Ben Shapiro talks about the latest in the ongoing saga of the Mueller investigation, including the revelation that hundreds of text messages between Peter Strzok and Lisa Page have gone missing, and why the DOJ should get a second independent counsel to investigate the matter. He also talks about a potential nuclear disaster, and what would happen if one were to happen in the event of a nuclear attack on the United States, and the NFL makes a big boo-boo leading up to the Super Bowl. Ben Shapiro is the host of the conservative podcast "The Ben Shapiro Show" and is a regular contributor on Fox News Channel's "The Five". He is also the co-host of "The Daily Wire" and hosts the conservative radio show "The View From The Top" on SiriusXM's The View from the Cheap Seats. His latest book, "The Dark Side of Politics," is out now and is available for pre-order on Amazon Prime and Vimeo worldwide. Subscribe to his new podcast, "Prepare With Ben Shapiro" wherever you get your books and other media releases, including "The Weekly Standard" and "Keeping Up With The Right." Subscribe on Apple Podcasts and other podcasting platforms wherever you re listening to the show. Learn more about you can get the latest releases and subscribe to "Preparing With Ben" on the "Righteous Minds" channel on Audible. and wherever else you might be listening to "Right On The Same Thing." - Subscribe and Shoutrocks on the Left's newest podcast on the Right On The Left's "Left On The Right's Guide to the Left On Down" and "The Right On Down's Most Powerful Podcasts on Social Media Strategy and Opinion on the Internet and Social Media Platforms, and much more! Subscribe and shares his latest book recommendations, including his newest novel, "Noah's Notebook: "The Best Podcasts of the Week's Most Influencers of the Left and Right On the Right's Most Successful Podcasts." and much, and so much More! - His new novel "The White House Correspondent's Guide" by Pundit, "Mr. John Does It All," out on Amazon's New York Times bestselling novel "Podcasts and more! " on the New York Magazine's "New York Times Besties" and his new book "The New York Post's "PODCAST " " " and more.
00:00:16.000Well, we have tons to get to today, and tomorrow I will be speaking at University of Connecticut, where, of course, naturally, the administration has decided that I'm a threat to public safety, and they've decided that the general public will not be allowed to attend.
00:00:27.000It will be students only at University of Connecticut.
00:00:29.000This is the second school in a row they've done this, or Berkeley they did this, and now they're doing it at University of Connecticut.
00:01:13.000And if that got you thinking, hey, what would happen if, God forbid, there were actually a disaster of that magnitude?
00:01:18.000First of all, it's important to note, just because, I'm not going to get graphic here, but just because a nuclear weapon would fall on your city does not necessarily mean that you will die.
00:01:26.000The fact is that nuclear weapons actually do not look like Terminator 2.
00:02:39.000So, we begin with today's big news, and that is these bombshell text messages that are now coming out from the FBI.
00:02:47.000So, the FBI has turned over a bunch of text messages to the Senate Judiciary Committee and the House Judiciary Committee, and these text messages are not looking good for the FBI.
00:02:57.000So, first off, Bob Goodlatte, who is a Republican from Virginia, and Devin Nunes, a Republican from California, as well as Trey Gowdy, a Republican of South Carolina, issued a statement on text messages they received regarding top FBI
00:03:31.000The omission of text messages between December 2016 and May 2017, a critical gap encompassing the FBI's Russia investigation, is equally concerning.
00:03:39.000Rather than clearing up prior FBI and DOJ actions, these recently produced documents cause us to further question the credibility and objectivity of certain officials at the FBI.
00:03:47.000So, as we mentioned yesterday on the show, there are a couple of big stories that have come out of the FBI.
00:03:51.000The first is that there are these text messages that were sent between members of the FBI regarding the way the Mueller investigation was run.
00:03:59.000Hundreds of text messages apparently have gone missing, among thousands of text messages that have gone missing, hundreds, between Lisa Page, who is working on the Mueller investigation, and her paramour, Peter Strzok, who is also working on the Mueller investigation, was a top counterintelligence guy yesterday on Facebook Live.
00:04:14.000You should check it out on our Facebook page.
00:04:16.000We had the opportunity to talk with Representative Jim Jordan, a Republican from Ohio, who's overseeing a lot of this stuff.
00:04:23.000And Representative Jordan was talking about the fact that they need a second independent counsel to investigate the first independent counsel because this investigation is compromised already.
00:04:33.000I did ask him a couple of the questions I've asked on the show.
00:04:36.000Why doesn't the President of the United States simply declassify the FISA warrant that was taken out against Carter Page so that we can find out whether indeed the FBI was using bad intel to target President Obama's and Hillary Clinton's political enemies?
00:04:48.000He suggested that perhaps Trump didn't want to politicize the issue.
00:04:55.000The fact is that there is the release the memo crew.
00:04:58.000Remember, there was a memo last week that we were talking about that supposedly lays out all of the flaws in FISA, supposedly lays out all of the problems with the FBI.
00:05:05.000This memo will be released to the public in the next one to two weeks, we are now hearing.
00:05:09.000So we'll have more information at that point.
00:05:11.000Meanwhile, according to Attorney General Jeff Sessions, this is reported over at Gateway Pundit, which
00:05:35.000Say something's not true that's not true.
00:05:53.000I have to say, the number of documents that have gone missing, whether it's Hillary Clinton's email servers or whether it is the FBI suddenly losing tens of thousands of texts, pretty shocking stuff.
00:06:17.000The FBI servers included over 50,000 texts and apparently the FBI system failed to retain text messages for approximately five months between December 14th, 2017 and May 17th, 2017.
00:06:28.000As I suggested, these dates are particularly suspicious because May 17th, 2017 is when, is literally the date that Robert Mueller took over the investigation.
00:06:40.000So, John Ratcliffe, who is a Republican from Texas, he said after reviewing the text messages that he thinks there is a, quote-unquote, secret society of folks within the DOJ and FBI working against Trump.
00:06:51.000Quote, Trey Gowdy said the explanation for the missing text may be fishier than the official explanation.
00:06:55.000He says he saw Strzok and Page discussing getting rid of text in a printout of the messages he and other members of Congress received last week.
00:07:01.000Quote, lay aside this glaring five-month gap in text that the world's premier agency somehow missed.
00:07:07.000Gowdy said, Ratcliffe said, And then, Senator Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, he went even further,
00:07:25.000He said in a radio interview on Tuesday with Jay Weber at WISN in Milwaukee, he read aloud a May 19, 2017 text, right?
00:07:31.000So this would be two days after they suddenly magically recovered texts.
00:07:36.000In this text, apparently he wrote, quote, this is to Lisa Page, his mistress.
00:07:40.000You and I both know the odds are nothing about whether this investigation is going to turn up something.
00:07:44.000If I thought it was likely, I'd be there, no question.
00:07:47.000I hesitate in part because of my gut-sensing concern there's no big there there.
00:07:50.000He said he didn't actually want to join the Mueller investigation because he didn't think there was anything actually going on.
00:07:55.000Johnson said, I think that's kind of jaw-dropping.
00:07:56.000He said, in other words, Peter Strzok, who is the FBI Deputy Assistant Director of the Counterintelligence Division, the man who had a plan to do something because he just couldn't abide Donald Trump being president, is saying that his gut sense is that there's no big there there when it comes to the Mueller special counsel investigation.
00:08:10.000I will say that it does seem like there's a conflict between this text and the implication that Strzok was basically ginning up a fake investigation in order to get Trump.
00:08:18.000It suggests there was something else going on inside the FBI, but not the Trump collusion investigation, not the Mueller investigation.
00:08:23.000Because if, indeed, Strzok was texting his paramour, Lisa Page, and suggesting, hey, Lisa, there's nothing here, and I don't want to join the investigation about Trump-Russia collusion because I don't think there's anything there, then that does pose a different
00:08:37.000Point of view than the suggestion that he was trying to craft out of whole cloth this narrative that Trump was colluding with Russia and then shove that down the throats of people over at the FBI.
00:08:46.000In other words, there's a lot of confusion going on here.
00:08:49.000They're certainly going to have to have Strzok testify.
00:08:51.000They're going to have to have Lisa Page testify.
00:08:53.000I do find it highly suspicious that the FBI is saying these messages just went missing.
00:08:58.000Again, if you are working for the government and messages just go missing, that is really suspicious.
00:09:04.000You're not allowed to delete government messages this way.
00:09:07.000I did get a note, by the way, from somebody who's an expert on cybersecurity.
00:09:33.000I'm not going to buy into the complete
00:09:49.000Republican narrative that this was all set up from the very beginning and that it was based on bad intel and that it was created out of whole cloth by Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama in order to get Donald Trump.
00:09:58.000I don't know if the evidence is there for that.
00:10:00.000I will say, however, that something smells fishy here with the missing text and with the text about a secret society and all of the rest of this.
00:10:07.000It's all confusing and it requires a lot of explication.
00:10:10.000Okay, so in just a second, I want to talk about the fallout from the government shutdown that failed for Democrats.
00:10:14.000First, I want to say thank you to our sponsors over at Blue Apron.
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00:10:20.000The reason is, not only is it healthier, not only is it faster, you don't have to go to a restaurant, not only is it more expensive, but it's also more fun.
00:10:27.000You get to cook with your family in your home.
00:10:30.000It's short rib burgers with a hoppy cheddar sauce on a pretzel bun, seared steaks and thyme pan sauce with mashed potatoes.
00:10:35.000You're cooking like a gourmet, and you don't even have to know how to cook, really.
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00:12:16.000Meanwhile, while there's all this fallout surrounding the Mueller investigation, there's also fallout surrounding the Democrats completely blowing it on the government shutdown.
00:12:23.000One of the things that is absolutely hilarious is Joy Reid over at MSNBC said that the government shutdown was actually not a loss for Democrats.
00:12:57.000The Republican leader and I have come to an arrangement.
00:13:00.000We will vote today to reopen the government to continue negotiating a global agreement with the commitment that if an agreement isn't reached by February the 8th, the Senate will immediately proceed
00:13:20.000The White House has immediately announced that they are not going to push for any of the proposals that the Democrats would want here.
00:13:27.000So, for example, White House spokesperson Hogan Gidley, he said that Graham Durbin, which is the bill that Schumer wants, this is the bill that would give about $2 billion for the border wall, but nothing else, in exchange for keeping 800,000 Dreamers and their parents here.
00:13:39.000The White House spokesperson said, that's not on the table.
00:13:41.000So, while Chuck Schumer is saying, we want a big victory here, the answer is, no, they really didn't.
00:13:47.000Senator Graham and Senator Durbin were completely dishonest when they brought the plan to the president.
00:13:53.000It did not do anything to address chain migration.
00:13:55.000In fact, it blew it up and made it bigger.
00:16:12.000It's reflective of the same gap that opened inside the Republican Party in 2013 after the government shut down there.
00:16:17.000There were a lot of people on the Republican side who said, you're not fighting Barack Obama hard enough, you need to shut down the government.
00:16:23.000You need to stop the funding of Obamacare because once it's in place, it's going to be very difficult for us ever to remove it.
00:16:30.000This is really where I think a lot of the anger at Mitch McConnell started was the feeling that he was not fighting hard enough on all of these particular matters.
00:16:37.000And what that led to was such discontent in the Republican Party that Donald Trump
00:16:41.000You're seeing the same thing in the Democratic Party.
00:16:46.000There's a fight now between the so-called establishment wing of the Democratic Party, led by Chuck Schumer, and the progressive wing of the Democratic Party.
00:16:51.000All the people who want to run in 2020 are now basically doing what Ted Cruz did in 2013.
00:16:56.000Cruz wanted to run for president in 2016, and so he shut down the government.
00:17:17.000All the people in the Senate who want to run for president are being very clear about what they want to do here.
00:17:21.000Chris Coons from Delaware, he basically was trying to encourage all these 2020 contenders, guys, simmer down, shut up.
00:17:28.000Can we actually govern well here or are you guys just going to run for president?
00:17:32.000What appeals to our base for some primary several years from now is not what I'm worried about.
00:17:36.000What I'm worried about is how do we solve real problems.
00:17:39.000And my gut is that at the end of the day, that's what people are looking for in a next national leader as well.
00:17:45.000So for my colleagues who are hoping that they might be on the ticket in 2020, I don't think simply moving further and further to the left is the best way to accomplish that.
00:17:54.000I think showing we can solve big problems is the way to encourage people to believe that Democrats belong in control of the Congress and back in the White House.
00:18:02.000But this is what's so fascinating, is that the Democrats who want to win are now opposed to the Democrats who are radical, right?
00:18:09.000What we're seeing now is that the Democrats are moving farther and further to the left.
00:18:14.000There have actually been studies on this.
00:18:16.000Basically, since 2010, Republicans have been stagnant.
00:18:18.000The Democratic Party, however, continues to move further and further to the left, and Trump has prompted them to move even further to the left, because their hatred of Trump means knee-jerk opposition to anything he does, including funding things like the Children's Health Insurance Program.
00:18:30.000By the way, funny to note, remember when, like, two days ago, Jimmy Kimmel was complaining that the Republicans wouldn't fund CHIP?
00:18:35.000Oh, the Republicans are holding CHIP hostage.
00:18:37.000Oh, the Republicans won't fund the Children's Health Insurance Program.
00:19:49.000But, you know, she's trying to shift blame off of Schumer, as well she should.
00:19:52.000The only person who's honest about this that I saw, completely honest, was Luis Gutierrez, the Democrat from Illinois who is very hardcore on immigration and who is perfectly willing to shut down the government over all of this because this is his lead issue.
00:20:03.000He says, listen, my Democratic colleagues, they blinked, they lost.
00:20:39.000This is obviously the case with the Democrats, who run literally zero branches of government at this point.
00:20:44.000One of the things that's been fascinating is that not only are Republicans gaining in the polls, but if you look at the way that the districts run, Democrats have a bit of an uphill run.
00:20:51.000A lot of the districts have become a lot more partisan and polarized, so Democrats would basically have to have a wave in order to take over the House.
00:20:57.000I've been suggesting for a while I think they probably will take over the House, but I don't think that it's going to be any surefire bet.
00:21:03.000Especially the way the Democrats are blowing it.
00:21:05.000This government shutdown does not help them.
00:21:06.000It gives the impression that they're not competent.
00:21:47.000It's already January 23rd, so that means that we're basically two weeks out.
00:21:50.000But we'll get to that in just a second.
00:21:52.000First, I want to say thanks to our sponsors over at FilterBuy.
00:21:55.000So the holidays might be over, but the winter is in full swing, and that means that you're spending a lot more time indoors.
00:22:00.000Well, according to studies, the air indoors contains up to 100 times more pollution than the air outside, which can cause illness, allergies, unnecessary wear and tear on your HVAC system,
00:23:21.000Because, as I mentioned, the White House is making clear that they don't want to cave to Democrats, and they honestly have no interest in caving to Democrats.
00:23:36.000And the Democrats, by the way, have no interest in actually saving Trump from having to back down.
00:23:41.000But Trump could easily just say, listen, we're not going to fix DACA.
00:23:45.000We're not going to be issuing any new DACA permits.
00:23:49.000But we're also not going to start deporting people.
00:23:51.000We're just going to let people stay here.
00:23:52.000We'll go after the criminal, illegal aliens first.
00:23:56.000If he says that, then nothing really happens.
00:23:58.000The urgency here—this is the thing about all of this that makes no sense—the urgency here is a little bit overblown.
00:24:05.000The president of the United States can just continue to waive DACA the same way that the former president of the United States has.
00:24:13.000The fact that DACA is coming to an end on March 8 doesn't mean that mass deportations are about to happen.
00:24:21.000The deadline just means that they're not going to be issuing any more new papers for people who have been trying to get papers to stay in the country permanently.
00:24:29.000Sorry, March 5th is the date that they're looking at, actually.
00:24:32.000So, the idea that the world ends on March 5th unless they come to some sort of deal obviously is not true.
00:24:40.000So, that means that there's not a lot of pressure on Trump to come to a deal, and there's not a lot of pressure on Democrats to come to the deal.
00:24:48.000The March 5th deadline ends protections for young undocumented immigrants if Congress fails to do anything, but the Homeland Security Secretary is already saying that they're not going to do anything about this.
00:24:59.000The White House is sort of making hints because they have to, right?
00:25:01.000They're trying to push Democrats into making a deal.
00:25:03.000But Sarah Huckabee Sanders said that, you know, maybe they'll start deporting dreamers, probably not.
00:25:23.000That's the most likely outcome of all of this.
00:25:25.000Not that he starts mass deportations the way that Ann Coulter would like, but that he actually doesn't do any of that.
00:25:30.000So, both sides have an interest in reaching a deal, but both sides also have an interest in not reaching a deal, which means that this will probably drag on beyond the deadline.
00:25:39.000The idea of a quick deadline by February 8th is not going to happen.
00:25:42.000Chuck Schumer is already taking off the table.
00:25:46.000All right, so Chuck Schumer is taking his big spending boost for the border wall off the table.
00:25:50.000According to Politico, this happened in the last few minutes.
00:25:52.000The Senate Minority Leader, through an aide, informed the White House on Monday he was retracting the offer he made last week to give Trump well north of $1.6 billion in wall funding Trump had asked for this year, according to two Democrats.
00:26:02.000Now they say Trump will simply not get a better deal than that on his signature campaign promise.
00:26:07.000So, Schumer offered a large increase in border wall spending as a condition for a broader deal to help DREAMers.
00:26:12.000After that offer was rebuffed, prompting the shutdown, the president has missed the opportunity to get the wall, said one Democratic aide.
00:26:19.000Senator Jeff Flake had already considered using the promise of border wall funding totaling more than $1.6 billion in order to lure more conservative votes.
00:26:26.000A dreamer plan written by a bipartisan group of six senators had included Trump's $1.6 billion request as part of a broader $2.7 billion border security package.
00:26:34.000But the White House had already rejected that deal.
00:26:36.000So basically, Schumer is withdrawing from a deal that the White House was never going to make.
00:26:40.000So the Democrats have no interest in coming to the table and offering anything.
00:26:43.000They would like to see mass deportations.
00:26:46.000Democrats want Trump to do a mass deportation so they can get all the headlines about how mean and cruel Republicans are leading up into the midterms.
00:26:52.000And Republicans have no interest in surrendering on DACA because they want to get their base out for the midterms.
00:26:57.000So, my prediction, no deal happens here.
00:26:59.000So, all the talk about how, you know, we have to reach a deal, we have to reach a deal, it's not going to happen.
00:27:03.000Tim Kaine, senator from Virginia, former vice presidential candidate, he said, we all want a permanent fix, right?
00:27:09.000Everyone, Democrats, Republicans, we all want a permanent fix.
00:27:13.000All of us in the room felt the same way.
00:27:15.000So we're sitting around in Susan's office again and again and then we're dispatching and going talking to the leaders and then coming back and doing the same thing, shuttle diplomacy.
00:27:25.000So we do have a strong degree of trust in each other that we want this outcome of opening the government and finding a permanent protection for DREAMers.
00:27:32.000Everybody in that room said we've got to find permanent protection for DREAMers and that's really important.
00:27:39.000The idea that they're going to actually move forward with something again, I find highly unlikely.
00:27:43.000They don't have the votes for it in the Senate.
00:27:45.000Democrats are saying to Trump, you can't just yell about what you want.
00:27:48.000But the truth is that they basically can't.
00:27:50.000Ari Melber at MSNBC was trying to pressure Trump.
00:28:11.000If you make a deal and don't stick to it long enough to sign it, you will push people to find other ways to try to force your hand.
00:28:18.000And since this is a democracy, not a dictatorship or a scripted reality show, you won't always have the final say by yourself, even when you have the top job.
00:28:28.000You don't get to skip the hard part because you only run a co-equal branch of government, which of course was recently shut down.
00:28:35.000You can't just yell what you want or go home.
00:28:38.000Well, actually, that's exactly what he can do, and he just did it, and the Democrats caved.
00:28:42.000So, the fact is, that's exactly what he will do.
00:28:44.000And again, I think the chances of reaching a deal here, when Democrats are not bending at all, is extraordinarily low.
00:28:49.000Right here is Senator Mazie Hirono from Hawaii.
00:28:51.000She said, listen, the funding for the wall is off the table.
00:29:10.000The wall is no longer something that... Chuck Schumer was willing to put the wall on the tape if we got a full DACA and full DREAMers, and that's not happening, so that's off the table.
00:29:24.000What if there's an offer for DACA, but that has to go back on the table?
00:29:27.000Is the wall funding going to go back on the table at some point?
00:29:30.000I think we're going to have a full-throated debate on DACA and possibly on a lot of other aspects of comprehensive immigration reform.
00:29:39.000And I know where I'm coming from, that we need to keep our focus on the urgency of taking care of the DACA dreamers and also comprehensive immigration reform that maintains family unity.
00:29:53.000They're just going to muddle through this.
00:30:05.000They want another wave of illegal immigrants coming through.
00:30:08.000And that's because, for both humanitarian reasons and also because they believe that these are all future Democratic voters, they would like the border to remain open.
00:30:20.000Democrats don't want that deal, so there will be no deal.
00:30:38.000I think that there's a good shot that Republicans should actually try and cut that deal themselves and just invoke the nuclear option if they have to in order to do it, because otherwise Democrats are going to continue using this as a club to beat Republicans with over and over and over again.
00:30:51.000This issue is not going to get resolved, because no one has an interest in watching this issue get resolved, unfortunately, even though they're all lying about it to you.
00:30:58.000So, I want to talk a little bit about the school marming media, as well as the NFL blowing itself up right before the Super Bowl in just the most foolish possible fashion.
00:31:05.000But for that, you're going to have to go over to dailywire.com and subscribe.
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00:31:57.000So, with all of this happening, President Trump's approval ratings continue to be in the dumps, which just shows you that his personal toxicity does not work well for him, even though a lot of his base may like it.
00:32:10.000The reason I say this is because there's a poll out today that shows Trump matched up against various Democrats, and it does not look particularly good for President Trump.
00:32:19.000Not particularly, because in the end, you end up running against a candidate, you know, and when you run against that candidate, you drag them down in the mud.
00:32:26.000At this time in 2015, or 2013 rather, you were looking at Donald Trump wasn't even on the polls.
00:32:34.000Right now he's the President of the United States.
00:32:36.000But if you look at the polls right now, Joe Biden at 57%, Trump at 40.
00:32:59.000He's also somebody with blue-collar appeal, apparently.
00:33:04.000And Bernie Sanders, of course, is highly popular until he actually has to face up with Trump.
00:33:09.000This doesn't mean, of course, that Trump would actually lose to these people, take all of those statistics with a grain of salt, but the fact is that Trump's personal toxicity is driving down numbers for President Trump and for Republicans.
00:33:19.000What is providing a lift for Trump and for Republicans is the continued media malfeasance.
00:33:34.000And North Korea, for all of the talk about it, is still in a relatively contained position, even though they continue to fire missiles.
00:33:41.000They have no intention of going to war with anyone, as far as I can tell.
00:33:45.000The media, however, continue to lie to people.
00:33:47.000And the more the media do this, the media have basically become Hollywood.
00:33:51.000Hollywood and the media have basically—they've merged.
00:33:53.000Whatever the media say, whenever they offer their opinion, whenever they get involved in the kind of schoolmarming of President Trump, people react badly to that.
00:33:59.000Chris Cuomo was responsible for it yesterday.
00:34:01.000He had on Kellyanne Conway, and he was slapping Kellyanne Conway for defending President Trump's tweets during the Women's March.
00:34:07.000During the Women's March, Trump tweeted out that he was happy that these women were marching, and also, by the way, the economy is great, which seemed like a fine tweet to me, but here's Chris Cuomo going after Kellyanne Conway.
00:34:42.000It's no joke that the women's unemployment rate is the lowest in 17 years.
00:34:47.000It is no joke that over a half a million new women enter the workforce on his watch.
00:34:52.000And it's no joke that they don't get equal pay, and women like you have been forced to do it twice as hard as men to get to the same place.
00:35:04.000So Chris Cuomo now mansplaining to Kellyanne Conway about the fake gender gap, which is just entertaining as all hell.
00:35:09.000And then people wonder why Trump continues to win when he just says that the economy is good and Chris Cuomo loses his ever-loving mind.
00:35:15.000Speaking of media malfeasance, so the NFL has seen its ratings decline dramatically this year.
00:35:20.000I mean, they've had a serious hit in terms of their public image.
00:35:24.000People don't like the NFL nearly as much as they used to.
00:35:27.000I think there are a couple of things behind that.
00:35:29.000Every time somebody gets hit in the head, we immediately think this guy's going to suffer serious brain damage future—in the future, and that's a problem.
00:35:36.000But beyond that, it did not help the NFL that their entire image has now been plastered with the people kneeling for the national anthem.
00:36:02.000So what you can see is these soldiers standing with the flag, and then it just says, make a $20 tax-deductible donation and help us help veterans by texting veterans to 444-999.
00:36:13.000And then it just says, hashtag please stand, which is,
00:36:23.000So, the AMVETS national commander, Marion Polk, said, So, this was supposed to be a $30,000 ad.
00:36:43.000Apparently, the NFL vice president of communications told the Army Times that the league asked them to change the message to, please stand for our veterans.
00:36:52.000But the group was unable to make changes in time for the deadline.
00:36:55.000Instead, the NFL is running a similar ad, apparently, from the Veterans of Foreign Wars with the message, we stand for veterans.
00:37:01.000The NFL has spent two years allowing players to sit, kneel, raise a fist, perform other symbolic acts during the performance of the star-spangled banners.
00:37:09.000And it's not true, by the way, that the Super Bowl gets rid of politically charged ads.
00:37:12.000They had a couple of them just last year, of course.
00:37:15.000I mean, I remember that they did an Audi ad—we made fun of it on the show—titled, Daughter, all about how your daughter is going to be discriminated against, but at least she'll be able to drive an Audi.
00:37:51.000But this just demonstrates how the people in the media misunderstand the people they are catering to.
00:37:55.000The people who actually watch the NFL stand for the flag.
00:37:58.000And there's a reason that President Trump, when he attended the college football championship game, was actually cheered by the crowd.
00:38:05.000The fact is that people who watch football are more likely to be in favor of standing for the flag than the average member of the population.
00:38:15.000And the fact is, and I'm not talking about black versus white, I'm just talking about population centers on the coast particularly versus the middle of the country.
00:38:22.000The ratings are higher in the middle of the country from what I understand.
00:38:27.000It is absolute foolishness for the NFL to continue alienating its own viewing population, but this is what Hollywood tends to do.
00:38:34.000Remember, the NFL is part of the entertainment complex, and the entertainment complex is mostly interested in pleasing people who live inside the entertainment complex.
00:38:42.000They don't want to tick off their own players by running this ad, which I would suggest better to have the audience tick off the players than have the players tick off the audience.
00:38:51.000I mean, the NFL's got enough hits that it's taking right now that the last thing that it needs is to harm itself further by rejecting ads from veterans that are simply saying, stand for the flag.
00:39:29.000The whole premise of Dune, if I recall—it's been years since I've read it—but the whole premise of Dune is that there's a planet that
00:39:37.000Basically has no water on it, and it's a desert planet, and it's the only source of a particular spice, and so the entire commerce of the planet runs off this particular spice.
00:39:52.000And it's all about the enslavement of particular populations and rebellions and declining empires.
00:40:34.000Whenever she does it on NBC, it's really good.
00:40:36.000When she does the sort of soft talk, we're going to talk about what we're doing with our nails today stuff, I don't think that's Megan at her best.
00:40:43.000I think Megan at her best is this, right?
00:40:46.000So she had Jane Fonda on the show, and she asked Jane Fonda about plastic surgery, which, again, in a normal interview, I don't see the problem with that.
00:42:12.000The fact that Jane Fonda has been a well-accepted part of Hollywood for decades after doing what she did during the Vietnam War is insane, and without apology, is even more insane.
00:42:25.000This is an amazing video of a 20-week-old baby in utero.
00:42:29.000And again, one of the reasons that the pro-life movement is making so much hay right now is because we can actually see inside the womb, right?
00:42:35.000When you couldn't see inside the womb, then you could pretend that that wasn't a baby in there.
00:42:38.000Now that you can see inside the womb better and better these days, it is obvious that that is, of course, a child, that you're killing a child when you decide to quote-unquote abort.
00:42:47.000I mean, if you can't see this, that's a baby right there.
00:42:49.000There's no way to look at that and not say that's a baby.
00:43:26.000We'll really do one thing I hate today, so that is Morning Joe decided to cut an anthem for the Women's March.
00:43:32.000So all of the virtue signaling about the Women's March is just ridiculous all the way through.
00:43:37.000Morning Joe used to be a quote-unquote fair and balanced show, right, where Joe Scarborough was the Republican and Mika Brzezinski was the Democrat, and now they're married to each other, which is a weird dynamic.
00:43:47.000But in any case, here was Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski talking about how they had cut an anthem for the Women's March, because we all have to pretend that the Women's March is some
00:44:17.000We go to break with some of the powerful images from over the weekend as millions of Americans gathered in cities and streets across the nation for the 2018 Women's March.
00:44:38.000You may get the chance to stand against a column of tanks.
00:44:46.000What this president is doing is just so wrong.
00:45:43.000Apparently, there are some lyrics to a song called Bodak Yellow, which I've never heard of these things, so that's why I analyzed them for you, because if I haven't heard of them, I assume that you haven't either.
00:46:05.000Right, so that's a picture of one, there's shoes stomping on Trump's head, and then there's another one of shoes stomping on Pence's head, bloody moves, and then it's a picture of, I don't know, is that supposed to be a period?
00:46:18.000I'm confused as to what this is supposed to be.
00:46:21.000In any case, these lyrics have apparently become a thing now.
00:46:24.000So, let's look a little bit at the video for Bodak Yellow and explain why this has become a phenomenon.
00:46:30.000You can fuck with me if you wanted to.
00:47:00.000Okay, one of the things that I do like about this video is that she's literally riding a camel in the middle of the Arabian desert, presumably.
00:47:07.000That is not a very empowered place, just noting.
00:47:09.000That's not a place where strippers make lots of money in Saudi Arabia.
00:47:13.000But in any case, Bodak Yellow's, I guess, Cardi B is the name of this human, and Cardi B began stripping at the age of 19.
00:47:22.000She still says the strip club is her favorite place for dates, and then she was on Love & Hip Hop in New York, and then she does all of the sort of shock tactics that you expect from your normal rapper.
00:47:34.000But here's what the lyrics actually say, and this is supposed to be empowering for women.
00:47:38.000If this is empowerment for women, let me suggest that women need to think more of themselves, because this seems rather degrading, actually.
00:48:19.000So now it seems like she's getting aggressive with other women.
00:48:20.000So I'm missing the part where this is all female solidarity when she's talking about how she's competing with other women to take their men.
00:48:49.000I don't know why—again, I guess if you're obsessed with your own genitalia, then this is empowering to you, but I guess the—I'm not sure what else to expect from a Women's March that thinks it's empowerment to actually wear a hat on your head that is supposedly named after a vagina.
00:49:05.000So, just well done, women all over the United States who are really empowering themselves by glorifying stripping and glorifying cheating and glorifying
00:49:17.000We'll be back here tomorrow with much, much more.
00:49:23.000We'll be broadcasting from the great state of Connecticut.