The impeachment trial is almost ready to begin in the Senate, the Democratic race remains wide open, and the Women's March falls apart. Ben Shapiro explains why the Democrats need more witnesses and evidence to make their case against President Trump. The New York Times admits that it does not have enough evidence to impeach the President. Meanwhile, the White House continues to refuse to cooperate with the investigation, and Democrats are turning to the Republican-led House of Representatives for more testimony and documents to bolster their case. Plus, the gun control protests in Virginia continue to be maligned by the media, and there's still time to catch up on what's happening this weekend in the world of politics and pop culture. All that and much more on this episode of The Ben Shapiro Show with Ben Shapiro! Subscribe to the show on Apple Podcasts! Subscribe on iTunes Learn more about your ad choices. Rate, review, and subscribe to our other podcast episodes on The FiveThirtyEight.org and become a supporter of our new show Assassinations on Assassinations: True Crime and the Deep State. Subscribe today using the promo code CRIMINALS at checkout to receive $5 and receive $10 off your first purchase when you sign up for our 5-day VIP membership trial! If you like the show, consider pledging $5 or more! You'll get 10% off the first month, and we'll get 20% off for the next month, plus an ad discount when you become a patron! when you shop using promo code CREATE FREE! at CRIMES CRIMICS at checkout. and get 5 stars and get a FREE PRIVATE PRODUCREEDIBLE PROMOLLYTER at checkout, they'll get $5, and get VIP access to our VIP PROMOTION, and a FREE FASTEST PRIVACY OFFER AND VIP PRIVATION AND VIP SUPPORTING THE PODCAST PRODCAST, AND 7 DAY OFF THE FIRST MONTH TO BUY VIPREALERPRISE AND VIP REVIEW AND SUPPORT VIPREVIEW AND PATREON THE FUTURE PROMETORIAL SUPPORTING VIP SUPPORTED INSPONSORION AND VIP FACEBOOK GROUP AND APPEARANCE ONLY, AND A FRIENDS ARE PRICING A VOTING INCLUOR? CHECK OUT THE SHOW IS A MONTH GET A PRACTICALLY INCLUSION AND PATRIOTIC PRODONE PROMOTE $5 AND FREE PROGRAM AND PATRONE PROOF AND VIPRELLA?
00:00:09.000The Ben Shapiro Show is sponsored by ExpressVPN.
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00:00:20.000Well, I hope you got your rest this weekend because there is a lot of stuff that is happening this week.
00:00:25.000A little bit later on in the show, we'll get to these gun rights protests in Virginia being maligned by the media.
00:00:29.000We'll get to the women's march, but we begin with your impeachment update.
00:00:33.000So the New York Times basically admitting at this point that the Democrats do not have enough material to impeach.
00:00:38.000Report from the New York Times today, Democrats seek more testimony and evidence for impeachment trial.
00:00:43.000Which sort of requires us to ask the question, why would they need more testimony and evidence, given the fact that I was informed they had great testimony and great evidence.
00:00:54.000I was informed that they had an open and shut case.
00:00:56.000So why do they need more testimony and evidence?
00:00:58.000I mean, they gravely and soberly and seriously and somberly announced the impeachment, and then they soberly, seriously, sadly walked over the impeachment charges.
00:01:07.000From the House to the Senate, and I was informed that this thing was a done deal, that basically they had all the evidence they needed.
00:01:13.000Well, now the New York Times is reporting, with President Trump's impeachment trial getting underway, Democrats are intensifying their demands for more testimony and documents that could add to the already voluminous evidence against him and bolster their case by shedding new light on several key questions.
00:01:27.000Now, as I mentioned last week, this would be about the time where you should have a complete case.
00:01:31.000You can call additional witnesses, of course.
00:01:33.000The Senate can do its own investigation.
00:01:36.000But the fact that Democrats are now relying on the Senate Republicans to do so demonstrates a giant failure on their own part to actually do their research, to wait for the proper witnesses.
00:01:48.000The New York Times says, despite the White House strategy of blocking testimony from top officials and rejecting demands for documents, the Senate will have in front of it various accounts of how Mr. Trump eagerly sought to persuade Ukraine's new president You want to know what the Democrats thought they had?
00:02:00.000matters that could benefit him in his reelection campaign.
00:02:02.000Those matters are dealings in Ukraine involving former Vice President Joe Biden and his son Hunter Biden and purported Ukrainian meddling in the American 2016 presidential election.
00:02:10.000Now, notice how The New York Times is already morphing the charge.
00:02:13.000Originally, you want to know what the Democrats thought they had?
00:02:16.000Go back to Adam Schiff's silly fake reading of President Trump's phone call with Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky.
00:02:23.000If you actually go back and you listen to what Schiff said, what Schiff said is that Trump had called up Zelensky and then he had said, I want you to make up information about Joe Biden.
00:02:31.000And in return, we want our military aid, right?
00:02:34.000We'll give you the military aid as long as you give us some fake information about Joe Biden, right?
00:02:42.000But they've not proved any of the elements of that, and so instead they have now broadened this out.
00:02:47.000So the way the New York Times is describing the charges now is that Trump pursued investigations into two matters that could benefit him in his reelection campaign.
00:02:54.000Okay, well again, that standard is too vague, as I have been saying since the very beginning.
00:03:01.000For some sort of bad action in a foreign country is doing something that theoretically could benefit you in a re-election campaign.
00:03:09.000Welcome to foreign policy, where nearly every president does something that could benefit them in their re-election campaign.
00:03:14.000The question is whether you violated the law or whether you engaged in some sort of high-level corruption.
00:03:19.000According to the New York Times, in part because of the White House's decision not to cooperate, the record of actions by Mr. Trump and his underlings is riddled with gaps.
00:03:26.000That is the New York Times description phrase, riddled with gaps.
00:03:30.000And new evidence has been surfacing at the 11th hour.
00:03:32.000No, there's not been any new evidence surfacing.
00:03:34.000You have the testimony of Some kook named Lev Parnas, who was, according to the U.S.
00:03:39.000DOJ, working for Ukrainian oligarch and trying to manipulate events so that the U.S.
00:03:43.000ambassador to Ukraine, Marie Yovanovitch, would be fired, and then he's been going around on national TV basically lying about it to the cheers of the media.
00:03:51.000According to the New York Times, testimony from Mr. Trump's senior advisors could illuminate how overt the president's efforts were, though it is unclear if that would persuade any Republican senators to abandon their defense of the president.
00:04:00.000The bias in the media is it's all fake guys.
00:04:04.000On Sunday, Representative Adam Schiff, the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee and the lead House impeachment manager, said he was concerned that the CIA and National Security Agency were withholding information about Ukraine out of fear of angering the president.
00:04:15.000Well, the president is the head of the executive branch.
00:04:18.000The CIA and the National Security Agency do not actually work for Adam Schiff.
00:04:22.000Schiff said, the NSA in particular is withholding what are potentially relevant documents to our oversight responsibilities on Ukraine, but also withholding documents potentially relevant that the senators might want to see during the trial.
00:04:31.000Okay, well, you could subpoena the documents and then you could wait for it to be adjudicated by a court and then they have to turn it over.
00:04:38.000Instead, they decided to rush forward with all of this.
00:04:40.000Senator John Cornyn of Texas said, This to me seems to undermine or indicate that they are getting cold feet or have a lack of confidence in what they've done so far.
00:04:47.000And that, of course, is exactly correct.
00:04:50.000Now, President Trump, for his part, has had a couple of his lawyers in this matter, Jay Sekulow and Pat Cipollone.
00:04:55.000He counseled to the president, one to the White House, one to the president personally.
00:04:59.000Sekulow is for the president personally.
00:05:02.000They have issued only a seven page response to the articles of impeachment.
00:05:07.000So the articles of impeachment are like a hundred pages.
00:05:09.000Most of it is filled with stuff that we already know.
00:05:12.000We've gone through most of it here on the show.
00:05:14.000Trump is like, this thing does not even meet basic standards of evidentiary scrutiny.
00:05:18.000And so they issued what effectively is a seven page rebuttal.
00:05:22.000And it's just a harsh letter, effectively.
00:05:24.000The letter says, the articles of impeachment submitted by House Democrats are a dangerous attack on the right of the American people to freely choose their president.
00:05:30.000This is a brazen and unlawful attempt to overturn the results of the 2016 election and interfere with the 2020 election, now just months away.
00:05:38.000The highly partisan and reckless obsession with impeaching the president began the day he was inaugurated and continues to this day.
00:05:43.000The articles of impeachment are constitutionally invalid on their face.
00:05:47.000They failed to allege any crime or violation of law whatsoever, let alone high crimes and misdemeanors as required by the Constitution.
00:05:53.000They are the result of a lawless process that violated basic due process and fundamental fairness.
00:05:57.000Nothing in these articles could permit even beginning to consider removing a duly elected president or warrant nullifying an election and subverting the will of the American people.
00:06:05.000And then the letter goes on this way that the process violates all precedent and that the articles of impeachment are in front of the Constitution.
00:06:35.000Partisans were running the thing, but that is not any surprise.
00:06:38.000At this point, Cipollone and Sekulow go through the charges.
00:06:43.000They say the first article, the article with regard to abuse of power, fails on its face to state an impeachable offense.
00:06:49.000It alleges no crime at all, let alone high crimes and misdemeanors.
00:06:51.000In fact, it alleges no violation of law.
00:06:53.000House Democrats' abuse of power claim would do lasting damage to the separation of powers under the Constitution.
00:06:58.000And they say that Trump has never in any way abused the powers of the presidency.
00:07:02.000And they say that it was a perfect phone call and all the rest of President Trump's defense.
00:07:06.000And then they say the second article of impeachment also fails to state an impeachable offense.
00:07:10.000This would be the one about obstruction of Congress.
00:07:12.000They say, to the contrary, the president's assertion of legitimate executive branch confidentiality interests grounded in separation of powers cannot constitute obstruction of Congress.
00:07:19.000Now, they are correct that the articles of impeachment do not allege a crime.
00:07:25.000I mean, the House, the Senate, they can impeach and convict for any reason whatsoever.
00:07:29.000You don't have to have a criminal offense, but Speaking of precedent, has there ever been an impeachment effort that was not based on some violation of law?
00:07:51.000First, Let us talk about how you can save money quickly and easily, and you can do it for free.
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00:08:59.000Okay, President Trump has formed His legal team includes a couple of heavy hitters in terms of big names.
00:09:05.000Alan Dershowitz, who's a guest on the show last week, and of course, longtime famous lawyer who has been involved in trials ranging from the OJ trial to the trial Of a man who is accused of killing his wife, and it wasn't true, or at least it didn't seem to be true.
00:09:22.000Dershowitz has been involved in a lot of very famous cases, and so bringing him aboard sort of gives this whole thing the Hollywood appeal.
00:09:29.000Kenneth Starr has also joined on, and people are going nuts over this.
00:09:32.000How could Kenneth Starr, the man who went after Bill Clinton, now be defending Donald Trump?
00:09:37.000Well, because in the Bill Clinton trial, he actually committed perjury.
00:09:40.000Yes, Kenneth Starr did a full investigation on uncovered crimes.
00:09:42.000Here, no crimes have actually been uncovered, which is why the articles of impeachment don't include any crimes.
00:09:46.000Nonetheless, George Conway, who has become famous simply by virtue of the fact that his last name is Conway and his wife is famous, and now we are supposed to take his legal analysis even more seriously than we would if you were just some rando lawyer in the Washington D.C.
00:09:58.000area, he has a piece in the Washington Post today that says, This is what happens when you don't pay your legal bills.
00:10:03.000President Trump, whose businesses, and now campaign, Have left a long trail of unpaid bills behind them, has never discriminated when it comes to stiffing people who work for him.
00:10:10.000That includes lawyers, which is part of the reason he found the need to make some curious last-minute tweaks to his team, announcing the addition of the legal odd couple Alan Dershowitz and Kenneth Starr.
00:10:19.000The president has consistently encountered difficulty in hiring good lawyers to defend him.
00:10:23.000In 2017, after Robert Mueller became special counsel, Trump couldn't find a high-end law firm that would take him as a client.
00:10:30.000His reputation for non-payment preceded him.
00:10:32.000Now he's trying to make up an excuse, Conway, for why a big firm wouldn't take on Trump.
00:10:35.000The answer is a big firm wouldn't take on Trump because there are too many lawyers who don't like Trump and they're afraid of the blowback they'd get from their other clients.
00:10:41.000Right, if Davis Polk Wright Tremaine had picked up Trump as a client, they would get enormous blowback from the partners, from the other associates.
00:10:47.000They don't care about the associates, but certainly from their clientele.
00:10:51.000This is... Okay, here's the real reason, and Conway buries it.
00:10:54.000Of course, being cheap wasn't the only reason Trump struck out among the nation's legal elite.
00:10:58.000There was the fact that he would be an erratic client who'd never take reasonable direction.
00:11:01.000Firms also understood that taking on Trump would kill their recruiting efforts.
00:11:07.000That left Trump to be personally defended in the Mueller investigation by a random patchwork of counsel, including Jay Sekulow, a lawyer specializing in religious liberty cases, and John Dowd, a Washington solo practitioner who, according to Bob Woodward, viewed Trump as an effing liar.
00:11:21.000And then Trump had the assistance of Rudy Giuliani.
00:11:24.000Wow, so that means that Clinton was innocent because he could get big-name lawyers to defend him from well-established firms.
00:11:32.000with heavy hitter Bob Bennett's handle, the Paula Jones case, and the elite Washington defense from Williams and Connolly, led by the brilliant David...
00:11:38.000Wow, so that means that Clinton was innocent because he could get big-name lawyers to defend him from well-established firms.
00:11:44.000Either that or it meant he was a Democrat.
00:11:45.000But according to George Conway, it's very bad that Dershowitz and Starr are now defending the president.
00:11:51.000He says, Dershowitz may be a genius in some ways, but he's not necessarily the advocate you want on your side.
00:11:55.000Judges have told me they find him condescending in manner and tone.
00:12:05.000As his former Harvard colleague, Professor Lawrence Tribe has put it, Dershowitz revels in taking positions that ultimately are not just controversial, but pretty close to indefensible.
00:12:13.000This would be the same Lawrence Tribe who spent the last several years absolutely losing his mind and just tweeting garbage that makes no sense because he has Trump derangement syndrome like terminal Trump derangement syndrome.
00:12:23.000George Conway is also very upset with Kenneth Starr.
00:12:25.000He says, I know and like Starr, but I can't comprehend what he's doing here.
00:12:28.000He's best known as the independent counsel whose investigation led to the impeachment of Clinton.
00:12:32.000That's hardly helpful for Trump because Clinton was a piker compared with Trump.
00:12:36.000Or alternatively, it's actually good for Trump because Ken Starr, who knows what an impeachable offense looks like, is saying this is not an impeachable offense.
00:12:59.000Dershowitz fully understands that you can impeach for any reason.
00:13:02.000He is just saying that in his opinion and in the opinion of most senators, if you are going to impeach somebody, you need to allege a crime.
00:13:07.000Here's Alan Dershowitz explaining that just saying abuse of power does not make does not make activity impeachable.
00:13:13.000In order for a president to be impeached, and Johnson was impeached on charges that didn't include criminal conduct, he argued successfully to the Senate that criminal-like conduct is required.
00:13:40.000He's pointing out a very obvious truth, which is, if you're going to try to impeach a president, typically you should actually register some sort of criminal activity, like an actual crime.
00:13:49.000Now, last week, they tried to suggest that Trump had violated the law because the Government Accountability Office suggested that his administration had not given a special message to Congress about why they had delayed aid to Ukraine.
00:14:00.000But as I mentioned last week, that same statute has a remedy in the statute for what is supposed to happen, and none of it actually involves the impeachment of the President of the United States.
00:14:08.000Normally impeachment is reserved for situations in which the President commits an actual crime that would send him to jail, like perjury.
00:14:14.000And then, because you cannot actually charge a President, With a criminal offense, then you have to impeach him in order so that you can free up that actual prosecution because then you have basically a constitutional impasse.
00:14:25.000The same is not true when the president just violates the law and there's an actual remedy in the law for when the president or the executive branch violate the law, which is exactly what happened in this government accountability office report.
00:14:36.000In just a second, we'll get to more of Alan Dershowitz.
00:14:38.000Then we'll get to the Democrats who are being very sober and serious and somber and fist bumping each other on Friday nights.
00:14:44.000Seriously, on national TV, fist bumping each other.
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00:16:39.000The president's brief filed last night says very clearly the president did nothing wrong and you're saying you're not willing to endorse that statement.
00:16:44.000I did not read that brief or sign that brief.
00:16:49.000My mandate is to present the constitutional argument.
00:16:53.000And if the constitutional argument succeeds, we don't reach that issue because you can't charge a president with impeachable conduct if it doesn't fit within the criteria for the constitution.
00:17:04.000So he is right about all of this, but the Democrats are already ecstatic because they got what they wanted, right?
00:17:08.000Nancy Pelosi got up last week and she said, he's always impeached for all time.
00:17:13.000She was very solemn and sober and sad.
00:17:19.000When a bunch of House Democrats who hate Trump and wanted him impeached on day one were impeaching the president and we were told that it was very solemn and sad and sober.
00:17:44.000Thank you so much for waiting till we got back on the air before you started the impeachment.
00:17:48.000Yeah, and she's happy and he's happy and everybody's happy because the president's impeached and it's so solemn and so... Remember that time when she said it was super sober and she was saving the Constitution?
00:18:02.000How do you take these folks seriously?
00:18:03.000It's nearly impossible to take these folks seriously.
00:18:05.000Then you have Adam Schiff, who's trotting out there, suggesting that he's out there to protect the Constitution after several years of lying about having secret information that would tie Trump to Russia in such a way that Trump would be impeached over the Mueller report.
00:18:17.000And so Adam Schiff just moved right on to Ukraine.
00:18:20.000And then he goes on national TV and he suggests that when Dershowitz says abuse of power is not impeachable, no, abuse of power would have appalled the founders.
00:18:28.000Tell me more about appalling the founders, dude who literally spends his days camped out outside the CNN tent.
00:18:35.000Abuse of power is at the center of what the framers intended an impeachable offense to be.
00:18:42.000The logic of that absurdist position that's being now adopted by the president is he could give away the state of Alaska.
00:18:48.000He could withhold execution of sanctions on Russia for interfering in the last election.
00:18:54.000to induce or coerce Russia to interfere in the next one.
00:18:58.000That would have appalled, the mere idea of this would have appalled the founders who were worried about exactly that kind of solicitation of foreign interference in an election for a personal benefit. - There's nothing I like more than a man who lied about Trump and Russia going on TV and maintaining that he didn't lie about Trump and Russia and that Trump and Russia were actually the mere idea of this would have appalled the founders who were worried about exactly that kind of solicitation of foreign interference in an election for a personal benefit. - There's Very, very trustworthy, folks.
00:19:23.000Meanwhile, the Democrats are trying to figure out exactly how they're going to thread this whole witness needle in the impeachment, because here's the problem.
00:19:29.000If they call somebody like Lev Parnas, if they try to bring in a witness like Lev Parnas, who, as we discussed last week, is this Ukrainian Operator, or this American operator in Ukraine who is dealing on behalf of the Ukrainian oligarch and violating law in the process, and then under indictment for falsifying documents and lying to the federal government, he's going around on the media and blaming Trump for all of his mis-action, for all of his malfeasance.
00:19:54.000If Democrats call that guy, it's pretty obvious that Hunter Biden is also going to be called, and that ain't going to go well for Hunter Biden, because it turns out that Hunter Biden is utterly unqualified for anything except being the neighborhood janitor, and he's been using his daddy's last name to fly around the world picking up bags of cash.
00:20:06.000Okay, so Sherrod Brown, the senator from Ohio, he was on CNN over the weekend suggesting that Parnas should testify, but Hunter Biden is not relevant.
00:20:16.000So somehow, Lev Parnas is deeply relevant, but Hunter Biden, whose activity in Ukraine lies at the very center of President Trump asking the Ukrainians to investigate Hunter Biden.
00:20:25.000That would be irrelevant, according to Sherrod Brown.
00:21:22.000I understand both sides get to call witnesses.
00:21:25.000I'm not sure that a lot of Republicans think.
00:21:27.000I mean, I think many Republicans think that's a distraction.
00:21:30.000By the way, Bernie Sanders is putting out notices today in advance of Iowa.
00:21:33.000He literally just put out, his campaign put out what they call the burn notice.
00:21:37.000It says that Joe Biden has a big corruption problem.
00:21:40.000So the real reason Democrats don't want Hunter Biden testifying is because it might actually show that President Trump, his suspicions were not completely unfounded, that Hunter Biden was simply serving as a bag man for himself.
00:21:50.000And using Joe Biden's last name in order to do so.
00:21:53.000Meanwhile, the same Democrats who are suggesting that we must, must, must have witnesses back in 1999 were suggesting that we should have no witnesses.
00:21:59.000Now, I think we should have as many witnesses we want.
00:22:18.000Back in 1999, one day before President Clinton was acquitted in his impeachment trial before the Senate, Chuck Schumer, who's now the Senate Minority Leader, penned a passionate letter outlining why the process had taken unfair toll on the nation, according to the New York Post.
00:22:29.000He noted that the president believed he had not crossed the line, he praised the large threshold needed to get a conviction in the Senate, and then he went on record suggesting that the whole thing had been a giant waste of time.
00:22:39.000He said it has shaken me that we stand at the brink of removing a president not because of a popular groundswell to remove him and not because of the magnitude of the wrongs he's committed, but because conditions in the late 20th century America have made it possible for a small group of people who hate Bill Clinton and hate his policies to very cleverly and very doggedly exploit the institutions of freedom that we hold dear and almost succeed in undoing him.
00:23:00.000He says, if you had asked me one year ago if people like this with such obvious political motives could use our court to play the media and tantalize the legislative branch to achieve their ends of bringing down the president, I would have said, not a chance.
00:23:10.000That doesn't happen in America, but it almost happened.
00:23:13.000And then he says, what Bill Clinton did was wrong and arrogant.
00:23:15.000We are all angered, but let's express some sympathy.
00:23:19.000And now you've got Chuck Schumer leading up the mob against Trump on this without actually advocating a crime that was actually committed.
00:23:28.000Pretty amazing stuff from Chuck Schumer, going all the way back to 1999.
00:23:33.000Meanwhile, Jerry Nadler is really objecting to Hunter Biden being called.
00:23:38.000He, of course, is the head of the House Judiciary Committee.
00:23:40.000So, Jerry Nadler, head of the House Judiciary Committee, very much in favor of calling people like Lev Parnas, who he suggests he would like to see called.
00:23:46.000Now he says that we should not even request Hunter Biden testify because that is doing Trump's dirty work.
00:23:52.000This whole controversy about whether there should be witnesses is really a question of, does the Senate want to have a fair trial, or are they part of the cover-up of the President?
00:24:01.000Any Republican senator who says there should be no witnesses, or even that witnesses should be negotiated, is part of the cover-up.
00:24:09.000Did the president, as the evidence shows that he did, betray his country by conspiring with a foreign country to try to rig the election?
00:24:19.000Hunter Biden has nothing to say about that.
00:24:21.000Their asking for Hunter Biden is just more of a smear of Hunter Biden that the president is trying to get the Ukraine to do.
00:24:27.000So yes, witnesses, but not those witnesses, guys.
00:24:39.000So no on Hunter Biden, but yes on Lev Parnas, who is currently under indictment for lying to the federal government and falsifying documents.
00:24:45.000It is the fact with many of the people surrounding the president that they end up indicted.
00:24:49.000These are the people that the president has chosen to work with.
00:24:53.000People like Michael Cohen, like Lev Parnas, like so many others, Paul Manafort, and these are people that do have information about the president's misconduct.
00:25:02.000But right now, George, we don't know what witnesses will be allowed, and even if we'll be allowed witnesses, we can't really make a determination on which witnesses we'll call in the absence of knowing whether the Senate will allow any at all.
00:25:15.000So again, Lev Parnas maybe, but Hunter Biden really not.
00:25:19.000Chris Wallace went after Hakeem Jeffries, the Democrat congressperson from New York over the weekend on Fox News.
00:25:24.000He said, listen, you guys keep talking about how you want more witnesses and more witnesses and more witnesses, and then you say you have an open and shut case.
00:25:32.000Well, we proceeded expeditiously because, you know, Trump's abuse of power, his pressuring of a foreign government, in this instance, for his own personal political gain, related to an urgent matter of national security.
00:25:43.000You know, the notion of withholding $391 million that was allocated on a bipartisan basis... But again, you can't have it both ways, Congressman.
00:25:51.000You say it was an urgent matter, it was a threat, and then Nancy Pelosi waited a month to even hand over the articles of impeachment.
00:25:58.000Yeah, I'm glad you raised that, because there's two parts to this process.
00:26:02.000I'm glad you raised that, but I'm not really that glad you raised that, Chris Wallace, because this whole thing is awkward.
00:26:07.000So how long is this whole thing going to take?
00:26:08.000According to Ted Cruz, it could take six to eight weeks.
00:26:10.000In reality, it's only going to take a couple of weeks.
00:26:12.000I do not think this is going to drag out for more than a month.
00:26:15.000I think by the time we are midway into the Democratic primaries, this thing will be over.
00:26:18.000Speaking of which, the 2020 Democratic presidential race continues apace.
00:26:23.000President Trump has a very simple case to make.
00:26:27.000Which is that the Democrats are too far left to be trusted with power, especially given a strong economy.
00:26:32.000The Democrats have pledged to take economic measures that will absolutely stop the longest, now longest recovery in the history of the United States, and a recovery that has picked up pace under President Trump.
00:26:41.000It was very slow under Barack Obama, and it picked up pace under President Trump, including increases in wages at the low end of the income spectrum.
00:26:47.000Here's President Trump going after the Democrats.
00:26:51.000The far left, they want to massively raise your taxes, crush your Your businesses with regulations take away your health care and send bureaucrats to interfere with your property and second-guess every decision that you make.
00:27:06.000The radical left in Washington wants to demolish these gains and they frankly want to destroy your way of life.
00:27:33.000That split was reflected by the editorial page of the New York Times, which hilariously today issued their endorsement in the Democratic primaries.
00:28:00.000What actually happened here is they desperately wanted to endorse Elizabeth Warren, but they also recognized that they would have been viewed as hacks on behalf of Elizabeth Warren, which they are, and so they decided to also endorse a person who has no shot at winning the primaries, Amy Klobuchar, so they could cover their ass.
00:28:13.000In the editorial board room, it was...
00:28:16.000We could endorse Elizabeth Warren, but we've been busy kissing her ass for the last year, and it's going to look kind of ridiculous if we now endorse her.
00:28:24.000So let's endorse somebody who's not like an actual mainstream competitor.
00:28:28.000We'll endorse somebody who looks a little bit more moderate, and we can say that it's all about female power, and then we'll endorse Amy Klobuchar.
00:28:34.000Now all I can envision is the editors of the New York Times breaking a pool cue, tossing it between Amy Klobuchar and Elizabeth Warren, saying, we're having tryouts.
00:28:42.000But with that said, it's pretty hysterical.
00:28:45.000And the editorial itself is really, really funny.
00:28:47.000It's funny because what they think of as qualities of these candidates are just bizarre.
00:28:52.000By the way, the New York Breaking News, the New York Times has now suggested that both the San Francisco 49ers and the Kansas City Chiefs will win the next Super Bowl.
00:29:00.000According to the New York Times, American voters must choose between three sharply divergent visions of the future.
00:29:06.000The incumbent President Donald Trump is clear about where he is guiding the Republican.
00:29:22.000Is it possible that maybe the New York Times is sort of pigeonholing what they think Trump voters are into a box?
00:29:28.000And they say, in America, first unilateralism abroad, brazen corruption, escalating culture wars, a judiciary stacked with ideologues, and the veneration of a mythological past where the hierarchy in American society was defined and unchallenged.
00:29:40.000By the way, when we speak about mythological histories, the New York Times' mythological history in the 1619 Project is utterly astonishingly bad.
00:29:46.000So much so, that it was ripped by professional historians ranging from James McPherson to Gordon Wood.
00:29:51.000It takes a lot of gall to suggest that the traditional history of the United States is somehow a myth.
00:29:57.000Well, their version of the United States was that the United States was rooted in racism, white supremacy, slavery, sexism, and bigotry, and that everything in U.S.
00:30:04.000history has been an outgrowth of that, except for the times when we overthrew the principles for just one second, and then went right back to our racism and bigotry.
00:30:13.000It takes a lot of gall for people who push that agenda to suggest that history is being rewritten by Trump.
00:30:18.000They say on the Democratic side, an essential debate is underway between two visions that may define the future of the party and perhaps the nation.
00:30:24.000Some in the party view President Trump as an aberration and believe that a return to a more sensible America is possible.
00:30:29.000Then there are those who believe that President Trump was the product of political and economic systems so rotten they must be replaced.
00:30:35.000The Democratic primary contest is often portrayed as a tussle between moderates and progressives.
00:30:41.000But when we spent significant time with the leading candidates, the similarity of their platforms on fundamental issues became striking.
00:30:47.000Okay, that part is true, that a lot of these so-called moderates in the Democratic Party are actually the same as the progressives when it comes to policy.
00:30:52.000We'll get to the rest of this idiotic New York Times editorial endorsing both Amy Klobuchar and Elizabeth Warren, which is super unhelpful.
00:30:59.000Wait till you get their description of Elizabeth Warren is wonderful.
00:31:13.000You may also remember that last year, I streamed this podcast live from the March for Life in Washington, D.C., which is the biggest pro-life rally in the country, where I also gave a speech to the crowds marching for the cause.
00:31:23.000What you may not be aware of is how much grief this caused us from our political adversaries.
00:31:27.000Our advertisers were targeted by left-wing media watchdogs Several of them actually pulled their ads from our show under pressure, even though I said absolutely nothing objectionable.
00:31:37.000This wasn't the first time, nor will it likely be the last time, that we are attacked in an attempt by the left to shut down pro-life voices.
00:31:49.000They continue to do some of the most important work in this space.
00:31:52.000From raising awareness and education on the abortion issue to undercover videos that expose Planned Parenthood and other abortion clinics for horrific human rights abuses.
00:32:00.000Live action has been targeted a lot on social media.
00:32:02.000They've been banned from advertising on Twitter for their calls to defund Planned Parenthood.
00:32:06.000They've been banned from Pinterest altogether for quote spreading medical misinformation.
00:32:09.000They've seen their advertising efforts and their online distribution restricted depending on the platform.
00:32:14.000This cause is supremely important since the passing of Roe v. Wade, the creation of Roe v. Wade.
00:32:19.000Over 60 million pre-born children have been killed in the womb, 60 million kids who never had a chance to give the world their love, and countless young women harmed physically and emotionally last year.
00:32:29.000They passed the New York law allowing abortion up to birth, the Illinois law allowing partial birth abortion.
00:32:33.000This year, virtually every Democratic candidate, basically everyone except for Tulsi Gabbard, supports no restrictions on abortion, which is the most radical position threatening the right to life.
00:32:42.000That is why our DailyWire.com members are really important.
00:32:45.000Well, your membership keeps our cameras on, our microphones turned up.
00:32:48.000Also, your direct support helps us say no to advertisers who cave to left-wing ideologies.
00:32:52.000You keep us and our message from being canceled, and you help the conservative pro-life movement get louder, which is why from now until January 31st only, just for the next couple of weeks, a portion of any DailyWire.com membership purchase will be donated to live action with promo code LIVEACTION.
00:33:06.000So when you use that promo code LIVEACTION, you get our membership.
00:33:09.000We're going to donate part of that to live action.
00:33:10.000The portion will go to support awareness and education around the world on the pro-life issue.
00:33:16.000Make your pro-life voice even louder and protect the causes that you care about from the viciousness of a left wing that seeks to silence.
00:33:22.000We are the largest, fastest growing conservative podcast and radio show in the nation.
00:33:25.000So to continue with this New York Times editorial, they endorse both Amy Klobuchar and Elizabeth Warren.
00:33:36.000They say many Democratic voters are concerned first and foremost about who can beat Mr. Trump.
00:33:40.000But with a crowded field and with traditional polling in tatters, that calculation calls for a hefty dose of humility about anyone's ability to foretell what voters want.
00:33:47.000So that is the New York Times throwing its hands in the air and saying, yeah, we know Elizabeth Warren isn't super electable, but we like her.
00:33:56.000Choosing who should face off against Mr. Trump also means acknowledging that Americans are being confronted with three models for how to govern the country, not two.
00:34:02.000Democrats must decide which of their two models would be most compelling for the American people and best suited for repairing the republic.
00:34:09.000The party's large and raucous field has made having that clean debate more difficult.
00:34:12.000With all the focus on personal characteristics, age, race, experience, and a handful of the most contentious issues, voters have not benefited from a clarifying choice about the party's message in the election and the approach to governing beyond it.
00:34:23.000It was a privilege for us on the editorial board to spend more than a dozen hours talking to candidates, asking them any question that came to mind.
00:34:29.000Yet, that exercise is impossible for most Americans.
00:34:49.000They say, and then they explain why they will not endorse Sanders.
00:34:52.000They say, Senator Sanders has spent nearly four decades advocating revolutionary change for a nation whose politics often move with glacial slowness.
00:34:58.000Mr. Sanders would be 79 when he assumed office.
00:35:01.000And after an October heart attack, his health is a serious concern.
00:35:03.000Then there's how Mr. Sanders approaches politics.
00:35:06.000He boasts that compromise is anathema to him.
00:35:08.000Only his prescriptions can be the right ones, even though most are overly rigid, untested and divisive.
00:35:13.000He promises that once in office, a groundswell of support will emerge to push through his agenda.
00:35:17.000Three years into the Trump administration, we see little advantage in exchanging one over-promising, divisive figure in Washington for another.
00:35:24.000By the way, if Bernie Sanders wins the nomination, I'm going to throw that line back in their face the moment they endorse Bernie Sanders.
00:35:29.000It's good news then that Elizabeth Warren has emerged as a standard bearer for the Democratic left.
00:35:33.000Their description of Warren is just phenomenal.
00:35:44.000You know, telling stories about her time wandering the plains with the Cherokee people.
00:35:50.000Stories about how she was fired for the sin of being pregnant when all documentary evidence shows that she was actually unanimously requested to retain her job.
00:35:58.000All of her stories about her difficulties in life.
00:36:19.000Well, I guess you're not on the New York Times editorial board.
00:36:21.000She speaks elegantly of how the economic system is rigged against all but the wealthiest Americans, and of our chance to rewrite the rules of power in our country, as she put it in a speech last month.
00:36:30.000In her hands, that story has the passion of a convert, a longtime Republican from Oklahoma, and a middle-class family whose work studying economic realities left her increasingly worried about the future of the country.
00:36:40.000By the way, Her work on bankruptcy is largely bullcrap.
00:36:45.000The idea that people are on mass suffering from medical bankruptcy, it's just not true.
00:36:50.000The way that she actually classified those studies, she said, if you went bankrupt and you had a medical bill, she called that a medical bankruptcy.
00:36:56.000The word rigged, according to the New York Times, feels less bombastic than rooted in an informed assessment of what the nation needs to do to reassort its historic ideals, like fairness, generosity, and equality.
00:37:08.000And then they go on to talk about how she has so many plans.
00:37:11.000Warren accurately describes a lack of housing construction as the primary driver of the nation's housing crisis.
00:37:37.000And then they say, but we have a problem.
00:37:40.000American capitalism is responsible for its share of sins, but Ms.
00:37:44.000Warren often cast the net far too wide, placing the blame for a host of maladies from climate change to gun violence at the feet of the business community when the onus is on society as a whole.
00:37:53.000This country needs a more unifying path.
00:37:55.000Okay, and that is why we have also decided to talk about Amy Klobuchar.
00:38:25.000And they say that his current campaign approach reveals more about America's broken system than his likelihood of fixing it.
00:38:31.000And then they say that Joe Biden is prone to verbal stumbles, but it is time for him to pass the torch to a new generation of political leaders.
00:38:39.000Nothing says passing the torch to a new generation of political leaders like being 77 and passing the torch to somebody who's 70.
00:38:48.000And then they talk about Amy Klobuchar.
00:38:50.000Good news that Amy Klobuchar has emerged as a standard bearer for the Democratic Center.
00:38:54.000Her vision goes beyond the incremental.
00:38:56.000Given the polarization in Washington and beyond, the best chance to enact many progressive plans could be under a Klobuchar administration.
00:39:02.000The senator from Minnesota is the very definition of Midwestern charisma, grit, and stick-to-itiveness.
00:39:07.000Her lengthy tenure in the Senate and bipartisan credentials would make her a dealmaker, a real one, and unite her for the wings of the party and perhaps the nation.
00:39:16.000So why didn't they just endorse her outright?
00:39:19.000Well, apparently they didn't endorse her outright because she treated her staff badly.
00:39:24.000They're gonna go with the, she eats salad with a comb story to not endorse her over Elizabeth Warren.
00:39:29.000That's literally the only, and then they say, she doesn't have the polished veneer and smooth delivery that comes from a lifetime spent in the national spotlight.
00:39:35.000She has struggled to gain traction on the campaign trail, but she's really popular in Minnesota.
00:39:40.000And they basically say, well, no matter who we endorse, it's better than Trump.
00:39:56.000Or Elizabeth Warren with the knife she just removed from Bernie Sanders' back?
00:40:00.000Meanwhile, the race moves forward apace.
00:40:03.000Bernie Sanders, who a new poll shows actually in second place in Iowa.
00:40:06.000There are three new polls in Iowa, all of them showing Bernie Sanders dropping behind Joe Biden.
00:40:11.000If Joe Biden, by the way, wins Iowa, this thing is basically over before it begins.
00:40:15.000And that New York Times endorsement doesn't mean jack.
00:40:18.000And now Bernie Sanders is out there on the apology tour trying to explain to women that gender remains an obstacle for women in politics.
00:40:25.000He has to pay homage to the intersectional notion that women are greatly victimized in American politics despite the fact that Hillary Clinton was propped up as a political figure despite having no political experience running for the Senate, and then she was a horrible Secretary of State, and then she was a horrible presidential candidate twice, and we're still being told the only reason she lost is because of the Russians.
00:40:41.000Here's Bernie Sanders explaining it's rough to be a lady.
00:40:44.000Do you think that gender is still an obstacle for female politicians?
00:40:48.000Look, the answer is yes, but I think everybody has their own sets of problems.
00:41:11.000So everybody brings some negatives, if you like.
00:41:14.000Bernie has to say that part about how you're really disadvantaged if you're a layman.
00:41:17.000My favorite is the lady asking him the question, who says, is it hard to be a woman?
00:41:21.000And she's trying to telegraph him the answer.
00:41:23.000She's actually nodding as she utters the question.
00:41:26.000Look, the reason that Bernie Sanders, by the way, if he doesn't win the nomination and if he doesn't win the presidency, the reason he doesn't is because he's a crazy communist.
00:41:33.000He had John Cusack out on the road stumping for him because nothing says connection with the American people like John Cusack.
00:42:00.000So the growth of global GDP from like 1800 to 2015.
00:42:06.000It increased global GDP, not American GDP, global GDP increased by 15,700% in the previous millennia, okay, in like the last two millennia before that, increased by like 100%.
00:42:18.000And then the Enlightenment and free markets happened and boom, prosperity.
00:42:21.000But according to John Cusack, I'm going to take his word over the experience of the last couple of centuries, he explains we have 10 years to save the planet from capitalism or we're all going to die or something.
00:42:31.000We know this form of capitalism takes and takes.
00:42:36.000It takes whatever, whenever, however it wants.
00:42:41.000It'll take our labor, our spirit, our air and water, even our earth.
00:42:45.000And Bernie respects us enough to tell the truth, the hard truth.
00:42:49.000We have a 10 to 12 year window to radically transform our energy systems or climate change, predatory capitalism and the endless war economies will rob us of the right to any future at all.
00:43:02.000That is why Bernie Sanders has trouble, because in the end, Bernie Sanders is a radical.
00:43:08.000Meanwhile, you get Elizabeth Warren, who's just as radical, but the Democrats are going to pretend that she's a moderate, explaining that Trump has nominated racist, sexist, bigoted, homophobic, anti-trans judges.
00:43:19.000I think what's at the heart of it is who you ask to be a judge, who you want on your list to be a judge.
00:43:25.000And I'll tell you what the answer has been for Donald Trump, because I've seen this, guys.
00:44:12.000Whenever you have a very, very big rally, you have to worry that there are gonna be some fringe people who try to glom onto the sides of the rally, and then the media will cover those people and pretend that the rest of the rally doesn't exist.
00:44:21.000Okay, this is not like the Unite the Right rally, which is openly, openly marketed in Charlottesville as a white supremacist rally.
00:44:27.000Okay, this thing is marketed as a pro-gun rally, and by all available evidence, it is a pro-gun rally.
00:44:32.000Thousands, tens of thousands of people apparently showing up at the Virginia Capitol to protest the removal of gun rights in the state of Virginia, and doing so peacefully.
00:44:39.000They're there, like, chanting the Pledge of Allegiance, and members of the media are just lying about them.
00:44:44.000Openly lying, suggesting it's a white supremacist rally.
00:44:48.000And just because you can find a couple of white supremacists who try to infiltrate the rally because they know they'll get media coverage that way, that does not make the entire rally white supremacist any more than a couple of Antifa members infiltrating the Women's March makes it a terrorist rally.
00:45:02.000Rallies should try to do a good job of policing who shows up at the rallies, but you can't slander the entire rally because five guys in Nazi hats show up.
00:45:10.000In this case, there's not even been any evidence of that thus far, and yet the media are portraying this as a terror rally.
00:45:17.000Like Gabe Gutierrez over at NBC News tweeted out a video of people literally chanting the Pledge of Allegiance, and he tweeted, chants of, we will not comply from gun rights protesters in Richmond.
00:45:27.000They're literally chanting the Pledge of Allegiance.
00:45:32.000And that's not the only lie being told.
00:45:33.000He had a couple of other reporters suggesting that it was a terrorist rally.
00:45:38.000Saying that carrying guns openly in Virginia, which is legal, that this is somehow a violation of the Second Amendment, is not what the founders intended when it was literally what the founders intended.
00:45:47.000The coverage of the Virginia gun rights rally is astonishingly bad.
00:45:52.000So far, I know the media would love, they would love nothing better.
00:45:55.000Many of the media would love nothing better than a Charlottesville-like scenario, where a bunch of white supremacists show up and start killing people.
00:45:59.000That would be their favorite thing ever, because then it could claim that all gun rights advocates in the United States are actually vicious, violent, racist brutes.
00:46:05.000That would be their favorite thing in the world.
00:46:08.000Benny Johnson, over at TPUSA, who's there covering this thing, says, no riots, no violence, no targeting of citizens, no attacking cops, just thousands upon thousands of peaceful, law-abiding citizens gathering in Virginia's capital to protest an unconstitutional assault on their rights.
00:46:22.000And that, of course, is exactly, that's exactly right.
00:46:47.000Isabella Gomez Sarmiento reported from NPR, quote, The fourth annual Women's March descended on the streets of Washington on Saturday.
00:46:57.000Unlike the first demonstration that brought hundreds of thousands to the Capitol the day after President Trump's inauguration, the march drew just a fraction of the original turnout, as the movement has struggled with changes in leadership and questions about inclusivity.
00:48:15.000It's sad to me that short stories seem to have fallen out of fashion.
00:48:18.000And maybe somebody will bring them back at some point.
00:48:21.000I know that the magazine that Bradbury wrote for, which was called Weird Tales, I know that it's still around, although I have no idea whether it's any good or not.
00:48:27.000I'd love to see the short story brought back.
00:48:28.000Ray Bradbury's The October Country, but he has a bunch.
00:48:31.000Sound of Thunder is another short story collection.
00:48:34.000If you liked Fahrenheit 451, his short stories are of equal quality.
00:48:44.000A court A court in the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeal has now ruled that a federal prisoner who calls himself a her and wants to be transferred to a women's facility, this person appealed to the court and said, I want to be called her in all the court filings.
00:48:58.000And the court said, no, that's giving away the argument.
00:49:04.000Because now, the left would like for the court to engage in the logical inconsistency of going along with the lie that this person is a woman, but then ruling objectively on whether a woman should be placed with other women.
00:49:16.000The entire controversy in this case is over whether this person is a woman or a man.
00:49:21.000You can't just grant the premise of the lawsuit in the lawsuit itself out of sensitivity.
00:49:28.000People always get my position on transgender pronouns wrong because they wish to.
00:49:32.000I've said one million times that if you're at dinner with somebody and that person wishes to be called as a member of the opposite sex, Then I'm not going to go out of my way just to call the person a member of their biological sex, because why ruin dinner?
00:49:44.000But when we are talking about public policy, when we're talking about whether that person actually is a member of the opposite gender, no, I'm not going to go along with that.
00:49:51.000If I'm in public debate with a person who's transgender, I'm not going to grant them the premise that they are a member of the opposite sex.
00:49:56.000That's the subject of the entire debate.
00:49:58.000There's a difference between a public issue and what you say to somebody in private at dinner.
00:50:05.000Right, if my son wishes for me to call him Luke Skywalker today, which he probably does, at home, I'll probably do it.
00:50:11.000If I'm on national TV and he says, call me Luke Skywalker, I'm gonna say, no son, that's not your name, right?
00:50:15.000I mean, that's not the way any of this works.
00:50:17.000But according to the Washington Post, supposedly, the court was supposed to go along with the request to call a him or her, and then to rule objectively on the question of whether this him should be placed with women.
00:50:26.000By the way, in this particular case, What the media would like is for this biological male who is engaged in pedophilia.
00:51:03.000Everyone knows that male aggression and male sex drive is very different from female, which is why crime rates are different between male and female.
00:51:52.000And Governor Gavin Newsom, who is A Ken doll in every way.
00:51:57.000He is stupid and he is vacuous and has that plastered back hair.
00:52:03.000He was opening a new homeless facility and he explained that California has been nowhere to be found on homelessness.
00:52:08.000Weird, because it seems like Jerry Brown was the governor for a thousand years and then you've been the governor for a while.
00:52:12.000It seems like every major city in Los Angeles has been governed by a Democrat for a very long time and yet somehow you've gotten no handle on homelessness.
00:52:18.000Not only that, it's gotten massively worse underneath the Democratic purview.
00:52:22.000Here is Gavin Newsom admitting, Let's just be candid.
00:52:25.000The state of California has been nowhere to be found on the damn issue of homelessness.
00:52:30.000We haven't been focused on this issue.
00:52:51.000We had a lot of other things that were prioritized, but it got in the way of our focus on this.
00:52:55.000Did an amazing job balancing the budget.
00:52:56.000The way that California balanced the budget is by lying about the accrual of interest in CalPERS.
00:53:01.000They just went to their pension funds, and then they suggested that those pension funds were going to outperform the market by large percentages, and then we wouldn't have to worry about investing on behalf of those pension funds, so we would sign all these bad pension contracts.
00:53:13.000Jerry Brown did a wonderful job balancing the budget.
00:53:15.000He's raised the top income tax rate to 13.3%, driving business out of the state at record rates.
00:53:20.000We actually had a net loss of population in the state of California, I believe, last year.
00:53:24.000Gavin Newsom, sorry, we couldn't handle the homelessness crisis where you have 65,000 people in Los Angeles County alone who are homeless in the city.
00:53:32.000And that is very partially as a result of high housing prices.
00:53:36.000But the regulations in the city of Los Angeles make it nearly impossible to build new housing.
00:53:40.000And in large part, that is because the cops have been not allowed to arrest people for trespass.
00:53:45.000And also, there's been tremendous underfunding of the one thing that the government ought to fund in the state of California, namely mental health facilities and drug dryout facilities.
00:53:52.000And mandatory drug dryout for people who are on the streets shooting heroin into their feet in front of businesses.
00:53:58.000I mean, you can find open needles half a block from my house, and I live in a fairly nice area.
00:54:03.000So hearing Gavin Newsom complain that he's done a bad job on what is his watch?
00:54:08.000Look, the state of California can either wake up or it can die, and right now it is choosing to die, because better to sleep and pretend that everything is fine and the weather here is really nice and we got beaches.
00:54:16.000But the fact is, this state continues to be a garbage heap, Gavin Newsom continues to make it a garbage heap, and we continue to vote Democrat to make ourselves feel better, even though no Democrat has solved any of these problems in the last decade or more.
00:54:30.000I mean, the city of Los Angeles, which I can speak to very personally because I live here, Eric Garcetti, who thought about running for president, has been awful.
00:54:37.000Every so often, right before there's a photo shoot, basically, they'll clean up the streets a little bit, they'll move some of the homeless people out from underneath the embankments, and then...
00:54:45.000As soon as the media stopped covering it, those people are right back there.
00:54:49.000I will say, some of the permanency of these residencies is pretty astonishing to me.
00:54:53.000The other day, right here in Los Angeles, I saw a person who had wired into, you wonder how folks are living on the streets, this person had actually wired into a streetlamp, which is pretty dangerous, you shouldn't do this, had wired into a streetlamp for electricity.
00:55:06.000It actually pulled off the plate at the base of a streetlamp and had wired into the streetlamp.
00:55:13.000And not only have they wired into the streetlamp, I saw that they actually had an old-fashioned turntable.
00:55:33.000I think it is absolutely unjust and unfair and not right and disgusting that the solution of this state and of this city is to leave them living in their own filth on street corners and then pretend that that is what is called freedom.
00:55:44.000A huge percentage of these folks are people suffering from mental illness.
00:55:48.000A huge percentage of these folks are people who are suffering from severe drug addiction.
00:55:51.000Leaving them on the streets to get disease and die.
00:55:54.000is a horrible commentary on what our government thinks freedom is.
00:55:58.000So according to the government of the state of California, if you work a job and you earn, then freedom is the government takes a huge chunk of your salary.
00:56:07.000And also, if you're living on the street in your own filth because you're mentally ill or because you have a drug addiction, then freedom is you get to live on your own and police can't even move you.
00:56:16.000And I know a lot of the members of the LAPD.
00:56:18.000First of all, it is disgusting that they've turned the LAPD into their solution for failures to deal with drug addiction and failures to deal with severe mental illness.
00:56:27.000The police were not supposed to be first line of response for people who are mentally ill or drug addicted.
00:57:20.000We've had people stabbed to death in the middle of the city by homeless folks who are suffering from severe schizophrenia, deep forms of mental illness, drug addiction.
00:57:28.000And the city's solution is to have Gavin Newsom get up there and say, well, you know, we've been ignoring the problem.
00:57:33.000Here's the bottom line is, here's the bottom line.
00:57:35.000The voters of the state have not forced Democrats to deal with the problem because there's no incentive to deal with the problem.
00:57:39.000All that the Democrats are elected to do is continue signing lucrative government contracts with massive unions who then spend that money to re-elect the government employees and grow the bureaucracy and grow the state, a state that does not protect its own citizens and just drains them dry.
00:58:50.000Hey everybody, it's Andrew Klavan, host of The Andrew Klavan Show.
00:58:53.000You know, some people are depressed because the American Republic is collapsing, the end of days is approaching, and the moon has turned to blood.
00:58:59.000But on The Andrew Klavan Show, that's where the fun just gets started.