The Trump administration has a new policy at the southern border, and it involves separating immigrant children from their parents. It s a policy that has been in place since the early days of the Obama administration, but it s been challenged by the courts and the media. Today, Ben Shapiro explains why this is a bad idea, and why you should be worried about being separated from your kids. He also explains why it s a good idea to have a life insurance policy, since you ll be better off if you have it than if you don t have one. If you want your life to be better, you want more knowledge in your brain directly tailored for you, then you need to become a subscriber to DailyWire. You ll get access to all sorts of access to our most up-to-date news and information, including our most popular show on the internet, The Ben Shapiro Show. Subscribe today using our podcast s RSS feed to stay up to date with the latest episodes and listen to the show wherever you get your favorite podcast episodes. Thanks for listening and share the podcast with your friends and family! Ben Shapiro and The Daily Wire - Ben Shapiro Copyright 2019 Ben Shapiro This episode was produced in partnership with DailyWire and edited by Elisha Krauss. All rights reserved. All Rights Reserved. This podcast was used with permission from Dailywire.co.nz and the author of the podcast "The Conversation" is a work of noncommercial use and distribution of this podcast is copyright of Ben Shapiro's work. All credit given to Ben Shapiro, and all rights reserved under a license under a Creative Commons Attribution license. Used by the use of their respective third-party rights of other authors and other authors' respective owners' respective rights of third-third-party owners worldwide. Thank you for their respective rights and other owners' rights under a respective third parties' respective licenses, including those respective rights under copyright notice. . Thank you, Mr. Ben Shapiro is a friend of the author and credit given out in this podcasting license. , Mr. Shapiro, and Mr. ? The DailyWire, LLC , "The Daily Wire, "Thank you for listening to this podcast? - Thank you so much for your support and support is greatly appreciated? " . . . " " " and & "the Daily Wire" - The Conversation" - "This podcast is sponsored by DailyWire"
00:00:00.000President Trump fights back on the rumors that he's attempting to split children from their illegal immigrant parents, the media continue their assault, and the Department of Justice Inspector General goes directly after the FBI.
00:00:16.000Many a thing to get to today, and we'll get to all of those things.
00:00:19.000First, I want to let you know that later this afternoon, I'm going to be doing an episode of The Conversation with my good friend Elisha Krauss.
00:00:24.000We're going to take your live questions at 5.30 p.m.
00:00:31.000But only subscribers can ask me the questions over at DailyWire.com, so if you want your questions answered, you want your life better, you want more knowledge in your brain directly tailored for you, then you need to become a subscriber.
00:00:58.000And when you do, it would be better if you had some life insurance.
00:01:00.000Because let's be real, if you don't have life insurance, you're going to be
00:01:03.000Increasing costs on your family, your family's not going to have your earning power, whether you have brothers and sisters, whether you have mom and dad, whether you have kids, whether you have a spouse, you ought to make sure that somebody is the beneficiary of your death, since you won't be the beneficiary of your own death.
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00:01:52.000If you arrive at the border, not at the patrol stations, right?
00:01:55.000If you arrive at ports of entry and you claim asylum,
00:02:14.000We will not separate you from your children.
00:02:15.000If you arrive between ports of entry and we arrest you by operation of law thanks to a Ninth Circuit court ruling in 2016, thanks to that ruling, if we arrest you, we have to take your kids away from you because we can't hold your kids in jail with you.
00:02:29.000Now, there's a question as to how long we can hold the kids in jail with you.
00:02:32.000Do we have to immediately remove them?
00:02:33.000Or is it just that we have to remove them within 20 days?
00:02:36.000But bottom line is, you will be separated from your kids if you are arrested.
00:02:38.000The Trump administration has changed policy in the sense that they are now treating everyone who crosses the border illegally as a criminal.
00:02:47.000So they're basically just enforcing the law strictly.
00:02:49.000Now, I am a fan of enforcing the law strictly.
00:02:51.000The reason is not because I always think the law is a great idea.
00:02:54.000It's because I don't like the idea of executive discretion.
00:02:57.000I think executive discretion is a way of making bad laws palatable and making good laws unpalatable.
00:03:03.000If you actually want a law enforced the way that it is on the books, we're going to learn pretty fast whether that law is worthwhile or whether that law is not.
00:03:09.000The Obama administration sort of picked and chose how exactly they wanted to enforce immigration law, and it's important to note that these sorts of controversies over separation of families at the border
00:03:19.000This sort of stuff was going on 2014-2015 when there was that vast influx of illegal immigrants swamping the southern border.
00:03:25.000This is from the New York Times, July 25th, 2015.
00:03:26.000So a guy named Barack Obama was president then.
00:03:40.000And that the families should be released as quickly as possible.
00:03:42.000So the Obama administration was arresting mothers, and they were keeping them with their children, and the court found that that was a problem.
00:03:49.000In a decision late Friday roundly rejecting the administration's arguments for holding the families, Judge Dolly M. G. of the Federal District Court for the Central District of California found that two detention centers in Texas that the administration opened last fall failed to meet minimum legal requirements of the 1997 settlement for facilities housing children.
00:04:06.000Judge G also found that migrant children had been held in widespread deplorable conditions in border patrol stations.
00:04:13.000Under Barack Obama, migrant children had been held in widespread deplorable conditions in border patrol stations.
00:04:19.000After they were first caught, she said the authorities had wholly failed to provide the safe and sanitary conditions required for children, even in temporary cells.
00:04:27.000Right, so the kids were in cells, right?
00:04:28.000We're hearing the same sort of stuff now, but let's not pretend this is unique, because it's not.
00:04:32.000The opinion was a significant legal blow to detention policies ordered by Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson, remember this is 2015, in response to an influx of children and parents, mostly from Central America, across the border in South Texas last summer.
00:04:44.000In her 25-page ruling, Judge Gee gave a withering critique of the administration's positions, declaring them unpersuasive and dubious, and saying officials had ignored unambiguous terms of the settlement.
00:04:54.000The Department of Homeland Security was nailed for apparently trying to use this sort of policy as deterrence.
00:05:00.000So remember, the Trump administration's been ripped up and down for suggesting that separating families was a deterrent.
00:05:06.000They're not the first people to do this.
00:05:08.000This is from the New York Times, 2015.
00:05:10.000Initially, Homeland Security officials said they were detaining the families to send a message to others in Central America to deter them from coming to the United States illegally.
00:05:18.000In February, a federal court in Washington, D.C.
00:05:22.000Officials stopped invoking deterrence as a factor in deciding whether to release mothers and children as they seek asylum in the United States.
00:05:29.000But many women and children remained stalled behind bleak walls and fences, month after month, with no end in sight.
00:05:34.000Mothers became severely depressed or anxious, and their distress echoed in their children, who became worried and sickly.
00:05:39.000Okay, so remember, again, this is 2015.
00:05:40.000So these issues have been plaguing the federal government since 2015, and in fact, this particular case that I'm talking about here was elevated to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals.
00:05:48.000The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals held that when a mother was held in detention, her child had to be released.
00:05:54.000The child could not be held in detention with the mom.
00:05:57.000They had to be released to a relative, or to foster care, or to somebody inside the HHS.
00:06:01.000And they pointed out that the federal government was using this sort of policy, holding mothers and children together, as a deterrent.
00:06:07.000So the same people who are now saying that Trump is separating families as a deterrent, four years ago, three years ago, they were saying that holding mothers and children together was being used as a deterrent.
00:06:17.000This is a direct quote from the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals case from 2016.
00:06:38.000District for the District of Columbia granted the plaintiff's motion for a preliminary injunction.
00:06:42.000The court found that ICE had not adopted a blanket no-release policy, but found ample support for the plaintiff's alternative contention that DHS policy directs ICE officers to consider deterrence of mass migration as a factor in their custody determinations, and that this policy has played a significant role in the recent increased attention of Central American mothers and children.
00:07:00.000In other words, all the talk about, you know, Trump
00:07:03.000Being pro-deterrence and that's so evil, it's so terrible.
00:07:05.000The hysteria that you're seeing, people comparing it to Japanese internment, people comparing it to the Nazis.
00:07:10.000Okay, this is something that the Obama administration was openly saying in 2015 and 2014.
00:07:38.000Here's John Kelly back in March talking about separating mothers from children.
00:07:42.000We have tremendous experience in dealing with unaccompanied minors.
00:07:46.000We turn them over to HHS and they do a very, very good job of either putting them in foster care or linking them up with parents or family members in the United States.
00:07:56.000Yes, I am considering, in order to deter more movement along this terribly dangerous network, I am considering exactly that.
00:08:05.000They will be well cared for as we deal with their parents.
00:08:08.000Okay, so we should not be using separation of parents from children as a deterrent because that's just cruel.
00:08:13.000Saying that you're going to use law enforcement as a deterrent, you're going to arrest everybody who crosses the border, that seems to me perfectly appropriate.
00:08:18.000Well, the Trump administration has decided that this is a political winner.
00:08:21.000What we have right now is a prisoner's dilemma.
00:08:24.000Okay, prisoner's dilemma is something in game theory, where basically everybody's first choice ends up creating the worst possible outcome.
00:08:29.000So, basically, here's the way this works.
00:08:33.000They can either attempt to alleviate the situation by passing a law, or they cannot attempt to alleviate the situation by passing a law.
00:08:39.000And Democrats, similarly, have two choices.
00:08:41.000They can either attempt to alleviate the situation by passing a law, or they cannot attempt to alleviate the situation by passing a law.
00:08:46.000If the Republicans attempt to alleviate the situation and Democrats refuse to go along with it, Republicans get the worst of both worlds.
00:08:52.000They look like pansies to their own base, and they get ripped by the press anyway because the press is going to rip them no matter what.
00:08:57.000If Democrats go along with all of this, then they look like a bunch of people who are caving to Republicans for their own base, and they're not going to be credited by the media with the win.
00:09:06.000So what you end up with is a prisoner's dilemma in which both parties have an incentive not to make the right decision here, which would be to pass a simple piece of legislation saying that kids can stay with their parents in custody pending removal from the country.
00:09:18.000That would be the easy way to solve all of this.
00:09:20.000But that looks like that is not going to happen.
00:09:23.000Trump administration is doubling down on all of this.
00:09:25.000President Trump himself came out yesterday.
00:09:26.000He said, listen, our goal here is we're not going to be a migrant camp.
00:09:29.000That's not something we're going to do.
00:09:31.000The United States will not be a migrant camp.
00:09:37.000And it will not be a refugee holding facility.
00:09:51.000Okay, so, you know, this obviously is part of Trump's chief appeal, is that he thinks that there's been a border that's swamped by illegal immigrants.
00:09:57.000The truth is that two-thirds of the people who are overstaying their visas—two-thirds of illegal immigrants are people overstaying their visas.
00:10:02.000But when President Trump says it's not the job of the U.S.
00:10:04.000to be a migrant camp, obviously this definitely appeals to the people who voted for him in the first place.
00:10:09.000One of the problems the administration is having is they're sending a bunch of mixed messages.
00:10:12.000So, as I say, I think the media have been wildly dishonest on this entire issue, and I'm going to get to the media's dishonesty on all this.
00:10:18.000The media, by the way, exacerbate that prisoner's dilemma that I'm talking about.
00:10:21.000The media, by hyping up the hysteria, what they really do is they push the Trump administration into a corner where they're defending themselves from the assault, and they push Democrats to never make a deal with Republicans because they're winning politically.
00:10:56.000One time because Republican base didn't want to do it.
00:10:58.000The other time also because the Republican base was not particularly interested, but
00:11:03.000The media's hysteria on this particular issue is making things worse, not better.
00:11:08.000But with that said, the Trump administration press on this has really been bad.
00:11:11.000I mean, their press angle on this has been bad because you've had mixed messages.
00:11:14.000On the one hand, you've had certain officials like John Kelly saying, yes, we are separating parents from children at the border because we wish to deter people.
00:11:21.000So that's the hardest possible position.
00:11:22.000And then you have President Trump saying, we are not going to be a refugee or migrant camp.
00:11:26.000That's not something we're going to do.
00:11:29.000Christian Nielsen, who is the head of the Department of Homeland Security, and she's basically saying, listen, it's not our policy to separate parents from kids.
00:11:35.000It's just a natural after effect of enforcing law.
00:11:37.000Now, I think the Secretary of Homeland Security is correct, but she's the one who's been taking all the flack, which is kind of amazing.
00:11:42.000We'll talk about what she had to say yesterday.
00:12:14.000Instead, you can get movement sunglasses, and they felt the same way about sunglasses they felt about watches, which is they're too expensive, and you can make quality at a fair price.
00:12:22.000These are not plastic, they are acetate, and you can get them polarized.
00:12:25.000They start at just $70, and they are really my go-to shades.
00:13:06.000Christian Nielsen is the head of the Department of Homeland Security and instead of Sarah Huckabee Sanders doing the press conference yesterday with the press gaggle, instead she was called in sort of an emergency crisis management to deal with the press.
00:13:19.000Here's what she had to say about entering the country illegally.
00:13:22.000This administration has a simple message.
00:13:24.000If you cross the border illegally, we will prosecute you.
00:13:28.000If you make a false immigration claim, we will prosecute you.
00:13:31.000If you smuggle illegal aliens across an extraordinarily dangerous journey, we will prosecute you.
00:13:38.000Okay, so this makes perfect sense, right?
00:13:40.000If this were the administration's policy, this should have been the lockstep policy that they were talking about.
00:13:44.000None of this, I'm gonna quote the Bible, none of this, we're trying to deter people.
00:13:48.000Bottom line is, you come across the border illegally, we're arresting you.
00:13:51.000And then the law operates as the law operates, right?
00:13:53.000It's not our job to make the law not operate that way.
00:13:56.000And as many people have pointed out, if you are arrested in the United States, if you and your wife were arrested in the United States for some sort of misdemeanor, and you were put in jail overnight, we wouldn't take your kids with you.
00:15:17.000On closer inspection, details about the California-licensed childcare facility run by Southwest Key Programs reflect the situation of the children it serves.
00:15:24.000It's surrounded by fencing that is backed by privacy netting, and a sign at the gate warns visitors it's under video surveillance 24 hours per day.
00:15:30.000If someone opens the front door of the facility without first swiping a badge, an alarm blares through the hallway warning of potential escape.
00:15:36.000On Friday morning, a class of 15 boys recited all of the ways they had learned to greet each other.
00:15:40.000They quickly moved through English, French, Italian, Portuguese, Mom, Arabic, and many more before erupting into applause.
00:15:46.000So this doesn't sound quite like the torture that's being portrayed in the press.
00:15:49.000Now, that's not to say there aren't some horror stories.
00:15:50.000In a second, I'm going to play for you some of the audio from one of these supposed horror stories.
00:15:55.000I'm going to talk about whether this is representative of the entire thing or whether this is just the press choosing one example out of many.
00:16:02.000But it is pretty obvious the White House is angry about the way this is being pitched.
00:16:06.000So the White House has said that they've had enough of this information.
00:16:09.000Christian, this is clip 17, Christian Nielsen, she says, listen, all of the talk about how we are basically seizing children from parents and then torturing them for pleasure, all that's not true.
00:16:19.000There's a lot of misinformation about what DHS is and is not doing as it relates to families at the border, and I want to correct the record.
00:16:27.000First, this administration did not create a policy of separating families at the border.
00:16:34.000We have a statutory responsibility that we take seriously to protect alien children from human smuggling, trafficking, and other criminal actions while enforcing our immigration laws.
00:16:45.000And what she has to say there is basically true.
00:16:48.000And this is the line the administration should have taken.
00:17:18.000I see the fact that no one was being prosecuted for this as a factor in a five-fold increase in four years in this kind of illegal immigration.
00:17:30.000So yes, hopefully people will get the message and come through the border at the port of entry and not break across the border unlawfully.
00:17:39.000Okay, so that's a different take on deterrence than you were getting from General John Kelly, right?
00:17:44.000Here he's saying we're going to enforce the border because that's the deterrent.
00:17:46.000That's different from saying we're enforcing the separation policy as a deterrent.
00:17:50.000And then he said, listen, we want to allow asylum for people who qualify for it.
00:17:54.000It's not that the administration is denying people asylum.
00:17:56.000They're saying if you come through a port of entry, right, you come not illegally across the border, then we will treat you as anyone else who is seeking asylum.
00:18:02.000There's just so much press on this that is not true.
00:18:07.000We need to think it through, be rational and thoughtful about it.
00:18:11.000We want to allow asylum for people who qualify for it, but people who want economic migration for their personal financial benefit and what they think is their family's benefit is not a basis for a claim of asylum.
00:18:27.000OK, and obviously that is true as well.
00:18:31.000So I talked a little bit before about one of the accounts that these kids are basically being kept in humane conditions.
00:18:36.000Well, this is audio yesterday that was released about agents from ICE mocking crying children or agents from from HHS mocking crying children.
00:18:45.000And you can hear the kids crying in the background.
00:19:03.000So this has been going around because you can hear the hubbub in the back, and you can hear some of the crying children, and then you can hear a man yelling, don't cry.
00:19:11.000Right, so it's just, you know, that sort of stuff is not great.
00:19:15.000Well, there's certainly some truth to that.
00:19:46.000So here's Mark Meadows, a member of the House Freedom Caucus.
00:19:49.000This guy's about as conservative as he comes.
00:19:51.000Representative Mark Meadows says they're going to introduce legislation later today that will allow parents to stay with their kids as they await detention.
00:20:00.000We're going to introduce later today a piece of legislation that actually is more narrow than the two pieces that the president will be talking about with members of Congress this afternoon.
00:20:10.000What it does, it deals with this issue that we're having at the border with the separation of children from their parents.
00:20:16.000It also deals with some of the asylum issues at the border.
00:20:20.000Now, one of the things that is important to note about this is if, in fact, the Republicans put up a separate bill that says, listen, we're going to solve this particular issue.
00:20:27.000Kids get to stay with parents until deportation or until asylum arrangements are made.
00:20:32.000If that were the policy, do you think Democrats would vote for it?
00:20:34.000I don't think Democrats would vote for it.
00:20:36.000I think Democrats would vote against it, specifically because they think they've got a political winner on their hands.
00:20:40.000I think that they believe they have a political winner because there's a poll out today showing that two-thirds of Americans don't like the separation policy, while a majority of Republicans do.
00:20:47.000That's a political winner for Democrats.
00:20:49.000They want to hold Trump's feet to the fire on all of this.
00:20:51.000And you can hear the press corps jumping with both feet on all this.
00:20:54.000So, in just a second, I want to talk about the press.
00:20:57.000And how the press have lied routinely about all of this.
00:22:13.000Creamy caramelized onion burgers with apple and pickled pepper salad.
00:22:17.000You'd have to go to the restaurant and spend a bunch of money on that, but you can make that at home and then eat with your whole family.
00:22:22.000Spicy penne pasta with zucchini and capers.
00:22:23.000I mean, this is like gourmet level stuff that you will be making yourself when you go over to blueapron.com slash Shapiro and sign up and get your first three meals for free.
00:22:58.000He tweeted, he's from ProPublica, I believe, and he tweeted out, I believe this is the Washington Post, said, Elise Jordan, who I believe is a MSNBC and NBC News contributor, says,
00:23:17.000Okay, well, whether or not you like the policy, you know, whether you think that audio is stomach-churning, and I think that it is stomach-churning,
00:23:34.000The real question is, how do you solve that?
00:23:37.000And when I think the press, I think many members of the press, they think, oh, well, you know what?
00:23:41.000We'll jar the American public into action here.
00:23:43.000We will force them into action by creating this groundswell of anger about the separation of parents from children.
00:23:48.000What they're really doing is they're driving the Trump administration into a bunker and they're driving Democrats never to make a deal.
00:23:53.000Because, believe you me, Democrats in Congress do not care about getting a deal done on this particular topic.
00:24:08.000Politically speaking, better to keep the illegal immigration issue burning, better to ensure that illegal immigration issue keeps getting people to the polls than to actually solve the issue.
00:24:18.000This is one of the big problems with modern American politics.
00:24:20.000We don't elect our politicians to actually get things done.
00:24:22.000We elect our politicians as a sort of emotional catharsis.
00:24:26.000And Democrats are looking at issues like this and thinking, boy, this is a political winner for 2018.
00:24:32.000So that's why when reporters are going over the top about all of this, what they're really doing is making it less likely that a deal is going to get done.
00:24:39.000What they really should do is they should just report the facts without any of the over-the-top emotional passion, and just report it.
00:24:46.000The American people can make up their own minds.
00:24:48.000But here, for example, is a reporter to Christian Nielsen, the head of DHS, pummeling her, suggesting that this is a sort of child abuse.
00:24:55.000And it was like this all day yesterday, basically.
00:24:59.000Are there any examples of child abuse, you believe?
00:25:02.000And how could this not be child abuse for the people who were taken from their parents?
00:25:06.000Not the ones who were sent here with their parents' blessing, with the smugglers.
00:25:10.000The people who were taken from their parents.
00:25:30.000Okay, so I think the policy itself should change.
00:25:34.000And again, this is why I think that Ted Cruz's bill that he's bringing up is useful.
00:25:37.000I think that these kids should stay with their parents.
00:25:39.000I'm not in favor of kids being separated from their parents under any circumstances.
00:25:42.000I will point out the mild irony of so many Democrats who believe in no-fault divorce and think that if a parent wants to remove himself from the kid, that's totally fine.
00:25:49.000But if the government removes the kid from the parent, that of course is totally different.
00:25:52.000I guess the kid doesn't matter in all of that, right?
00:25:54.000It's just the parent's consent to any of that.
00:25:56.000If you get divorced without the kid wanting you to, then that's totally fine.
00:26:01.000But, you know, bottom line is, people of good heart can agree that this stuff should not be happening.
00:26:06.000The question is, how is this actually going to get solved?
00:26:08.000Democrats are having too much fun ripping into the Trump administration to actually solve the problem, however.
00:26:13.000So Nancy Pelosi is having a lot of fun calling Donald Trump barbaric.
00:26:38.000So then why don't you work with the Republicans to solve it?
00:26:41.000Hey, Hillary Clinton, she comes back from the dead to call President Trump a liar and unchristian for enforcing the same policy that she was touting a few years ago.
00:26:48.000She was in the administration when a lot of this policy was being touted.
00:27:39.000Because it turns out that in that Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruling that I've been talking about for the last several days, the one that suggested they have to release the kids, the plaintiffs in that case were saying that you should also have to release the parents.
00:27:50.000They were saying you should have to release the parents as well because otherwise you are violating the rights of the children.
00:27:55.000The Democrats don't want a solution because they're hoping to leverage President Trump into backing down and just releasing people into the interior of the United States, into the general population.
00:28:29.000Repeatedly, I have visited detention facilities tragically housing young children.
00:28:32.000For far too long, children have been the greatest victims of our broken immigration system, with tens of thousands of children who were detained under the Obama administration and continuing through today, and with far too many of those children facing horrific physical or sexual assault from criminal human traffickers.
00:28:46.000So Ted Cruz is on the same page as the Democrats here, right?
00:29:23.000The executive branch does not get to make up its own body of law simply because it wants to.
00:29:28.000But because we think the president is some sort of king who sits on top of a throne determining what laws to enforce and what laws not to enforce, the Trump administration gets all the blame.
00:31:02.000We are the largest, fastest growing conservative podcast in the nation.
00:31:09.000So, final note on the media's hysteria over all of this immigration stuff.
00:31:13.000So, Gayle King over at CBS, she said that the Statue of Liberty is weeping.
00:31:18.000The sort of over-the-top rhetoric that is now being utilized is astonishing.
00:31:22.000Here is Gayle King from CBS, you know, going full bore, full bore, you know, kind of daytime TV here.
00:31:28.000All I can say after talking to the people, watching the people, listening to the people, that the Statue of Liberty, I think, is weeping right now.
00:31:36.000OK, and then Chris Hayes over at MSNBC, he actually tweeted out, if I'm remembering my Third Reich history correctly, I think the first use of the term final solution was in a memo describing an initial plan to expel all the Jews from Europe.
00:32:57.000Because Michael Horowitz, who is the Inspector General over at the DOJ, a nonpartisan figure, he came out and he said,
00:33:05.000That should not be downplayed by anybody.
00:33:07.000I can't think of something more concerning than a law enforcement officer suggesting that they're going to try and use, or may use, their powers to affect an election.
00:33:16.000Okay, when the next investigator general, when the next inspector general report comes out about the Russia investigation, expect to see a lot more about Strzok's decision-making.
00:33:25.000Horowitz also said that James Comey, former FBI director,
00:33:28.000He was concerned about his survivability.
00:33:29.000He was less concerned about exactly what proper policy would be in investigating the Hillary email situation.
00:33:36.000Instead, he was concerned about how he could keep his job, which is pretty obvious from the report, right?
00:33:41.000The reason that he decided to release that letter right before the election that said that they were reopening the Hillary email investigation, he said, and he said it openly, is that he thought Hillary was going to win and he wanted to make sure that her presidency was seen as legitimate.
00:33:52.000So he was already trying to get himself in good with Hillary Clinton so that he could stick around in his job.
00:33:57.000Here is Michael Horowitz saying exactly this.
00:34:00.000I think that was a concern we had certainly where it's even clearer in that October time period because we have testimony that indicated that when he explained why when he explained through his chief of staff why he was going to do what he did on October 28.
00:34:15.000Okay, the FBI is just filled with bad actors.
00:34:19.000It doesn't mean everybody in the FBI is a bad actor, of course.
00:34:21.000I know lots of FBI agents who are wonderful people, but there were key people in key places who were bad actors.
00:34:27.000Okay, James Comey is now under investigation for mishandling classified information, according to Michael Horowitz.
00:34:32.000He's specifically under investigation for his handling of memos he wrote about his interactions with President Trump while he was FBI director.
00:34:37.000You remember that James Comey leaked out all sorts of information to his good friend, a former FBI agent as well,
00:34:44.000Chuck Grassley said Comey said he did not expect a report on his handling of classified information because, quote, that's frivolous.
00:34:49.000I don't happen to think that's frivolous.
00:34:51.000And then he said, question number one, Mr. Horowitz, are you investigating the handling of his memo?
00:34:55.000And does that include the classification issues?
00:34:57.000And should Mr. Comey expect a report when it is complete?
00:35:01.000Okay, so James Comey is now under investigation as well.
00:35:16.000Now, all of this is not to suggest there was some giant conspiracy happening inside the FBI.
00:35:20.000What it is to suggest is that there was basically an informal group of people who all thought the same way, and when you're in a bubble with a lot of authority, bad things can really happen.
00:35:29.000You see this on college campuses a lot, with professors who all agree with one another.
00:35:34.000It's when there's media bias against President Trump.
00:35:36.000It's not that everybody in the media are getting together and deciding, let's go after President Trump today.
00:35:41.000It's that there is a groupthink that happens in the media because everybody in the media shares the same political perspective.
00:35:46.000And they understand the social expectation, which is you're going to be a lot harder on President Trump than you were on President Obama.
00:35:52.000Well, the same thing is true inside the FBI.
00:35:54.000When you have top officials at the FBI who have spent eight years working with the Obama administration, very warm with the Obama administration, very friendly with the Obama administration,
00:36:02.000When you have people there, at the top, who believe that it is their use of authority that stands between America and the darkness of Trump.
00:36:09.000Why are you so surprised when something bad happens?
00:36:12.000This is sort of what happened with the IRS under President Obama.
00:36:14.000When the IRS began targeting conservative nonprofits, and I know because I know two, I personally know at least two 501c3s that were targeted by the IRS under Obama.
00:36:23.000When all that happened, it wasn't that Obama had to call down to Lois Lerner and say, hey, I need you to shut down those 501c3s from the conservative side of the aisle.
00:36:30.000It was there was an expectation at the highest levels of the IRS that they were going to work hand-in-glove with the Obama administration.
00:36:36.000You can certainly see the flavor of that happening in these Peter Strzok texts.
00:36:40.000And the texts of four other FBI agents, by the way.
00:37:16.000This is what the IRS did on the 501c3 issue.
00:37:19.000Just because he didn't plan it doesn't mean that there wasn't a basically covert op happening, or essentially that there wasn't an informal conglomeration of people working together toward a common goal, even if it was unstated what that common goal would be.
00:37:40.000We have a booming economy, a thriving economy, and the President of the United States is gradually escalating a tariff war with a bunch of trade partners.
00:37:47.000Now, I'm not against the idea of tariffing China.
00:37:50.000I'm not against the idea of putting economic pressure on China for humanitarian reasons and for security reasons.
00:37:54.000I think that China as a world power... I'm not...
00:37:57.000In fact convinced that Nixon opening China was something great for the world.
00:38:00.000I think there's a strong case to be made that we should have continued to isolate China and then maybe it would have collapsed in on itself just like the Soviet Union did if we had been willing to actually go all the way.
00:38:08.000Nixon was not willing to go all the way.
00:38:09.000He opens China and instead China continues to be a global threat and a regional threat particularly.
00:38:16.000A trade war with China not out of a sense of national security, but out of a sense that he likes trade wars.
00:38:21.000So according to the Washington Post, President Trump threatened Monday to levy tariffs on nearly all of China's products shipped to the United States unless Beijing agrees to a host of sweeping trade concessions, a dramatic escalation that would enlist American consumers in the brewing U.S.-China commercial conflict.
00:38:35.000In a statement, Trump said he had ordered his chief negotiator, U.S.
00:38:38.000Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer, to drop a list of $200 billion in Chinese products that will be hit with tariffs of 10% if China refuses his demand to narrow the yawning U.S.
00:38:47.000trade deficit and change its industrial policies.
00:38:50.000Now, this is why you know this is stupid policy.
00:38:52.000If the president actually wanted to tackle something meaningful, what he should have said is, we're going to levy these tariffs unless you stop the violation of our intellectual property.
00:39:02.000We are going to tariff you unless you actually liberalize your regime, for example, or stop supporting North Korea so much, right?
00:39:08.000These would all be legitimate reasons.
00:39:09.000But if you are tariffing a country because you have a trade imbalance with that country, as I've explained a thousand times, that's just stupid policy.
00:39:16.000This is like you saying that you have a trade deficit with your local grocery store, so you are therefore going to shop at a different grocery store that is more expensive, costing you more money.
00:39:25.000Well, then you'll have a trade deficit with that grocery store, too.
00:40:00.000There are countries that have trade surpluses and that are garbage.
00:40:03.000There are countries with trade deficits, like the United States, that are wonderful.
00:40:06.000And again, every dollar that goes over to China has to be re-spent on American products.
00:40:10.000The big problem has been that China has been re-spending it on American bonds.
00:40:12.000And they've been basically holding up the value of our dollar.
00:40:15.000If they decide to retaliate, they theoretically could undercut the price of our bonds by simply selling our bonds on the open market, thereby tanking the dollar and hurting the American economy.
00:40:23.000Tariffs are a tax on American citizens.
00:40:26.000You better have a good reason to tax American citizens.
00:40:28.000If you're going to tax American citizens because you need to crack down in war-like fashion on somebody else, well then, make the case that that war-like fashion has to be done.
00:40:37.000But if you're doing so because you want to strengthen America's trade deficit, trade imbalance,
00:40:42.000So, none of the tariffs announced on Monday would take effect until industries and consumers have a chance to make their views known in a 60-day public comment period.
00:40:50.000This is a threat the Chinese can't match, said Jeff Moon, a former U.S.
00:40:53.000I see this as a major growl to get the Chinese to take his threats seriously.
00:40:57.000Rick Helfenbein, who's president of the American Apparel and Footwear Association, called the president's decision to up the ante, quote, hollow, vindictive, and reckless, said it would endanger the $130 billion in American exports to China.
00:41:09.000Again, I don't think this is good policy.
00:41:10.000I think there are ways that tariffs can be good policy.
00:41:12.000This does not look like a good policy, particularly because the White House has already attempted to reinstate legal relations with the Chinese telecom giant ZTE.
00:41:24.000ZTE has put actual American security at risk.
00:41:27.000ZTE products pose a national security risk, according to Congress, and could be used by the Chinese government to spy on the United States.
00:41:32.000At the same time, Trump is pushing the idea of tariffs.
00:41:35.000He's also trying to help out ZTE, which is a Chinese government
00:41:43.000The President of the United States needs to get his agenda straight on trade because he has a booming economy.
00:41:48.000There's no reason for him to undercut that booming economy with foolish policy when it comes to free markets.
00:41:55.000Okay, so time for some things I like, then things I hate, and then we will deconstruct the culture a little bit today because it is a Tuesday.
00:42:02.000So I just, this ad is just spectacular.
00:42:04.000So Richard Painter is a former George W. Bush ethics lawyer.
00:42:07.000He's now a Democrat, he's up in Minnesota, and he has cut
00:42:10.000I don't know what's going on with the Democrats and their ads this election cycle, but we've already seen a Democratic ad in which a guy pepper sprayed himself in the face.
00:42:18.000We've already seen a Democratic ad from Maryland in which a gay guy kissed his husband to show Trump to own the cons or something.
00:42:25.000And now Richard Painter cuts what has to be the most bizarre ad of the election cycle in which he stands literally in front of a flaming dumpster and explains how he is going to stop the dumpster fire.
00:42:36.000Some people see a dumpster fire and do nothing but watch the spectacle.
00:42:41.000Some are too scared to face the danger, or they think it will benefit them if they just let it keep on burning.
00:42:49.000Others shrug and say, oh, all this talk of a dumpster fire, it's just fake news.
00:42:56.000There is an inferno raging in Washington.
00:42:59.000But here in the land of 10,000 lakes, we know how to put out a fire.
00:43:21.000Also, Richard Painter, if you're going to shrug in front of the camera, as someone who is not natural on camera, let me just say, even I can do a better fake shrug than that.
00:43:30.000That is really spectacular stuff from Richard Painter.
00:45:50.000Everybody in the room believes F Trump.
00:45:52.000Chris Pratt goes in front of a room of Hollywood people who are gonna go after this and go smoke weed and do cocaine and nail a hooker, right?
00:45:59.000And he's standing up there going that, and he's up there saying that God is real, you should cultivate your prayer, and you're a flawed human being so you should seek grace in God.
00:48:09.000From my perspective of knowing nothing about pop culture, and I tried to explain to you what it is that is being purveyed in the pop cultural sphere, because the fact is more people know who Beyonce is than know who any random congressperson, senator, or governor is.
00:48:22.000So, she has now cut a music video with her husband.
00:49:28.000It's just the most famous stuff at the Louvre is Western art because, in my humble opinion, Western art was the culmination of Western civilization.
00:49:33.000And Western civilization is the culmination of all civilization, in my opinion.
00:50:20.000When you watch a movie that has to do with people who are nothing like you, you feel something about Star Wars, right?
00:50:25.000Star Wars is in a universe far, far away with people who are nothing like you, but you feel something about it because there is something unique to every human experience that also happens to be universal to all human experience.
00:50:34.000This is why great art is extraordinarily particular.
00:50:44.000That's why I don't like a lot of modern literature that I think draws broad generalities.
00:50:47.000Great art is extraordinarily particular because you identify with other people the more particular we are about those people.
00:50:54.000If I just say to you, there's a guy who just died in Zimbabwe, you're not gonna feel anything.
00:50:57.000But if I describe that guy to you, if I describe his entire life to you, if I describe his family to you, you feel more because I've now particularized the subject.
00:51:04.000Okay, so of course, if you have, so the idea that it can't be a universal piece of art because it focuses on a white subject is simply idiotic.
00:51:13.000But the Rolling Stone says this is just a great piece of art, this Beyonce-Jay-Z video.
00:51:18.000Beyonce and Jay-Z set about interjecting blackness into a space that has never placed much value on it, claiming one of the centerpieces of European culture with gleeful defiance.
00:51:26.000They frequently film themselves moving in opposition to the frozen stillness of painting by Jacques-Louis David.
00:51:30.000David, a French neoclassical artist whose works like The Oath of Horatii and Madame Recamier invoke the Greco-Roman tradition.
00:51:37.000Much of the potency of the ape bleep video comes from the contrast drawn between the white art on the walls and the black women on the gallery floor.
00:51:45.000And now we're supposed to believe that the art being created by Beyonce and Jay-Z is actually better than these great works of classic Western art.
00:52:11.000I'm sure that Beyonce is victorious over Venus de Milo.
00:52:14.000A line of her dancers sway back and forth in the foreground while another white marble statue, the winged victory of Samothrace, looms inertly behind them.
00:53:09.000Okay, so now I actually have to show you some of this video and I'm gonna read you some of the lyrics because this is the art that Rolling Stone says upstages the Venus de Milo and the Mona Lisa and the great canon of Western civilization.
00:55:11.000If this this video will last the test of time, this video, 1000 years from now, when people have forgotten about Beethoven, when they have forgotten about
00:55:19.000The Mona Lisa, when they have forgotten about Da Vinci, when they have forgotten about the great works of art, when they've forgotten about Rembrandt, when they've forgotten about all these people, the one thing they will remember is, give me my check, pay some respect on my check, or pay me in equity.