The Democrats move forward with the House Impeachment vote, President Trump sends a wild letter to Nancy Pelosi, and Mitch McConnell plots his next steps. Ben Shapiro explains why the impeachment of President Trump is a referendum on American politics, and why you should be worried about what s going to happen in the impeachment process and whether or not it s a good idea to diversify your portfolio in the precious metals market. The Ben Shapiro Show is sponsored by Express VPN. Protect your online privacy today at ExpressVPN.org/ProtectYourOnline Privacy Today at ExpressVpn.org. Protect Your Online Privacy Protect Your Privacy is a term used to describe a person's online privacy, and is a reflection of their mental health and well-being. It is not related to their physical or mental health, and should not be used as a substitute for mental health care or other forms of insurance. If you or someone you care about is having a mental health problem, or is experiencing a mental or emotional crisis, please seek immediate medical support. This episode is not intended to diagnose, treat, prevent, or treat it, or attempt to prevent it, unless it is proven to be the result of appropriate treatment. medical or other appropriate medical or legal advice. In this episode, Ben Shapiro uses the term "impeachment" to describe what is happening in the United States today, and what is going on in our political, legal, or political, and legal system. . We are all caught up in the current events and events that are unfolding in our society. in our time and our society and how we should be able to make sense of what s happening in our world in order to make informed decisions what we can do how we can be doing why we should do to prepare for the next step in the future who s the most important thing in our lives whether it s going forward or not should we be doing our best to prepare the best we can we can our best, which is our best when we are most likely to have the best, and most we can make the most impact , is What s going on the next steps where we are going to get the most effective and most important etc.. and so on and so much more How can we make the best of it
00:00:00.000The Democrats move forward with the House impeachment vote, President Trump sends a wild letter to Nancy Pelosi, and Mitch McConnell plots his next steps.
00:00:34.000It feels like nobody knows anything because everything is a mess.
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00:00:47.000Which means you should have like 12 feet, but one of those feet Should actually be in precious metals.
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00:01:13.000Ask all of them so you feel like you have full information.
00:01:15.000And then at that point, you might want to think about putting at least some of your money in precious metals that the government cannot inflate, that the government cannot mess around with.
00:01:22.000You know, an actual hard asset that has a price.
00:02:10.000The Republicans are going to acquit in the Senate.
00:02:12.000It's not going to have any massive impact on the election.
00:02:14.000Everything in the world is baked into this cake.
00:02:16.000Old shoes, human feces, everything is in the cake.
00:02:19.000And when it comes to 2020, the only factor that is not baked into the cake is who the Democrats will nominate.
00:02:24.000We'll get to that a little bit later on in the show.
00:02:26.000When it comes to Trump, everything is baked into the cake.
00:02:29.000And I realized this morning, I was thinking about this with regard to how people view President Trump, because really how you view the impeachment is a referendum on how you view President Trump, and even more than President Trump, how you feel about the broader political situation in the United States.
00:02:43.000I don't think that many people are actually looking at the charges in this case and reading the Democrats' 659-page report and then reading the Republicans' 200-page response and being like, well, after considering all of the transcripts and all of the facts, here's where I come down on the legal metal of this case, on the evidentiary burden.
00:03:00.000Has it been met or has it not been met?
00:03:02.000I don't think that most Americans are thinking that way.
00:03:03.000I think most Americans are thinking to themselves, is this impeachment appropriate or is this impeachment not?
00:03:09.000Are the people trying to impeach Trump politically motivated or are they motivated by just concern for the Constitution and preventing foreign countries from interfering in America's elections?
00:03:19.000I feel like we've been speaking past each other for quite a while here.
00:03:23.000And so there are a couple issues on which this is a referendum on Trump, and then there are a couple issues where this is a referendum on American politics as a whole.
00:03:30.000And it's all wrapped up together in a ball, and that's what people's opinions on impeachment are.
00:04:08.000He rips the media and then he degrades the view of people of the media because he sees them as his enemy.
00:04:14.000He calls them the enemy of the people.
00:04:16.000This is somebody who cannot be normalized.
00:04:18.000And this is why you've heard Democrats say, and people in the media say, since literally the day he was elected, and really since the day he was nominated, we cannot accept this as the new normal.
00:04:26.000We cannot accept this as the new normal.
00:04:28.000In other words, Trump murdered all of these conventions, right?
00:04:40.000Before this, we were a republic of comedy.
00:04:43.000And you see this in the rewriting of Barack Obama's history by the media.
00:04:47.000It has now been an accepted part of the media's history that Barack Obama was actually a politician of comedy and unity and spent his days trying to cut bipartisan deals, which for any of us who have a memory longer than that of the fish dory in Finding Nemo, We have recognized that that's a bunch of crap.
00:05:01.000But for folks on the left, it's like, well, you know, Barack Obama, that was a man of honor and civility.
00:05:49.000It will just be another casualty of his evil.
00:05:52.000So the view of the left is that Donald Trump is the political murderer.
00:05:55.000That he is Michael Myers, and that he is stalking Jamie Lee Curtis, and that Jamie Lee Curtis is all that is good and right with the American Republic.
00:06:04.000And then there is the view of the people who are, I would say, probably on the middle or on the right.
00:06:10.000And that view is that Trump is not actually a political murderer.
00:06:13.000Yes, he exacerbates a lot of the problems that the country has already been experiencing.
00:06:16.000No, he's not militating against any of those.
00:06:19.000But Trump is much more a coroner than he is a murderer.
00:06:23.000That his election represents the recognition by the American people that all these things were already dead.
00:06:28.000Trump came upon the still warm corpse of American politics, and then he declared it dead.
00:06:35.000And so Democrats, seeing a man standing over the body, are going, oh, that guy probably killed him, right?
00:07:00.000Newt Gingrich was attacking it in 2012 to wild acclaim.
00:07:03.000The media had already made clear that they were nothing but sort of drool carriers for Barack Obama.
00:07:12.000So Donald Trump coming along and ripping the media, that was nothing new.
00:07:14.000That was just him declaring something dead that we all knew was dead.
00:07:18.000Then when it comes to civility, Barack Obama was going around insulting everybody who didn't agree with him as a bitter clinger.
00:07:25.000Joe Biden was going around saying that Mitt Romney was going to put black people back in chains, that he was an evil person who put dogs on top of his car and all of this.
00:07:33.000It was interest groups in favor of Barack Obama, super PACs, running ads suggesting that Mitt Romney had fired people so their wives would get cancer and die.
00:07:42.000So don't tell me that civility died because Donald Trump put a stake through its heart.
00:07:53.000The same thing when it comes to this quote-unquote consensus.
00:07:56.000There was no consensus on American foreign policy.
00:07:58.000Politics did not stop at water's edge.
00:08:00.000Most of us are old enough to remember when mainstream members of the left were suggesting that George W. Bush was a war criminal and should be tried in The Hague.
00:08:08.000We remember when the Democrats were undermining the Iraq war.
00:08:13.000We remember when the Democrats were pulling precipitously out of Iraq and leaving room for ISIS.
00:08:18.000So let's not pretend that there was some sort of broad foreign policy consensus when Barack Obama and Ben Rhodes were lying to the faces of the American people about the supposed moderation of the regime in Iran.
00:08:36.000And he's just the coroner, he ain't the murderer.
00:08:38.000And then finally, when it comes to impeachment, and that's today's news, people on the left are like, well, if we don't impeach over this, then we won't be able to impeach over anything.
00:08:49.000There is truth to the notion that whenever Congress slides on its impeachable responsibilities, that the ability to impeach is degraded.
00:08:59.000There's no question that that is true.
00:09:00.000That the less you use a particular... Impeachment is like any other muscle of the political body politic.
00:09:06.000The less you use it, the more it atrophies.
00:09:08.000It's only been used four times in American history.
00:09:11.000One of those times it ended in the resignation of President Nixon.
00:09:13.000Somebody said to me today, somebody on the right said to me today, who's a fan of the impeachment effort, said to me, well, you know, if President Nixon were around today, he wouldn't be impeached, right?
00:09:23.000And the answer is that's probably true.
00:09:24.000If President Nixon were in office today, if Watergate had happened, it's probably true that he would have stuck around.
00:09:29.000It is also true that he was impeached for actual crimes.
00:09:33.000This impeachment effort, to distinguish it and to be completely fair, this impeachment effort has no crimes attached to it, which is why the Democrats did not charge bribery, it's why they did not charge wire fraud, it is why they did not charge obstruction of justice.
00:09:43.000Instead, they crafted these political crimes to avoid having to prove the element of an actual crime, so it's pretty obvious what they're trying to do here.
00:09:50.000But, if you want to say that bad activity by the President of the United States is impeachable, Well, guess what?
00:09:56.000Even there, President Trump is acting as a coroner.
00:10:00.000So he's not making the problem any better.
00:10:02.000He ain't reviving the honor and coherence of the presidency.
00:10:06.000But I'm old enough to remember when Barack Obama's IRS was targeting conservatives, was finding keywords in IRS applications, and then nixing those IRS applications for nonprofit status if those nonprofits happened to be conservative.
00:10:19.000I remember when that happened, and the Republicans didn't impeach him over it.
00:10:22.000The fact is, impeachment was atrophied the moment that Bill Clinton was not thrown out of the White House.
00:10:28.000The man obviously committed perjury and obstruction of justice.
00:10:32.000At that point, the political body politic, it was atrophied.
00:10:35.000And so for Democrats to come around now and be like, well, this is completely partisan.
00:10:38.000Yeah, and it was completely partisan in 1998 when the Democrats decided that despite open crimes by the President of the United States, he was not going to be impeachable.
00:10:47.000Now on a broad level, on a broad level, should the president be impeached?
00:10:52.000On a broad level, most presidents should probably have been impeached.
00:10:55.000Or at least many presidents should have been impeached.
00:10:58.000When Barack Obama was launching wars in Libya without the express permission of Congress, When Barack Obama was droning American citizens overseas.
00:11:08.000And if you're on the left, when George W. Bush was exceeding his mandate with the war in Iraq, using the authorization to use military force for Afghanistan and Iraq.
00:11:18.000All of these things in any sort of vacuum would appear as quote-unquote impeachable offenses.
00:11:24.000Impeachment has been a dead letter for a long time.
00:11:26.000Civility has been a dead letter for a long time.
00:11:28.000Consensus has been a dead letter for a long time.
00:11:30.000The media's credibility has been a dead letter for a long time.
00:11:34.000And so this is why I think that Democrats look at Trump and they see every outrage as a new outrage, a fresh outrage, because they believe that none of this is true.
00:11:43.000They believe that everything was hunky-dory under Barack Obama, that everything was wonderful and civil and delightful and cheerful and happy.
00:11:51.000They pretend the Bush years didn't exist, that Bush was just one of those wild outliers.
00:11:54.000It's weird how in the Democratic view every Republican is an outlier.
00:11:58.000But the fact is that Donald Trump was the new normal before Donald Trump was the new normal.
00:12:01.000Donald Trump was the coroner of America's politics.
00:12:05.000He was not, in fact, the murderer of America's politics.
00:12:07.000Now, that does raise the question as to how we rebuild an American politics in this arena with all of our institutions mistrusted.
00:12:14.000And as I say, I don't think that Donald Trump is rebuilding those institutions.
00:12:17.000I don't think that President Trump is restoring the integrity of the White House or the media.
00:12:21.000I don't think that he's restoring civility.
00:12:37.000The Democrats are about to nominate Bernie Sanders.
00:12:40.000Can you imagine an election between Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders?
00:12:42.000I mean, last time around, if you didn't think that was the death of American politics, Donald Trump versus Hillary Clinton, one of the most widely despised, hated politicians of the last 30 years, against a man who arrived on the political scene five seconds ago and had the lowest approval ratings for any candidate in American history, I don't know what to tell you.
00:13:09.000But the real reason Democrats want to impeach Trump is because they want to assume that if it were not for Trump, the American body politic would be alive and well.
00:13:21.000Okay, so today, the impeachment vote is happening.
00:13:24.000The Democrats are going to impeach President Trump.
00:13:26.000The media will declare this a historic moment, and then this thing will move on to the Senate.
00:13:32.000It's not going to pay off for the Democrats, politically speaking.
00:13:35.000It's going to be pretty ugly for the Democrats, actually, politically speaking.
00:13:38.000Jim McGovern, Democrat of Massachusetts, Chairman of the House Rules Committee, he says, Guys, impeachment was broken quite a while ago.
00:13:42.000security and using the federal government for his own selfish personal gain is not impeachable conduct, then Madam Speaker, I don't know what is.
00:13:50.000Again, the Democrats speaking the language of if we don't impeach, then impeachment itself has been broken.
00:13:54.000Guys, impeachment was broken quite a while ago.
00:13:56.000Now, if you want to ask about whether you think this particular set of facts is impeachable, my answer for a long time has been no, because I don't think that you've actually fulfilled.
00:14:04.000I don't think that you have actually fulfilled the standard here.
00:14:08.000I'm I don't think that you have actually fulfilled the criminal standard necessary to drive bipartisan approval.
00:14:16.000But with that said, again, impeachment's been broken for a very long time.
00:14:19.000To say that this is what breaks the mold.
00:14:22.000There's never going to be a legitimate impeachment again in American history, barring some sort of resurgent American unity.
00:14:27.000Which I don't see happening in the near future, do you?
00:14:29.000We'll get to more of this in just one second.
00:14:31.000First, let us talk about a great holiday gift that will stand the test of time.
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00:16:15.000The Democrat narrative is that if we don't impeach over this, impeachment is broken.
00:16:19.000The Republican narrative is you're cherry-picking the evidence.
00:16:21.000Tom Cole of Oklahoma, the ranking Republican on the House Rules Committee, said the Democrats were being partisan and using cherry-picked evidence to fit their narrative.
00:16:27.000He says, if we're really being honest, Democrats have been searching to impeach Trump since the day he was elected.
00:16:44.000There wasn't the normal in the first place.
00:16:46.000And I think most Americans understand this, which is why the impeachment stuff is not going anywhere.
00:16:50.000People feel like Democrats are partisan.
00:16:52.000People feel like this has nothing to do with healing the body politic and everything to do with exacerbating the divides inside the body politic.
00:17:21.000An ad from the Republican non-profit group America First Policies cried as images of Abigail Spanberger, who represents the region in Congress, flickered on screen.
00:17:27.000Spanberger, of course, is a blue Democrat in a red district or purple district.
00:17:33.000During the roughly two months the impeachment inquiry has been underway, Trump and his Republican allies have flooded the airwaves, spending more than $16.7 million on ads critical of the impeachment effort.
00:17:42.000A vast majority of those ads attack House Democrats rather than defending the president, according to advertising analytics and ad tracking firm.
00:17:49.000Democratic groups are not fighting back directly, are choosing to instead focus mainly on other issues like health care.
00:17:54.000Which shows you what they think, right?
00:17:55.000If they thought that a referendum on Trump would win them re-election, if they think that just shouting that Trump is going to skew the election unless you get out and vote is going to win the election for them, even they don't think that.
00:18:05.000Instead, they're running ads on healthcare.
00:18:07.000They're spending just $5.4 million on television ads specific to impeachment.
00:18:11.000Instead, the most prominent democratically funded message on TV is Mike Bloomberg for president.
00:18:17.000So the Democrats are not spending on pushing the impeachment effort.
00:18:20.000Because they know the American people do not agree with them that Donald Trump, the elected president of the United States, remember 63 million people voted for him.
00:18:27.000And right now he's favored in the polls to win reelection.
00:18:31.000And according to the latest polls out, the only Democrat who's capable of beating him is Joe Biden.
00:18:35.000And Biden is fading in the polls against Trump.
00:18:38.000And he's lost ground to Trump over the past couple of months.
00:18:41.000And so the American people are just not buying the argument that if you don't get rid of Trump, the American people will not be heard.
00:18:47.000Now, Trump himself, and honestly, Trump himself makes the case for Democrats that he is out of the box, but the American people still see through that and they say, yeah, no, politics was out of the box.
00:18:59.000You are just, this is just the latest episode in Arkham Asylum over here.
00:19:04.000So President Trump has sent a letter to Nancy Pelosi.
00:19:08.000It's something that his base enjoys because the letter is full on Trump.
00:19:14.000It's something that the middle of the country kind of shrugs at because they figure, okay, well, independents are like, yeah, that's Trump.
00:19:50.000And it is just an indicator that if the American people want to get rid of this guy, guess what?
00:19:55.000A year from now, 11 months from now, they will have every opportunity to do so, and the Democrats don't want to give you the opportunity to do so.
00:20:01.000They get to make their case that Trump should not be the new normal.
00:20:04.000They get to make their case that Trump is everything wrong with the body politic.
00:20:07.000And you may not buy that case, and that's what they're afraid of.
00:20:44.000Well, Democrats are sort of stuck in the same position with regard to this Trump-Ukraine stuff.
00:20:48.000On the one hand, he's a criminal mastermind, deviously seeking to skew the results of the 2020 election by using a Ukrainian foreign policy to interfere with American politics.
00:20:59.000On the other hand, he's a dundering moron who stumbles from place to place.
00:21:03.000Now, the reality is Trump is just Trump.
00:21:47.000Because you think he should be impeached over this letter, this is why we don't trust you.
00:21:51.000Really, because this letter ain't impeachable.
00:21:53.000Now, you've seen Democrats being like, this is the very reason why Donald Trump should be impeached.
00:21:58.000The letter is basically just a six-page long restatement of his main thesis, which is that the impeachment is a disgrace, something that he said yesterday in a press conference.
00:22:05.000Here's President Trump explaining that the vote itself is a disgrace.
00:22:08.000To impeach the President of the United States for that is a disgrace and it's a mark on our country.
00:22:14.000And I'll tell you what, other presidents in the future, unless they do something about this, other presidents are going to have to live with this.
00:22:22.000And every time they do something that's a little bit unpopular, a little bit strong, even if they're 100% right, because I've done a great job.
00:22:30.000Okay, so Trump then sends a letter to this effect and Nancy Pelosi's response to the letter is that the letter is sick and just another reason why he should be impeached.
00:22:38.000Okay, well that is a referendum again on is he the murderer or is he the coroner?
00:22:42.000The letter to her is evidence that he's the murderer.
00:22:44.000The response from the American people basically has been, nope, you were part of this, Nancy.
00:23:21.000In just a second, we'll get to the actual text of President Trump's Last, his pre-impeachment letter, the last letter that he will write as a non-impeached president in the House.
00:23:31.000We'll get to that in one second because it is entertaining.
00:23:34.000It is all you have come to expect from President Trump.
00:23:36.000We'll get to all of those things in just one second.
00:23:41.000First, we need to talk about the fact that your car, basically, it can break down.
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00:23:54.000Basically, your car is a computer on wheels.
00:23:55.000And what that means is that anytime there's a breakdown in your car, it could cost you an absolute fortune.
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00:24:48.000And you can't take it over to the local auto body shop and just get it fixed without spending a bunch of money out of pocket.
00:25:26.000Dear Madam Speaker, I write to express my strongest and most powerful protest against the partisan impeachment crusade being pursued by the Democrats in the House of Representatives.
00:25:35.000This impeachment represents an unprecedented and unconstitutional abuse of power by Democrat lawmakers unequaled in nearly two and a half centuries of American legislative history.
00:25:44.000Hey, now you know that Trump is writing this because he is capitalizing bizarre words.
00:25:47.000So Democrat and like lawmakers is capitalized.
00:25:58.000The articles of impeachment introduced by the House Judiciary Committee are not recognizable under any standard of constitutional theory, interpretation, or jurisprudence.
00:26:06.000They include no crimes, no misdemeanors, and no offenses whatsoever.
00:26:09.000You have cheapened the importance of the very ugly word impeachment.
00:26:15.000They do not include a crime, and this is a point that I have made.
00:26:18.000Yes, it is true that if Richard Nixon came up for impeachment today, probably he would not be impeached.
00:26:22.000It is also true that at least that impeachment effort had crimes attached to it.
00:26:26.000The same thing happened to be true with Bill Clinton, who had perjury and obstruction of justice attached to it.
00:26:30.000The Democrats specifically crafted these charges to avoid including criminal conduct.
00:26:35.000They said abuse of power, which is not a crime, And obstruction of Congress, which is not a crime.
00:26:42.000The second charge, by the way, obstruction of Congress is so unbelievably weak because again, all they had to do was wait for a judiciary to force Trump's officials to turn over documents.
00:26:52.000And then there's no obstruction of justice.
00:26:55.000And so that is just, it's an utter outright lie.
00:26:57.000And he's correct when he says that these charges include no crimes.
00:27:01.000Trump continues, by proceeding with your invalid impeachment, you are violating your oaths of office.
00:27:05.000You are breaking your allegiance to the Constitution, and you are declaring open war on American democracy.
00:27:10.000And, you know, this last statement that they're declaring open war on American democracy, listen, they're using constitutional means.
00:27:16.000But I think that the vast majority of the American people, in the end, if given the choice between impeachment and we get to vote on this guy in 2020, I'm like, let's vote on the guy.
00:27:25.000The Democrats are treating this as though this is the final referendum on Trump, which is a bizarre take, by the way.
00:27:29.000They keep saying over and over, if Trump isn't impeached, well, then he could cheat and steal the election.
00:27:34.000And so now you are delegitimizing every election from here on in.
00:27:38.000Which Democrats have been wont to do in 2016 with Stacey Abrams in Georgia in 2018.
00:27:43.000Trump says, you dare to invoke the Founding Fathers in pursuit of this election nullification scheme, yet your spiteful actions display unfettered contempt for America's founding and your egregious conduct threatens to destroy that which our founders pledged their very lives to build.
00:27:55.000I'm not going to say that every sentence here was written by Trump.
00:27:57.000He says, even worse than offending the Founding Fathers, you are offending Americans of faith by continually saying, I pray for the president, when you know this statement is not true, unless it is meant in a negative sense.
00:28:07.000It is a terrible thing you are doing, but you will have to live with it.
00:28:25.000I'm going to break out this popcorn right now.
00:28:26.000Because, let's be real, I've not been entertained by this impeachment.
00:28:29.000And I've been rooting for entertainment.
00:28:31.000Because when all hope is lost, at least we can all enjoy the entertainment, correct?
00:28:34.000But the fact is, It has not been enjoyable because you know the end of the movie.
00:28:38.000So, if we can at least have some pyrotechnics, that's good.
00:28:40.000And Trump is here to provide the pyrotechnics.
00:28:42.000He says, Your first claim, abuse of power, is a completely disingenuous, meritless, and baseless invention of your imagination.
00:28:48.000You know that I had a totally innocent conversation with the President of Ukraine.
00:28:51.000I then had a second conversation that has been misquoted, mischaracterized, and fraudulently misrepresented.
00:28:56.000Fortunately, there was a transcript of the conversation taken, and you know from the transcript, which was made immediately made available, well, it was made available upon This becoming a national issue.
00:29:06.000That the paragraph in question was perfect!
00:29:10.000I said to President Zelensky, I would like you to do us a favor, though, because our country has been through a lot and Ukraine knows a lot about it.
00:29:23.000And this has been my claim since the beginning, is that Trump perceived his interest to be America's interest.
00:29:28.000And he was concerned, not about 2020, but about 2016, because Trump is very much concerned about his vindictive 2016 concerns.
00:29:36.000The Democrats spent two years investigating 2016 and whether it had been skewed.
00:29:40.000It does not seem out of the realm of possibility that the American people have a right to know what happened in 2016 up to and including what happened in Ukraine.
00:29:47.000Now, was that founded on serious grounds by Rudy Giuliani?
00:29:53.000But for the president to believe a batch of false information presented by Rudy Giuliani and then to ask the Ukrainians to investigate that false information, believing it to be suspicious or true about the 2016 election is not a high crime.
00:30:42.000Well, one of the things that you might want to get done is that life insurance policy, because who the hell knows what's going to happen over that holiday break?
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00:33:23.000The Democrats in Congress do not get to control Ukraine policy, at least insofar as President Trump going through the motions of military aid, President Trump meeting with foreign leaders, he's the commander-in-chief, he does have Extraordinary power on the foreign policy front.
00:33:37.000And just because you disagree with him, and just because Maria Bonovitch disagrees with him, and just because Gordon Sondland disagrees with him, and just because Lieutenant Colonel Alexander Vindman disagrees with him, that does not make it a criminal impeachable offense.
00:34:13.000Even Joe Biden admitted just days ago in an interview with NPR that it looked bad.
00:34:17.000Now you're trying to impeach me by falsely accusing me of doing what Joe Biden has admitted he actually did.
00:34:23.000Again, that's probably an over-read of what Biden is admitting to.
00:34:26.000There's suspicion by Republicans that Joe Biden was militating against a prosecutor who was looking into Burisma, which had hired his son Hunter for $50,000 a month to be on its board of directors, which is an extraordinary amount of money for a useless, incompetent buffoon.
00:34:40.000But with that said, Biden wouldn't admit to that, but Trump was suspicious of that.
00:35:03.000Senator Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, A supporter of Ukraine who met privately with President Zelensky has said, at no time during this meeting was there any mention by Zelensky or any Ukrainian that they were feeling pressured to do anything in return for the military aid.
00:35:16.000Many meetings have been held between representatives of Ukraine and our country.
00:35:19.000Never once did Ukraine complain about pressure being applied.
00:35:22.000Ambassador Sullivan testified that I told him, no quid pro quo, I want nothing, I want nothing, I want Zelensky to do the right thing, do what he ran on.
00:35:31.000Okay, well, that is certainly what Trump told Sondland.
00:35:34.000Sondland then testified that he thought there was a quid pro quo, but that's exactly the point, is that there isn't enough for impeachment, even if you are suspicious that Trump is not telling the truth here.
00:35:42.000The second claim, so-called obstruction of Congress, is preposterous and dangerous.
00:35:46.000House Democrats, says Trump, are trying to impeach the duly elected president of the United States for asserting constitutionally based privileges that have been asserted on a bipartisan basis by administrations of both political parties throughout our nation's history.
00:35:57.000So as I say, I don't think Trump wrote this whole letter.
00:35:59.000There are parts of this that are actually quite true and quite good and well spoken.
00:36:02.000Because under that standard, every American president would have been impeached many times over.
00:36:06.000As liberal law professor Jonathan Turley warned when addressing congressional Democrats, quote, I can't emphasize this enough.
00:36:12.000If you impeach a president, if you make a high crime and misdemeanor out of going to the courts, it's an abuse of power.
00:37:06.000Speaker Pelosi, you admitted just last week in a public forum that your party's impeachment effort has been going on for two and a half years, long before you ever heard about a phone call with Ukraine.
00:37:15.000Nineteen minutes after I took the oath of office, the Washington Post published a story headline, the campaign to impeach President Trump has begun.
00:37:22.000Less than three months after my inauguration, Representative Maxine Waters stated, I'm going to fight every day until he's impeached.
00:37:27.000House Democrats introduced the first impeachment resolution against me within months of my inauguration.
00:37:33.000For what will be regarded as one of our country's best decisions, the firing of James Comey.
00:37:39.000Who the world now knows is one of the dirtiest cops our nation has ever seen.
00:37:43.000By the way, Comey was wildly incompetent.
00:37:45.000Should have been fired by the Obama administration, actually.
00:37:48.000A ranting and raving congresswoman, Rashida Tlaib, declared just hours after she was sworn into office, we're going to go in there and we're going to impeach the mother effer.
00:37:55.000Representative Al Green said in May, I'm concerned that if we don't impeach this president, he will get reelected.
00:37:59.000Again, you and your allies said and did all of these things long before ever you heard of President Zelensky or anything related to Ukraine.
00:38:07.000See, here's the thing about Trump, right?
00:38:09.000And this is what you're getting from the letter.
00:38:10.000A lot of what he's saying is absolutely true.
00:38:12.000And thus, the referendum on Trump is really a referendum on broader American politics and the belief that the Democrats are not going after Trump on solid grounds, that this is just the latest hook upon which they are hanging their hat.
00:38:24.000And Trump is putting his finger there.
00:38:28.000He's doing it in colorful fashion, but he's right.
00:38:29.000He says, as you know very well, this impeachment drive has nothing to do with Ukraine or the totally appropriate conversation I had with its new president.
00:38:36.000It only has to do with your attempt to undo the election of 2016 and steal the election of 2020.
00:38:42.000Congressman Adam Schiff cheated and lied all the way up to the present day, even going so far as to fraudulently make up out of thin air my conversation with President Zelensky of Ukraine and read this fantasy language to Congress as though it were said by me.
00:38:53.000And he is specifically referring to this incident where Adam Schiff Basically did make up a conversation about how Trump was shaking down Ukraine instead of just reading the transcript.
00:39:04.000His shameless lies and deceptions dating all the way back to the Russia hoax is one of the main reasons we are here today.
00:39:08.000You and your party, says Trump, are desperate to distract from America's extraordinary economy, incredible jobs boom, record stock market, soaring confidence, and flourishing citizens.
00:39:16.000By the way, this is Trump's entire 2020 ad campaign and it's gonna work.
00:39:19.000He says your party simply cannot compete with our record 7 million new jobs.
00:39:23.000The lowest ever unemployment for African Americans, Hispanic Americans, and Asian Americans, a rebuilt military, a completely reformed VA with choice and accountability for our great veterans, more than 170 new federal judges and two Supreme Court justices, historic tax and regulation cuts, the elimination of the individual mandate, the first decline in prescription drug prices in half a century, the first new branch of the U.S.
00:39:42.000military since 1947, the Space Force, strong protection of the Second Amendment, criminal justice reform, a defeated ISIS caliphate, the killing of the world's number one terrorist leader, al-Baghdadi, The replacement of the disastrous NAFTA trade deal with the wonderful USMCA, which is definitely an exaggeration.
00:39:58.000I mean, NAFTA was not disastrous, and also USMCA mostly mirrors NAFTA.
00:40:03.000A breakthrough phase one trade deal with China, massive new trade deals with Japan and South Korea, Withdrawal from the terrible Iran nuclear deal, cancellation of the unfair and costly Paris climate accords, becoming the world's top energy producer, recognition of Israel's capital, opening the American embassy in Jerusalem, and recognizing Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights, a colossal reduction in illegal border crossings, the ending of catch and release, and the building of the southern border wall.
00:40:26.000You cannot defend your extreme policies.
00:40:28.000Open borders, mass migration, high crime, crippling taxes, socialized healthcare, destruction of American energy, late-term taxpayer-funded abortion, elimination of the Second Amendment, radical far-left theories of law and justice, and constant partisan obstruction of both common sense and common good.
00:40:41.000This paragraph is Trump's re-election campaign in a nutshell, and it is very likely to work.
00:40:46.000Because it is simply true that Trump's record on the actual issues has been pretty good for Americans.
00:40:55.000And Democrats are hoping that this election becomes a referendum on Trump.
00:40:59.000By making this impeachment effort, it starts to become an election referendum on Democrats.
00:41:04.000And who's the candidate who can avoid that?
00:41:06.000Who's the candidate on the Democratic side who can avoid this thing becoming a referendum on the Democrats' own extremism and their willingness to push impeachment above political priorities?
00:41:37.000Trump says, there is nothing I would rather do than stop referring to your party as the do-nothing Democrats.
00:41:41.000Unfortunately, I don't know you'll ever give me a chance to do so.
00:41:44.000After three years of unfair and unwarranted investigations, $45 million spent, 18 angry Democrat prosecutors, the entire force of the FBI headed by leadership now proven to be totally incompetent and corrupt.
00:41:55.000Few people in high position could have endured or passed this test.
00:41:59.000You do not know, nor do you care, the great damage it hurt.
00:42:01.000You have inflicted upon wonderful and loving members of my family, says Trump.
00:42:04.000You conducted a fake investigation upon the democratically elected President of the United States, and you are doing it yet again.
00:42:11.000There are not yet many people who would have taken the punishment inflicted during this period of time and yet done so, so much for the success of America and its citizens.
00:42:18.000Now you can tell that sentence is written by Trump because it's, it's, it's, his arm is barely long enough to pat himself on the back there.
00:42:23.000So instead of putting our country first, you have decided to disgrace our country still further.
00:42:27.000You completely failed with the Mueller report because there was nothing to find.
00:42:30.000So you decided to take the next hoax that came along, the phone call with Ukraine, even though it was a perfect call.
00:42:34.000And by the way, when I speak to foreign countries, there are many people with permission listening to the call on both sides of the conversation.
00:42:39.000You are the ones interfering in America's elections.
00:42:41.000You are the ones subverting America's democracy.
00:42:45.000You are the ones bringing pain and suffering to our republic for your own personal, selfish, political, and partisan gain.
00:42:50.000Before the impeachment hoax, it was the Russian witch hunt, against all evidence, and regardless of the truth, you and your deputies claimed that my campaign colluded with the Russians, a grave, malicious, slanderous lie, a falsehood like no other.
00:43:01.000Now, listen, I get enjoyment from the fact that President Trump has these sort of key phrases that he comes back to, like no other.
00:43:08.000It's, there is a tsunami like no, a hurricane like no other.
00:43:12.000Because you can sort of see Trump just reading this out loud before a fire, a sort of soft fire going in the background.
00:43:19.000He's got that Christmas log out, just reading this out loud.
00:43:22.000You forced our nation through turmoil and torment over a wholly fabricated story, illegally purchased from a foreign spy by Hillary Clinton and the DNC in order to assault our democracy.
00:43:31.000Yet, when the monstrous lie was debunked, and this Democrat conspiracy dissolved into dust, you did not apologize, you did not recant, you did not ask to be forgiven.
00:43:38.000You showed no remorse, no capacity for self-reflection.
00:43:41.000Instead, says Trump, you pursued your next libelous and vicious crusade.
00:43:44.000You engineered an attempt to frame and defame an innocent person.
00:43:47.000All of this was motivated by personal political calculation.
00:43:49.000Your speakership and your party are held hostage by your most deranged and radical representatives of the far left.
00:43:55.000Each one of your members lives in fear of a socialist primary challenger.
00:44:04.000Do not take our country down with your party.
00:44:05.000If you truly cared about freedom and liberty for our nation, says Trump, you would be devoting your vast investigative resources to exposing the full truth concerning the FBI's horrifying abuses of power during and after the 2016 election, including the use of spies against my campaign, the submission of false evidence to a FISA court, the concealment of exculpatory evidence in order to frame the innocent.
00:44:24.000The FBI has a great and honorable people, but the leadership was inept and corrupt.
00:44:27.000I would think that you would be personally appalled by these revelations, because in your press conference, the day you announced impeachment, you tied the impeachment effort directly to the completely discredited Russia hoax, declaring twice that all roads led to Putin, when you know that as an abject lie, I've been far tougher on Russia than President Obama ever even thought to be.
00:44:43.000He says, any member of Congress who votes support of impeachment against every shred of truth, fact, evidence, and legal principle is showing how deeply they revile the voters and how truly they detest America's constitutional order.
00:44:53.000Our founders feared the tribalization of partisan politics, who are bringing their worst fears to life.
00:44:58.000And here is where President Trump goes the full Trump.
00:45:01.000He says, worse still, I've been deprived of basic constitutional due process from the beginning of this impeachment scam right up to the present.
00:45:07.000I have been denied the most fundamental rights afforded by the Constitution, including the right to present evidence, to have my own counsel present, to confront accusers, to call and cross-examine witnesses.
00:45:16.000Now, again, he does have the ability to do all of that in a Senate trial, which he probably will forego.
00:45:22.000So-called whistleblower who started this entire hoax with a false report of the phone call that bears no relationship to the actual phone call that was made.
00:46:27.000This is nothing more than an illegal partisan coup that will, based on recent sentiment, badly fail at the voting booth, says Trump.
00:46:33.000You are not just after me as president.
00:46:35.000You're after the entire Republican Party.
00:46:37.000This is the part where Trump is now he's back on track, right?
00:46:39.000He says, because of this colossal injustice, our party is more united than it has ever been.
00:46:43.000Because again, people see this not just as a referendum on Trump, but as a referendum on the state of American politics and as a referendum on the Democrats who are happy to say the same crap about Trump that they said about Mitt Romney on a wide variety of other issues.
00:46:56.000History will judge you harshly as you proceed with this impeachment charade.
00:46:59.000Your legacy will be that of turning the House of Representatives from a revered legislative body into a star chamber of partisan persecution.
00:47:06.000Perhaps most insulting of all is your false delay of solemnity.
00:47:09.000Now this part, this may be the best part of the letter.
00:47:10.000He says you apparently have so little respect for the American people that you expect them to believe you are approaching this impeachment somberly, reservedly, and reluctantly.
00:47:17.000No intelligent person believes what you are saying.
00:47:35.000They are seeing straight through this empty, hollow, dangerous game you're playing.
00:47:38.000I have no doubt the American people will hold you and the Democrats fully responsible in the upcoming 2020 election.
00:47:43.000They will not soon forgive your perversion of justice and abuse of power.
00:47:46.000And Trump concludes, There is far too much that needs to be done to improve the lives of our citizens.
00:47:50.000It is time for you and the highly partisan Democrats in Congress to immediately cease this impeachment fantasy and get back to work for the American people.
00:47:57.000While I have no expectation that you will do so, I write this letter to you for the purpose of history and to put my thoughts on a permanent and indelible record.
00:48:03.000100 years from now, when people look back at this affair, I want them to understand it and learn from it so it can never happen to another president again.
00:48:10.000Sincerely yours, Donald J. Trump, President of the United States.
00:48:14.000So, there you have President Trump's final signing-off missive as the House of Representatives votes to impeach him.
00:48:21.000Okay, well, I promise you we have like two hours of additional commentary on this later on the radio show, so I should subscribe because as things develop over the course of the day, we'll be updating, we'll get to Mitch McConnell's plans and all the rest, but I thought that since this is going to be what goes down in the history books, the vote and Trump's letter, you ought to have heard Trump's final thoughts before the actual impeachment happens.
00:48:40.000Okay, time for A quick thing that I like, and then a quick thing that I hate.
00:50:52.000Mitch McConnell, he may be ramming through all sorts of garbage packages that President Trump approves of, spending packages like $1.4 trillion in spending, which we'll get to in just a second.
00:51:02.000But when it comes to this sort of stuff, he is a cut-to-the-bone, stone-cold-cocaine Mitch killer.
00:51:08.000Here's Mitch McConnell also adding, by the way, I'm not going to save your garbage investigation.
00:51:11.000If you think I'm going to call a bunch of witnesses that you guys wouldn't even wait for, yeah, that ain't happening.
00:51:16.000The Senate is meant to act as judge and jury.
00:51:19.000To hear a trial, not to rerun the entire fact-finding investigation because angry partisans rushed sloppily through it.
00:51:29.000If the Senate volunteers ourselves to do House Democrats' homework for them, we will only incentivize an endless stream of dubious partisan impeachments in the future.
00:51:39.000We don't create impeachments over here, Mr. President.
00:51:45.000And then Jackie Speier from California, who apparently has but passing knowledge of the legal process, suggests that Mitch McConnell should recuse himself.
00:51:55.000Because he's political, because he's a Republican, he should recuse.
00:51:58.000All the Republicans should recuse themselves.
00:51:59.000And the Democrats, those impartial arbiters of fact and law, they should be the ones who vote.
00:52:03.000By Jackie Speier's logic, the only people who should be allowed to vote on the impeachment of a president are members of the opposing party.
00:52:13.000I think, you know, we're going to have to call for a mistrial before it ever gets over to the Senate.
00:52:18.000My understanding is that each of the senators is going to have to take an oath that they will independently evaluate the evidence for impeachment and for conviction.
00:52:28.000It sounds like there's no interest in doing that whatsoever.
00:52:31.000And I would think Mitch McConnell should recuse himself.
00:52:48.000So the House has now passed a $1.4 trillion spending bill because this is what we do these days.
00:52:58.000We argue about impeachment, we argue about Colin Kaepernick on Nike commercials, we argue about all culture war issues, and then we just continue to spend to bankrupt our children and grandchildren.
00:53:06.000Here is the House acknowledging the passage of a $1.4 trillion spending bill that will blow out the budget yet again.
00:53:13.000Seventy-five years ago this week, American forces were under siege from 200,000 German soldiers, over 1,000 panzers, as Hitler mounted a counteroffensive in the middle of the freezing cold winter at Christmas.
00:53:51.000The Republicans are spending more than the Democrats ever did.
00:53:56.000People have made the case before that there should be a split government between Democrats and Republicans because if you actually look at the spending during those periods, it tends to go down.
00:54:03.000That's largely due to the Clinton-Gingrich era.
00:54:06.000It is true that this thing is a boondoggle.
00:54:08.000I mean, there's a bunch of stuff in here.
00:54:09.000And by the way, major issues that are just sort of passed into law.
00:54:12.000This bill has an actual provision that raises the federal law regarding smoking from 18 to 21.
00:54:19.000So you have to be 21 years old to smoke a cigarette.
00:54:21.000So you can serve in the military, you can't smoke a cigarette.
00:54:23.000Wouldn't you think that that would, you know, occasion maybe some actual national debate?
00:54:27.000Now, I'm not a fan of smoking, but that seems like something that you should maybe have a separate debate on that shouldn't be in an omnibus package.
00:54:34.000Also, this package includes $25 million for federal research into gun violence.
00:54:54.000If you're going to do gun research, do it under the auspices of the DOJ.
00:54:58.000Do it under the auspices of the Department of Homeland Security.
00:55:01.000Doing it under the auspices of health is a way to suggest that you should be able to regulate guns in the same way that you regulate disease, which of course is completely insanity.
00:55:09.000Blaze Media's Daniel Horowitz has a long piece today blasting the budget deal.
00:55:13.000He says there's no reason why Trump can't demand a clean continuing resolution for six weeks while the nation debates and even discovers the provisions of these bills.
00:55:21.000He should use the bully pulpit, threaten the veto pen to build a case for better immigration enforcement, punishing rebellious sanctuary states, and actually fulfilling a fraction of his promises on spending levels.