Ben Shapiro delivers a blistering attack on The Economist. President Trump goes on offense after the Mueller report's findings come out, Cory Booker has his moments in the CNN spotlight, and Joe Biden humiliates himself... again, I'm Ben Shapiro. Prepare thyself for a blast of anger coming at you very shortly, because I have something to say to the British newspaper, British magazine, The Economist, and they did a podcast with me in Britain, and it's a major national outrage, and I'll get to that in just one moment. First, I talk about Honey, the amazing free browser extension that automatically helps me save money on all my favorite sites, but I wouldn't be doing my job if I didn't tell you how Honey even makes Amazon better. I use Honey every time I shop at Amazon. I've saved money in the past month on everything ranging from a set of weights to various books. Next time you are shopping on Amazon, treat yourself to the free upgrade that guarantees you always get the absolute best price on everything you want. That's right, you can add Honey to your browser for free, and all it does is sit there and save you money. Seriously, it's basically free money! Honey is just fantastic. And more than 10 million people are using Honey to save money. They have over 100,000 5-star reviews on the Google Chrome store. It's basically FREE money. Seriously, they say it s basically free. because it is. . Because it s. Ben Shapiro is the smart shopping assistant that helps you save time and money on everything that you need to do your shopping on all your favorite sites. and is basically free, because it's good to save you time and saves you money on the best deal you can get the best of the best deals on the most important things you can find on the place you can do the most of your favorite places in the world. You can t go wrong with your local Best Fiends, and you can t get the most out of your time and your best chance to save the most time and you won t be doing your best to spend it all in the most efficient way possible. The Economist interview with me on the internet, and gives me a chance to learn how to be a better version of what you actually do what you really need to be the best at your day to do the best you can be the most productive you can.
00:00:00.000President Trump goes on offense after the Mueller report's findings come out, Cory Booker has his moments in the CNN spotlight, and Joe Biden humiliates himself.
00:00:15.000Prepare thyselves for a blast of anger coming at you very, very shortly, because I have something to say to the British newspaper, British magazine, The Economist.
00:00:28.000It's good to save money, and getting the best deal is important, and this is why you ought to use Honey.
00:00:32.000You've probably heard me talk about Honey, the amazing free browser extension that automatically helps me save money on all my favorite sites.
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00:01:01.000I've saved money in the past month on everything ranging from a set of weights to various books.
00:01:54.000We are number one on the New York Times bestseller list for this, The Right Side of History.
00:01:58.000We actually knocked Michelle Obama's book down to number two for the first time in months because so many of you went out and bought a copy of The Right Side of History.
00:02:06.000This book is all about how Western civilization was created, the fundamental ideological and philosophical grounding of Western civilization.
00:02:15.000It is all about the eternal truths and immutable principles that our civilization is based upon.
00:02:23.000Because if you listen to the show, you know the show is extraordinarily anti-racist.
00:02:27.000Because if you've read my writing, you know that my writing is extraordinarily anti-racist.
00:02:31.000You know also, if you've followed me for more than 30 seconds, that I am the Bette Noire of the so-called alt-right.
00:02:36.000The alt-right movement is a white supremacist, white nationalist, white separatist movement in the United States that essentially attributes Western civilization to color.
00:02:44.000They basically make the argument that Western civilization is great because it's white people.
00:02:49.000It's not because of the immutable principles.
00:02:51.000It's not because it actually has the capacity, Western civilization, to integrate people of various faiths and various ethnicities and various backgrounds.
00:03:55.000The audio was released last week, and I tweeted it out because I thought that the interview was so good.
00:03:59.000Well, today, in the aftermath of my book hitting number one on the New York Times bestseller list, The Economist decided it was time Well, they got all of this wrong.
00:04:06.000All of this wrong, because in fact, not only am I not alt-right, now I'm rageful.
00:04:10.000"Inside the mind of Ben Shapiro, "the alt-right sage without the rage." Well, they got all of this wrong, all of this wrong, because in fact, not only am I not alt-right, now I'm rageful, now I'm pissed off, because it's just a lie.
00:04:54.000This alt-right nonsense is a blot on Western civilization.
00:04:59.000And I say that in the book they interviewed me about.
00:05:01.000I say that in The Right Side of History.
00:05:03.000This is a quote from the introduction.
00:05:06.000It's talking about Ta-Nehisi Coates and Ta-Nehisi Coates essentially suggesting that America is a deeply racist place, that we are divided on the basis of race.
00:05:15.000The photo negative of Coates' perspective comes courtesy of the racist alt-right movement, which accepts Coates' characterization of American politics, but sees things in reverse, an America overrun by identity politics of racial minorities.
00:05:27.000The alt-right loves Coates' characterization of white America as all-powerful.
00:05:32.000As Richard Spencer told New York Times Magazine, contributing writer Thomas Chatterton Williams, this is why I'm actually very confident, because maybe those lefties will be the easiest ones to flip.
00:05:41.000More than that, the alt-right also sees the world in terms of a race war, one they hope one day to finally win.
00:05:47.000A couple of pages later in the introduction, quote, During the election cycle, I was highly critical of both candidates.
00:05:53.000As a conservative, I'd been a lifelong critic of Hillary Clinton, but I was also highly critical of Donald Trump.
00:05:58.000Thanks to my criticisms of Trump, and thanks to my very public break with Breitbart News, an outlet I believed had become a propaganda tool for the Trump campaign, I quickly found myself targeted by a new breed of radical.
00:06:08.000In late March, the exquirable Milo Yiannopoulos penned a story at Breitbart openly praising the alt-right, including odes to racist cretins like Richard Spencer.
00:06:16.000Egging on his alt-right followers, cheering on their jolly trollery, Milo sent me a picture of a black baby on the day of my son's birth that May.
00:06:32.000According to the ADL, approximately 19,253 anti-Semitic tweets were directed at journalists during the August 2015 through July 2016 period.
00:06:41.000I personally received 7,400 of those tweets, or 38% of the total.
00:06:47.000Hey, this is just in the introduction.
00:07:09.000Racial solidarity among members of the intersectional coalition has also driven reverse racial solidarity from the so-called alt-right, a group of racists who have sought to promote white pride.
00:07:19.000Leaders in this movement include the execrable Richard Spencer, Jared Taylor, and Vox Day, all of whom use IQ data to explain racial disparities while claiming that the roots of Western civilization lie not in ideas, but in race.
00:07:30.000The alt-right remains a fringe movement, but their arguments have penetrated into more visible circles thanks to a reactionary tendency by some on the right to embrace anyone who supposedly opposes political correctness.
00:07:52.000They've lumped in people like Dave Rubin, a gay Jewish man, and Jordan Peterson, an active opponent of the alt-right, with the alt-right.
00:08:00.000They've lumped in me with the alt-right.
00:08:02.000They've taken mainstream conservatives and non-conservatives, anyone with heterodox views, and they've said, these people are the real problem.
00:08:16.000Alt-right has the prefix alt in it, and it stands for alternative.
00:08:21.000It was originally coined by actual white supremacists because it was supposed to be an alternative right that rejected the tenets of conservatism.
00:08:30.000This is why it didn't even make sense when people were quoting the manifesto of the disgusting Christchurch shooter.
00:08:36.000To suggest that conservatives were somehow responsible.
00:08:38.000The manifesto itself says conservatism has conserved nothing.
00:08:41.000Conservatism has bought into basic ideas of individual liberty and individual rights.
00:08:46.000Conservatism hasn't conserved white civilization.
00:08:49.000The alt-right makes an argument that conservatism, classical liberalism, that these things are very bad.
00:08:55.000That is the argument of the alt-right.
00:08:57.000To lump me in with those pseudo-intellectual jackasses is the height of ridiculousness.
00:09:30.000All this would take is a rudimentary Google search.
00:09:33.000Instead, they decided to go for the clickbait, they decided to go for the slander, all because they were just ticked off, presumably, that the book sold so well.
00:09:41.000All because they were just ticked off that we were number one on the New York Times bestseller list.
00:09:44.000Because again, they tweeted out the audio last week, without any of this slanderous crap.
00:09:48.000But now they tweet it out with the slander, and of course that's what's getting the clicks, because you come after me and you call me a racist, you're more likely to get clicks than if you come after me and suggest that I'm defending Western civilization.
00:09:59.000Okay, well, I do think that this does have a linkage to the more general left view of Western civilization as inherently linked to race.
00:10:09.000As I say in the book, one of the big problems we have right now is that all of the ties that bind us, the ties that tie us together, the things that make us a civilization together, the principles, the immutable principles of the innate value of the individual, The belief that we have free will, that we are responsible for our own actions, that the universe is an orderly, understandable place, and that we have the capacity to sit and discuss with one another.
00:10:29.000These concepts, which are rooted in both Judeo-Christian morality and in Greek teleology, That these very concepts have fallen under attack.
00:10:39.000And there's a whole group of people in the West who do see Western civilization as racial.
00:10:44.000On the right, those come in the form of alt-right racists.
00:10:47.000And on the left, this comes in the form of people who label Western civilization itself inherently bad, and the institutions of Western civilization themselves inherently racist.
00:10:55.000The idea is that Western civilization, in reality, is merely a pretext.
00:11:00.000When we talk about Western civilization, what we really mean is race.
00:11:05.000This is how the left gets to the point where they can lump me in with people who want to kill me.
00:11:09.000The left gets there through a quick trick of logic, and I'll explain the quick trick of logic to you in just one second.
00:11:15.000First, let's talk about your sleep quality.
00:11:17.000So I will admit, I didn't sleep that great last night, but that is not because of Bull and Branch.
00:11:20.000Bull and Branch will ensure that your sleep is better.
00:12:06.000We legitimately took all the other sheets in our house and threw them out and got more Bull and Branch sheets because they honestly, they ruin sheets for you.
00:12:29.000Okay, so how does the left commit this trick where suddenly the conservatives are all alt-right?
00:12:36.000It's because what they say is that when people use the term Western civilization, they're inherently reinforcing a racist hierarchy.
00:12:42.000So when I speak about generalized principles, when I write a 250-page book about the principles of Western civilization going all the way back 3,000 years to Sinai and then through ancient Greece, When I do that, what I'm really doing is reinforcing the racial power hierarchy in the United States and in the West.
00:13:00.000So anyone who stands up for Western civilization is in fact, in sophisticated fashion, standing up for this racial power hierarchy.
00:13:08.000Now that's a bunch of crap, but you can see that this mindset has infused a certain element of the left, and that element of the left is unfortunately gaining strength.
00:13:16.000It really is a threat to the civilization upon which we stand.
00:13:20.000A great indicator of this is Joe Biden.
00:13:21.000So Joe Biden was vice president of the United States.
00:13:25.000But Joe Biden said yesterday that English jurisprudential culture, you know, the culture that brought you equal rights under law, that brought you limited government, that brought you the idea of constitutional monarchy, that brought you the idea of tort law, you know, that culture, that culture that basically built the Anglosphere, That culture is bad.
00:13:50.000He's saying the same thing in his way as the alt-right.
00:13:52.000The alt-right just says English jurisprudential culture is great, and it's great because white people created it.
00:13:57.000And now Joe Biden is saying English jurisprudential culture is bad, and it's bad because white people created it.
00:14:03.000I realize they get a little too passionate about this sometimes, but we all have an obligation to do nothing less than change the culture in this country.
00:14:38.000Christina Hoff Summers has busted this myth.
00:14:40.000There's a myth that in English jurisprudential law, a key tenet is that a man could beat his wife with a stick so long as the stick was no wider in girth than his thumb.
00:14:53.000It can't be found anywhere in the English legal books.
00:14:55.000There's one judge who one time wrote about it and was mercilessly mocked for the rest of his career as Judge Thumb in Britain sometime in the 19th century.
00:15:03.000And yet, somehow, this has become a key tenet in the left's takedown of Western civilization.
00:15:08.000If you see Western civilization as predominantly racial, then you are doing it wrong.
00:15:12.000This is true if you are on the right, and it is true if you are on the left.
00:15:16.000And the fact that the left agrees with the alt-right on the nature of Western civilization means that Western civilization is really in trouble.
00:15:22.000Because if instead of arguing over principles, and the application of those principles, if instead of applying reason to Judeo-Christian principle, and coming up with an admixture that makes all of our lives better, you decide, let's just abandon the whole project and revert to tribalism, because hey, everything is power hierarchies of race anyway, things get really ugly really quickly.
00:15:42.000And this is how the left can lump everybody in, because if they say everything is tribal, then you're tribal too, even if you don't know it.
00:16:06.000He seems to be more soft-spoken than a lot of the other Democrats.
00:16:09.000He seems to be more reasonable in a lot of ways.
00:16:11.000For example, yesterday, he suggested that he wouldn't boycott Chick-fil-A because he likes their chicken, which seems like a perfectly rational We've allowed our conservative friends to get a monopoly on the idea of freedom.
00:16:22.000left when it comes to key items of principle.
00:16:23.000And what's fascinating is to watch as the Democratic left tries to hijack the term freedom to describe a program that is directly opposed to freedom in any traditional sense.
00:16:36.000Here's Pete Buttigieg trying to explain why his giant government programs are in fact an element of freedom.
00:16:40.000We've allowed our conservative friends to get a monopoly on the idea of freedom.
00:16:46.000Now they care about freedom, but they care about a very specific Kind of freedom.
00:16:58.000You're not free if there is a veil of mistrust between you as a person of color and the officers who are sworn to keep you safe.
00:17:06.000You're not free if your reproductive choices are being dictated by male politicians and Don't let anybody tell you that the other side is the side that's got a handle on freedom.
00:17:15.000We are the party of freedom and we shouldn't be afraid to go out there and say it.
00:17:18.000Now what's hilarious is that in that video, Buttigieg actually goes ahead and he talks about how the right's version of freedom is freedom from.
00:17:25.000How what the right wants is freedom from government.
00:17:27.000And then he says, well, but that's not real freedom.
00:17:29.000You have to have freedom from your cable company.
00:17:42.000Because it seems to me that you are making a voluntary dispensation of your labor in return for someone else's voluntary dispensation of benefits.
00:17:50.000So, yeah, that would be freedom right there.
00:17:52.000And then he cites a bunch of stuff, Buttigieg, that is actual government involvement.
00:17:57.000So he's talking about how freedom is infringed upon when officers do racist things.
00:18:02.000Right, because armed officers are the arms of the state.
00:18:06.000So you agree with me on the definition of freedom, Mayor Buttigieg.
00:18:10.000And then, Mayor Buttigieg suggests that it is a violation of freedom if a county clerk denies you some sort of marital license.
00:18:18.000Well, it is a denial of freedom in a certain sense.
00:18:21.000I mean, we can argue over whether that denial of freedom is quote-unquote justified or not.
00:18:26.000We can argue over whether the state ought to be providing benefits to particular couples or not.
00:18:32.000That seems like a rational conversation we can have.
00:18:34.000But if he's talking about the state cracking down on voluntary sexual activity that is consensual in nature, then we agree and we're just both libertarian.
00:18:45.000One of the things that the left is fond of doing, as you see with the term alt-right, is they define the term, and then they proceed to expand the term dramatically to include stuff they want to include.
00:18:55.000So alt-right starts off as an actual descriptor of an actual group of people, and then it quickly expands to include anybody with whom they disagree.
00:19:02.000And it is the same thing with the word freedom.
00:19:04.000Freedom starts off with a pretty exact definition, which is freedom from government intervention, freedom from the government cracking down on you.
00:19:10.000And then they expand it to include freedom from anything that you don't want.
00:19:14.000And then they expand it to include freedom to take stuff from other people.
00:19:19.000By gradually expanding the definition of words, they change the way that people think, folks on the left.
00:20:10.000You can always watch by how the terms expand, how the terms expand and contract.
00:20:15.000You can see where the left moves just by following the etymology of the terminology that they are using, following the history of the words that they like to use.
00:20:24.000So to go back to that Biden example for a second, you have Joe Biden ripping on English jurisprudence, right?
00:20:29.000It's white culture, English jurisprudence.
00:20:31.000I'm old enough to remember when his former boss, Barack Obama, In that speech, I spoke about why I love this country.
00:20:43.000Weird, because it didn't before when Barack Obama was talking about it.
00:20:46.000In that speech, I spoke about why I love this country, why I love America, and what I believe sets this country apart from so many other nations in so many eras.
00:20:59.000I said that the true genius of America is a faith in simple dreams, an insistence in small miracles, that we can tuck in our children at night and know that they are fed and clothed and safe from harm, that we can tuck in our children at night and know that they are fed and clothed and safe from harm, that we can say what we think, write Thank you.
00:21:25.000Now, he talks about that as a legacy of Anglo-American law.
00:21:28.000He said that habeas corpus was a perfect example of Anglo-American law.
00:21:32.000Now the left has expanded Anglo-American law or English jurisprudence to mean racism because they've decided to shift the meaning of all of this stuff.
00:21:40.000A term that once was good has now become bad because they've decided to expand the application of the term.
00:21:46.000Remember that when Pete Buttigieg says that the Democrats are the party of freedom, he is talking about the same party as Bernie Sanders, who legitimately said just yesterday that we should get rid of all insurance companies in the United States and rob some 160 million people of their health insurance plans.
00:22:01.000You are not going to be able, in the long run, to have cost-effective, universal healthcare unless you change the system, unless you get rid of the insurance companies, unless you stand up to the greed of the drug companies and lower prescription drug costs.
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00:25:00.000Ten minutes ago, she confirmed that she did not actually recuse herself from the Smollett case, legally speaking.
00:25:06.000Apparently her spokeswoman, Tandra Simonton, said, quote, the state's attorney did not formally recuse herself or the office based on any actual conflict of interest.
00:25:15.000As a result, she did not have to seek the appointment of a special prosecutor under the law.
00:25:19.000Instead, she simply took her first assistant, Joe Maggots, out front to take the beating that would come.
00:25:24.000Quote, although we use the term recuse as it relates to state attorney's Fox involvement in the matter, it was a colloquial use of the term rather than in its legal sense.
00:25:45.000I mean, the FBI is now telling local ABC News reporter Rob Elgas that they are reviewing the circumstances surrounding the dismissal of the criminal charges against Empire actor Jussie Smollett.
00:25:55.000Remember the guy who was the victim of the fake hate crime?
00:26:13.000So they're buying Jussie Smollett's argument that, presumably, that he was actually beaten in a hate crime by two people he was friends with and called an hour before and signed a check to afterward.
00:26:27.000How bad is the case for Jussie Smollett?
00:26:29.000His attorney came out and explained that maybe when Jussie Smollett described his attackers as white, it's because the Nigerian brothers were wearing whiteface.
00:26:36.000I kid you not, this is a thing that was said by a human.
00:26:55.000There is actually, interestingly enough, a video.
00:26:58.000You know, I think police did minimal investigation in this case.
00:27:00.000It took me all of five minutes to Google.
00:27:03.000You know, I was looking up the brothers, and one of the first videos that showed up, actually, was one of the brothers in white face doing a Joker monologue with white makeup on.
00:27:36.000They said, quote, First, when a chief prosecutor accuses him or herself, the recusal must apply to the entire office, not just the elected or appointed prosecutor.
00:27:44.000This is consistent with best practices for prosecutors' offices around the country.
00:27:48.000Second, prosecutors should not take advice from politically connected friends of the accused.
00:27:53.000Each case should be approached with the goal of justice for victims, while protecting the rights of the defendant.
00:27:58.000Well, yeah, and what they're referring to there is that Tina Tchen, who is a former aide to Michelle Obama, called up the district attorney in this case, the state's attorney, and asked her to drop the case, basically.
00:28:07.000Third, when a prosecutor seeks to resolve a case through diversion or some other alternative to prosecution, it should be done with an acknowledgment of culpability on the part of the defendant.
00:28:17.000A case with the consequential effects of Mr. Smollett's should not be resolved without a finding of guilt or innocence.
00:28:23.000Yes, this is what we commented yesterday.
00:28:25.000If Smollett were going to be let off the hook, at least you would have to apologize.
00:28:27.000Now, fourth, expunging Mr. Smollett's record at this immediate stage is counter to transparency.
00:28:33.000Law enforcement will now not be able to acknowledge that Mr. Smollett was indicted and charged with these horrible crimes, and the full record of what occurred will be forever hidden from public view.
00:28:41.000Finally, we believe strongly that hate crimes should be prosecuted vigorously, but the burden of proof should not be artificially increased due to the misguided decisions of others.
00:28:49.000So even the National Association of District Attorneys is looking at Kim Foxx and saying, uh, what the hell is wrong with you?
00:28:59.000So bad that the FBI is now reviewing all the circumstances and a leaked email from the prosecutor's office shows them scrambling, scrambling to find other cases where charges were suddenly dropped under conditions like Smollett's.
00:29:11.000Here's an email that went out to the entire state attorney's office in the aftermath of their decision, quote, Hello everyone.
00:29:19.000We are looking for examples of cases, felony preferable, where we, in exercising our discretion, have entered into verbal agreements with defense attorneys to dismiss charges against an offender if certain conditions were met, such as the payment of restitution, completion of community service, completion of class, etc., but the defendant was not placed in a formal diversion program.
00:29:37.000In other words, yeah, we know we did something that was completely ridiculous here, but let's see if we can find a precedent for the completely ridiculous thing we actually did.
00:29:42.000work with them to further further to figure out on what case it was done nobody's in trouble we're just looking for further examples of how we as prosecutors use our discretion in a way that restores the victim that causes minimal harm to the defendant in the long term in other words yeah we know we did something that was completely ridiculous here but let's see if we can find a precedent for the completely ridiculous thing we actually did kim fox is in so much trouble that she is now denying that she asked the court for the file to be sealed she says it was now done by accident
00:30:09.000it was an accident to ask the file to be sealed oh is that what happened kim fox i see how convenient fox yesterday said that the charges were appropriate but of course she has no precedent she has no excuse do you think jesse smollett is innocent - Okay.
00:30:27.000You know, I think that the charges that were filed, and again, I was recused at the time of the charges, were appropriate.
00:30:34.000I believe that the outcome, him having to forfeit the $10,000, having to do community service based on the allegations, and again, the class 4 felony and no background, are an outcome that we could expect with this type of case.
00:32:03.000And that is available for all people to watch, but only subscribers can ask questions via the beautiful and pregnant Elisha Krauss, who is spectacular and also like a sister.
00:32:14.000Okay, so go check out... I don't like Knowles, but I like Elisha.
00:32:17.000That's sort of what you can take away from this.
00:32:19.000Go check out dailywire.com, subscribe, you get all those things.
00:32:21.000You get the Sunday special, which comes out on Saturday for you if you're a subscriber, with extra content behind the paywall.
00:32:27.000So many great things that you get when you're a subscriber.
00:32:29.000And, with all of that, the annual subscription, the annual subscription, 99 bucks a year, gives you this.
00:32:35.000The very greatest in all beverage vessels, the leftist tier's hot or cold tumbler, overflowing right now with tears from the editors of The Economist, apparently.
00:32:42.000Because they were so upset about me making number one on the New York Times bestseller list with my book that I'm now outright.
00:32:47.000So let's taste their tears, actually, and see how those are.
00:32:55.000You can get the Leftist Tears Hot or Cold Tumblr when you get the annual subscription.
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00:33:08.000Okay, so President Trump is now going on the offense against the folks who suggested that he was involved in Russian collusion.
00:33:22.000He appeared via phone with Sean Hannity last night, and there he suggested that he was going to release a bunch of files.
00:33:29.000Now, I've been saying for years that he should.
00:33:31.000I've been saying for years that he kept complaining that the files showed, for example, that the Carter Page FISA warrant was illicitly gotten and that the attempt to phone tap Carter Page, who was a low-level foreign policy aide on the campaign and was suspected of being sort of a Russian tool, that that warrant was gotten on the basis of bad intel.
00:33:49.000And Trump kept complaining about that.
00:33:50.000I kept saying, listen, dude, you can declassify anytime you want.
00:34:37.000I mean, more in the public view is better.
00:34:39.000Now, I do think that it is possible For President Trump to overreach here.
00:34:42.000I think it is possible for the right to overreach with the suggestion that every element of this investigation was somehow corrupt from the outset.
00:34:49.000Now, I think there were elements of this investigation that may have been corrupt.
00:34:53.000If it turns out that James Clapper was using the Steele dossier, the unverified Steele dossier, as the basis for this entire investigation, If it turns out that the members of the Obama intelligence team were using shoddy intel that they did not bother to do one moment of work on as the basis for launching an investigation into an opponent's political campaign, then that's indeed dirty stuff.
00:35:15.000But I'm not sure that we're all the way there yet.
00:35:17.000The fact is, George Papadopoulos, who was a low-level person with the Trump campaign, did meet with a Russian cutout.
00:35:24.000It is true that in June 2016, there was a Trump Tower meeting between a Russian lawyer who was connected to the Russian government and Donald Trump Jr.
00:35:41.000We will know, I think in short order, whether this investigation was started on the basis of illicit corruption or whether it was started, honestly, like a lot of investigations and just never came to fruition.
00:35:51.000And then it turned bad because all the people who were involved in the investigation were personally invested in the investigation coming up with something.
00:35:59.000That it started off as a non-witch hunt, in other words, and then it gradually turned into a witch hunt where everybody was suspected of every crime without any proper evidence.
00:36:08.000To me that seems more likely, because I usually attribute to stupidity that which, I usually attribute to malice only that which I cannot attribute to stupidity.
00:36:17.000I think that, as Hanlon's Razor suggests, people are generally dumb and not malicious, and so probably the most likely scenario here is that people were handed intel, they got suspicious, they started an investigation, and then they convinced themselves that Trump and his team were guilty of something, and then they started pushing the edge.
00:36:34.000Then they started doing things like issuing the Carter Page FISA Warrant, if in fact it turns out that the Carter Page FISA Warrant was based solely on the Steele dossier, for example.
00:36:43.000President Trump, however, is firmly convinced that dirty cops started this.
00:37:29.000So people don't tend to be able to hold the view that, one, the investigation came up with nothing.
00:37:33.000And yes, there were corrupt actors involved in the investigation.
00:37:37.000And two, the investigation may not have been illicitly started.
00:37:40.000It was just hijacked or used by people with political preferences who decided to violate the oaths that they had taken because they were so convinced of their own moral rectitude, which seems more likely to me.
00:37:50.000That looks a lot like Peter Strzok and Lisa Page, for example.
00:37:54.000With that said, President Trump knows that he's got room to run here.
00:38:13.000Comey, who's a terrible guy, Comey and McCabe and Strzok and Page, the lover, Page, and all of these people, they've admitted in testimony that there was no crime.
00:38:27.000So they started an investigation based on no crime.
00:38:31.000I mean, it's really, that part of it, the very end where he says it was an investigation based on no initial crime.
00:38:37.000When you launch an investigation, I mean, I've worked in a DA's office.
00:38:40.000When you launch an investigation, you typically do so on the basis of an allegation.
00:38:44.000If it were proved, the person would already be in prison, presumably.
00:38:47.000But when he talks about how Comey was a terrible guy, You know, Comey obviously believed what he wanted to believe.
00:38:53.000Again, confirmation bias is a hell of a drug.
00:38:56.000So Comey appeared on NBC Nightly News with Lester Holt last night, and he explained that he thought that his firing was obstruction of justice.
00:39:31.000And that, in your mind, would have been obstruction of justice?
00:39:33.000No, potentially obstruction of justice.
00:39:35.000And it's complicated when it's the President of the United States, given his authority over the executive branch, but you would certainly be irresponsible not to explore whether that is obstruction of justice.
00:39:45.000Okay, would it be irresponsible not to explore it?
00:39:47.000Because it sort of turns out that he had the right to fire anybody he wanted in the executive branch, so long as he was not actively impeding an ongoing investigation, which apparently he was not.
00:39:58.000Because politics tends to break down into a battle of personalities, now that Trump has been largely vindicated on the collusion stuff, Comey is made to look a fool, and Trump has a lot of room to run here.
00:40:09.000Okay, coming up, I want to talk about Cory Booker, who appeared on CNN last night.
00:40:13.000Again, what you learn more about the candidates these days is, I think, what you learn about the Democratic candidates Tells you more about where the Democratic base is than where the candidates are.
00:40:23.000Because right now, what you see among the various Democratic candidates is a dramatic attempt to run where they think the base is.
00:40:30.000This is what all politicians do during the primaries and the general.
00:40:33.000They run to where they think the votes are.
00:40:35.000When you watch people like Cory Booker, Who used to be a quote-unquote moderate, the senator from New Jersey.
00:40:40.000He's a guy who used to work across the aisle, have conversations with people across the aisle.
00:40:44.000He used to talk somewhat about school vouchers.
00:40:46.000He used to talk about creative solutions to problems.
00:40:49.000He wasn't a very good mayor of New York, but he used to talk about this stuff.
00:40:52.000Now he is running as the craziest leftist you can imagine, which is, you know, pretty wild considering the rest of the Democratic Party at this point.
00:41:01.000So Cory Booker appeared on CNN last night.
00:41:03.000He had his big town hall event on CNN.
00:41:06.000All the candidates have a town hall event on CNN.
00:41:08.000And he was treated very warmly by Don Lemon.
00:41:10.000It seems like they're personal friends.
00:41:11.000Lemon started off by teasing Cory Booker about his veganism.
00:41:24.000It's been a great experience for me, great for well-being.
00:41:26.000You know, when you come from a family that literally owned a soul food restaurant, my mom and dad, it may have caused some trouble, but now they understand that for health reasons, it's a good way to go.
00:41:35.000Yeah, but you're not eating barbecue down here, right?
00:41:37.000Maybe putting a little sauce on the vegetables.
00:41:45.000I don't remember them being quite as friendly with, for example, Senator Ted Cruz.
00:41:49.000But Cory Booker, the real point here is not—by the way, I just have to note, there was a point in this interview where Don Lemon, as they went to break, turned to Cory Booker, and he didn't realize his mic was still live, and he told Cory Booker that he had done a nice job on the answers.
00:42:03.000We're going to be right back with more from CNN's Democratic Presidential Town Hall with Senator Cory Booker live from Orangeburg, South Carolina.
00:42:21.000Don Lemon is very, very objective in his journalism.
00:42:23.000Anyway, Cory Booker is a great example of somebody who sort of speaks radicalism as a second language, in the same way that President Trump seemed to speak conservatism as a second language during the 2016 election.
00:42:35.000Like, he would jump to conclusions he thought conservatives believed, even if they were wrong.
00:42:38.000So famously, President Trump was asked whether women should be punished for abortions, and the pro-life position has generally been for decades at this point, no, that's not correct.
00:42:48.000He was like, yeah, absolutely we should punish women for abortions because he thought that's what pro-life people thought because Trump didn't have a history with the pro-life movement.
00:42:56.000Booker feels that way with the far left.
00:42:58.000And so he says things that are just ridiculous on a regular basis.
00:43:03.000So, for example, here was Cory Booker being asked about gun laws and just blowing it because he doesn't know what he's talking about.
00:43:08.000If I am your president, we are going to bring the fight to the NRA who wants to represent corporate gun owners, corporate gun corporations, manufacturers more than they want to represent the people because this is what they're doing to Americans.
00:43:19.000They are defending loopholes, like that loophole that if a man is convicted of beating his wife, he can find a loophole to go out and buy a gun and murder her.
00:43:28.000They are defending not their membership but loopholes, like the loophole that says that someone on the terrorist no-fly list in our country can still go to a gun show and buy weapons, or that somebody that's convicted of a violent crime can still find a loophole to go and buy a weapon.
00:43:44.000Okay, so there are so many flaws in what he is saying right there that, I mean, he's not even close to the truth.
00:43:49.000It is not a loophole when someone violates a criminal law, number one.
00:43:54.000Also, when he talks about the laws regarding guns, he's just not correct about them.
00:44:00.000I mean, he just says things that are eminently untrue.
00:44:03.000Dana Lash, who's a spokesperson for the National Rifle Association, went directly at him.
00:44:08.000She said, first of all, the NRA is not an actual government organization.
00:44:16.000Also, federal law bars domestic abusers from buying or possessing guns.
00:44:19.000So what the hell are you talking about?
00:44:21.000And Booker did this the whole interview, right?
00:44:23.000Here is Booker explaining that he would rather hang out with a nice atheist than a mean religious person, as though religious people everywhere somehow would rather hang out with evil religious people than hang out with nice atheists.
00:44:35.000I just want to say up front that I'm a person who often says that before you tell me about your religion, show it to me in how you treat other people.
00:44:47.000I was raised in a church where my mom taught Sunday school, and I'll never forget learning that verse, that faith without works is dead.
00:44:55.000And I'll tell you what, I feel like I'm in church right now.
00:45:01.000And I'll tell you what, this is what often bothers me.
00:45:02.000I would rather hang out with a nice atheist than a mean Christian any day of the week.
00:45:08.000I love that that receives a giant round of applause.
00:45:10.000You know who else would rather do that?
00:45:39.000But what we've got to know is that this is happening in a larger context where hate crimes in this country are on the rise, where white supremacist violence is on the rise.
00:45:48.000In fact, if you look at the majority of terrorist attacks since 9-11, the majority of them have been done by homegrown right-wing extremist groups, and the majority of those have been white supremacist groups.
00:46:00.000What does that have to do with Jussie Smollett?
00:46:01.000How do we get from the question, which was, was the decision to drop charges against Smollett a whitewash?
00:46:06.000How do we get from that to the majority of terrorist attacks in the United States have been by white supremacist groups?
00:46:11.000I mean, there's truth to that statement, although the majority of dead from terrorist attacks in the United States, particularly since 2001, if you include 2001, are in radical Islamic terror attacks.
00:46:21.000But with that said, that's such a non-sequitur.
00:46:24.000What does that have to do with anything?
00:46:26.000So Jussie Smollett lied about a hate crime, and Cory Booker's response is to immediately launch into an attack on white supremacists.
00:46:33.000Like, I'm fine with the attack on white supremacists.
00:46:36.000But I just want to know why that has anything to do with letting Jussie Smollett off the hook.
00:46:40.000This is why Cory Booker is not a very good candidate, and this is why Cory Booker is inevitably going to fall apart, because it turns out that he, like too many other Democrats, is simply an empty vessel for what he thinks the base wants, rather than a representative of something actual and real.
00:46:54.000It's one of the reasons, by the way, why Pete Buttigieg is actually picking up ground on Beto O'Rourke.
00:46:58.000If you look at the Google searches, Buttigieg is suddenly picking up steam.
00:47:01.000That's because he's more substantive than Beto O'Rourke.
00:47:05.000At a certain point, even Democratic members of the base are going to want something a little more substantive than they've been offered so far.
00:47:10.000Okay, time for some things I like and then some things that I hate.
00:47:28.000And that means that every night I have to put on a movie and then just sign and sign and sign and sign.
00:47:32.000Well, the other night I was looking for something to watch and I came across a movie on Amazon Prime called Trans Siberian, which I missed at the time.
00:47:40.000It is Woody Harrelson and Ben Kingsley.
00:47:41.000Ben Kingsley is one of my favorite actors.
00:47:44.000The movie is basically a potboiler about a couple who are on a train with another couple, and the other couple turns out may or may not be criminals.
00:48:50.000Okay, time for a couple of things that I hate.
00:48:56.000So it turns out that ABC's The View is a complete crazy house.
00:49:00.000There's a new book out called Ladies Who Punch, The Explosive Inside Story of The View.
00:49:03.000It is written by Ramin Setudeh, the New York Bureau Chief of Variety, and it has a lot of details about the show.
00:49:10.000They sat down for everyone except for Elizabeth Hasselbeck and Whoopi Goldberg.
00:49:14.000There's a bunch of stuff in there that is not great for The View.
00:49:17.000According to the Huffington Post review of the book, Barbara Walters, the founder of The View, is portrayed as a leader who understandably held a tight grip on the show, but was also deeply egomaniacal and threatened by women who are more popular, namely Joy Behar and Rosie O'Donnell.
00:49:29.000The book also alleges she actively participated in undermining current and former co-hosts by leaking embarrassing information to the press.
00:49:37.000Apparently, she did this specifically with Rosie O'Donnell.
00:49:41.000She specifically went after Rosie O'Donnell and dictated that when Rosie O'Donnell's book came out, that there be a bunch of bad stuff that come out about Rosie O'Donnell in the press.
00:49:52.000Apparently, there was a massive behind-the-scenes clash between Rosie O'Donnell and Mark Gentile, the show's director.
00:49:57.000O'Donnell says she took issue with Gentile because of his incompetence.
00:50:00.000Insiders at The View told Satuda that they believe O'Donnell targeted Gentile because he once rejected her offer to poach him from The View when she was trying to do her own daytime talk show.
00:50:10.000In the book, O'Donnell shared a story of when she walked into a meeting at The View and asked a group of staffers, is this Mark Gentile's baby?
00:50:16.000A woman producer at the show is holding a baby in her arms.
00:50:19.000According to Citude, the producer, whom Citude has not named in the book, had been having an affair with Gentile who was married.
00:50:25.000The affair was an open secret among the staff and Walters was aware of it.
00:50:28.000The producer didn't directly report to Gentile, but at The View, this was not considered an issue.
00:50:34.000So all sorts of details about The View.
00:50:35.000It turns out, guys, that Hollywood is a terrible place filled with bad people who do bad things.
00:50:41.000In other Hollywood news, good news, Chris Evans, the guy who plays Captain America, and has... I'm in the battle of the Chrises, you know, Chris Pine, Chris Pratt.