In a shock move, Republican Speaker of the House Paul Ryan will be retiring, while Mark Zuckerberg gets grilled on the Hill. Plus, the FBI raids the President s personal lawyer s office, and now the Speaker announces that he will not be running for re-election and will in fact step down from his position as Speaker after the November election, meaning he will leave office in January of 2019. Plus, Mark Zuckerberg goes to the Hill and gets grilled in historic fashion. But before we get to any of those things, I want to say thank you to our sponsor, LendingClub. They help you get access to low rates on loans of up to $40,000 for almost any purpose. It s easier than going to a bank, and you can check your rate for free right now. Check your rate now! It will not impact your credit score which is great! Use the promo code: CRIMINALS at checkout to get 20% off your first month with discount code CRIMIALS. Ben Shapiro's The Ben Shapiro Show is now available on all major podcast directories, including Audible, iTunes, and Podcoin. If you like what you hear, please HIT SUBSCRIBE and leave us a review and tell a friend about what you think of the show. We'll be listening to the show on Apple Podcasts and other podcasting services! And don't forget to tell us what you're listening to on your favorite streaming platform! and we'll be giving us a shoutout! in the next episode of the Ben Shapiro show! next week! Thank you! - Ben Shapiro Subscribe to The Six Sigma and the next one is coming out on Monday, November 5th, November 6th, 7/19th, 9/20th, at 7/7/19, and 7/27, at 9/28, Subscribe & 7/9/19 Thanks for listening to The FiveThirtyEight I'll see you next Monday, right after that's a real thing? Thank You, Ben Shapiro, right? Thanks, Ben, bye, bye, The Sixteenth, Right, Right, Thank you, Thanked, Righteous, etc., Love, Cheers, "A Big Bird, Ben ? " & Good Morning, Maura,
00:00:00.000In a shock move, Republican Speaker of the House Paul Ryan will be retiring, Mark Zuckerberg gets grilled on the Hill, and the Trump investigation continues to proceed.
00:00:08.000I'm Ben Shapiro, this is the Ben Shapiro Show.
00:00:18.000The FBI raids the President of the United States' personal lawyer's office two days ago.
00:00:24.000And now, the Speaker of the House Paul Ryan announces that he will not be running for re-election and that he will in fact step down from his position as Speaker after the November elections and that he will not run for re-election, meaning he will leave office in January of 2019.
00:00:39.000Plus, Mark Zuckerberg goes to the hill and gets it grilled in historic fashion.
00:00:43.000But before we get to any of those things, first I want to say thanks to our sponsors over at Lending Club.
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00:02:01.000The big breaking news on this Wednesday is that Speaker of the House Paul Ryan has announced that he will indeed be stepping down from his position as Speaker of the House.
00:02:10.000Now, he's not going to do that until after the election.
00:02:12.000He also will not be running for re-election in his district.
00:02:15.000He announced it this morning, and here is what it sounded like.
00:02:18.000You realize something when you take this job.
00:02:20.000It's a big job with a lot riding on you, and you feel it.
00:02:23.000But you also know that this is a job that does not last forever.
00:02:27.000You realize that you hold the office for just a small part of our history.
00:02:52.000He thought that he was going to be able to save the country from the oncoming train that is Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid collapse, which will be happening over the next 10 to 20 years.
00:03:09.000He's been able to get rid of some of the regulations that the Obama administration put in place through the Congressional Review Act process.
00:03:16.000He's gotten a lot of flack as well, and I have a lot of thoughts on why it is that Speaker Ryan is going.
00:03:20.000But first, I think we ought to review exactly what Speaker Ryan was, because today you're going to hear a lot of people who are on the right celebrating Paul Ryan going, suggesting that Paul Ryan going is going to change the way that Congress does business.
00:03:32.000Now, listen, I don't think Paul Ryan ran everything as well as things could be run.
00:03:36.000The man cut deals with Patty Murray when he was not Speaker of the House, and then he cut a deal with Democrats to pass a $1.3 trillion omnibus package that there is no excuse for passing.
00:03:46.000But it is important to note that for all of the bad bills that Paul Ryan passed, he also passed a good bill that was rejected by Mitch McConnell.
00:03:52.000So I think a lot of the ire that's been directed at Paul Ryan really ought to be directed at Mitch McConnell, because here's how the process works.
00:03:58.000Paul Ryan would pass a very conservative bill through a conservative house, and then it would go to the Senate, and there it would die.
00:04:03.000And then Mitch McConnell would pass a different version of a bill.
00:04:06.000And now the question was on Paul Ryan.
00:04:09.000Do you tell Mitch McConnell that you're not going to pass anything the Senate passes?
00:04:12.000Do you tell President Trump that you're not going to pass something that he wants to sign?
00:04:15.000Or do you go along, do you get along, take the hit on behalf of Mitch McConnell, and now you're seen as somebody who believes the same things that Mitch McConnell believes on spending, and believes the same things in terms of fiscal priorities that President Trump does?
00:04:26.000If Paul Ryan can be faulted for anything,
00:04:28.000It's that he didn't hold Mitch McConnell's and President Trump's feet to the fire.
00:04:32.000The same people who think that Paul Ryan is indeed a milquetoast and a weakling would have been fighting angry at him if President Trump had not gotten things on his desk.
00:04:43.000So in order of priority for people who have not gotten Trump's legislative agenda passed, it goes like this.
00:04:48.000Trump, at the top of the list because he has not had a solid legislative agenda that has been pushed by the White House in any serious way.
00:04:53.000The turnover at the White House has been too high.
00:04:55.000The turnover on topics has been too high.
00:04:57.000The president has not used his bully pulpit to actually stump for legislation in any real
00:05:02.000In a serious way, and he hasn't really been part of the negotiations, so the buck stops with Trump.
00:05:06.000The second on the totem pole in terms of blame has to be Mitch McConnell, because Mitch McConnell is the one with 51 senators, and he's been unable to get seriously conservative legislation through the Senate.
00:05:16.000A third on the list is Paul Ryan, and yet people seem to have reversed this polarity.
00:05:19.000People seem to believe that Paul Ryan is the real problem here, when he really is not, and that Mitch McConnell is second on the list, and that Trump, of course, can never be blamed for anything, because we can't blame the President of the United States when his legislative agenda doesn't get passed.
00:05:46.000Maybe it'll be somebody who's more compelling.
00:05:48.000And I would suggest that that's going to have to be the case, because the high likelihood is that the Republicans are going to lose the House in 2018, which means that it better be somebody who's a fighter.
00:05:58.000It better be somebody who's going to try and obstruct Nancy Pelosi's agenda as much as humanly possible, considering the great likelihood is that Paul Ryan will be succeeded as Speaker, not by another Republican, but by Nancy Pelosi, which is a frightening thought in all of its various permutations.
00:06:13.000But the person who replaces Paul Ryan, you have to wonder whether that person is really going to do a lot better than Paul Ryan, given the fact that Paul Ryan did not do worse than John Boehner.
00:06:20.000He did not do worse than Denny Hastert.
00:06:22.000He did not do worse than late-stage Newt Gingrich, to be frank.
00:06:27.000So all of the talk about Paul Ryan being the world's crappiest speaker I think is untrue.
00:06:31.000Do I think that he was the world's best speaker?
00:06:33.000I also don't think he was temperamentally cut out for the job.
00:06:35.000I don't think Paul Ryan wanted the job, and having met Paul Ryan now, I don't think that Paul Ryan is somebody who was fit for the job, because to be a good Speaker of the House requires a couple of things.
00:06:45.000One, you either have to be a very canny manipulator, you have to be a Tip O'Neill type, you know, the Democrat from the 1980s who manipulated his own members, manipulated Republicans in order to get his agenda passed.
00:06:54.000You have to be very good at manipulating people and fitting pieces together.
00:06:58.000You have to be more of a Mitch McConnell temperament, sort of a turtle who's able to slowly walk legislation through your House of Congress.
00:07:07.000Or you have to be a great visionary leader, somebody who's charismatic and who has an agenda that is backed by your own caucus.
00:07:12.000That was like Newt Gingrich in 1994 or Nancy Pelosi in 2006.
00:07:17.000Somebody who came in with a whole list of agenda items that the caucus agreed on and you could pass those into law as fast as humanly possible.
00:07:24.000Paul Ryan obviously did not have that sort of cohesion inside his own caucus and he is also not a particularly charismatic leader.
00:07:30.000He's not somebody who stands up and people say, I want to follow that guy into battle.
00:07:33.000Paul Ryan just was not suited for the job.
00:07:37.000The reason that Paul Ryan is announcing that he's leaving right now, there are a couple of reasons.
00:07:40.000One is because he wants to spend more time with his family, but he could have announced this after the election.
00:07:44.000He could have waited until after the election, then announced, listen, I'm not going to be Speaker anymore, so I'm leaving, and I'm not interested in running for re-election.
00:07:50.000I want to go home, or I want my family to move to Washington, D.C., and I'll work for American Enterprise Institute or something.
00:07:56.000The reason that he announced this now is twofold.
00:07:58.000One, Ryan knows that this blue wave is coming.
00:08:02.000The indicators are very good that Democrats win the House, and it is quite possible they win the Senate as well, and that Chuck Schumer is the new Senate Majority Leader, and that Nancy Pelosi is the new House Majority Leader, that she's the new Speaker of the House, rather.
00:08:13.000And that sets up a really bad cycle for going into 2020, which I'll talk about in just a minute.
00:08:17.000But if you look at the list of Republicans who have left,
00:08:20.000Okay, it's a pretty lengthy list of Republicans who are retiring this term because they don't want to exist in the Nancy Pelosi Congress.
00:08:27.000Okay, Trey Gowdy is out, Bob Goodlatte, Jeb Hensarling, Rodney Frelinghuysen, Daryl Issa, Lamar Smith, Ileana Ross-Lettinen, Charlie Dent, Dave Reichert, Pat Tiberi, Frank Labiando, Lynn Jenkins, Sam Johnson, John Duncan, Ted Poe, Dave Trott, Ryan Costello, Bill Schuster, Greg Harper, Tom Rooney.
00:08:42.000Okay, that's a list of Republicans in the House who are retiring this term, and that doesn't even include the ones who are retiring because of various scandals.
00:08:50.000There's a Republican in Pennsylvania who retired over a sex scandal.
00:08:53.000There's a Republican in Texas, Blake Fahrenthold, who's retiring over a sex scandal.
00:08:57.000Okay, there are a lot of Republicans stepping down because what they see is that the polls don't look good.
00:09:01.000So if you're Paul Ryan, and you're figuring, okay, we're in serious trouble here, right?
00:09:05.000We're probably gonna lose the House, and it's really not because of Paul Ryan that they're gonna lose the House, okay?
00:09:09.000If they lose the House, the high likelihood is because the President of the United States has incredibly low approval ratings and because Democrats hate him with a passion equal to the fiery, burning, passionate hatred of a thousand suns.
00:09:48.000So I think that Ryan is making a political move and that's why he is making this statement.
00:09:51.000Now also he says, and I think this is probably true, he doesn't want to lie to his constituents about who's going to serve out his term.
00:09:56.000Because if he wins re-election in November in his district, which he likely would, and then retires in January, then he's been fibbing to his constituents all along.
00:10:37.000So for all the talk about Paul Ryan standing in the way of Trump's agenda, there's really no evidence that Paul Ryan has been standing in the way of Trump's agenda.
00:10:43.000In fact, it's been Paul Ryan trying to pass Trump's agenda, and he just can't get it through the Senate because he's not a senator.
00:10:50.000I will say, however, that it's pretty clear that Ryan leaving does represent a triumph of Trumpian attitude.
00:10:54.000Now, people have been mistaking the gaps in policy between Trump and Ryan for the serious gap.
00:10:59.000That is not the serious gap in the Republican Party right now.
00:11:01.000The serious gap in the Republican Party is the gap between attitudes.
00:11:04.000Now, people have seen this as a binary choice between Paul Ryan's sort of polite wonkishness and Donald Trump's punch-everything-including-the-baby.
00:11:15.000You can either wheel around and you can tweet whatever you want, and you can be wild and crazy and bombastic, and that's the way you ought to approach politics, or you can be milquetoast and Jack Kemp-like in your approach to politics.
00:11:27.000I think there is a middle ground where you are very aggressive when you need to be very aggressive, and you are polite when that possibility is available.
00:11:33.000You know, it's something that I try to pursue in my own sort of political rhetoric.
00:11:37.000But if the Republican Party had to choose one, it's pretty clear that the base chose Trumpian rhetoric over Paul Ryan's rhetoric because they are very angry, and they're very angry because they're very frustrated, and they're very frustrated because no matter how many Republicans they elect, it seems that their agenda is never passed.
00:11:51.000And they can blame that on Paul Ryan, but the truth is that Paul Ryan is just the head of the caucus.
00:11:54.000I promise you that if Paul Ryan were the head of a caucus that were all Freedom Caucus guys,
00:11:58.000Then the agenda would look very different.
00:12:01.000Okay, more thoughts on Paul Ryan in just a second.
00:12:03.000First, I want to say thanks to our sponsors over at Bull & Branch.
00:12:06.000So, you haven't been getting enough sleep, and you think that it's because the temperature in the room isn't right, or you think it's because your mattress isn't right.
00:12:13.000Well, have you ever thought that maybe, just maybe, it might be the sheets that you're sleeping on?
00:12:16.000You don't tend to think about the sheets that you sleep on very often, because who thinks about sheets?
00:12:31.000There are three ex-presidents sleeping on them.
00:12:33.000After I got Bull and Branch sheets, I legitimately had to throw out all the other sheets in my house and buy only Bull and Branch sheets because they are that good.
00:13:36.000If you were the head of a caucus that looked like Mark Meadows, where everybody was Mark Meadows, or everybody were Jim Jordan, then they'd be passing different legislation.
00:13:44.000But the job of the Speaker is to put all of those various components together.
00:13:47.000And very often he was able to do that, it's just that the Senate never passed any of that stuff.
00:13:52.000So all of this bodes very ill for Republicans, obviously, going into 2018 and beyond.
00:13:58.000The polls show that there's going to be a historic youth wave coming in 2018.
00:14:01.000According to Harvard University Institute of Politics, this wave of voters 18 to 29 is going to be very strong.
00:14:08.00053% probably or definitely will be voting.
00:14:10.000And of those most likely to vote, 55% lean Democratic, 21% favor Republicans at this point.
00:15:07.000There's going to be a bunch of investigations.
00:15:08.000There'll be investigations from here till the end of time, and President Trump will be dragged through the mud.
00:15:13.000So for all the hatred of the Republican Party that a lot of people are evidencing inside the conservative movement, recognize that if you like Trump and you're frustrated with the Republican Party,
00:15:20.000Then your worst move here, your worst move, is to allow Democrats to take over the House.
00:15:25.000They'll do nothing but be a thorn in the side for President Trump, no question.
00:15:29.000And if you don't like President Trump, and you're a conservative, then you should recognize that you need a conservative Congress, because the worst thing that could happen here is Nancy Pelosi takes over the House and Chuck Schumer takes over the Senate, and then both of them are negotiating with President Trump.
00:15:41.000President Trump, who sees himself as a great dealmaker, you could easily see him walking through the front doors of the White House, arm-in-arm with Pelosi and Schumer, passing a bunch of leftist priorities because Trump wants to be seen as a guy who signs things.
00:16:24.000If you recall, back on Monday, President Trump's personal lawyer's office was raided by the FBI.
00:16:29.000And Alan Dershowitz has a piece over at The Hill about this.
00:16:33.000He says, there's much speculation as to the significance of the search of the offices and hotel room of President Trump's lawyer, Michael Cohen.
00:16:38.000To obtain a search warrant, prosecutors must demonstrate to a judge they have probable cause to believe the premises to be searched contain evidence of crime.
00:16:44.000They must also specify the area to be searched, the items to be seized, and in search of computers, the word searches to be used.
00:16:50.000At least that's the constitutional requirement
00:16:52.000In theory, especially where the Sixth Amendment right to counsel is involved, in addition to the general Fourth Amendment right against unreasonable searches.
00:16:58.000But he says that the firewalls and the so-called taint teams, which are supposed to prevent the FBI from looking at documents that they're not supposed to look at, that these have experienced troubles in the past.
00:17:08.000He says it's an imperfect protection of important constitutional rights.
00:17:11.000He says that's why Justice Department officials must be careful to limit the searching of lawyers' offices to compelling cases involving serious crimes.
00:17:18.000We don't know at this point what the prosecutors are looking for, but if it relates to payments made to porn star Stormy Daniels, that would not seem to justify so potentially intrusive a search of Cohen's confidential lawyer client files.
00:17:29.000So Dershowitz is defending President Trump.
00:17:31.000He's been defending him on legal grounds for a while here, suggesting that President Trump has been unfairly targeted, which I think in large measure
00:17:39.000But all of this is leading to, you know, a serious crisis inside American government.
00:17:45.000There's a lot of talk today about whether President Trump is actually going to go ahead and fire Robert Mueller or whether he's going to fire Rod Rosenstein.
00:17:51.000Those are the two rumors that are on the table.
00:17:53.000So firing Mueller, by the way, would not stop the investigation into Cohen's office.
00:17:56.000Recognize that that was referred out to the U.S.
00:17:59.000Attorney's Office in the Southern District of New York.
00:18:01.000So that's no longer under Robert Mueller's purview.
00:18:04.000So, President Trump could fire Mueller.
00:18:06.000It would just end the Russian collusion investigation, which, by most accounts at this point, is turning out to be sort of an empty bag, at least so far, as quote-unquote, getting Trump.
00:18:15.000There's no evidence at this point that there was serious collusion between the Trump campaign and anyone in the Russian government.
00:18:20.000The only people who have been indicted have been indicted for lying to the FBI, people like George Papadopoulos.
00:18:25.000Carter Page still has not been indicted, despite the FISA warrant against him.
00:18:29.000And so, you know, Trump's drive to fire Mueller, I think, would be misplaced.
00:18:32.000I think that that's probably a waste of time.
00:18:35.000Apparently, according to a New York Times piece, the president was so furious after seeing news about subpoenas issued by the special counsel a few months back that he told advisers in no uncertain terms that Mr. Mueller's investigation had to be shut down.
00:18:46.000This is when Mueller was going after Deutsche Bank.
00:18:50.000You know, so Trump has repeatedly been considering firing Mueller.
00:18:53.000He said the other day that he was still considering firing Mueller.
00:18:55.000Obviously, that is something that he is considering now.
00:18:57.000Apparently, he's considering firing Rod Rosenstein.
00:18:59.000Rod Rosenstein is, of course, the guy who oversees Mueller and oversees the rest of the Department of Justice with regard to some of these Trump-related investigations.
00:19:08.000So, CNN was reporting that the President's interest in releasing the Deputy Attorney General was heightened after the office of his personal lawyer, Michael Cohen, was raided by the FBI.
00:19:16.000The CNN report noted that such a move could limit Special Counsel Robert Mueller's quickly escalating investigation into Trump.
00:20:05.000I don't think it's out of the realm of possibility by any stretch of the imagination.
00:20:09.000But does that rise to the level of a high crime and misdemeanor subject to impeachment?
00:20:13.000A little harder to make that case, simply because this was a $130,000 payment that violated campaign finance, and Barack Obama's 2008 election cycle contained $2 million in such campaign violations.
00:20:27.000So, unless President Trump, as President of the United States, was actively involved in a conspiracy to cover up a campaign finance violation, then I think that it's going to be harder to claim impeachment, even if it turns out that Michael Cohen is guilty of violating campaign finance laws.
00:20:42.000So that's the latest in that investigation.
00:20:44.000I want to get to Mark Zuckerberg here in just a second.
00:20:47.000First, I want to say thank you to our sponsors.
00:22:25.000On Capitol Hill, aside from the ouster of Paul Ryan, aside from the continuing investigation into the personal lawyer of the President of the United States, as if you didn't have enough news, Mark Zuckerberg was on the Hill yesterday.
00:22:35.000So Mark Zuckerberg had been called onto the Hill yesterday because of all of the claims that privacy had been violated by Facebook.
00:22:42.000That if you publicly post information and then that information was scraped by an outside company, meaning that they were using that data in order to market to you or in order to generate voter profiles, for example, by Cambridge Analytica, that this was some sort of terrible, evil crime.
00:22:55.000Now, I think there are lots of problems with social media.
00:22:58.000I've been highly critical of social media many times, and I will be again in just a moment.
00:23:02.000But if you really think that the big problem on Facebook is that you publicly post information and then companies look at it, you're stupid.
00:23:09.000And if you think the big problem on Facebook is that tons of people were being manipulated by fake news, if you really think, like Democrats think, that Hillary Clinton would have won except for the seven ads run by Russian bots in the 2016 election, you crazy.
00:23:26.000People are so crazy now that there was a big story that came out, I think it was from NBC News yesterday, about a video that was viewed about 250,000 times that was a supposed sex tape including Hillary Clinton.
00:23:36.000It was fake news, obviously, because number one, who would ever want to see any of that on camera?
00:23:40.000But number two, was that shifting votes?
00:23:43.000Because we're five minutes away from Dianne Feinstein calling the head of Pornhub up to the Hill to explain why Hillary Clinton lost since there was a distribution on Pornhub of a fake Hillary Clinton sex tape.
00:24:07.000When you pick up the phone and you call somebody, what is said over that phone line is not the responsibility of Verizon or AT&T or Sprint, okay?
00:24:14.000It is the responsibility of the person on the phone.
00:24:16.000Facebook was supposed to be more like the phone line.
00:24:24.000Instead, Facebook has now interposed itself between its own users and information that people want to see.
00:24:30.000There's been a pet peeve of mine for a long time.
00:24:32.000They were doing it back in 2016 when they were talking about shifting their algorithms so that certain trending topics were not allowed to trend.
00:24:39.000Conservative trending topics were not allowed to trend on Facebook.
00:24:41.000And now, of course, they've shifted their algorithms to supposedly benefit local news and establish mainstream media outlets and against alternative news sources like Daily Wire.
00:24:50.000This is why, if you're watching this show right now and you're wondering where your Daily Wire updates went,
00:24:55.000You need to go and check out your own settings right now and reset your settings because Facebook has tacitly, and without your permission, gone and changed the algorithm so that you are not seeing our updates anymore.
00:25:07.000Because they say that our news site is somehow not as credible as CNN or the New York Times, which is just absurd.
00:25:14.000Facebook right now is even burying which outlets it's punishing.
00:25:17.000So Facebook is obviously penalizing certain outlets, but it's not explaining what exactly
00:25:22.000And now, Peter Hassan of the Daily Caller is reporting that Facebook does not intend to identify which media outlets it helps and which it hurts, according to a company spokesperson who spoke to the Daily Caller News Foundation.
00:25:42.000The spokesperson argued that if the company revealed that data, it would not give people a clear picture of Facebook, adding,
00:25:47.000We've made changes to News Feed to help people meaningfully connect with friends and family first.
00:25:51.000This means public pages of all types are going to experience declines across Facebook.
00:25:55.000Political pages and partisan news pages, like other public pages, have experienced declines, but there are examples of declines across the political spectrum.
00:26:02.000Except for the fact that that's not true.
00:26:04.000Except for the fact that if you look at the mainstream media outlets, they have not lost engagement.
00:26:08.000The only sites that are losing engagement are particularly conservative ones.
00:26:11.000So, all of the senators yesterday were grilling Mark Zuckerberg until they're grilling him again today.
00:26:16.000And, first of all, it is important to note, if you're going to have people grill Mark Zuckerberg, they have to have once used a computer.
00:26:23.000A lot of these questions look like they were submitted by my 93-year-old grandmother.
00:26:28.000And it was a bunch of people who were asking Mark Zuckerberg about the questions.
00:26:33.000Basically, the exchange sounded something like this.
00:26:35.000You know, Senator Orrin Hatch, who's 8,000 years old, either reading off a piece of paper written by a 23-year-old or asking questions that have nothing to do with Facebook.
00:26:44.000Or Senator Dick Durbin, who's a complete idiot, who probably has never used Facebook, sitting there and saying, So, Mark Zuckerberg, you have a book full of faces.
00:26:53.000And then Mark Zuckerberg looking at him in wonderment and bemusement.
00:26:58.000This is what happens when the average age of the senators who are questioning Mark Zuckerberg is 57 years old.
00:27:03.000That's not a rip on people who are 57.
00:27:04.000It is to say that the chance that they are really fluent in social media is pretty low.
00:27:10.000And that's why you see stupidities like Dick Durbin asking Mark Zuckerberg where he stayed at his hotel last night.
00:27:14.000This is a thing that actually happened.
00:27:28.000Okay, and this is one of the things that's so incredibly stupid.
00:27:34.000So, one of the complaints by Democrats has been that if you publicly post information and people see that information, it's a violation of privacy.
00:27:42.000Mark Zuckerberg would not have to, under Facebook's rule, reveal where he went to his hotel last night.
00:27:48.000And so I'm not sure what Dick Durbin is even getting at, but Dick Durbin doesn't know what the hell he's talking about.
00:27:51.000There were a couple of people who actually went after Zuckerberg on matters that actually do matter.
00:27:55.000Okay, so there are really a couple of matters that are really serious.
00:27:59.000One is the amount of political bias at Facebook, the political bias of the people who are actually implementing and writing the algorithms.
00:28:06.000And the other thing that's really important is whether Facebook is a platform or whether Facebook is a publisher.
00:28:13.000And that matters because, getting back to our AT&T Sprint Verizon discussion, if the phone company starts acting like a censor, if they start buzzing out what you're saying to your friends, they become responsible for what you say to your friends.
00:28:25.000Like we at Daily Wire, we edit all of our pieces, we purchase all of our photos from a service called Getty Images, so that they're all licensed, because we're a publisher and we're responsible for the content we post.
00:28:36.000If, however, if we use a particular internet service, that internet service is not responsible for the content we post.
00:28:43.000Facebook has presented itself as a platform, which means they're not legally responsible for, for example, misuse of copyrighted content or slander.
00:28:52.000But if they're responsible for what's being put up, if they're controlling what you see and what you hear, then suddenly they need to be treated like any other news outlet.
00:28:59.000They need to be treated like NBC or MSNBC or CBS or CNN or the New York Times or the Daily Wire.
00:29:06.000One was the political bias, and one was the fact that Facebook is playing censor, which would actually subject them to liability.
00:29:13.000Both of these lines of questioning were engaged in by Republicans, and these were the only two lines of questioning that mattered.
00:29:17.000So the first line of questioning about the political bias, about Facebook cracking down on conservatives, this was pushed by Senator Ted Cruz from Texas.
00:29:25.000And full disclosure, when Senator Cruz visited our offices and I interviewed him, we had
00:29:29.000Pretty substantial discussion about exactly this topic.
00:29:32.000So, good for Senator Cruz for going after Mark Zuckerberg on this.
00:29:34.000Here is Senator Cruz illuminating the issue for Zuckerberg.
00:29:38.000Well, Mr. Zuckerberg, I will say there are a great many Americans who I think are deeply concerned that Facebook and other tech companies are engaged in a pervasive pattern of bias and political censorship.
00:29:53.000There have been numerous instances with Facebook.
00:29:56.000In May of 2016, Gizmodo reported that Facebook had purposely and routinely suppressed conservative stories from trending news, including stories about CPAC, including stories about Mitt Romney, including stories about the Lois Lerner IRS scandal, including stories about Glenn Beck.
00:30:13.000In addition to that, Facebook has initially shut down the Chick-fil-A Appreciation Day page, has blocked a post of a Fox News reporter, has blocked over two dozen Catholic pages, and most recently blocked Trump supporters Diamond and Silk's page with 1.2 million Facebook followers after determining their content and brand were, quote, unsafe to the community.
00:30:40.000To a great many Americans, that appears to be a pervasive pattern of political bias.
00:30:47.000Zuckerberg would go on to basically say that it is fair to say that Silicon Valley is far left-leaning, and that suspicions of political bias are not unwarranted.
00:30:58.000Also, it is important to note, along the same lines, that Zuckerberg, who is now proclaiming that Facebook ought to be the arbiter of what constitutes good speech and bad speech,
00:31:06.000I can't define what good speech and bad speech are.
00:31:08.000So he was questioned by Ben Sass about specifically this, and he was asked about defining hate speech, because he said, well, let's just get rid of all hate speech.
00:31:18.000And Sass said, OK, well, it's one thing if you're talking about violent speech, but if you're talking about nonviolent speech, do you even know how to define that?
00:31:25.000If you claim that you're a platform, if you claim that you're not a publisher, you're a platform, then how can you define what speech is hateful and which speech is not, given the fact that you have no hard considerations as to what that constitutes?
00:31:36.000So we'll show you, we'll play you that audio in just a second, show you that video in just a second.
00:31:40.000But first, I want to say thanks to our sponsors over at Keeps.
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00:32:55.000We're going to get to more of Mark Zuckerberg being ripped up and down by the Republicans in the Senate Judiciary Committee in just a second.
00:33:03.000But for the rest, you're going to have to go over to Daily Wire and subscribe.
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00:34:02.000So Senator Cruz rips Zuckerberg up and down on his level of political bias at Facebook, which is well worthwhile, and then Zuckerberg is questioned about how he's policing speech, because this is really the danger.
00:34:14.000You have to understand, the entire Democratic crusade against the so-called privacy violations of Facebook is really an attempt by Democrats to grab control of the reins of Facebook and drive Facebook to please them politically.
00:34:26.000The implicit promise here is that if Facebook starts mirroring all the Democratic talking points, then they will stop regulating them or threatening to do so.
00:34:39.000And he's already talked about how he wants to stop hate speech on his platform.
00:34:43.000But, as is obvious, he has no idea how to define hate speech because there is no way to define hate speech in any real way.
00:34:48.000You may decide, or Facebook may decide, it needs to police a whole bunch of speech that I think America might be better off not having policed by one company that has a really big and powerful platform.
00:35:03.000Senator, I think that this is a really hard question.
00:35:07.000And I think it's one of the reasons why we struggle with it.
00:35:09.000There are certain definitions that we have around
00:35:17.000Okay, so again, there's a difference between saying you're going to ban speech that calls for violence and saying you're going to ban hate speech.
00:35:29.000Zuckerberg has no idea what he's talking about.
00:35:30.000He says that AI is going to be able to identify hate speech as nonsense.
00:35:35.000Yeah, what we're talking about here is social media platforms acting as censors.
00:35:40.000Zuckerberg made a pretty shocking admission in the middle of this colloquy with the Republican senators.
00:35:46.000He was asked specifically, are you a platform or are you a publisher?
00:35:49.000And he basically admits we're a publisher.
00:35:51.000You agree now that Facebook and other social media platforms are not neutral platforms but bear some responsibility for the content.
00:36:01.000I agree that we're responsible for the content.
00:36:03.000Okay, so as soon as he says that, his lawyers in Silicon Valley lose their minds.
00:36:07.000Because he just acknowledged that Facebook now ought to be treated like Daily Wire or the New York Times, meaning that any unlicensed photo shared on Facebook makes Facebook suable.
00:36:16.000It means that any piece of slander published on Facebook makes Facebook suable.
00:36:20.000This is the choice Mark Zuckerberg has and he's going to have to make it.
00:36:22.000Are you a platform or are you in fact a publisher?
00:36:25.000Dan Sullivan, the senator from Alaska, he says to Zuckerberg, he asked Zuckerberg the same question.
00:36:29.000You'll see Zuckerberg start to back off because there was a little break in the questioning.
00:36:33.000I'm sure he got a call from his lawyer saying, Mark, you need to back off that one real quick.
00:36:36.000So here's Dan Sullivan questioning Zuckerberg.
00:36:39.000When you mentioned Senator Cornyn, you said you are responsible for your
00:36:48.000Are you the world's largest publisher?
00:36:52.000Because I think that goes to a really important question on what form of regulation or government action, if any, you would take.
00:37:01.000Senator, this is a really big question.
00:37:04.000I view us as a tech company because the primary thing that we do is build technology and products.
00:37:09.000But you said you're responsible for your content, which makes you kind of a publisher, right?
00:37:14.000Well, I agree that we're responsible for the content, but we don't produce the content.
00:37:19.000I think that when people ask us if we're a media company or a publisher, my understanding of the heart of what they're really getting at is, do we feel responsibility for the content on our platform?
00:37:29.000The answer to that, I think, is clearly yes.
00:37:33.000But I don't think that that's incompatible with fundamentally, at our core, being a technology company where the main thing that we do is have engineers and build products.
00:37:40.000Man, his lawyers have got to just be twisting themselves in pretzels over all of this because he just opened up Facebook to millions of dollars in liability.
00:38:01.000Mark Zuckerberg just said, we feel responsibility for the content that's posted on Facebook.
00:38:05.000Which means that you can now sue Facebook.
00:38:07.000Hey, Facebook is a much deeper pocket.
00:38:09.000Under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, there's an automatic statutory penalty for use, for unlicensed use of materials like that, that ranges from $750 per instance to $30,000 per instance.
00:38:21.000How many unlicensed photos are posted on Facebook every minute?
00:38:25.000My goodness, if his lawyers are not in a state of panic right now, then they really should be, because I promise you, the lawsuits are forthcoming, and they are forthcoming in pretty short order.
00:38:34.000But this is where the Democrats have driven Zuckerberg.
00:38:37.000And when you decide to go full leftist and censor your own content, and censor content of other people, because you want to please your cocktail party friends, that has some pretty significant ramifications for your business as well.
00:38:47.000OK, so in other silly news, OK, I just have to bring you a couple of really dumb stories because they are pretty amazing.
00:39:05.000They say that men who identify as women can compete against biological women regardless of whether or not they've taken any steps to officially transition.
00:39:12.000So according to Boston Athletic Association President Tom Grilk, quote, That's an amazing statement.
00:39:33.000They've had to deal with a lot over the years and we don't want to add to the burden.
00:39:35.000It's not a burden to suggest that men should not be competing against women in the women's bracket.
00:39:40.000If the NCAA applied the same logic to basketball, you know how, first of all, everybody would be able to dunk in the women's NCAA, but second of all,
00:39:51.000There'd be no way to prevent seven-foot dudes from saying that they were ladies and then just being in the, and just competing against women.
00:39:57.000Or even if they were transgender, seven-foot dudes with twice the upper body mass of women competing against women.
00:40:25.000So ABC features one man who identifies as a woman who admits to not having undergone any treatment to lower testosterone, which allows men to have a significant athletic advantage over women.
00:40:33.000Stevie Roemer is a transgender woman from Woodstock, Illinois, and says she registered, this is according to ABC News, for Boston as a woman because that's what she is.
00:40:40.000Although she hasn't done anything to lower her testosterone levels, Roemer legally changed her gender, grew her hair out, and started living openly as a woman more than a year ago.
00:40:47.000To be able to experience it as me was really, really important, she said.
00:40:51.000I've been a runner since as long as I can remember.
00:40:53.000I love running, but I just happen to be transgender.
00:41:09.000But apparently, I guess men will be winning the women's marathon anyways.
00:41:12.000We may as well just obliterate the categories.
00:41:14.000I mean, the failure to distinguish between sex and gender is clearly an incredible thing.
00:41:18.000And the fact that so many in the scientific community have pretended to buy into this, and I say pretend because they do know better, there's not a doctor alive in the United States who does not know the difference between a man and a woman biologically.
00:41:28.000And yet they act as though these distinctions mean nothing when it comes to real world consequences, as long as the man believes he is a woman or vice versa.
00:41:36.000ABC quoted a doctor from a Boston-based LGBT health and advocacy center who insists there is, quote, no physiologic advantage to being assigned male at birth.
00:42:23.000The mean difference has been about 10% between men and women for all events.
00:42:27.000The mean gap is 10.7% for running, 8.9% for swimming, and 17.5% for jumping.
00:42:33.000That doesn't even take into account lifting where it's significantly greater.
00:42:36.000When performances improve, the improvements are proportional for each gender.
00:42:40.000David Epstein, author of The Sports Gene, discussed the biological realities of athletic differences between genders in a piece for the Washington Post in 2014.
00:42:48.000And in it, he provided some background on women's inclusion in several sports, which led to a momentary explosion in their performance that ultimately plateaued.
00:42:56.000In terms of top speed in a range of running events, women began leveling off by the 1980s, and the record stagnated after the crackdown on mega-doping of female athletes from some Eastern Bloc nations.
00:43:05.000From the 100 meters to the 10,000 meters, the gap between elite male and female performers generally stands around 11 percent.
00:46:31.000Really, it's kind of amazing how many of these stars actually can hold a tune.
00:46:34.000Okay, time for a couple of things that I hate.
00:46:40.000So one of the things that I really dislike, as a general matter, is hypocrisy.
00:46:44.000And one of the things that I find hilarious is how many Democrats are now suggesting that President Trump does not have the authority to attack Syria.
00:46:51.000It's an amazing thing, because I sort of agree that it's Congress's job to determine when war has been declared, right?
00:46:58.000That's how the powers are delegated under the Constitution.
00:47:00.000But Democrats don't have a lot of ground to stand on, considering that Barack Obama declared about 33 wars without any sort of congressional involvement at all.
00:47:10.000Senator Jeff Flake and I have had a bipartisan authorization focusing upon all of the military action we're currently taking against non-state actors.
00:47:30.000The president currently does not have any legal authority to wage war against nation states, missile strikes against Syria, for example, without coming to Congress.
00:47:52.000One of the things that's been so amazing is watching as the left turns Barack Obama into this highfalutin figure who doesn't... who really...
00:48:03.000He was just a beautiful man who never really had the capacity to deign to talk to the public on their own level.
00:48:11.000Just a man who elevated the public discourse.
00:48:31.000You should be angry at people who insult your wife as a general rule, but it is true that the Obamas were obsessed with celebrity, right?
00:48:37.000Bruce Springsteen, George Clooney, Leonardo DiCaprio were among a bunch of the stars who came to the White House to hang out with the cool president.
00:48:42.000Now, you know, one of the things that's fun for me is I've had a chance to meet a lot of celebrities in my job and
00:48:48.000The celebrities who are actually interesting to me are the ones who you don't actually know about.
00:48:53.000They're the ones who are the writers and directors of films, but you've never heard of them.
00:48:56.000Actors tend to be really uninteresting as a general rule.
00:48:59.000People who are musicians, who are stars, they tend to be really uninteresting as a general rule.
00:49:04.000But Obama was in fact obsessed with celebrities, and Obama was a celebrity to the Hollywood crowd.
00:49:09.000One of the reasons you got a reality TV president in President Trump is because he was not actually the first reality TV president.
00:49:14.000The first reality TV president was in fact Barack Obama, who spent enormous sums of time talking to all of his Hollywood buddies and occupying a central place on our television screens
00:51:18.000Saul ends up bringing Agog in front of Samuel and Samuel ends up slaying Agog instead of Saul.
00:51:25.000So what's interesting about this is that if you look at King David, King David maintains the kingship after he is threatened with its removal by Nathan the prophet.
00:51:32.000And what David did is a lot worse than what Saul did in any objective sense of morality.
00:51:36.000King David impregnated another man's wife and then sent that guy to die at the battlefield.
00:52:14.000Being a good person is about being subject to higher principles and higher virtue, not just the will of the people.
00:52:20.000The way that Saul governed, and the reason that he couldn't be the king, is because Saul spent a lot of his time with one eye on the people.
00:52:28.000Well, I guess I'll disobey God and I'll keep the animals.
00:52:31.000This is why he is deprived of the kingship and David is not.
00:52:33.000David sins, for sure, and David does some really awful things.
00:52:36.000But, at no point does he say, you know what, the will of the people trumps what I know to be right and virtuous, or what God has instructed me to do.
00:52:44.000At no point does he say that, and that's the real defining feature.
00:52:46.000And this is something we should all remember.
00:52:48.000Because it's easy enough to say, yeah, most people suck.
00:52:50.000Most people are okay with this or that.
00:52:51.000Most people want me to do X. But that does not justify the doing of X. You have to make an explicit argument as to why it is right to do X, Y, or Z. You can't just rely on populism to justify your own malfeasance.
00:53:04.000Okay, we'll be back here tomorrow with whatever crazy news breaks then.