The flaming garbage fire that is American politics continues to flame away, and Al Franken has been caught in the blaze. Plus, we ll talk about the latest with Roy Moore, and Bob Menendez s jury is deadlocked, so the news comes fast and furious and crappy. This is The Ben Shapiro Show, where somebody says, the bleep hits the fan, and there s actually a picture of poop hitting the fan. And that s pretty much everyday in American politics now. When I say that it s a garbage fire, I mean that outside this door is a raging dumpster fire, and the smell just wafts through the building and that is coming directly from Washington D.C. and Hollywood, and it s just all garbage, and everyone is garbage and they are coming from the same place, and that s all garbage and that's why they are garbage. Today's show is a short summary of today's breaking news, but there is much more! We'll talk about all of the breaking news today, including: 1. Al Franken is now being accused by an LA anchor. 2. Texas Justice Don Willett is ripping him up and down because he had once tweeted something about how he liked bacon. 3. Leigh Ann Tweeden says she didn t have a problem with Al Franken s sexual advances on her. 4. A woman accused Al Franken of groping her during a USO performance, and he insisted they rehearse everything leading up to the kiss. 5. She says she did it. 6. It's just to show that this stuff is a common occurrence. 7. She didn t do it right, right? 8. She did it by her mouth. 9. She said she didn't have a tongue in her mouth by me? And so on and so on... The rest is pretty much it's just a hook by me, so I didn t even have to go there, right by the hook by her?? That means it's not by her ... Yeah, so does she do that, right, she did that by her? And she's not letting me hook by my mouth by her or by her nose by her tongue by me or she did this by her or she's just by her ass by my nose by my tongue by her... And that means she's off the hook, by her butt by her back, by my ass? ...
00:00:21.000Here's that shot in Airplane, where somebody says, the bleep hits the fan, and there's actually a picture of poop hitting fan.
00:00:26.000And that's pretty much everyday in American politics now.
00:00:29.000When I say that it's a garbage fire, I mean that outside this door is a raging dumpster fire, and the smell just wafts through the building.
00:00:36.000And that is coming directly from Washington D.C.
00:00:39.000and from Hollywood, and it's just all garbage.
00:00:41.000And everyone is garbage, and that's the short summary of today's show, but there's much more.
00:00:45.000We'll talk about all of the breaking news.
00:00:46.000But first, I want to say thank you to our sponsors over at FilterBuy.
00:00:50.000So, you know, you don't think about the air quality in your home until one day there's black mold on your ceiling and you're dying.
00:00:56.000That's why you need to go to FilterBuy, okay?
00:00:58.000At my house, we hadn't thought about our filters.
00:00:59.000We looked at our filters and they were all dirty.
00:01:55.000So I do have a big announcement coming momentarily about my speech tour.
00:01:59.000And no, it's not like a big announcement like Trump's big announcement about his Asian tour, which was basically him announcing which Chinese restaurants he'd eaten at in China.
00:02:07.000It's actually a really big announcement.
00:02:45.000Ripping him up and down because Texas Justice Don Willett, who is very funny on Twitter, had once tweeted something about how he wanted to legalize marriage to Bacon because he liked Bacon so much, and Al Franken thought that this was a slap at the gay community somehow, which is weird because gay people aren't Bacon.
00:03:01.000Apparently, sexually harassed slash assaulted Leigh-Anne Tweeden, she said, in an essay, she describes her encounter with Franken, whom she says used comedy as an excuse to be inappropriate.
00:03:11.000Because comedians in Hollywood apparently are all inappropriate, from Louis C.K.
00:03:16.000to David Letterman, Tweeden, a former model, was on her ninth tour with the USO and expected to be the event MC, but quickly discovered that Franken had penned a special skit for her to perform with him, and he'd included a kiss that he insisted they practice beforehand.
00:03:30.000He repeated that actors really need to rehearse everything, and that we must practice the kiss.
00:03:33.000I said, okay, so he would stop badgering me.
00:03:35.000We did the line leading up to the kiss, and then he came at me, put his hand on the back of my head, gnashed his lips against mine, and aggressively stuck his tongue in my mouth.
00:03:42.000Hey, first of all, you know, that is sexual assault, but I will say that every actor in Hollywood has apparently done this to every actress in Hollywood.
00:03:51.000Like, talk to any actress in this town, you'll see this is a very common occurrence.
00:03:53.000This is not letting Al Franken off the hook by any means.
00:03:56.000It's just to show you that in Hollywood, this stuff is
00:04:13.000She says she didn't report Franken's behavior or the alleged assault of superiors, but did her best to stay out of Franken's way the rest of the tour.
00:04:19.000He repaid her, she says, by peppering her with insults and drawing devil horns on pictures she signed for the troops.
00:04:24.000Then, on the flight home, as Tweeden slept in her Kevlar vest and helmet, she says Franken groped her while he posed for this photo.
00:04:30.000Yeah, there is a senator from Minnesota groping or attempting to grope a sleeping woman.
00:04:43.000He groped me without my consent while I was asleep.
00:04:45.000I felt violated all over again, embarrassed, belittled, humiliated.
00:04:48.000How dare anyone grab my breast like this and think it's funny?
00:04:51.000I told my husband everything that happened and showed him the picture.
00:04:53.000She claimed she was too scared to complain, worried about the potential backlash and possibility that lobbying a sexual harassment allegation against a famous comedian...
00:05:00.000But every percussion is her career, which it would.
00:05:02.000The way that it works in Hollywood, because Hollywood is a scummy place, is that if you complain about sexual harassment, no one will hire you ever again.
00:05:13.000You're considered hard to put up with, you're considered somebody who doesn't get it and isn't cool in Hollywood, if you don't put up with men acting like pervs, or anyone acting like a perv.
00:05:22.000If somebody gropes you and you say anything about it, this makes you a prude in Hollywood.
00:05:27.000Al Franken has now responded to the allegations, saying he sends his sincerest apologies and that the photo was, quote, clearly intended to be funny.
00:05:46.000We're about to find out whether Democrats are flaming hypocrites because they, of course, have been calling for Roy Moore to be expelled from the Senate.
00:05:52.000If you were elected, and for every Republican to distance themselves from Roy Moore, the Senate Republican from Alabama.
00:05:58.000Quick correction I want to make on the show.
00:05:59.000So I keep saying for the last two days, the snot has addled my brain from this cold.
00:06:03.000But I kept saying that Richard Burr was the Senator from Alabama.
00:07:16.000So I guess this is how it's gonna go now, right?
00:07:18.000Women, Democratic women, not quite standing by other women.
00:07:22.000I guess I'd heard that Gillibrand says that, quote, so now Kirsten Gillibrand has said that the allegations against Franklin are deeply disturbing, says she believes the woman who accused him.
00:07:42.000So proposal number one is that we should actually just have all the Congress people stay home.
00:07:48.000I think the remote voting is the best solution to this.
00:07:50.000So all of these senators should be forced to live in the districts from which they spring and live at home with their wives and their husbands.
00:07:56.000This is the way that sexual harassment would, I think, be minimized.
00:08:00.000Not because these people aren't scumbags when they're in their home district, but because Washington DC is a scummy place filled with scummy people.
00:08:07.000The other way we can do this is it's time for, I think, Robot Congress.
00:08:09.000So I think we need to elect robots to Congress.
00:08:14.000But in any case, we will see whether the Democrats are giant hypocrites or whether the Democrats are not giant hypocrites in very, very short order.
00:08:22.000What's funny about this is that Democrats really don't have any risk in getting rid of Franken.
00:08:25.000If they get rid of Franken, the governor of Minnesota right now is a Democrat.
00:08:29.000So Democrats don't have much to worry about.
00:08:39.000By Matt Iglesias' logic yesterday at Vox.com, they have no excuse not to get rid of him.
00:08:44.000I do also want to do this flashback because you're seeing a lot of Democrats these days talk about how the Clintons should go, and it's time for Bill Clinton to go, and now they're all hot and bothered about sexual harassment.
00:09:36.000Now it's believe the women, believe the women.
00:09:37.000The only reason the Democrats are saying this, of course, is because they want Roy Moore gone.
00:09:41.000The networks, if you remember during the last election cycle, when Donald Trump brought up all of the accusers against Bill Clinton, the networks attacked Trump for having the temerity to bring up these accusers.
00:09:49.000Donald Trump proving nothing is off limits.
00:09:53.000Dramatically intensifying his attacks on former President Bill Clinton's history with women.
00:10:32.000Two of the cases were plagued by factual discrepancies.
00:10:35.000Still, the accusations linger and will be a focus of GOP ads against Hillary Clinton.
00:10:41.000Okay, so look how the media was downplaying all this until two seconds ago when Bill Clinton's desiccated political body was thrown right under that train because now it's time to get Republicans.
00:10:52.000Now listen, if inadvertently we end up raising our standards for politicians because everybody is so focused on getting rid of the other guy that they're forced to abide by their own standards,
00:11:00.000Maybe something good comes out of this.
00:11:01.000Maybe we actually all have new standards.
00:11:04.000I don't think that's what's going to happen, though.
00:11:05.000I think that this'll be a five-minute break from partisan politics dominating, and then we'll go right back to being terrible about electing terrible people.
00:11:16.000I mean, remember, Democrats were so insane back in the 90s over this thing that Bill Clinton, who was a perjurer and a sexual molester, Bill Clinton was applauded by Democrats.
00:11:25.000After he was impeached, Democrats came to the White House and they gave him a standing ovation.
00:11:29.000I ask the American people to move with me, to go on from here, to rise above the rancor, to overcome the pain and division, to be a repairer of the breach, all of us, to make this country as one America what it can and must be for our children in the new century about to dawn.
00:12:07.000I said directly on that show that Roy Moore should absolutely step down from his Senate run.
00:12:13.000So what aboutism only applies if you say that you're excusing Roy Moore's behavior because of Bill Clinton.
00:12:17.000The reason that I'm bringing up Bill Clinton is because I believe that the standard for American politicians was set in the 1990s and that has been the consistent standard all the way until now.
00:12:25.000And so if Democrats want to get rid of Roy Moore and this is going to force them to get rid of Al Franken too, good.
00:12:31.000Now, with all of that said, I do think that we should be careful about what exactly are the standards for sexual harassment and sexual assault.
00:12:37.000Like, we actually have a picture of Al Franken, you know, purporting to grab a woman's breasts while she's sleeping.
00:12:51.000The reason that I've said that Roy Moore should step down is because the allegations are credible.
00:12:54.000When Ted Cruz, for example, during his campaign was accused to have slept with a bunch of his campaign aides, the allegations were not credible because there were no names that were named, all of the women denied it, there was not any corresponding information.
00:13:08.000I remember during the campaign, there was a rape allegation that the media were not widely reporting against Donald Trump, and that's because the accuser's story basically fell apart pretty quickly.
00:13:18.000So, the allegations have to be credible, but with that said, I think that if our new standard is that credible allegations are treated as, we don't want these people anywhere near the levers of power, I think that's a good thing.
00:13:30.000Maybe inadvertently we'll stumble into something better here.
00:13:32.000Okay, so, before I go any further, and I do have a big announcement about my college lecture tour in just a moment, first I want to say thank you to our sponsors over at Birch Gold.
00:13:39.000So, right now, if it feels like the economy is doing really well, but it still feels like it might be a little bit inflated, and you think that maybe the stock market's going to take a dive sometime in here,
00:15:07.000I mean, literally dozens of requests every single day.
00:15:12.000And because of how many YAF receives on their end, we've now been working to set up a formal application process.
00:15:16.000So for all the college students who want to bring me, going live today, there's an application and info page at yaf.org slash benshapirotour.
00:15:25.000We lay out all the necessary steps and info needed to order a request hosting an event.
00:15:31.000Because of my crazy schedule, we're actually limiting next year's tour to 12 campuses, so be fast about this.
00:15:35.000Be sure to follow all the steps in the application, and present a good proposal for why you think your school should be one of the 12.
00:15:41.000Check out yaf.org slash benshapirotour, that's yaf.org slash benshapirotour to submit an application, and that will allow us to get back to you faster as well.
00:15:51.000Meanwhile, while all of this is going on in the Senate, the continuing saga of Roy Moore continues apace.
00:15:58.000And I want to talk about some of the solutions to Roy Moore's saga, but one of the things I find really kind of gross about the way that sexual allegations are treated, it's gross in two aspects.
00:16:10.000One is that sexual allegations without any other corroborating proof, if you say, show me some corroborating evidence, people go nuts.
00:16:18.000And if you say there is corroborating evidence, now you have to show me why it's not true.
00:16:25.000Roy Moore's lawyers put out a defense yesterday that was so weak and so strained, and yet people are hanging their hat on this peg.
00:16:32.000I remember that during the campaign, there was some of this with regard to President Trump, and I remember with Bill Clinton, there was some of the same sort of stuff.
00:16:39.000With regard to Trump, I recall that there was an allegation that Trump had sexually assaulted a woman on a plane, and people were going back and trying to figure out whether the arm rests on that kind of plane went up or down.
00:16:51.000And this was supposed to be used as proof that Trump had never done any of this?
00:16:55.000I'm seeing something similar happening with Roy Moore.
00:16:57.000The question you have to ask yourself is whether these allegations are credible.
00:17:01.000Now, you can still make the case, and I'm getting letters from people in Alabama who are saying, listen, I'm not going to vote for Doug Jones.
00:17:05.000I don't want you to vote for Doug Jones.
00:17:07.000I didn't vote for Hillary Clinton, right?
00:17:09.000I thought that Donald Trump was kind of a scuzz.
00:17:12.000I'm not saying you have to vote for Doug Jones.
00:17:14.000I'm saying now is the time for all of you folks to be planning a write-in campaign for somebody who is not credibly accused of child molestation.
00:17:43.000There are two new accusers who are suggesting that Moore was harassing them.
00:17:47.000One of them was a high school girl who said that when Moore was in his 30s, he called up her high school, pulled her out of trig class to ask her on a date.
00:17:53.000Which he, like, called the principal's office and said, can I speak to X?
00:17:56.000And the girl went to the office and she said, what's up?
00:17:59.000And he said, I want to ask you on a date.
00:18:00.000She said, I'm in trig class right now.
00:18:04.000Okay, in any case, Moore's lawyer... Let's say his legal team is not the strongest.
00:18:10.000And when I say not the strongest, I mean it's really quite terrible.
00:18:13.000Like, I don't know whether he went to the... His lawyers went to the My Cousin Vinny School of Lawyering, but they don't have the street smarts of Joe Pesci.
00:18:22.000Okay, in any case, here was Roy Moore's attorney.
00:18:25.000At a certain point, you just have to laugh at this stuff because we are so down the rabbit hole, folks.
00:18:29.000I mean, we are in Alice in Wonderland, and here is Roy Moore's lawyer yesterday trying to make excuses for Roy Moore attempting to date girls who were like 15 or 16 years old in Alabama in 1979.
00:20:46.000Dear Sean, I am suffering the same treatment other Republicans have had to endure.
00:20:50.000A month prior to the general election for U.S.
00:20:52.000Senate in Alabama, I have been attacked by the Washington Post and other liberal media in a desperate attempt to smear my character and defeat my campaign, and then he talks at length about how wonderful he is.
00:21:01.000He repeats that he's been married for a long time and has grandkids, et cetera, et cetera.
00:21:04.000And then he says, we are in the process of investigating these false allegations to determine their origin and motivation.
00:21:09.000For instance, we have documented that the most recent accuser, Beverly Nelson, was a party in a divorce action before me in Etowah County Circuit Court in 1999.
00:21:18.000Okay, so there's a problem with this particular allegation by Roy Moore, which is that the actual judge who was assigned to this case was not Roy Moore.
00:21:24.000Roy Moore signed, I think, one document at the very, very end of the case.
00:21:27.000She never sat in a courtroom with Roy Moore apparently.
00:21:29.000In her accusations, Nelson did not mention I was the judge assigned to her in the divorce case in 1999.
00:21:35.000A matter that apparently caused her no distress at a time that was 18 years closer to the alleged assault.
00:21:39.000Yet 18 years later, while talking before the cameras about this supposed assault, she seemingly could not contain her emotions.
00:21:45.000And she says, my signature on the order of dismissal in the divorce case was annotated with the letters DA, representing the initials of my court assistant.
00:21:51.000Well, again, one of the problems is that apparently his actual court assistant of record did not have those initials at that time.
00:21:56.000So, very weak defense from Judge Roy Moore in this letter to Sean Hannity trying to convince him not to throw him overboard.
00:22:07.000And then he trotted out his lawyers to say that the signature in the yearbook is a fraud.
00:22:12.000Remember, we played the tape of the signature in the yearbook, the accuser showing the signature in the yearbook from Roy Moore, and then his attorney said it was a fraud.
00:22:19.000I'm going to show you the tape of the attorney.
00:22:20.000Again, I don't know where he's getting his legal team.
00:22:23.000It looks like he's getting them from one of the ambulance-chasing firms that you see advertising on television.
00:22:29.000But before we get there, first I want to say thank you to this awesome new advertiser.
00:22:32.000Really, I'm very excited about this new advertiser.
00:22:38.000So, this is not a cheese of the month club or a new tie.
00:22:40.000They offer a hundred hand-curated gift collections for every type of guy.
00:22:43.000This is perfect for Christmas or Hanukkah.
00:22:45.000From the rugged outdoorsman to the sports fanatic and everything in between.
00:22:48.000They have the Whiskey Appreciation Crate with a personalized decanter and glasses for your favorite drink, or the Grill Master Crate with Brass Knuckle Meat Tenderizer, like Glittery Brass Knuckles, and Cast Iron Smoker Box.
00:22:59.000Go to mancrates.com, pick the perfect crate, choose the delivery date, and then here's the best part of it.
00:23:03.000When the crate arrives, they send you a laser-engraved crowbar, and you legitimately pry open the crate with your bare hands and the crowbar in order to get at the product, which is just awesome.
00:24:04.000So right now, Trenton Garment, our attorney, has sent a letter or is sending a letter to Gloria Allred demanding that the yearbook be released.
00:24:13.000There are a couple things that you need to look at.
00:24:14.000Look at the 1977 after Merry Christmas.
00:25:38.000Well, all I'm saying is, we're not denying, we're not admitting, we're not addressing, we will not be distracted, and we will pursue a just result for our clients.
00:25:51.000Okay, thank you, Lori Allred, for throwing more gasoline on the flames of conspiracy theories.
00:25:54.000We're going to have Sheriff Joe Arpaio actually create an investigatory committee after they figure out whether Obama was indeed born in Kenya and the birth certificate is a fake.
00:26:02.000We're going to find out also whether this yearbook was actually signed in Kenya by Ted Cruz's father after murdering JFK.
00:26:08.000I'm very excited to find all of this out.
00:26:14.000So because all you have to do now in order to doubt an allegation is basically throw any sort of doubt out there.
00:26:20.000So now Moore is trying to turn this into, and a lot of his allies are trying to turn this into, if you don't support Roy Moore, it's because you're a cuck.
00:26:27.000If you don't support Roy Moore, it's because you're a weakling.
00:26:29.000It's because you're a pansy and you just want to see the Senate seat lost.
00:26:32.000I'm not the one losing the Senate seat right now, dude.
00:26:34.000You're the one losing the Senate seat.
00:27:26.000The Democrats rally around their candidates even when they're guilty.
00:27:30.000Republicans want to throw them under the bus on a mere accusation without knowing whether they're guilty or not.
00:27:36.000Okay, no, we actually, this is one of the arguments that I keep hearing is Democrats don't throw their people under the bus, they rally around them.
00:27:41.000First of all, we'll see what they do with Al Franken.
00:27:43.000Second of all, just because someone else does something bad doesn't mean you should.
00:27:46.000And it's not like Republicans can get away with this in the same way Democrats can.
00:27:54.000Because when you have no moral standards in social life, that means that you can get away with just about anything.
00:27:59.000When you say that social standards matter, that social fabric matters, that morality matters, of course we hold you to a different standard.
00:29:01.000But Judge Roy Moore tweeted out yesterday, as though Mitch McConnell's the only one going after him, Dear Mitch McConnell, bring it on.
00:29:09.000And what he neglected was the second part of the tweet, is my favorite movie, and I think we all know why it was his favorite movie, actually.
00:29:16.000We had the best squad around for years, but no one's been able to see what we can do.
00:30:11.000There are really three options that are being weighed right now.
00:30:14.000So option one is the Sean Hannity option.
00:30:16.000So after Sean lays out this very strong case a couple of nights ago that Roy Moore has to come up with something credible or Sean's gonna call for him to get out of the race,
00:30:24.000Roy Moore basically offers nothing, and then Sean says, we'll let the people decide, which is a cop-out.
00:30:38.000In my opinion, so serious, the people of Alabama, they need to know the truth and they've got to have all the facts that they need.
00:30:46.000And that means that the Alabama voters can make an educated, informed, inclusive decision for their state when they go to the polls.
00:30:56.000And if that means, whatever it means, to get to the truth, if it means more time, I believe the governor, according to Greg Jarrett, has the ability to make that decision.
00:32:20.000So the option one is let the vote happen, okay, and then Moore wins or he loses.
00:32:23.000If he loses, then Doug Jones takes the seat, and this is a real problem for Republicans who now have 51 seats in the Senate as opposed to 52.
00:32:29.000They can't even get a tax bill through right now.
00:32:31.000I'm going to talk about that in a second.
00:32:32.000Okay, option two would be to somehow reset the election.
00:32:44.000Very difficult to see how it would matter, actually.
00:32:45.000If he delayed the election, or she, sorry, if she delayed the election, it's very difficult to see how that would necessarily impact the election.
00:32:51.000Also, it sets a pretty bad precedent that anytime something bad happens for the candidate of your political party, you just delay the election.
00:32:57.000Obviously, if a Democrat did that on the flip side, we would be ragingly upset over it.
00:33:03.000The other thing is that Mitch McConnell is considering a gambit.
00:33:06.000So, Luther Strange, who's the current occupant of this seat, his term expires.
00:33:11.000Remember, he was appointed to fill Jeff Sessions' seat in sort of corrupt fashion.
00:33:14.000His term expires in a couple of years, or rather next year, I believe.
00:33:19.000And therefore, they are holding the special election on that basis.
00:33:22.000So one of the considerations here is that if Luther Strange, instead of filling out the rest of his term, resigns right now, that triggers a new special election.
00:33:30.000Under the 17th Amendment to the Constitution, the way that Senate seats are filled is that when there is an absence, a vacancy, then the governor fills that and then a new election is declared.
00:33:43.000So does it matter if the guy who filled that vacancy resigns early?
00:33:47.000Not really clear from the 17th Amendment, but this is the logic, that maybe they can get away with it.
00:33:51.000Maybe they can just reset the election, have a new special election with new primaries and everything.
00:33:56.000So, the problem with this, of course, is that Roy Moore could very easily win those primaries.
00:34:01.000So what would end up happening, I guess we could do this ad infinitum.
00:34:04.000I guess you could have Luther Strange basically resigns, triggering a new special election.
00:34:08.000In the meantime, you see that Jeff Sessions is appointed by the governor, at which point Roy Moore wins the primaries, at which point Jeff Sessions resigns, at which point a new election is called, at which point she appoints Luther Strange,
00:34:19.000At which point Roy Moore wins the primaries, and we can do this forever.
00:34:59.000And I think it's important that he be held accountable.
00:35:02.000But hopefully, the people in his state will vote for someone else.
00:35:07.000Okay, so Gillibrand, by the way, says she supports an investigation into the Franken allegations, but she is not calling for Franken to step down.
00:35:13.000So she wants more out, but Franken, well, we'll have an ethics investigation.
00:35:17.000An ethics investigation just means nothing ever happens, because there are tons of ethics investigations, few with expulsion.
00:35:23.000But the question is, should Republicans seat more?
00:35:25.000So yesterday I said on national television, I don't think they should seat more.
00:35:32.000And even some folks who I was talking about off the air, I was talking with a couple of folks off the air who were on the show with me, and they were saying, well, wouldn't that be disrespecting the people of Alabama's choice?
00:36:02.000When you have credible allegations of child molestation, I don't think that that's taking it lightly.
00:36:06.000I do think that the reason the founders put in place checks and balances, including the ability to expel a member or not seat a member, was for situations like this.
00:36:16.000So the big idea, in a little while, I'm going to talk about the difference between living in a democracy and living in a republic, and why it is that the founders were not supremely comfortable with the argument that just because the people want something, the people ought to get something.
00:36:28.000I'll talk about that in just a second.
00:36:48.000And he still, the judge still wants them to go back to the drawing board.
00:36:52.000He's facing charges of conspiracy, bribery, and honest services fraud relating to abusing the power of his office.
00:37:00.000The prosecutors say that he accepted more than 600 grand in political contributions, a luxurious hotel suite at the Park Hyatt in Paris, free rides on a private jet.
00:37:07.000from wealthy ophthalmologist Solomon Melgen in exchange for political favors, including getting visas for Melgen's hot girlfriends.
00:37:14.000So all of that is breaking news as well.
00:37:16.000We'll talk about all that, but first, you're going to have to go over to dailywire.com and subscribe.
00:37:21.000At dailywire.com, you can subscribe for $9.99 a month and get the rest of our show live on video.
00:37:27.000You can get the rest of Michael Mull's show live on video and Andrew Klavan's show live on video, be part of our mailbag.
00:37:31.000The Shapiro store is launching in short order.
00:37:34.000It's just that the gear is taking a little while to get set for the store, but that will be up very shortly and you'll get discounts for that.
00:38:27.000So, you know, I know a lot of people are uptight with me for talking so much about the Moore thing, but I do think that this is a moral breaking point for the Republican Party.
00:38:33.000Because I don't think that we can get away with the vision of governance that we are suggesting.
00:38:39.000That we on the right can elect characterless people and get away with it.
00:38:42.000Because the whole point of being on the right, the whole point of being on the right, is that we are supposed to stand for virtue.
00:38:48.000This is one of the things I'm writing about in my new book.
00:38:53.000And the absence of virtue in political life and in common life, the decision that we don't have to worry about virtue or inculcation of virtue or have a common definition of virtue, this means that we are less happy as a people.
00:40:04.000There's one scene near the end where a crime is replayed, and it is very dee- I mean, it is deeply upsetting.
00:40:09.000So, if you're not up for that, then you probably won't be up for any of Taylor Sheridan's films, but the movie itself is effective, and interesting, and takes on some issues with regard to Native reservations, Native American reservations, which I think have been long neglected as a place that tremendous suffering goes on.
00:41:11.000It's a very good movie, and one of the things that I like about this film, and one of the things I like about Taylor Sheridan's writing generally, is that not only is he willing to do nuance, but also, he doesn't do these anti-American sucker punches.
00:41:22.000So, one of the things that's really nice about this film is that it's all about investigation into a woman's murder on a Native American reservation, but the person who's solving the murder is a white guy, Jeremy Renner, and this comes up.
00:42:35.000It was slated for some awards, it was Weinstein Company produced, and so now it's probably going to get ignored because of Weinstein, which I find just yuck.
00:42:43.000I mean, Weinstein didn't make the movie, he put some money behind it.
00:42:45.000I don't think that just because Weinstein put money behind something means everything he put money behind is garbage.
00:43:39.000And everybody went nuts for a second because Donald Trump had, of course, mocked Marco Rubio for drinking from the bottle of water.
00:43:44.000Rubio actually, he actually critiqued Trump on his water bottle technique, which is pretty funny on Twitter, so I thought that was kind of funny.
00:43:50.000Okay, time for some things that I hate.
00:43:59.000I have almost a million followers there.
00:44:01.000And I tweet incessantly, annoying everyone in my feed.
00:44:05.000And Twitter is now cracking down on blue checkmarks.
00:44:07.000The way they're doing this is they're saying that they want to get rid of blue checkmarks for people who tweet controversial and nasty things.
00:44:13.000So they got rid of it for some white supremacists like Richard Spencer and Baked Alaska.
00:44:21.000I think all those people are garbage, but the blue checkmark is there so that if somebody is imitating you, it's supposed to verify you, right?
00:44:28.000The idea is that if somebody is imitating you, you can report them for imitating you.
00:44:32.000It's a protection against fraud, essentially.
00:44:34.000Fraud protections still exist for bad people.
00:44:37.000Like, if you want to kick off Baked Alaska because you think Baked Alaska is a scumbag and he violates your terms of service for being a white supremacist, you know, that's your standard.
00:44:44.000You're a private company, you can do what you want.
00:44:46.000But, if you're removing verification checkmarks, what that inherently is doing is now
00:44:51.000You're saying that there are certain people whose messages are approved who we will continue to provide blue checkmarks, and there are certain people whose messages are not approved who will not provide blue checkmarks, and now it looks like Twitter is sponsoring certain messages.
00:45:01.000It's really dumb business more than anything else.
00:45:03.000I think Twitter's making a huge mistake.
00:45:28.000At the Bureau of Engraving and Printing.
00:45:29.000And I don't even know what's going on here.
00:45:33.000I mean, like, if you can't see the picture, it's Mnuchin holding up the sheet, and then his wife, Louise Linton, in Cruella de Vil gloves, giving a Bond villain glare into the camera as she smiles, holding this up.
00:45:44.000The best tweet that I saw on this yesterday was, Louise Linton with the things she loves and Steve Mnuchin.
00:46:09.000I mean, you don't want to look plutocratic.
00:46:10.000That's not exactly the best look, which of course led to one of my favorite things that I have ever seen, which is somebody made this video of Steve Mnuchin, and Steve Mnuchin is, let's say he's a rather smarmy character, and Steve Mnuchin, you have to laugh, they cut a video of Steve Mnuchin talking, but they filled his mouth with gargling sounds, and it really works.
00:47:18.000I think that the people of Alabama, many of them who would vote for Roy Moore, don't want him in the Senate.
00:47:21.000They just don't want Doug Jones there.
00:47:23.000And so if you were replaced by somebody like Jeff Sessions, I think that a lot of people in Alabama would probably breathe a sigh of relief.
00:47:27.000I think a lot of Alabama voters say, I'm not voting for Mitch Jones, I don't want Jones in the Senate, I don't want the election to get away, I'll vote for Moore, right?
00:47:34.000They'll make the binary decision and vote for Moore.
00:47:36.000That would be the logic anyway, and write-in won't work, so we'll vote for him.
00:47:39.000He'll win, and then maybe they'll replace him.
00:47:43.000There's this idea that has gone around, and I find it very irritating, that institutions that were specifically set up to check public excesses are now considered out of bounds.
00:48:28.000Under all forms of simple government, and when unchecked, produce the same effects of fraud, violence, and cruelty.
00:48:33.000When clear prospects are open before vanity, pride, avarice, or ambition, for their easy gratification, it is hard for the most considerate philosophers and the most conscientious moralists to resist the temptation.
00:48:43.000Individuals have conquered themselves.
00:48:44.000Nations and large bodies of men, never.
00:48:47.000So, John Adams saying, listen, direct democracy, the idea that people always are right, is not true, which is why you have a set of checks and balances.
00:48:53.000If you believe that people are always right, majority rule on everything.
00:48:56.000You wouldn't need a Constitution, you wouldn't need a Senate, you wouldn't need a House, you wouldn't need a Presidency, you wouldn't need a Judiciary.
00:49:00.000You wouldn't need checks and balances.
00:49:02.000The Senate was given the authority as to whether to seat particular Senators specifically for situations where Senators should not be seated even though they were elected.
00:49:09.000You know, and somebody yesterday asked me, what if the Electoral College had rogue electors who voted against Donald Trump?
00:49:14.000What I said is, that is what the Electoral College was designed to do.
00:49:16.000I would have disagreed that the Electoral College should have seen Donald Trump as such a threat to democracy that they wouldn't seat him.
00:49:22.000But originally, this is what the Electoral College was designed to do.
00:49:25.000The Electoral College was designed to stop bad men from entering high office.
00:49:33.000In fact, if I had my druthers, the Electoral College would have said nix to both of the candidates, and then we would have been able to seat somebody else.
00:49:38.000In any case, Chief Justice John Marshall said the same thing.
00:49:47.000A balanced republic is designed to check out the excesses.
00:49:49.000James Madison writes this in Federalist Ten, which we'll get to when we eventually get to Federalist Ten in our review of the Federalist Papers.
00:50:07.000If we don't accept that some checks and balances are necessary to prevent the excesses of people who feel forced into binary positions, then we're not going to be able to actually see what the system of government was meant to be.
00:50:18.000Okay, so we'll be back here tomorrow with all the latest.
00:50:20.000We'll see if the Democrats continue to stand in hypocritical fashion by Al Franken, and we'll see if Bob Menendez walks free.