00:54:21.000What's different is UFC, PGA, WTA, they were all smart enough to recognize that they had an incredible asset and it was going to make everybody else richer.
00:54:31.000Doesn't mean that it was perfect when they introduced these new athletes, but they were smart enough to get in line and say, hey, let's all pull in the same direction.
00:54:39.000The WNBA has taken this incredible golden goose and they've tried to strangle it.
00:54:56.000If you told me right now, Clay, you can buy stock in Caitlin Clark or the WNBA, I would buy stock in Caitlin Clark.
00:55:03.000And I wonder whether in a couple of years, she might decide to just say Sia to the league based on how they're treating her, found her own league with five or six teams and really unlock the value that truly she has brought to women's basketball.
00:55:18.000They don't have women's basketball fans.
00:56:09.000If you wished to justify all criticisms of the WA, both WNBA, both athletically and then in terms of the feminist notions of the WNBA, they're doing an amazing job of it, that I have to say.
00:56:20.000Well, Clay Travis, founder of Outkick, hosted the Clay Travis and Buck Sexton show.