The Ben Shapiro Show - The Day After | Ep. 609

00:00:00.000 The fallout continues for Michael Cohen and Paul Manafort.

00:00:02.000 New York opens another line of investigation into President Trump.

00:00:05.000 And President Trump leaps into the South Africa situation.

00:00:08.000 I'm Ben Shapiro.

00:00:08.000 This is The Ben Shapiro Show.

00:00:14.000 See, normally they call it the summer doldrums because not a lot happens.

00:00:17.000 But then there was the Trump administration and stuff happens all the time.

00:00:20.000 We're going to jump into all of it in just one second.

00:00:22.000 But first, let's talk a little bit about our national debt.

00:00:24.000 It's $21 trillion and counting.

00:00:26.000 That is at least a large chunk, money we owe other countries or to our unfunded liabilities.

00:00:31.000 It's greater than the entire economic output of the United States.

00:00:33.000 So what is your plan for hyperinflation if the stilts fall out from under the economy?

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00:01:21.000 We're good to go.

00:01:37.000 We are still living in the aftermath of all the revelations about Paul Manafort and Michael Cohen.

00:01:41.000 And we begin today with the sort of latest updates on the Michael Cohen situation.

00:01:45.000 Because Michael Cohen, it turns out, is the greater threat to the President of the United States than is Paul Manafort.

00:01:50.000 To recap, Michael Cohen pled guilty to campaign finance violations.

00:01:54.000 And he suggested that the president had informed him and told him to commit these campaign finance violations.

00:02:00.000 He'd instructed him to create all these shell corporations and avoid going through normal disclosure routes in order to pay off two separate women, Karen McDougal and Stormy Daniels, with whom he had once had sex just before the election in order to impact the election.

00:02:12.000 Now,

00:02:13.000 There are a couple of cases today as to why this is not actually legal violation.

00:02:18.000 One of those cases being made by Bradley Smith.

00:02:19.000 I discussed this over the last couple of days.

00:02:21.000 He's a former chairman of the Federal Election Commission.

00:02:23.000 He has a piece over at the Washington Post about this.

00:02:25.000 And what he basically argues is that it is not a campaign expenditure when you are paying off a former lover.

00:02:31.000 His rationale is that this is a personal expenditure.

00:02:34.000 You may be doing it for a variety of reasons.

00:02:36.000 Maybe you're doing it because you want to avoid ticking off your wife.

00:02:39.000 That was John Edwards' case.

00:02:40.000 He said that he silenced Riel Hunter, remember the 2008 presidential candidate for the Democrats? 1.00

00:02:45.000 He had knocked up a woman who is not his cancer-ridden wife because John Edwards is a piece of human trash. 1.00

00:02:50.000 And then he had 1.00

00:02:51.000 Basically had his donors pay the woman a million dollars to shut up. 0.99

00:02:54.000 That ended up coming out.

00:02:55.000 He ended up being prosecuted for it.

00:02:57.000 His case was that he was paying off Riel Hunter because he didn't want to tick off his wife.

00:03:01.000 It had nothing to do with the election.

00:03:02.000 That was dubious.

00:03:03.000 He was tried on it.

00:03:03.000 There was a hung jury.

00:03:05.000 And he ended up basically getting off.

00:03:07.000 Well, that's sort of the case that Bradley Smith is making.

00:03:10.000 He is saying, under the theory that then-candidate Donald Trump's personal attorney Michael Cohen violated campaign finance laws by arranging hush money payments to women accusing Trump of affairs, the answer would seem to be yes to the question of whether a business owner running for political office deciding to pay bonuses to his employees would be a campaign expenditure.

00:03:28.000 He says that that's a problem, that we can't equate everything with a campaign expenditure.

00:03:32.000 Everything you do in your own interest or that influences a campaign can't be a campaign expenditure.

00:03:36.000 You decide to give your employees a bonus just before the election, that's not necessarily a campaign expenditure because maybe you would have given that bonus to your employees in the absence of the campaign anyway.

00:03:46.000 Bradley Smith says, The problem is that almost anything a candidate does can be interpreted as intended to influence an election, from buying a good watch,

00:04:08.000 So, he's making the case that basically this is not a campaign expenditure, this is a personal expenditure by the President of the United States.

00:04:28.000 The test under FEC rules is the so-called irrespective test.

00:04:32.000 The irrespective test says, would this expenditure have been made irrespective of whether the campaign was happening?

00:04:37.000 And as I've argued, I think that there's a plausible case Trump could say, I would have made this expenditure anyway, because he has a long history of pressuring women to stay silent and paying women off to stay silent.

00:04:45.000 Back in 2011, he basically threatened to sue In Touch magazine for printing an interview with Stormy Daniels.

00:04:51.000 And they backed off and did not print the interview with Stormy Daniels about her affair with then reality television producer and star Donald Trump.

00:04:59.000 So Trump has a case on these grounds.

00:05:01.000 There's a secondary case here, and that's the case being made over at Politico by a bunch of legal experts.

00:05:06.000 They say that Cohen's admission that he violated campaign finance law while acting at Trump's direction is far from rock-solid proof that the president is also guilty, even if Cohen is being entirely truthful, some lawyers say.

00:05:16.000 The fact that Cohen did something illegal doesn't mean Trump did anything illegal, said Jan Barron.

00:05:20.000 A longtime Republican campaign finance lawyer.

00:05:23.000 Cohen said in court on Tuesday that he acted at Trump's direction and violated federal election laws by arranging the payout to Stormy Daniels, an adult film actress, in the days before the 2016 election to keep her silent about what she said was an affair with Trump a decade earlier.

00:05:36.000 Andrew Gruhl, however, a University of Iowa law professor, he says, So in other words, if Trump called up Michael Cohen,

00:05:58.000 And he said, dude, I'd like for you to make this go away.

00:06:00.000 And Michael Cohen says, don't worry, I'll take care of it.

00:06:02.000 That is not Trump being complicit in a campaign finance violation, because he assumes that Cohen knows all the legal requirements.

00:06:08.000 If, however, Trump says to Michael Cohen, listen, I need you to make this go away, and it doesn't matter if you violate campaign finance law, or I know that we should shield this from public scrutiny by using a bunch of shell corporations, and let's say Cohen has them on tape saying all of that stuff, then it looks more like a criminal campaign finance violation.

00:06:26.000 Cohen said under oath, the most damaging information that the president of the United States committed a crime and covered it up.

00:06:31.000 But that is not actually indicative that the president has criminal intent.

00:06:35.000 So this one lawyer, Jan Barron says, in order to prove criminal intent, you have to point to evidence that the actors knew or had reason to know that what they were doing was illegal.

00:06:43.000 Trump can simply claim ignorance.

00:06:45.000 And that may, in fact, be the case that he is making.

00:06:48.000 Right.

00:06:48.000 That may be his strongest case.

00:06:49.000 He sort of made that case a little bit yesterday.

00:06:51.000 We'll get to Trump's response to all of this.

00:06:53.000 So Trump has a couple of defenses that are relatively robust here.

00:06:56.000 Defense number one, I pay off women all the time. 1.00

00:06:58.000 This wasn't a campaign expenditure.

00:07:00.000 Defense number two, even if it was a campaign expenditure, I didn't know the rules because I have people whose job it is to know that stuff and I didn't order anyone knowingly to violate campaign finance laws because why the hell would I do that?

00:07:10.000 Also a relatively strong defense.

00:07:12.000 So ignorance and sluttiness are the president's two defenses and both are quite plausible because the president gets around and has for a long time and has paid women to shut up for apparently a long time and because the president is not exactly a legal expert despite his own belief that he is.

00:07:26.000 President Trump is actually a terrible legal client because he thinks he knows more than his lawyers, which is always the first mark of a bad legal client.

00:07:32.000 In fact, if God could have come up with a bad legal client in the laboratory before putting him on earth, he'd look a lot like Donald Trump, who just will not let his lawyers do their job.

00:07:41.000 Chuck Todd actually asked Lanny Davis.

00:07:44.000 Chuck Todd over at MSNBC asked Lanny Davis, who is Michael Cohen's lawyer.

00:07:47.000 And this is the great irony, of course, is Lanny Davis was Bill Clinton's lawyer back during the impeachment scandal.

00:07:52.000 So now he's flipped sides.

00:07:54.000 And Lanny Davis is now going after the president. 1.00

00:07:56.000 He is asked by Chuck Todd if there's any corroborative evidence that Michael Cohen is telling the truth.

00:08:01.000 That when Michael Cohen says that Trump told him to violate campaign finance law, is there any evidence that corroborates this?

00:08:06.000 Here was Lanny Davis's answer.

00:08:08.000 Does the SDNY have physical evidence in their hands that, or is this still on Michael Cohen's word versus the president's word?

00:08:17.000 I was trying to give you your answer, Chuck.

00:08:20.000 The answer is, number one, the Trump

00:08:24.000 Team and Miss Giuliani have admitted that the money was paid.

00:08:28.000 Number two, there is physical and electronic evidence that the money was paid to Miss Daniels from the Trump conduit, who was Mr. Cohen, and it's all documented.

00:08:42.000 Okay, but that doesn't answer the question.

00:08:44.000 Okay, we know that the money was passed along.

00:08:46.000 The question is whether Trump had intent to avoid campaign finance law, and that is not actually documented, is what Lanny Davis seems to be saying.

00:08:53.000 So, just because the money passed hands, which we all assume happened, and just because Trump told Cohen to solve the problem, which we all assume happened, doesn't mean that Trump actually had intent to violate campaign finance law.

00:09:02.000 Now, the great irony of this situation is that Hillary Clinton was allowed to get away with

00:09:07.000 Creating a private server and then destroying information on the private server, supposedly because she didn't have intent. 0.86

00:09:12.000 That's pretty clear.

00:09:13.000 She actually did have intent to destroy information and violate the law. 0.99

00:09:16.000 But Trump probably didn't have intent here.

00:09:18.000 And so by the same standard, he should probably not be criminally liable unless they have actual evidence that he knew that the law was being violated.

00:09:25.000 And he said, I don't care.

00:09:26.000 Go ahead and violate the law anyway.

00:09:28.000 It also doesn't help that Michael Cohen happens to be 0.98

00:09:30.000 A particularly sleazy liar, and everybody sort of knows it.

00:09:33.000 The newfound respect for Michael Cohen's honesty is sort of astonishing from folks on the left. 0.61

00:09:37.000 And you can see that folks on the left even really don't believe Michael Cohen. 0.99

00:09:40.000 They think he's a liar and a screwball. 0.72

00:09:42.000 Lanny Davis was on national television yesterday on NBC News, and he actually said that they'd opened a legal defense fund for Michael Cohen. 0.96

00:09:49.000 He asked people to contribute, and the audience started laughing at him.

00:09:52.000 It's really funny.

00:09:54.000 But could I just take one opportunity to remind everyone that Michael Cohen has suffered a tragic and difficult experience with his family.

00:10:02.000 He's without resources and we've set up a website called MichaelCohenTruth.com that we're hoping that he will get some help from the American people so he can continue to tell the truth.

00:10:16.000 The audience, they don't know if you're ready to donate, Lanny, but we did check before we went to air.

00:10:23.000 And honestly, that's the appropriate response.

00:10:24.000 By the way, his legal defense fund has raised like $150,000.

00:10:27.000 It's raised a bunch of money.

00:10:29.000 $50,000 of those dollars apparently came from the CEO of NASCAR.

00:10:32.000 For some odd reason that nobody can really explain.

00:10:35.000 So all of that is good stuff.

00:10:36.000 Again, the president has actually three pretty good defenses. 0.97

00:10:39.000 Michael Cohen's a liar. 0.94

00:10:41.000 Okay, fair enough. 1.00

00:10:41.000 Michael Cohen is a liar. 1.00

00:10:43.000 Two, I sleep with every one of them, pay them off. 1.00

00:10:45.000 Also a fairly good defense.

00:10:47.000 And defense number three, I don't know what the hell I'm doing with regard to legal stuff.

00:10:50.000 He's my lawyer.

00:10:51.000 It's his job to know that stuff.

00:10:52.000 Also a pretty good defense.

00:10:53.000 So,

00:10:53.000 All of the talk about Trump being necessarily legally on the ropes.

00:10:56.000 Maybe he is, maybe he's not.

00:10:57.000 I mean, he's certainly more jeopardy than he was two days ago, but that's not, it's not indicative that this is sort of an open and shut case.

00:11:04.000 Bret Stephens of the New York Times has a whole thing today about how Trump should immediately be impeached.

00:11:08.000 The evidence isn't quite there yet of criminal action.

00:11:11.000 We all knew that Trump is a man who lacks character in a lot of particular areas, but that's not the same thing quite as criminal activity.

00:11:19.000 We'll get to the White House's response to all of this in just a second, plus some Paul Manafort updates.

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00:12:34.000 So, with all of this said, the strongest offenses the President has are, I get around, 0.89

00:12:41.000 I'm dumb about the law. 0.99

00:12:42.000 Michael Cohen's a liar, right? 1.00

00:12:43.000 Those are his strongest defenses. 0.95

00:12:44.000 His strongest defense is not, I am by nature a truth teller.

00:12:48.000 That is not the president's strongest defense because he's not, okay?

00:12:52.000 Let's just be honest about this.

00:12:54.000 The president is not known for his veracity on a wide variety of issues.

00:12:57.000 He may be at root a truth teller on some matters political.

00:13:00.000 I think that's true, but he also likes to fib a fair bit.

00:13:04.000 And so when Sarah Sanders got up, Sarah Huckabee Sanders yesterday at the White House, when she got up,

00:13:08.000 When she was asked whether Trump is lying, she got very offended and it didn't play all that great.

00:13:14.000 I'm here today and say the president has never lied to the American people because so many people now look back at that tape of him on Air Force One saying he knew nothing about these payments, when in fact we now know he knew everything about these payments.

00:13:27.000 So has he lied? 0.76

00:13:28.000 Look, again, I think that's a ridiculous accusation.

00:13:31.000 The president in this matter has done nothing wrong and there are no charges against him.

00:13:35.000 Okay, so he's done nothing wrong.

00:13:37.000 There are no charges against him.

00:13:38.000 No charges against him is a bad defense.

00:13:40.000 He never lies, a bad defense.

00:13:41.000 It's offensive to ask whether he lied.

00:13:43.000 He literally was on Air... I mean, what that reporter says is true.

00:13:45.000 He was on Air Force One.

00:13:46.000 He was asked about paying off Stormy Daniels and Karen McDougal.

00:13:49.000 And he said, I had no knowledge that any of that stuff was happening.

00:13:51.000 That was not true.

00:13:52.000 Okay, so that's not his best defense.

00:13:54.000 Again, I've laid forth three separate defenses for the president, all of which are fairly robust.

00:13:59.000 His best defense is not

00:14:01.000 I can't be indicted and I never lie.

00:14:04.000 That's not his best defense, but Sanders said repeatedly that Trump can't be indicted.

00:14:08.000 Again, he can't be indicted probably because he's president of the United States, but that's not a case that he's not guilty of a crime.

00:14:13.000 There are a bunch of other cases he's not guilty of a crime, but the statement that he can't be indicted, that's like saying, well, I was acquitted on a murder charge and then it turns out I actually murdered the person.

00:14:26.000 I can't be tried again because of double jeopardy.

00:14:28.000 Well, that's true.

00:14:29.000 That is legally true.

00:14:30.000 It also doesn't mean that you didn't necessarily murder the person.

00:14:33.000 Here's, like, O.J.

00:14:34.000 Simpson clearly murdered Nicole Simpson.

00:14:35.000 He was acquitted, and he can't be retried under double jeopardy.

00:14:38.000 If somebody were to ask him, O.J., are you innocent of killing your wife?

00:14:40.000 And he said, can't be tried again.

00:14:43.000 You might assume, well, maybe he's a little bit guilty.

00:14:45.000 Here is Sarah Huckabee Sanders, though, saying the president is innocent because he can't be indicted, which is, again, legally not tenable.

00:14:51.000 As the president said, we've stated many times, he did nothing wrong.

00:14:55.000 There are no charges against him.

00:14:57.000 As the president has stated on numerous occasions, he did nothing wrong.

00:15:00.000 There are no charges against him in this.

00:15:02.000 The president in this matter has done nothing wrong and there are no charges against him.

00:15:06.000 What the president has stated a number of times, he did nothing wrong.

00:15:09.000 There are no charges against him.

00:15:11.000 You just kept saying this over and over, right?

00:15:12.000 He did nothing wrong.

00:15:13.000 There are no charges against him.

00:15:14.000 He did nothing wrong.

00:15:16.000 There are no charges against him because he's the President of the United States and you cannot, under federal law, have a federal law enforcement agency indict a sitting President of the United States.

00:15:22.000 Okay.

00:15:33.000 Meanwhile, we have updates on the Paul Manafort case.

00:15:35.000 So, President Trump has come out very strongly in favor of Paul Manafort.

00:15:39.000 He's defended Paul Manafort.

00:15:39.000 We're gonna get to President Trump's response to all of this in just one second, because he's been very prolific on Twitter, and then he did a very long interview this morning on Fox and Friends as well, and he talked to Ainsley Earhardt yesterday.

00:15:50.000 But, the update on Paul Manafort is that a lot of people on the right have been saying that Paul Manafort was railroaded, and the case that they're making is that because he was acquitted, or because the jury hanged, he wasn't acquitted, the jury

00:16:02.000 The jury hung on ten separate charges.

00:16:04.000 That just means that he was innocent of those charges and the whole thing is some sort of witch hunt.

00:16:08.000 He was convicted on eight charges.

00:16:09.000 One of the jurors was on Fox News last night with Shannon Bream.

00:16:13.000 She's a Trump supporter.

00:16:14.000 She explained that basically there was one person in the room who made it a hung jury as opposed to everybody.

00:16:19.000 So basically, if it had not been for one juror, he would have been convicted on all accounts.

00:16:22.000 Here's the juror explaining.

00:16:24.000 Okay, how close, I want to know, did this jury come to convicting Paul Manafort on all 18 counts?

00:16:31.000 By one.

00:16:32.000 There was one holdout.

00:16:34.000 The person, a female juror, was... We all tried to convince her to look at the paper trail. 0.93

00:16:41.000 We laid it out in front of her again and again, and she still said that she had a reasonable doubt.

00:16:49.000 And that's the way the jury worked.

00:16:52.000 OK, so the idea that this was just all a witch hunt.

00:16:55.000 Again, there are a bunch of Trump supporters on that jury and Manafort was convicted on eight counts anyway.

00:17:01.000 So it's not the witch hunt.

00:17:03.000 If there is a witch hunt, the witch hunt would have to do a lot more with the Mueller investigation looking at Russian collusion.

00:17:08.000 But it would have nothing to do with Paul Manafort being guilty of stuff.

00:17:10.000 Paul Manafort was guilty of stuff.

00:17:12.000 End of story.

00:17:13.000 And when people say, you know, if the special counsel dug into you, he would find something, my answer would be, well, it depends on what he finds.

00:17:20.000 If he finds that I was actively taking money from a foreign government in order to manipulate the American political process, which is sort of what Manafort was doing prior to the election, had nothing to do with Trump, then that's a crime.

00:17:35.000 You know, there's not to say that the government should be able to go through everybody's books at will, but he was convicted of eight federal felonies and would have been convicted of another ten if there hadn't been one holdout on the jury.

00:17:43.000 So, let's reserve the witch hunt language for actual witch hunts.

00:17:47.000 Let's not reserve the witch hunt language for when there's actually a lady running around in an actual witch's hat riding a broom and casting curses by killing cats. 1.00

00:17:54.000 How about that?

00:17:55.000 How about we save the witch hunt language for, you know, actual witch hunts.

00:17:58.000 Ainsley Earhart came out and said that Trump is actually considering pardoning Manafort.

00:18:01.000 Trump has been very warm toward Manafort.

00:18:03.000 He says that Manafort is a great guy because he didn't squeal.

00:18:06.000 Which, again, doesn't make the president sound particularly innocent.

00:18:09.000 The president is his own worst advocate when it comes to matters legal.

00:18:11.000 Here, Ainsley Earhart came out and she said that Trump is considering pardoning Paul Manafort.

00:18:16.000 She then walked that back. 1.00

00:18:18.000 A little bit.

00:18:18.000 Ari Fleischer tweeted out and he said,

00:18:40.000 I think so far Ari Fleischer is basically correct.

00:18:42.000 So all the talk about Paul Manafort, it amounts to nothing.

00:18:45.000 I'm just puzzled as to why the president continues to defend him.

00:18:48.000 Meanwhile, the state of New York is looking at going after President Trump as well.

00:18:51.000 This poses a significant serious difficulty for the president because the president can be indicted on state charges.

00:18:56.000 So if you commit a murder as president of the United States, there is nothing in the Constitution that forbids a state prosecutor from bringing you up on violation of state law.

00:19:05.000 The reason the president can be indicted under federal law is because the president controls the federal executive branch, but the president does not control state law, which is why the president can't, for example, pardon state crimes.

00:19:14.000 Right?

00:19:14.000 He can't pardon a state murderer, for example.

00:19:17.000 Well, New York state investigators have now subpoenaed Michael Cohen, the president's former personal lawyer, according to state officials, as part of a probe into the Donald J. Trump Foundation.

00:19:25.000 They have a lot of evidence that the Donald J. Trump Foundation was basically being used as a pass-through for Trump to pay personal expenses.

00:19:32.000 It's not a criminal matter yet.

00:19:34.000 The tax department in New York doesn't have the jurisdiction to pursue criminal charges, but if it discovered information valuable to the investigation of the Trump Foundation, it would then be referred to the New York State Attorney General.

00:19:45.000 I have very little doubt that the New York Attorney General would have very little trouble trying to pursue a criminal investigation into President Trump.

00:19:51.000 Barbara Underwood hates President Trump with a passion of a thousand burning suns. 0.99

00:19:55.000 So what you could see is a state prosecution against the President, and he is not, in fact, immune to state prosecution

00:20:01.000 Under federal law.

00:20:02.000 So, this is a continuing serious problem for the president.

00:20:07.000 It's, you know, it would be great if we didn't have to deal with any of this stuff.

00:20:11.000 We'll have to deal with the charges as they come and evaluate them as they come.

00:20:13.000 Now, in a second, we're going to get to the president's response to all of this, some of which is good, some of which is bad, most of which is kind of bad.

00:20:20.000 But we'll get to that in just a second.

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00:21:42.000 Okay, so, President Trump has responded to all this in a variety of ways.

00:21:48.000 So yesterday, he was on with Ainsley Earhart over at Fox News, and he said, So remember, this is a guy who said that he didn't even know about the Stormy Daniels payoff.

00:21:57.000 Now he's saying that he paid for Stormy Daniels.

00:22:00.000 The case in favor of him saying this is that he doesn't think he violated federal finance law.

00:22:05.000 He didn't know it was a violation of federal finance law.

00:22:07.000 He still doesn't know it was a violation of federal finance law, so how can you say he had intent to violate federal finance law?

00:22:13.000 That's the charitable reading.

00:22:14.000 The uncharitable reading is that he just admitted to a federal crime, because if he personally paid for a campaign expenditure and admitted to it, then he just admitted to a federal crime on national television.

00:22:23.000 This is why you should let your lawyers do the talking, Mr. President.

00:22:26.000 Here is the President of the United States talking to Ainsley Earhart.

00:22:29.000 Did you know about the payments?

00:22:31.000 Later on I knew.

00:22:32.000 Later on.

00:22:33.000 But you have to understand, Ainsley, what he did, and they weren't taken out of campaign finance.

00:22:39.000 That's a big thing.

00:22:40.000 That's a much bigger thing.

00:22:41.000 Did they come out of the campaign?

00:22:42.000 They didn't come out of the campaign.

00:22:44.000 They came from me, and I tweeted about it.

00:22:46.000 You know, I put, I don't know if you know, but I tweeted about the payments.

00:22:51.000 But they didn't come out of campaign.

00:22:54.000 In fact, my first question when I heard about it was, did they come out of the campaign?

00:22:59.000 Okay, so this is not a smart line of attack, because if in fact he knew that the money was going to be used to pay off Stormy Daniels and Karen McDougal in violation of federal campaign finance law, then him saying, I signed it personally, is in fact the crime.

00:23:14.000 If it's a campaign expenditure, it's supposed to come from campaign funding.

00:23:17.000 And if he wants to spend on his own behalf, he's supposed to report it.

00:23:19.000 So that's not particularly great.

00:23:21.000 And the president also decided that it would be worthwhile to tweet out about Michael Cohen again today.

00:23:27.000 So he tweeted out, So fact check, three quarters true, half true.

00:23:39.000 So it is true that if he had not won, none of this would be an issue.

00:23:42.000 It is also true that the media are very pissed that he won.

00:23:45.000 It is not really super true that the only thing he did wrong was to win the election.

00:23:51.000 It turns out that shipping women, not your wife, and then paying them hundreds of thousands of dollars to shut up in advance of an election

00:23:56.000 It doesn't go in the book of virtues.

00:23:58.000 It's probably not the best thing to do.

00:24:00.000 But he's right that the media are treating this in a way differently than they would treat a Democrat, certainly.

00:24:05.000 That wasn't the end of it, though.

00:24:07.000 The president also did an interview this morning.

00:24:11.000 on Fox News.

00:24:12.000 It was a fairly lengthy interview.

00:24:14.000 And he talked about a wide variety of topics.

00:24:17.000 One of the things that he talked about is Michael Cohen flipping on him.

00:24:21.000 And he makes a comment that, again, this is why you let your lawyers do the talking, Mr. President.

00:24:26.000 Let your lawyers do the talking, Mr. President.

00:24:28.000 My goodness.

00:24:29.000 He comes out and he says that when people flip, flipping ought to be illegal, right?

00:24:34.000 So getting somebody to testify in exchange for a due sentence, that should be illegal.

00:24:39.000 Well, for a law and order guy, that's a real weird statement because every drug ring that has ever been rolled up has been rolled up on the basis of people pleading to lesser crimes in order for them to get some sort of advantage and then testify against their buddies.

00:24:52.000 Right?

00:24:52.000 Every single, every single RICO case, every single drug case,

00:24:58.000 Half of criminal cases are based on flipping people so that you can move up the chain, right?

00:25:02.000 Flipping people is a long honored tradition, and the reason for that is because if you couldn't flip people, if you couldn't offer them a reduced sentence, or protection, or some sort of concession, why wouldn't they just go by Omerta? 0.80

00:25:12.000 Why wouldn't they just keep silent in order to maintain loyalty with the folks who they are afraid will kill them in prison?

00:25:18.000 Or in order to maintain loyalty with the folks who are going to pay their family while they stay in jail for a longer period of time.

00:25:23.000 Here's President Trump, though, saying that flipping people ought to be illegal.

00:25:26.000 This is just not smart.

00:25:27.000 It makes him look guilty even if he's not.

00:25:29.000 It's just...

00:25:31.000 Okay, here he is. 0.97

00:25:53.000 What in the living hell? 0.77

00:25:54.000 I mean, he sounds like John Gotti here. 0.89

00:25:56.000 He should not be doing this, right?

00:25:58.000 The fact is, when the president says, I've been watching this for 30 years, okay, so you can actually search his tweet history.

00:26:04.000 He has not once tweeted about flipping.

00:26:06.000 Not once until now has he discussed flipping publicly.

00:26:08.000 Not once has he said, you know what?

00:26:09.000 This criminal procedure is really bad.

00:26:11.000 Only when someone flips on him, then all of a sudden flipping is really, really, really bad.

00:26:16.000 And presumably when it comes to cracking down on drug crimes or illegal immigration, he's a very tough law and order president.

00:26:22.000 He doesn't care about flipping.

00:26:23.000 It's only flipping applies when it comes to him.

00:26:25.000 So I guess that we can all expect Republican support for the Don't Rat On People Act of 2018.

00:26:32.000 It's just not good stuff.

00:26:36.000 Then the president makes a separate case.

00:26:37.000 He says, I shouldn't be impeached, not because I'm innocent.

00:26:40.000 I shouldn't be impeached because if I did, then the market would crash.

00:26:43.000 Again, ay-yi-yi-yi-yi. 0.97

00:26:46.000 I'll tell you what, if I ever got impeached, I think the market would crash.

00:26:50.000 I think everybody would be very poor.

00:26:52.000 Because without this thinking, you would see numbers that you wouldn't believe.

00:26:58.000 In reverse.

00:27:00.000 Okay, so maybe that's true, maybe that's not.

00:27:02.000 The fact is that after the impeachment of Clinton, the market continued to go up.

00:27:05.000 I think that the market really does not like uncertainty.

00:27:10.000 So it's probably true that the market would take a hit.

00:27:12.000 The market took a hit a couple of days ago when all these revelations from Michael Cohen broke.

00:27:16.000 So yes, the market doesn't like uncertainty.

00:27:18.000 Would it adjust with President Mike Pence?

00:27:20.000 Yeah, sure.

00:27:21.000 I mean, the answer is probably yes.

00:27:23.000 Although, a Trump impeachment would probably ding the market.

00:27:26.000 I don't think he's totally wrong here.

00:27:27.000 I think the reason that it would ding the market is because the markets fear a Democratic takeover of the House, Senate, and presidency, and a massive upswing in regulation that would dampen the ability to invest.

00:27:36.000 If people were afraid that Elizabeth Warren was going to be the next president with a Democratic Congress, then that might ding the market. 1.00

00:27:41.000 So Trump isn't entirely wrong here.

00:27:43.000 But again, his strongest case here is, I didn't do anything wrong. 0.78

00:27:47.000 He should just come out and say, I don't know the law, I didn't know the law, to pretend I'm some sort of campaign finance expert is silly.

00:27:53.000 There's such ample defenses available to him, but this is where the president's ego gets in the way of his own success.

00:27:59.000 Now, the president loves him some president.

00:28:01.000 I mean, Donald Trump is a big fan of Donald Trump.

00:28:04.000 And because he's a big fan of Donald Trump, he's never able to admit to things that we all know are true. 0.60

00:28:09.000 Like the fact that he goes around sleeping with porn stars and paying them off.

00:28:12.000 Like, we all know that's true.

00:28:14.000 I'm not going to pretend that he's a King David character when it comes to his character.

00:28:17.000 He's not.

00:28:18.000 And we all know that.

00:28:20.000 That was baked into the cake.

00:28:21.000 If he would just say that, I think everybody would be like, OK, fine, that's a plausible case.

00:28:24.000 That's what Bill Clinton basically did. 0.98

00:28:25.000 Bill Clinton basically says, yeah, that's what I do. 0.92

00:28:28.000 I go around sticking cigars in women. 1.00

00:28:30.000 That's what I do. 0.78

00:28:31.000 And everybody was like, OK, I guess so.

00:28:34.000 Yep, that's that's accurate.

00:28:35.000 If the president just said that stuff, he said, listen, I'm ignorant about the law and I pay off ladies. 1.00

00:28:40.000 Everybody would be like, yeah, kind of knew that already.

00:28:43.000 Kind of knew that already.

00:28:43.000 That was already known.

00:28:45.000 But instead, the president keeps saying that he's a legal expert on things, that he's been talking about flipping for 30 years.

00:28:51.000 He has never once talked about flipping that we can find.

00:28:54.000 And how do you know that the president is a little bit egotistic?

00:28:56.000 Because here's what he was asked to grade his presidency so far.

00:28:59.000 I will give you three guesses how he graded his presidency so far.

00:29:02.000 Three guesses.

00:29:03.000 I don't think it's going to take three guesses for you.

00:29:06.000 So I give myself an A+.

00:29:10.000 I don't think any president has ever done what I've done in this short... We haven't even been two years.

00:29:16.000 Biggest tax cuts in history.

00:29:17.000 So I would say I would honestly give myself an A+.

00:29:21.000 And so would many other people.

00:29:22.000 Yes, many other people who work for you and or in Congress and want to get things done with you.

00:29:27.000 Listen, I've been very positive about the president's policy.

00:29:29.000 I've given him an A- when it comes to his executive policy.

00:29:32.000 I have given him like a C plus when it comes to legislative policy, maybe a B minus.

00:29:36.000 And when it comes to rhetoric, he's a dear enough.

00:29:38.000 I mean, that's just the way that it is.

00:29:40.000 And people may disagree with that, although I can assure you there are a lot of folks in the administration who basically agree with that assessment.

00:29:46.000 But the fact that the president gives himself an A plus...

00:29:49.000 Ego is a killer, okay?

00:29:50.000 It's true for you, it's true for me.

00:29:51.000 Anybody who gets too over their skis on ego, who never reflects for a second and thinks, maybe there's something I'm bad at.

00:29:57.000 One of the worst things you can do in life is overestimate your own skill set or suggest that you have a skill set where you have none.

00:30:03.000 And there's certain things I'm just bad at, okay?

00:30:05.000 I'm not the world's most athletic human.

00:30:08.000 I'm good at math, but I'm not great at math, right?

00:30:10.000 There are certain things I just don't know a lot about.

00:30:13.000 If I don't admit that stuff, you get yourself in real trouble, and that's particularly true when you are talking about matters legal.

00:30:19.000 There are lawyers, for a reason, who go to law school and spend years practicing.

00:30:22.000 It is not a coincidence that President Trump has fired basically every lawyer he's ever worked with.

00:30:27.000 At a certain point, when you look at a client, and every one of their lawyers has failed, you have to think, maybe it's not the lawyers, maybe it's the client.

00:30:34.000 So the President of the United States making real trouble for himself.

00:30:38.000 He didn't stop there.

00:30:38.000 We'll get to some more of his comments in just a second.

00:30:40.000 First, let's talk about Bravo Company Manufacturing.

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00:30:58.000 And that is why I am a big Second Amendment supporter.

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00:31:28.000 Or if you are in the midst of a tyrannical government rise, which I know folks on the left like to discount this until Donald Trump is president, but one of the reasons we don't have a tyrannical government is particularly the threat of a population that is armed.

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00:32:22.000 Okay, so in just a second, we'll get to the media's response to everything Trump-related, plus the president sounds off on South Africa.

00:32:29.000 I have some thoughts.

00:32:29.000 But first, you're gonna have to go over to dailywire.com.

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00:33:26.000 The president continues to defend Paul Manafort.

00:33:28.000 Again, not a... I don't see why.

00:33:30.000 Paul Manafort was convicted of a bunch of stuff that had nothing to do with Trump.

00:33:33.000 Now, the cynical reason he'd protect Paul Manafort is because he's afraid that if he doesn't talk about how Paul Manafort is great, Paul Manafort flips too.

00:33:40.000 But the non-cynical reason is that he just thinks anybody in his orbit who's targeted is targeted unfairly.

00:33:45.000 In any case,

00:33:47.000 The president is not his own best advocate here.

00:33:49.000 I know that a lot of his fans think that he's always his own best advocate, but that is just not true, and it's not true on matters with regard to law.

00:33:55.000 So, you know, I would hope that the president would kind of leave off here and let his lawyers do the rest.

00:34:02.000 Meanwhile, the media are just champing at the bit over this.

00:34:05.000 Chuck Todd, over at NBC, you know, doing some real journalism-ing, being very objective here.

00:34:10.000 He says that Paul Ryan should drop impeachment papers, because I remember when all of the members of the media were calling on Democrats

00:34:16.000 to go along with impeachment of President Clinton for committing actual perjury while he was President of the United States.

00:34:22.000 Oh, no, wait, that didn't happen at all.

00:34:23.000 I also don't remember calls for impeachment of President Obama over the IRS scandal or Benghazi or the Fast and Furious scandal or any of the other scandals that occurred during the Obama administration.

00:34:34.000 You want to read about all those scandals?

00:34:35.000 I wrote an entire book on them.

00:34:36.000 It's called The People vs. Barack Obama, so go check that out.

00:34:38.000 But Chuck Todd says Paul Ryan should start drawing up impeachment papers now.

00:34:44.000 Ryan's retiring.

00:34:45.000 I think he actually could do the party a favor.

00:34:48.000 And if you just start the procedure in the House Judiciary Committee, you give some home, you give some place for Republicans getting nervous to say, hey, you know what?

00:34:58.000 Let's start an investigation and we'll go from there.

00:35:00.000 Okay, how about everybody just saying we won't obstruct the investigation?

00:35:03.000 There's already an investigation going on.

00:35:05.000 The Mueller investigation continues, and Republicans have already said that if it's obstructed, it's going to be a problem.

00:35:11.000 The same thing holds true with regard to the SDNY investigation, I assume.

00:35:15.000 But the idea that Republicans are going to start impeachment proceedings based on the information that we have now, it's a little early, Chuck Todd.

00:35:21.000 Also, let's be real about what impeachment is.

00:35:24.000 Impeachment is a political remedy. 0.66

00:35:26.000 Impeachment is not a legal remedy.

00:35:28.000 That's not how it was originally conceived.

00:35:29.000 The founders thought that impeachment was going to be a legal remedy, that Congress would use impeachment in order to check the executive branch.

00:35:35.000 In reality, impeachment has been used extraordinarily sparingly.

00:35:38.000 People in politics tend to want elections to provide the referendum on the sitting president of the United States.

00:35:43.000 They don't tend to want to oust people, even for legal violations, because they'd rather have the people take it on their own backs to get rid of a particular president.

00:35:50.000 There have only been three impeachment proceedings in America's history with regard to presidents.

00:35:54.000 One was Andrew Johnson, impeached in the House, not convicted in the Senate.

00:35:57.000 Bill Clinton, impeached in the House, not convicted in the Senate.

00:35:59.000 And Richard Nixon, impeachment proceedings never really got started because Nixon knew he would be impeached and he resigned.

00:36:04.000 So...

00:36:05.000 The sudden shift toward we have to have a bipartisan view of impeachment is kind of ridiculous, coming from the same media that thought it was absolutely absurd for Republicans to try to impeach President Clinton back in 1998.

00:36:16.000 Elizabeth Warren, though, understands this is where the heart of the base is.

00:36:19.000 She is probably one of the frontrunners for the 2020 nomination among Democrats, and she said on CNN that she's not nervous to bring up the topic of impeachment.

00:36:26.000 Of course, why would she be?

00:36:27.000 She's from Massachusetts.

00:36:28.000 The chances that she meets any sort of resistance here aren't slim and none.

00:36:33.000 I'm not nervous.

00:36:34.000 I just want to be effective.

00:36:36.000 And the way that any of us are effective is to say, let's get all of the evidence.

00:36:42.000 Let's get all of the pieces out there.

00:36:44.000 Protect Robert Mueller.

00:36:46.000 Let him finish his investigation.

00:36:48.000 Let him make a full and fair report to all of the American people.

00:36:53.000 Okay, so what exactly are Democrats looking for in this whole proceeding?

00:36:56.000 What they're really looking for is an excuse just to obstruct Trump's agenda.

00:36:59.000 We all know this.

00:36:59.000 Kamala Harris, who's our ex-Gribble senator, I've been using that word a lot because there's a lot of ex-Gribble people lately, but Kamala Harris, who's our ex-Gribble senator here in the state of California, she came out and she says, you know, because Trump is now basically an unindicted co-conspirator, which he is not, right?

00:37:14.000 I mean, that's an actual legal term that is not used in the indictment of Michael Cohen.

00:37:17.000 Because he's an unincited co-conspirator, says Kamala Harris, we should not move forward on the nomination of Brett Kavanaugh for the Supreme Court.

00:37:24.000 This does not follow.

00:37:26.000 Let's say Donald Trump will remove tomorrow.

00:37:27.000 Let's say Donald Trump resigned tomorrow.

00:37:29.000 Who would become president?

00:37:30.000 It wouldn't be Kamala Harris.

00:37:31.000 It wouldn't be Hillary Clinton.

00:37:32.000 It would be Mike Pence, who would then move full-scale forward on the nomination of Brett Kavanaugh. 0.98

00:37:36.000 So this is just stupidity, but it demonstrates that the real force behind impeachment has much more to do with obstructing the president's agenda than with legal ire at the president's mis-action here. 0.98

00:37:49.000 Even before this happened, there was no question that the process was horribly flawed. 0.99

00:37:55.000 A court of the United States of America has accepted a guilty plea from someone who was the lawyer for the President of the United States.

00:38:04.000 And that person, in pleading guilty, basically made very clear that it was the then candidate, and now the President of the United States, who directed him to commit a crime.

00:38:17.000 This is a serious matter.

00:38:18.000 Yeah, I love the faux seriousness from Kamala Harris, who is one of the worst attorney generals in the history of the state of California, refusing to enforce the law. 1.00

00:38:26.000 Enforcing the law where it wasn't appropriate.

00:38:28.000 And now she's, of course, a senator who's going to use this sort of supposed legal ire to go after President Trump. 1.00

00:38:34.000 There's a fair bit of hypocrisy on this.

00:38:36.000 They're going to hold a Brett Kavanaugh over Trump.

00:38:39.000 Come on.

00:38:40.000 Come on.

00:38:40.000 We all know what this is really about.

00:38:42.000 We are all very well aware of what this is all really about.

00:38:45.000 OK.

00:38:46.000 Meanwhile, the president is getting himself in, I think, hot water from the left, but I don't think appropriately, because yesterday he tweeted out that he wanted to look into the situation in South Africa regarding land seizures.

00:38:58.000 So for folks who have not been following the situation in South Africa, because we don't tend to follow foreign policy that much in the United States,

00:39:04.000 What's been happening is that the South African government, which is dominated by the left, has decided that they want to seize the land of white farmers in recompense for apartheid.

00:39:14.000 Apartheid ended in 1994, I believe, under Nelson Mandela.

00:39:20.000 It had started to collapse already in the late 80s, and then it was formally ended in 94 by Mandela.

00:39:25.000 In any case, I don't want to get the history of that wrong, so I'm actually going to look that up right now.

00:39:32.000 So, in any case, the South African government decides, yeah, that's right, in April 27th, 1994 is when it was formally ended.

00:39:39.000 In any case, the President of the United States is commenting on the fact that the South African government now wants to seize land that is owned by white folks in South Africa and redistribute it.

00:39:49.000 This is bad policy for South Africa.

00:39:50.000 It's particularly bad policy because it is undermining the rule of law.

00:39:55.000 And the real problems in South Africa have very little to do with white land ownership.

00:39:59.000 And they have a lot more to do with the fact that rule of law has collapsed in South Africa.

00:40:02.000 The crime rates are extraordinarily high.

00:40:04.000 They have an unemployment rate of 28%.

00:40:05.000 They have significantly high inflation.

00:40:07.000 They have water crisis that's been ongoing for years at this point.

00:40:10.000 This is a distraction from the government of South Africa to the people of South Africa on a racial basis.

00:40:15.000 And it is true that apartheid was evil and it has carried over into land ownership today. 0.89

00:40:23.000 But the idea that you can just seize property from white landowners and not undermine the rule of law, which undermines foreign investment and the capacity to trust in your ability to own private property in South Africa, is of course very silly. 0.75

00:40:33.000 So Trump tweeted out, I've asked Secretary of State Pompeo

00:40:37.000 So he was watching Fox News last night and he decided this was going to drive policy.

00:40:39.000 He's not wrong about the land expropriations.

00:40:41.000 The left, which is going nuts over this, suggesting that this is racial.

00:40:56.000 It's racially motivated.

00:40:57.000 The United States, if it were the reverse, if it were black landowners who were having their land seized by white people, the president would certainly have a right to intervene, and the same is true here. 0.94

00:41:06.000 There's already been talk about the United States government getting active on the international stage over all of this, the Cato Institute.

00:41:12.000 ...has issued a statement regarding the dire consequences awaiting South Africa should due process fail land expropriation without compensation.

00:41:19.000 What's happening there is the government is not even saying that they're going to pay people for their land.

00:41:22.000 They're basically just grabbing land without even recompense, which is a crazy, crazy policy.

00:41:27.000 Here is some audio of the leader of South Africa, the Prime Minister of South Africa, his name is Ramaphosa, talking about this land expropriation.

00:41:41.000 On Tuesday, South Africans, through their publicly elected representatives in Parliament,

00:41:51.000 Okay, that's a crazy policy.

00:41:53.000 This is Cyril Ramaphosa.

00:41:55.000 The reason he's doing this is because he's being outflanked by radicals.

00:42:01.000 The ruling African National Congress amended but supported the motion.

00:42:14.000 to actually expropriate land without any sort of compensation.

00:42:17.000 He's being outflanked by the radical left's economic freedom fighters.

00:42:20.000 These are folks who wear red berets, like they're legitimate communists, whose leader, Julius Malema, told the country's parliament,

00:42:32.000 You may think that the people who own the land committed a crime.

00:42:34.000 You'd actually have to look at which people owning the land committed the crimes.

00:42:38.000 Maybe that's true, maybe that's not.

00:42:39.000 But to remove land from people without actually paying them on the governmental level, especially when it wouldn't cost all that much money to pay them off and make them leave,

00:42:46.000 To do that undermines rule of law in South Africa, and the president isn't wrong to point that out.

00:42:51.000 Now, there's been a lot of focus on so-called farm murders in South Africa.

00:42:55.000 A lot of these farms are owned by white folks, and the murder rate on these farms is high.

00:42:59.000 But the murder rate across South Africa is particularly high.

00:43:01.000 The statistics are very much in doubt as to whether there is a higher rate of targeted killing of whites in South Africa than blacks in South Africa, the most violent areas of South Africa.

00:43:10.000 Okay, time for some things I like, and then some things that I hate.

00:43:12.000 So things that I like,

00:43:32.000 My sister actually recommended the show to me.

00:43:33.000 It's on Netflix.

00:43:34.000 It's called I Am A Killer, and it's a look inside Death Row.

00:43:37.000 It's a documentary series, so they profile a bunch of murder cases, and they talk to folks who are on Death Row.

00:43:43.000 It's kind of fascinating because it is fairly objective.

00:43:46.000 It tries to take all sides of a particular issue.

00:43:48.000 It will talk to the victims of a killing.

00:43:50.000 It'll talk to the killer.

00:43:52.000 We'll talk to the family of the killer and the law enforcement officers and the prosecutors.

00:43:55.000 It's as good a piece of journalism on this stuff as I've seen.

00:43:58.000 I'm only a couple of episodes in, but so far, I'm a fan.

00:44:01.000 The show is I'm a Killer, and here's a little bit of the trailer.

00:44:04.000 I was convicted for capital murder.

00:44:07.000 I was convicted of capital murder.

00:44:09.000 And I was sentenced to death.

00:44:11.000 I did something so heinous. 0.88

00:44:14.000 I just fired a shot. 1.00

00:44:16.000 I strike him with the axe. 1.00

00:44:17.000 I started stabbing. 1.00

00:44:18.000 You're gonna let me tie you up or I'm gonna kill you. 1.00

00:44:24.000 I don't feel bad about it. 0.98

00:44:30.000 I mean, it's definitely well done.

00:44:32.000 It's not the fastest moving thing, but it's definitely a well done series, so you should go check that out.

00:44:38.000 It's well worth seeing.

00:44:39.000 Other things that I like, so the President of the United States has been making an issue out of the Mollie Tibbetts case.

00:44:44.000 The Mollie Tibbetts case, 20-year-old Iowan girl who was abducted and murdered by an illegal immigrant, and President Trump issued comments yesterday.

00:44:51.000 A lot of folks were saying that President Trump was doing this to distract from all the Cohen stuff.

00:44:55.000 The reality is that Trump would have done this in any case, right?

00:44:57.000 I mean, he did this during the campaign.

00:44:59.000 Mollie Tibbetts, an incredible young woman, is now permanently separated from her family.

00:45:03.000 A person came in from Mexico, illegally, and killed her.

00:45:05.000 We need the wall.

00:45:29.000 We need our immigration laws changed. 0.99

00:45:32.000 The Democrats will never give them.

00:45:34.000 And the wall is being built.

00:45:36.000 We've started it.

00:45:37.000 But we also need the funding for this year's building of the wall.

00:45:42.000 So...

00:45:43.000 To the family of Mollie Tibbetts, all I can say is God bless you.

00:45:48.000 This is why if President Trump would just leave to his lawyers the rest of this stuff and he campaigned on this stuff, he'd actually be doing much better in the polls. 0.99

00:45:54.000 And I think that he'd be doing well, especially when you contrast this with the sort of idiocy of a lot of folks on the left. 0.97

00:46:00.000 Simone Sanders is a commentator over at CNN. 0.98

00:46:02.000 Here's what she had to tweet on the Mollie Tibbetts matter.

00:46:03.000 She tweeted, Mollie Tibbetts was murdered because she told a man to leave her alone while she was jogging.

00:46:08.000 Her murderer happens to be undocumented.

00:46:09.000 This isn't about border security.

00:46:11.000 This is about toxic masculinity.

00:46:17.000 Well, I think it's fair to say that when a man kills a woman, that does count as toxic masculinity.

00:46:22.000 I think it probably counts as just toxic evil, in any case.

00:46:25.000 And it turns out the vast majority of murders in the United States are committed by men. 0.92

00:46:28.000 So, I don't think that's totally wrong, but to say that it has nothing to do with being undocumented is silly. 0.96

00:46:34.000 He shouldn't be in the country.

00:46:36.000 The question is how you stop that.

00:46:38.000 If Simone Sanders has a good answer as to how to stop toxic masculinity, like men from killing women in general, that is better than don't let evil men into the country illegally. 1.00

00:46:47.000 I'd like to hear it.

00:46:48.000 But this is sort of the problem with a lot of folks on the left.

00:46:50.000 They will say things like, we have a problem.

00:46:51.000 The problem is toxic masculinity.

00:46:54.000 And it's out there in the air somewhere.

00:46:55.000 And I'm not going to actually provide a solution to that.

00:46:58.000 The solution is sort of, you know, like, to regender our children.

00:47:03.000 The solution is to pretend that masculinity is inherently bad, right? 0.99

00:47:06.000 And then those of us say, well, you know, the other thing we could do is just not let this piece of crap in the country. 0.99

00:47:10.000 She's like, no, we got to talk about toxic masculinity. 1.00

00:47:13.000 You wonder why folks are resounding to President Trump even still.

00:47:16.000 That is the reason why.

00:47:18.000 Okay, meanwhile, some things that I hate.

00:47:24.000 Speaking of the attempt to undermine basic truths, there's this video that I've now been made aware of. 0.99

00:47:31.000 It's a video that is promoted at, of all places, the Huffington Post, because this is the repository for all stupidity in the United States. 0.98

00:47:37.000 It's a video of a trans man, which is to say, a woman who believes that she is a man. 0.99

00:47:43.000 Her name is Cass Bliss, and she detailed at Huffington Post what it's like to get your period when you're not a woman.

00:47:49.000 Which, as a man, I would say, is pretty weird, because you need a uterus, which makes you a woman. 1.00

00:47:54.000 Bliss is a non-binary trans educator, and she first went viral with her Bleeding Well Trans campaign in 2017 to prove the biologically impossible claim that men have periods, too.

00:48:04.000 She recently created a music video discussing the struggles of having your period while not identifying as a woman in a quest for menstrual equity.

00:48:11.000 So here is the song, cut by a woman who believes she is a man who says that men have periods. 0.52

00:48:17.000 And yes, it's weird.

00:48:18.000 And yes, if this is your solution to toxic masculinity, I'm not going to take you seriously.

00:48:24.000 When I find my cycle is a struggle and bloody Mary comes to me.

00:48:29.000 Oh no.

00:48:29.000 Streaming womb of wisdom, let me bleed.

00:48:34.000 Though I'm not a woman, she is spilling right outside of me.

00:48:38.000 You are though. 0.97

00:48:39.000 My boyish womb of wisdom, let me bleed. 0.97

00:48:44.000 Let me bleed, let me bleed, let me bleed, let me bleed.

00:48:49.000 Okay so, I'm not a big...

00:48:52.000 Our gendered wombs of wisdom let us bleed. 1.00

00:48:54.000 So, first of all, not a huge Beatles fan in general, but if you're going to destroy the Beatles this way, I feel bad for the Beatles now.

00:49:02.000 And this person is saying that we can't have tampons anymore because tampons are gendered. 0.99

00:49:07.000 When you go to the store, they're like pink and stuff.

00:49:10.000 Instead, what they should be is they should be like a manly blue, like manly blue tampons. 0.63

00:49:15.000 Very important.

00:49:16.000 And we should have tampons in the men's bathroom also. 1.00

00:49:19.000 Which would be weird, since men don't have uteruses. 1.00

00:49:21.000 But the conflation of sex with gender is one of the most ridiculous aspects of the sort of trans rights agenda. 0.74

00:49:28.000 This bizarre notion that sex and gender are different, but then we will conflate them again.

00:49:33.000 So, sex is your biology.

00:49:35.000 You are biologically male.

00:49:36.000 But your gender is that you are a gendered female. 1.00

00:49:38.000 But then when it comes to going to the bathroom, we are going to treat your gender as your sex. 1.00

00:49:42.000 You are a biological female, even though you are a biological male. 0.86

00:49:45.000 None of this makes any sense.

00:49:47.000 You wonder why folks are confused and find this stuff... There's an article yesterday.

00:49:50.000 It was really amazing.

00:49:50.000 There's an article about Blair White, who's a trans woman, meaning a man who believes that he is a woman, or who feels like a woman on the inside, or whatever.

00:49:58.000 And Blair is a nice person.

00:49:59.000 I've been on Blair's show on YouTube.

00:50:01.000 We just discussed exactly this issue.

00:50:03.000 And the Yahoo News article about Blair White described our conversation and said that I was anti the trans community.

00:50:08.000 I don't even know what that means.

00:50:10.000 If by anti the trans community you mean I am not going to suggest that you are a member of the sex to which you claim membership, then okay.

00:50:18.000 If you mean that I don't want you to have all the rights of a normal human being in the United States, then of course that's not true.

00:50:23.000 Of course I think that trans people should be able to do anything that non-trans people should be able to do in the United States, but no one in the United States gets to redefine objective biological terms and then expect me to go along with that because that's not a thing that is going to happen. 1.00

00:50:38.000 I guess, again, just this idea that you are anti a person because you're anti a perspective is a conflation that is intellectually dishonest.

00:50:46.000 Okay, other things that I hate.

00:50:47.000 So Jimmy Kimmel has now made clear for the 175th time that he doesn't want to appeal to Trump fans.

00:50:52.000 He says, I don't think that world exists anymore.

00:50:55.000 He says that he is not going to bother.

00:50:58.000 With trying to appease all of these folks.

00:51:01.000 He says, I don't think you can look at things in that way.

00:51:05.000 He says that the world doesn't exist anymore where he can appeal to a wide variety of people.

00:51:11.000 He was interviewed by the Daily Beast.

00:51:12.000 The Daily Beast said, In terms of the effect of politics on your own ratings, I know you've said if people who disagreed with you don't want to watch, you don't particularly care.

00:51:17.000 Has that ever been an issue at ABC?

00:51:20.000 And he replied, Maybe I shouldn't have said I don't care.

00:51:22.000 I don't care enough to change what I'm doing is probably a more explicit explanation.

00:51:25.000 I'm sure ABC would love it if my show appealed to everyone.

00:51:27.000 But I don't think that world exists anymore.

00:51:29.000 And I'm not comfortable in it.

00:51:30.000 I don't really see any other path.

00:51:32.000 I also think one of the biggest mistakes you can make as a performer is trying to guess what your audience wants.

00:51:36.000 I think you need to do what you think is right and hope that works out.

00:51:38.000 While I agree with that, I also think that what the audience expects from a comedian is to be funny and not to be a crusader for their politics.

00:51:45.000 That is not the same thing as if you just want to be a political person who happens to be funny.

00:51:49.000 There is a difference.

00:51:50.000 There is a difference.

00:51:51.000 I think the media are going to continue to fragment so long as people don't understand which lane they are in.

00:51:56.000 Are you a comedian or are you a political guru?

00:51:59.000 Pick one.

00:52:00.000 Pick one.

00:52:00.000 You can be a political guru who's funny.

00:52:01.000 That's fine.

00:52:02.000 There are plenty of those.

00:52:03.000 But if you're going to be a comedian, theoretically, you should be making comedy about everybody, which is not what folks like Jimmy Kimmel are doing.

00:52:09.000 It's alienating a lot of the audience, and it's causing that audience to react politically to cultural flashpoints like Kimmel.

00:52:15.000 Alrighty, we will be back here tomorrow with all the latest updates and the mailbag.

00:52:18.000 I'm Ben Shapiro.

00:52:18.000 This is The Ben Shapiro Show.

00:52:23.000 The Ben Shapiro Show is produced by Senya Villareal, executive producer Jeremy Boring, senior producer Jonathan Hay.

00:52:29.000 Our supervising producer is Mathis Glover, and our technical producer is Austin Stevens.

00:52:33.000 Edited by Alex Zingaro.

00:52:35.000 Audio is mixed by Mike Carmina.

00:52:36.000 Hair and makeup is by Jesua Alvera.

00:52:38.000 The Ben Shapiro Show is a Daily Wire Ford Publishing production.

00:52:41.000 Copyright Ford Publishing 2018.

The Ben Shapiro Show - August 23, 2018

The Day After | Ep. 609

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