Pres. 2020 Democrats stumble. Congressional Democrats bumble. Can impeachment save them? I'm Ben Shapiro, host of The Ben Shapiro Show on the Ben Shapiro Podcast, and host of the Daily Wire's "Politics with Ben Shapiro" podcast. Today, the Democrats bring in a new witness, Marie Yovanovitch, an ex-Ukrainian ambassador to the United States, to testify against President Trump. Is this evidence enough to impeach the President? Or is there more to the story than that, and will it be enough to get him removed from office and impeached by the House of Representatives? I'll tell you what I think, and why you should be diversified into precious metals, like gold and precious metals in general, in order to protect your money and your family from the Trump impeachment efforts. Tweet me with your thoughts! and let me know if you agree with my assessment of the evidence! Timestamps: 1:00:00 - What is the real story here? 4:30 - Is impeachment about quid pro quo? 5:20 - Is there any evidence that Trump was bribing the Ukraine Ambassador? 6:15 - Is the evidence against Trump a crook? 7:40 - Is this a political ploy? 8:20 9:00 Is impeachment really against Trump? 11:15 12:30 Can impeachment work? 13:10 - Is it possible? 14: What are the chances of impeachment? 15:40 16:00 | Is impeachment a good thing? 17: Is it time to impeaching Trump or not? 18: What is impeachment a scam? 19:30 | What does impeachment really mean? 21:40 | What s the real problem? 22:00 // 22:10 | Is it really a good idea? 25:20 | Does Trump s foreign policy strategy? 26:40 // Is it a crock? 27:30 Is impeachment good or is it a good deal? 35:00 +16: What s impeachment really a scam ? 27 - Is Trump s relationship with Ukraine? 29: What does Trump s role in Ukraine more than a cropping up with the Ukraine ambassador working for the Ukraine and Russia? 31:10 32:00 / 33:00 Do you like the evidence? 34:30 Do you agree?
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00:01:49.000So day one was a couple of days ago, and that one featured George Kent, the bow-tied specialist over at the Secretary of State's office, as well as William Taylor, the charged affair with the reassuring gray hair.
00:02:01.000Again, that description comes from the New York Times.
00:02:03.000Reassuring gray hair, a phrase I have never heard before.
00:02:05.000Well, today, today, in Impeachment Gate 2019, the Democrats have brought forth another witness, Marie Yovanovitch.
00:02:15.000She was fired before Trump withdrew aid from Ukraine.
00:02:17.000So why she is there, no one really understands, except that she is there to paint a picture of an alternative mechanism by which Trump foreign policy was being done.
00:02:25.000So there are serious complaints by Republicans, by conservatives, that what this whole impeachment thing really is about at root is not so much Trump and quid pro quos and supposed bribery.
00:02:35.000What it really is about is a foreign policy establishment that was very angry that Trump had set up a back channel for foreign policy.
00:02:41.000That he wasn't actually doing foreign policy through his foreign policy team.
00:02:46.000Instead, he was formulating his Ukraine policy with the help of his personal attorney, Rudy Giuliani, who is running around Ukraine talking with a variety of figures.
00:02:53.000And so by bringing forth Yovanovitch, what Democrats are really trying to do is put the target on the back of Rudy Giuliani and suggest that the foreign policy in Ukraine was being driven by Giuliani, not by America's national interest because, of course, Giuliani is Trump's personal lawyer.
00:03:07.000That is indeed the strategy, but if this is really just about Democrats don't like how Trump conducts foreign policy, they don't like how he conducts his presidency because he doesn't go through the authorized mechanisms, well then obviously that's really silly.
00:03:19.000Okay, so to go back to the beginning for just a moment, the Democrats, to recapitulate the charge that they are leveling against Trump, they have settled on the word bribery.
00:03:27.000And their suggestion is that President Trump was attempting to bribe Ukraine, and Ukraine was trying to bribe Trump, in order so that Ukraine could receive foreign military aid that they so desperately needed in their fight against Russia, and so that Trump would receive dirt on Joe Biden.
00:03:41.000That is the bribe that is being suggested.
00:03:43.000Nancy Pelosi has been the most frequent Democrat out there using the word bribery.
00:03:47.000You notice how they've shifted from quid pro quo, which is a Latin term, which also quid pro quo isn't a criminal act, bribery is a criminal act.
00:03:53.000So Nancy Pelosi, Says that Trump has already admitted bribery during that original June 25th phone call, which of course is not true.
00:03:58.000Here's Nancy Pelosi making that statement, however.
00:04:00.000You talked about bribery a second ago.
00:04:52.000The Ukrainians didn't do what Trump supposedly wanted them to do, and the foreign aid was forthcoming anyway.
00:04:57.000And there's a point that Republicans have made.
00:04:59.000So if there's a bribe, there actually has to be a bribe.
00:05:01.000Attempted bribery could theoretically be a crime.
00:05:03.000However, That has not been proved either.
00:05:05.000So why are Democrats shifting from this language of quid pro quo to bribery?
00:05:08.000It turns out that for all of their talk about not being nonpartisan and trying to hammer down all of the criminality of the Trump administration, it turns out that really this is about poll testing.
00:05:18.000According to the Washington Post, several Democrats have stopped using the term quid pro quo, instead describing bribery as a more direct summation of Trump's alleged conduct.
00:05:26.000The shift came after the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee conducted focus groups in key house battlegrounds in recent weeks, testing messages related to impeachment.
00:05:33.000Among the questions put to participants was whether quid pro quo, extortion or bribery was a more compelling description of Trump's conduct.
00:05:40.000According to two people familiar with the results, which circulated among Democrats this week, the focus groups found bribery to be most damning.
00:05:46.000The people spoke on the condition of anonymity because the results have not been made public.
00:06:30.000New remarks from top Ukrainian official damages Democrats impeachment narrative.
00:06:38.000Ukrainian foreign minister said on Thursday that the United States ambassador did not link financial military assistance to a request for Ukraine to open up an investigation into former vice president and current Democratic president.
00:07:04.000Okay, and the report that he is reading from is from a source called Interfax Ukraine, also being reported by Reuters.
00:07:09.000Trump and his allies are accused by Democrats of doing just that.
00:07:11.000said on Thursday, the U.S. Ambassador Gordon Sondland did not explicitly link military aid to Kiev with opening an investigation into former Vice President Joe Biden and his son.
00:07:19.000Trump and his allies are accused by Democrats of doing just that.
00:07:22.000Trump, of course, has said that the inquiry is a witch hunt.
00:07:26.000And Taylor had pointed to Trump's keen interest in getting the European ally to investigate Biden and reiterated his understanding that $391 million in U.S.
00:07:36.000Prostyko's comments came a day after William Taylor, the acting ambassador to Ukraine, testified in the first televised hearing of the impeachment inquiry.
00:07:43.000And Taylor had pointed to Trump's keen interest in getting the European ally to investigate Biden and reiterated his understanding that $391 million in U.S. security aid was withheld from Kiev unless it cooperated.
00:07:53.000Taylor also said that a member of his staff had overheard a July 26th phone call between Trump and Sondland in which the Republican president asked about investigations into the Bidens and Sondland told him that the Ukrainians were ready to proceed.
00:08:06.000Prosteko said, I have never seen a direct relationship between investigations and security assistance.
00:08:10.000Yes, the investigations were mentioned, you know, in the conversation of the president, but there is no clear connection between these events.
00:08:16.000So when Trump brings that out and he says, okay, even the Ukrainians are not claiming that there was an attempted bribe or a quid pro quo, well, that does carry some weight, obviously.
00:08:25.000Now, what Democrats are going to claim is what do you think the Ukrainians are going to say?
00:08:28.000Of course, they're going to say what they need to say.
00:08:32.000And that is what the Democrats are going to claim.
00:08:34.000And it turns out that now it is being reported that a second State Department official overheard President Trump's call with the EU envoy discussing Ukraine and investigations.
00:08:44.000The Washington Post reports that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said on Thursday the testimony presented by two career diplomats during Wednesday's open impeachment hearing corroborated evidence of bribery.
00:08:53.000Meanwhile, it was learned on Thursday that a second official from the U.S.
00:08:57.000Ambassador to the EU Gordon Sondland spoke on a July 26th phone call from Ukraine with Trump that more directly ties the president to his administration's efforts to persuade Ukraine's new leadership.
00:09:09.000So we will find out if there was indeed a second phone call.
00:09:11.000Trump denied that there was a second phone call between him and Sondland.
00:09:14.000He says the only phone call he remembers having with Sondland was saying there was no quid pro quo all the way through.
00:09:20.000Bill Taylor says that he talked to an aide who talked to Sondland who overheard Sondland and Sondland was talking with Trump about the investigation.
00:10:17.000So what Democrats are really trying to do today is they're bringing forth Maria Ivanovic, who is the American ambassador to Ukraine.
00:10:23.000Trump fired her, and he had every ability to do so.
00:10:27.000But what they're trying to say is that Trump's foreign policy is driven by personal animus and by Rudy Giuliani's information.
00:10:33.000Okay, well, both of those things can be true, and that can still not be an impeachable offense.
00:10:39.000But the fact is that he did fire Yovanovitch pretty much before anything happened, right?
00:10:45.000He fired her before any of this discussion about withholding military aid took place.
00:10:52.000Yovanovitch was removed from her job pretty early on in the last year, right?
00:10:58.000It was not as though she was there for any of this.
00:11:02.000And that's what the Republicans are pointing out today.
00:11:04.000They're saying, like, why is this lady even being called?
00:11:07.000Also, Trump has the right to fire an ambassador for any reason.
00:11:10.000She works at the pleasure of the president.
00:11:11.000Even Adam Schiff had to acknowledge in his early morning hearing, he had to acknowledge that President Trump has the right to fire any ambassador that he wants.
00:11:20.000Alrighty, so, meanwhile, Yovanovitch is testifying herself, and she herself is acknowledging that President Trump's foreign policy with regard to Ukraine is actually stronger than Trump's predecessor's policy toward Ukraine, right?
00:11:33.000That policy toward Ukraine from Obama was significantly weaker.
00:11:36.000So Yovanovitch is testifying and nobody really knows why.
00:11:40.000The only linkage here is to try and put a target on the back of Rudy Giuliani.
00:11:43.000Because the idea here is that Rudy Giuliani was manipulating foreign policy, manipulating Maybe this is the predicate to Rudy was doing work to go get Joe Biden, then feeding Trump that information, who is feeding that information to Gordon Sondland.
00:11:57.000But that is a very attenuated chain of logic.
00:12:00.000Basically, they're bringing in Yovanovitch to testify that Giuliani was testifying badly about Yovanovitch and that Yovanovitch is mad about that to show That Rudy Giuliani is feeding bad information to President Trump, and because he fed bad information to President Trump, that bad information was actually about Joe Biden.
00:12:13.000And then Trump took that bad information about Joe Biden and CrowdStrike from Rudy Giuliani, and then he forwarded that to Gordon Sondland, who forwarded that to the Ukrainians.
00:12:22.000Alright, if you can follow all that, sure.
00:12:24.000Okay, I suppose that she is tangentially related to this investigation.
00:12:28.000So here is Adam Schiff, clip 11, admitting that President Trump has the right to fire an ambassador, so what the hell is Maria Ivanovic even doing here for testimony?
00:12:37.000Some have argued that a president has the ability to nominate or remove any ambassador he wants, that they serve at the pleasure of the president.
00:13:09.000has provided significant security assistance since the onset of the war against Russia in 2014.
00:13:17.000And the Trump administration strengthened our policy by approving the provision to Ukraine of anti-tank missiles.
00:13:24.000Okay, bottom line is that the idea that Yovanovitch has anything truly damning to say about Trump is wrong.
00:13:32.000She's never had a conversation with Trump.
00:13:34.000She's never had anything really to say about Trump other than Rudy Giuliani is feeding Trump bad information, which puts, again, Giuliani in the crosshairs.
00:13:41.000You can see the media straining to try to explain why Yovanovitch is actually relevant to this inquiry.
00:13:46.000The best headline of the day comes from the Washington Post about all of this.
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00:15:24.000Okay, and then she would go on to suggest that while Trump had strengthened that policy, he was also getting bad information from Rudy Giuliani.
00:15:57.000It feels like the moment of reckoning on gender for President Trump came back in the 2016 election when there was tape that was revealed of him talking about grabbing women by the genitals, not firing the ambassador to Ukraine.
00:16:05.000But according to the Washington Post, during the pivotal phone call that sparked the House impeachment inquiry, President Trump made a reference to gender as he smeared former Ukraine ambassador Marie Yovanovitch.
00:16:15.000The former ambassador from the United States, the woman, was bad news, Trump told Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on July 25th.
00:16:22.000He was just trying to refer to... He didn't remember her name.
00:16:26.000Okay, and now they're trying to claim that he fired her because she was a woman.
00:16:29.000Wait, you're gonna impeach him for what?
00:16:30.000Sexual harassment under Title IX or something?
00:16:33.000Because he said the woman in a call with Zelensky?
00:16:37.000Trump then made an ominous prediction as he pressured Zelensky for investigations of his political rivals.
00:16:41.000She's going to go through some things, he said of the ambassador.
00:16:43.000Well, presumably what he meant by that is that there was going to be information revealed about Yovanovitch.
00:16:50.000But the Washington Post says, as the leading female diplomat, the political target of the president's allies, and a figure at the center of the Ukraine drama, Yovanovitch has crucial knowledge to impart when she testifies at Friday's impeachment hearing.
00:16:59.000She also enters the spotlight as the latest woman who has refused to acquiesce to Trump in the face of personal and gender-specific attacks.
00:17:21.000Again, the only thing that she's saying that actually matters in any of this is trying to put Giuliani in the crosshairs saying that President Trump was getting info from Giuliani.
00:17:31.000It is in America's national security interest to help Ukraine transform into a country where the rule of law governs and corruption is held in check.
00:17:41.000Unfortunately, As the past couple of months have underlined, not all Ukrainians embraced our anti-corruption work.
00:17:49.000What continues to amaze me is that they found Americans willing to partner with them, and working together, they apparently succeeded in orchestrating the removal of a U.S.
00:18:12.000When the very corrupt behavior we have been criticizing is allowed to prevail.
00:18:16.000Okay, so President Trump has responded to all this by saying, no, I didn't fire you because the Ukrainians were manipulating you, manipulating me, I fired you because you were a bad ambassador.
00:18:24.000And so he tweeted this out this morning, he had a couple of tweets about Marie Yovanovitch as she was testifying, which is always a solid look, in which you ripped into Marie Yovanovitch on a personal level.
00:18:35.000Right, so let me get up the exact tweets.
00:18:37.000He actually suggested, quote, Everywhere Marie Yovanovitch went... Everywhere Marie Yovanovitch went, he says, turned bad.
00:19:28.000And then the ambassador showed up and now things are just terrible.
00:19:30.000Okay, but again, the argument really here is about Rudy Giuliani.
00:19:34.000And now there's a story that Rudy Giuliani is facing a campaign finance probe.
00:19:38.000According to Bloomberg, Rudy Giuliani, President Trump's personal lawyer, is being investigated by federal prosecutors for possible campaign finance violations and a failure to register as a foreign agent.
00:19:47.000As part of an active investigation into his financial dealings, according to three U.S. officials.
00:19:51.000The probe of Giuliani, which one official said could also include possible charges on violating laws against bribing foreign officials or conspiracy, presents a serious threat to Trump's presidency from a man that former national security advisor John Bolton has called a hand grenade.
00:20:04.000Except not so much, because here's the reality.
00:20:07.000If it turns out that Rudy Giuliani were to be prosecuted for bribery, if it turns out that Rudy Giuliani were to be prosecuted for not registering as a foreign agent, then it appears that Trump got duped, not that Trump was actually attempting to go after Joe Biden.
00:20:18.000Then it just appears that Rudy Giuliani was manipulating the President, which means that Rudy is the one who takes the cap, not the President of the United States.
00:20:26.000A second official said Giuliani's activities raised counterintelligence concerns as well, although there probably wouldn't be a criminal charge related to that.
00:20:32.000The officials, who asked for anonymity to discuss a sensitive matter, provided the first indication of the potential charges under investigation.
00:20:39.000I would not be surprised if he gets indicted, said Mimi Roca, a former federal prosecutor with the U.S.
00:20:42.000Attorney's Office in the Southern District of New York.
00:20:45.000It's clear Giuliani is up to his ears in shady stuff, and there's tons of smoke.
00:20:49.000So, Trump continues to be tied to Rudy Giuliani, but again, if Giuliani was the source of all the bad information, then that's really not going to hurt Trump.
00:20:57.000It's really mostly going to hurt Giuliani, because Trump can claim, probably rightly, that his personal lawyer was feeding him bad information, and he was operating on the back of that bad information, not to get Joe Biden, but just because Giuliani was saying there's this corruption here, and it involves Hunter, and it involves Joe, and it involves CrowdStrike, and it involves the 2016 election.
00:21:15.000This is why I say Giuliani is the nexus of all of this, which is probably why Giuliani is openly joking, joking, that he has insurance against President Trump in case President Trump dumps him.
00:21:27.000Now, is any of this gonna matter in the end?
00:21:29.000Probably not, because Rudy Giuliani is, maybe he testifies, maybe he doesn't.
00:21:33.000If he just says what he said in his Wall Street Journal op-ed that we read yesterday on the air, then he's probably fine.
00:21:39.000This all seems like a bit of gamesmanship by the Democrats more than anything else, which is why Yovanovitch is a witness who doesn't really matter.
00:22:22.000Most life insurance policies through your work only cover like one-tenth of what your family would actually need in case God forbid something happened to you.
00:23:09.000Well, According to the Washington Post, a long-time career employee at the White House Office of Management and Budget is expected to break ranks and testify Saturday in the House Democrats impeachment inquiry.
00:23:18.000Sandy would be the first OMB employee to testify in the inquiry, after OMB acting director Russell Vaught and two other political appointees at the agency defied congressional subpoenas to appear.
00:23:28.000They just filed a lawsuit saying, we can't testify until a court tells us that we need to testify.
00:23:39.000He was not appointed by the president.
00:23:42.000Which again suggests that presidents who come into office should fire basically everyone and replace them with their own people.
00:23:46.000He has worked at the agency off and on for over a decade under presidents of both parties, climbing the ranks to his current role as Deputy Associate Director for National Security Programs.
00:23:55.000He's expected to testify during a closed-door deposition, which is not open to the public.
00:24:00.000Typically, the witnesses first have testified behind closed doors, and then they have testified in front of the cameras.
00:24:06.000It is unclear what exactly he's going to testify to.
00:24:08.000He may know something about the process by which aid was withheld.
00:24:10.000But again, if he was not in the room for conversations with Mick Mulvaney and President Trump, then he's not going to have any special insight either.
00:24:18.000So it feels like, it does feel like, and the poll numbers tend to show this, that the impeachment inquiry is a bit stalled out right now.
00:24:23.000That basically no one's mind is being changed.
00:24:26.000Everyone who thought Trump should go before thinks they should go now.
00:24:28.000And if that's the case, then we have an election in like a year.
00:24:32.000So all you have to do is just wait a year and you guys are going to get to have a referendum on whether you think Trump is fit for office or not.
00:24:37.000The problem is Democrats don't want that referendum.
00:24:46.000I'm talking about people like Bernie Sanders.
00:24:48.000Even the New York Times is now critical of Bernie Sanders' $16 trillion vision for arresting global warming.
00:24:54.000According to the New York Times, Sanders's vision would put the government in charge of the power sector, which has worked great in the state of California, and promise that by 2030, the country's electricity and transportation system would run entirely on wind, solar, hydropower, or geothermal energy.
00:25:18.000Climate scientists and energy economists say the plan is technically impractical, politically unfeasible, and possibly ineffective.
00:25:24.000Yet the criticism does not appear to bother many of the young voters who will have an important role in selecting a Democratic presidential candidate.
00:25:30.000Chandler Condon, a 25-year-old supporter who traveled from Denver to Des Moines for a climate rally with Sanders, says he really has some great ideas that may not be passed, but it's definitely stuff that needs to be brought up.
00:25:39.000People saying it's too radical, it's like, well, we need that radical change.
00:25:43.000But the problem is, of course, that the policy isn't serious.
00:25:46.000And this is why Buttigieg is gaining some ground in places like Iowa.
00:25:49.000David Victor, a professor of international relations at UC San Diego, a climate advisor to Buttigieg, said that the big challenge for the Democratic Party is that there's no serious policy.
00:25:58.000He says the progressive wing wants radical change, and climate change is one of those areas where this has really been the most palpable.
00:26:03.000The Sanders plan claims to deliver radical change, but it can't work in the real world.
00:26:07.000Yes, you mean that a lifelong communist useless person is disconnected from real world cause and effect?
00:26:15.000Meanwhile, new studies have come out on Elizabeth Warren's proposed wealth tax, which is a garbage piece of policy.
00:26:19.000If you don't know why, go back and listen to Monday's podcast and radio show.
00:26:24.000According to Jim Tankersley, there's a brand new study out that shows that Elizabeth Warren's proposed wealth tax would slow the U.S.
00:26:28.000economy, reducing growth by nearly 0.2 percentage points a year.
00:26:32.000Every year over the course of a decade.
00:26:35.000Every year over the course of a decade.
00:26:36.000To give you some insight into how large a decline that is, Okay, they're basically saying that every single year, the average of 1.5% growth that they are forecasting would drop to 1.3% growth, a 14% lower growth rate every single year for 10 years.
00:26:54.000The same people, by the way, tried to assess how much President Trump's tax cuts would help the economy, and they assessed that the tax cuts would result in 0.06% growth every year for the next 10 years.
00:27:03.000So, take The positive effect of the tax cuts.
00:27:10.000Multiply them by three and make them negative.
00:27:13.000And that's how bad Elizabeth Warren's wealth tax proposal would be for the American economy.
00:27:19.000Well, because it's going to force people to liquidate stock.
00:27:21.000It's going to force people to liquidate businesses.
00:27:23.000It's going to force people to offshore their assets or just leave the country entirely.
00:27:28.000There's an article in the Wall Street Journal today by Richard Rubin pointing out that Democratic presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren has unveiled sweeping tax proposals that would push federal tax rates on some billionaires and multimillionaires above 100%.
00:27:39.000For every dollar you take in, you would now pay more than 100% if you make above a certain threshold.
00:27:46.000Potential tax rates over 100% could result from the combination of tax increases the Massachusetts Senator proposes for the very top tier of investors.
00:27:53.000She wants to return the top income tax rate to 39.6% from 37%, impose a new 14.8% tax for Social Security, add an annual tax of up to 6% on accumulated wealth, and require rich investors to pay capital gains taxes at the same rates as other income, even if they don't actually sell the assets.
00:28:11.000So in other words, she wants to mark to market.
00:28:12.000So instead of you having to sell your stocks, If you happen to be a very wealthy person, you should just take your stock value.
00:28:19.000And you haven't sold them, so you haven't realized the gain.
00:28:20.000You should take your stock value, the accrual of the stock value, and then she would tax you every year on the accrual of value that you have not realized by selling the stock.
00:28:31.000So says the Wall Street Journal, consider a billionaire with a $1,000 investment who earns a 6% return or $60, received his capital gain dividend or interest.
00:28:38.000If all of Warren's taxes are implemented, he could owe 58.2% of that or $35 in federal tax.
00:28:44.000Plus, his entire investment would incur a 6% wealth tax, i.e.
00:28:50.000The result taxes as high as $95 on income of $60 for a combined tax rate of 158%.
00:28:57.000The rate would vary according to investor circumstances, any state taxes, the profitability of his investments and as yet unspecified policy details.
00:29:05.000But tax rates of over 100% on investment income would be typical, especially for billionaires.
00:29:10.000So, if you're going to get taxed 100%, over 100%, right, you actually get penalized for investing and making money in the stock market, what do you think every billionaire in the country is going to do?
00:29:18.000What do you think they're going to do?
00:29:20.000They're gonna liquidate their stock immediately before Elizabeth Warren can impose this idiotic wealth tax.
00:29:26.000What do you think that's gonna do to your 401k?
00:29:27.000You think it's gonna be good when Jeff Bezos unloads $100 billion worth of Amazon stock into the open market just to cash out?
00:29:34.000Because he figures even if I can only sell it for $70 billion, it's better than being taxed at 158% on every dollar I earn over $100 billion?
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00:30:46.000If you are running a small business and you don't have the money to tie up in legal, then really what you should be doing is looking at LegalZoom like right now.
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00:31:53.000Alrighty, in just a second, we're gonna get to the state of New Jersey attempting to wreck Uber, right?
00:31:58.000This is just the latest state trying to wreck A new American company that is providing a lot of people with jobs and income.
00:32:04.000First, it is that glorious time of the week when I give a shout out to a Daily Wire subscriber.
00:32:10.000Today, it's Twitterer Derek Archer, who understands the importance of supporting your spouse as they keep our country safe.
00:32:17.000This is some serious badassery right there.
00:32:20.000In a fantastic three-tweet post, Derek's wife, Flare, is holding her trusty Tumblr in front of her F-22 Raptor and a video of her refueling it mid-flight, which is utter, complete badassery.
00:32:32.000The caption reads, after getting gas airborne from her refueling tanker while flying her F-22 Raptor, the very greatest in stealth fighter aircraft, during a combat mission somewhere over the Middle East.
00:32:41.000My wife, Flair, also a subscriber, needs to refuel on the ground from the very greatest in beverage vessels.
00:32:46.000It's tough being apart, but I know she's out there doing good work.
00:32:49.000Thanks for all you guys do at Daily Wire.
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00:34:18.000So speaking of bad leftist economics, Uber is now being fined $649 million in the state of New Jersey alone for saying that drivers are not employees.
00:34:28.000According to the New York Times, New Jersey has now demanded that Uber pay $649 million for years of unpaid employment taxes for its drivers, arguing that the ride-hailing company has misclassified the workers as independent contractors and not as employees, which is absurd because you can actually sign on as an Uber driver part-time, you can decide when you want to drive, My employees don't get to do that, okay?
00:34:48.000People who work for me, we control their time.
00:34:52.000If we just had people who were like, you get to sign on when you want, you get to sign off when you want, and then just kick us back a percentage of what it is you make, and you can use our app, that's not an employee, that's an independent contractor, definitionally.
00:35:03.000But, the state's Department of Labor and Workforce Development issued the request this week to Uber and a subsidiary, Razor, after an audit uncovered $530 million in back taxes that had not been paid for unemployment and disability insurance from 2014 to 2018, and because of non-payment, the state now wants another $119 million in interest.
00:35:21.000A spokeswoman at Uber said the company disputed the state's findings.
00:35:24.000They said we're challenging this preliminary but incorrect determination because drivers are independent contractors in New Jersey and elsewhere.
00:35:31.000Across the country, states and cities have moved aggressively to rein in gig economy companies that depend on inexpensive and independent labor, potentially reshaping their business models.
00:35:38.000No, what you mean is that you are doing the dirty work of the taxi cab industry by destroying the ability of people who might be otherwise out of work to make a quick buck by driving a car around.
00:35:50.000If you think this is helping people who are out of work, if you think this is in some way helping the quote-unquote employees of Uber, all that's going to happen is that if Uber is turned into basically just a normal cab company, and they actually have to hire these employees, they're going to go out of business.
00:36:04.000Their entire business model does not function under this rubric.
00:36:08.000In California, a new law could require that workers be designated as employees, allowing them to gain access to basic protections like minimum wage and unemployment insurance.
00:36:17.000I love that they say that would allow the workers to gain access to these things.
00:36:19.000No, it would allow the workers to be unemployed because Uber would just stop operating.
00:36:23.000Really, what's their profit margin going to be like at that point?
00:36:26.000Like they have a slightly better cab app than Yellow Cab or something?
00:36:31.000You're making, you're re-cartelizing, you're making a cartel again out of driving as opposed to a free market.
00:36:38.000That's what the left wants in terms of economics.
00:36:40.000Now, in other breaking news, Turns out that the squad, they don't seem to understand the difference between like campaign expenditures and personal expenditures.
00:36:49.000This is the third member of the squad, so far as I'm aware, who's had some sort of financial scandal related to misusing campaign funds as personal funds.
00:36:57.000So we've had AOC, and there were significant, there was significant reporting that AOC was paying her boyfriend basically From campaign funding while she was dating him.
00:37:08.000I remember a few months back that was the accusation anyway.
00:37:11.000Then there was Ilhan Omar and there's actually an ethics investigation that apparently was open against Ilhan Omar for spending campaign funds paying her married lover while she too was married and then, you know, running around on trips with him.
00:37:24.000So there's an ethics investigation into Ilhan Omar.
00:37:26.000I don't think there's one into AOC but there were some allegations made about AOC and campaign funding and her boyfriend.
00:37:31.000And now there are new Allegations made about Rashida Tlaib, the greatest, wisest, and most honest among us.
00:37:41.000I had counted on their honesty and their transparency.
00:37:44.000These were the fresh faces of freshness and face.
00:37:47.000I mean, so much fresh, so much face, faces of freshness, and yet, and yet, the swamp, the swamp.
00:37:53.000Or alternatively, it turns out that people who love big government are just as apt to be corrupt as people who don't like big government, and in many cases more so.
00:37:59.000The House Ethics Committee announced on Thursday it is investigating Rashida Tlaib over internal messages that she allegedly sent in 2018, asking her congressional campaign for money for personal expenses, which is a potential crime, according to Ryan Zvedra over at Daily Wire.
00:38:13.000The announcement came in response to a referral that the committee received from the Office of Congressional Ethics, which alleged that Tlaib's campaign committee, Rashida Tlaib for Congress, reported campaign disbursements that may not be legitimate and verifiable campaign expenditures attributable to bona fide campaign or political purposes if Representative Tlaib converted campaign funds from Rashida Tlaib for Congress to personal use
00:38:33.000Or, if Representative Tlaib's campaign committee expended funds that were not attributable to bona fide campaign or political purposes, then Representative Tlaib may have violated House rules, standards of conduct, and federal law.
00:38:45.000Now, this does go to show you, by the way, I remember back in 2006, there was the Mark Foley scandal on the Republican side of the aisle, so 13 years ago now.
00:38:52.000And there was all this talk about Republican congressional corruption, and it led to a Democratic wave in 2006.
00:38:57.000If it were not for all the hubbub over Trump, there would be a wave of stories right now about Democratic corruption, ranging from Rashida Tlaib to Ilhan Omar to Katie Hill, all of these new Democratic women.
00:39:09.000She's already resigned her position, Katie Hill.
00:39:13.000And now you have Ilhan Omar under investigation and Rashida Tlaib under investigation and allegations about AOC.
00:39:18.000The Ringo Starr of the squad remains the only person about whom allegations have not been made, Ayanna Pressley.
00:39:24.000And it turns out it's not relegated to young Democratic women either.
00:39:27.000Apparently there's another House ethics investigation announced on Thursday into Democratic Representative Alcee Hastings over his relationship with his longtime girlfriend who works for him as a government employee.
00:39:38.000According to the South Florida Sun-Sentinel, the Ethics Committee didn't identify the staffer in question, but the case clearly refers to Patricia Williams, the deputy director in Hastings' office in his Broward-Palm Beach County district.
00:39:48.000Williams, who is the congressman's highest-paid staffer in Hastings, have been in a relationship for decades, and critics have raised questions about it for years.
00:39:56.000The House Ethics Committee wrote that the committee is specifically considering whether Representatives Hastings' relationship with the individual employed in his congressional office is in violation of House Rule 23, Clause 18a, and whether Representative Hastings has received any improper gifts, including any forbearance, from that employee.
00:40:12.000The committee continues to gather additional information regarding the allegations.
00:40:17.000That rule, that congressional rule, is a member, delegate, or resident commissioner may not engage in a sexual relationship with any employee of the House who works under the supervision of the member, delegate, or resident commissioner, or who is an employee of a committee on which the member, delegate, or resident commissioner serves.
00:40:32.000So Elsie Hastings should have married this lady, is what it sounds like, because it says the paragraph does not apply with respect to people who, in fact, are married.
00:40:40.000This isn't the first time that Hastings has faced controversies involving allegations surrounding relationships.
00:40:46.000Roll Call reported in December 2017 that the Treasury Department paid $220,000 in a previously undisclosed agreement to settle a lawsuit alleging sexual harassment involving Alcee Hastings.
00:40:55.000Winsome Packer, a former staff member of a congressional commission promoting international human rights, said in documents that the congressman touched her, made unwanted sexual advances, and threatened her job.
00:41:05.000At the time, Hastings was the chairman of the Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe, where Packer worked.
00:41:10.000So there would be a bevy, if the media did its job, there would be this wave of questions about whether Democrats were handling things ethically.
00:41:16.000Okay, in other news across the world, The continuing battle in the Gaza Strip continues.
00:41:23.000It turns out that Israel removing itself from the Gaza Strip circa 2005 did not result in the peaceful and wondrous election of a moderate Palestinian leadership that would make peace with Israel.
00:41:33.000Instead, it turns out the Hamas took over a terrorist group and now they are in open competition with another terrorist group, Islamic Jihad, for supremacy in the Gaza Strip.
00:41:41.000Well, a couple of weeks ago, about a week and a half ago, Israel killed one of the members, leading members of Islamic Jihad, because they had information that he was planning a series of terror attacks on Israeli targets.
00:41:50.000So they took him out, and this prompted Islamic Jihad to fire some 150 rockets into the heart of the state of Israel, all the way, pretty close to Beit Shemesh, which is kind of central in Israel.
00:42:02.000There were a couple of rockets that fell close to Beit Shemesh.
00:42:04.000There were a bunch of them that fell in Ashkelon.
00:42:05.000There were a bunch of them that fell in Ashdod.
00:42:08.000And put it this way, if Mexico started firing 150 rockets into the middle of San Diego, do you think the United States would let that regime stand?
00:42:21.000No self-respecting state should be tolerating this kind of garbage.
00:42:24.000But, because Israel is under international pressure, and because there are no good alternatives over there, instead, Israel has been targeting specific Palestinian Islamic Jihad targets.
00:42:34.000Hamas, by the way, is celebrating all of that, right?
00:42:53.000The Oslo process of bringing terrorists in to negotiate with, it turns out that was a giant fail.
00:42:58.000And it has ended up with more terrorists who you can't negotiate with.
00:43:02.000Right now, Hamas is actually risking conflict with Iran by abandoning Islamic Jihad, because Hamas doesn't care if Islamic Jihad gets wiped off the map.
00:43:15.000So, Hamas is sort of between a rock and a hard place.
00:43:18.000Either they side with Palestinian Islamic Jihad and start shooting rockets into Israel, in which case Israel goes in and destroys the Hamas leadership again, and the Palestinian Islamic Jihadic leadership again, or they set this one out, let Islamic Jihad be devastated.
00:43:31.000And then Hamas consolidates its power.
00:43:34.000Now all of this comes, it is incredible, all of this comes amidst the European Union's insistence that any product made by a Jew in Judea and Samaria be labeled West Bank Okay, so we have now gone back to labeling Jewish products in Europe.
00:43:51.000Now, there are a lot of people out there, well, no, no, they're just labeling it by area.
00:43:54.000Yeah, except for the fact that if a Muslim produces a product in the West Bank, it is labeled Palestine.
00:43:59.000Okay, there is no state of Palestine, it does not exist.
00:44:01.000So the assumption made by the EU is that that entire area ought to be owned and governed by the same people, the same terrorists, firing rockets into civilian areas of Israel, not targeting military installations, literally just firing rockets randomly into like freeways.
00:44:16.000And the Europeans have no moral compass when it comes to this issue, or frankly, many other issues.
00:44:30.000So my friend, Ali Stuckey, Who is over at Conservative Review TV, Blaze TV.
00:44:37.000Allie Stuckey was testifying on the Hill.
00:44:39.000She was called to testify about abortion laws.
00:44:42.000And Democrats had called a bunch of so-called experts.
00:44:45.000They called somebody from Planned Parenthood.
00:44:46.000And then the Republicans called Allie to talk about abortion.
00:44:50.000And Allie started, she gave an excellent five-minute presentation on what exactly an abortion procedure is and what is actually morally wrong with killing a baby before it is born, killing a human life in the womb.
00:45:02.000And Debbie Wasserman Schultz then goes after Allie and says, well you're not a doctor, so why are you even here?
00:45:07.000And Allie promptly just wrecks Debbie Wasserman Schultz.
00:45:14.000Stuckey is here expressing her own opinion exclusively and has no scientific or particular expertise in this subject matter whatsoever.
00:45:22.000I think it says something when I, the one without the scientific or medical background, am the only one to give you specifics on what an abortion procedure actually is.
00:45:41.000I love that Wasserman has to seize back the mic, because Stuckey, Ali points out, the one thing that matters, which is, she says, you're not a doctor, and she says, okay, then why am I the only one who's willing to talk explicitly about what an abortion constitutes?
00:45:53.000And Wasserman's like, well, I'm not, you know, I need, sorry, I need my time back.
00:46:02.000Democrats never want to talk about the truth about abortion because that would involve talking about the brutality, particularly of late-term abortion, which is not an antiseptic procedure.
00:46:10.000Late-term abortion involves the forcible cutting apart of human bodies right inside the womb.
00:47:00.000Even if you were just going to use the baseline stupid democratic argument that things have to look like babies in order to constitute a human life, which of course is nonsense, right?
00:47:07.000As soon as the egg and the sperm meet, now you have constituted a new human life with its own form of DNA.
00:47:14.000But even leave that aside, even if you were to use the sort of weird democratic formulation that you have to instinctively feel that it's a baby, There's a reason Democrats never want to talk about explicitly what happens during an abortion or allow people to see actual ultrasounds of their kids before they abort.
00:47:28.000It's why they have opposed, dramatically, any regulation that suggests that women need to be given full information before they go forward with an abortion by, for example, seeing one of these 3D ultrasounds.
00:47:39.000As I say, the quality is so incredible.
00:47:42.000In fact, I'm going to see if I can get permission from my wife to maybe show I have tape of the first ultrasound of the new baby.
00:47:49.000And maybe I will show it on the air just so that people can see the quality of these new ultrasounds because it really is pretty phenomenal.
00:47:56.000Okay, time for a quick thing that I hate.
00:48:03.000Okay, so the Supreme Court basically ruled this week that gun manufacturers can be sued for bad people using their products, which is just an absurdity.
00:48:13.000According to Hank Barian writing over at Daily Wire, this week the Supreme Court ruled it would refuse an appeal from the Remington Arms Company of a Connecticut Supreme Court ruling that permitted relatives of Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting victims to sue Remington.
00:48:24.000The shooter in the Sandy Hook shooting used arms made by Remington.
00:48:27.000The New York Times wrote, the case has been seen as a test of the ability of plaintiffs to pierce the legal immunity of firearm manufacturers in the aftermath of shootings.
00:48:35.000Okay, so here is the actual full story.
00:48:37.000So the way that they make this sound is that they make it sound as though there is special immunity granted to gun companies that do not apply to other companies.
00:48:46.000Now, legally speaking, that's sort of true and it's mostly not.
00:48:49.000So the reason it's sort of true is because there is a law, specifically on the books, That prevents the suing of gun manufacturers for bad people using their products.
00:48:58.000But the only reason that that law was formulated in the first place is because there was bad application of law in a lot of the states.
00:49:04.000So typically, when it comes to products liability, right, if there's a tort, there's only a couple of ways that you can sue the manufacturer of the thing that hurt you, right?
00:49:14.000There are a couple of different types of defects that you can sue under.
00:49:18.000Okay, design defect, so a product was designed and it was defective as it was designed and therefore it did not fulfill its purpose.
00:49:35.000Then there's a manufacturing defect, which is the car was perfectly designed, but in the process of manufacture, then there was a flaw that cropped up, and now the car blows up when you hit somebody.
00:49:43.000And finally, there's a marketing defect, and that is that something is marketed improperly.
00:49:48.000They say that the product can do something that it can't do.
00:49:57.000Now, the problem is that when it comes to a bad person using a gun, the gun manufacturer was not involved in either a design defect, a manufacturing defect, or a marketing defect.
00:50:08.000The gun operates as it was supposed to.
00:50:27.000Okay, so there were a lot of people launching lawsuits against manufacturers, because that's the deep pocket.
00:50:31.000It's very weird in Sandy Hook's case, because in that case, the gun was apparently legally bought by the parents, and then the kid took the gun, From the parent after shooting mom and then went to the school and started shooting up the kids Somehow this is the fault of the manufacturer Remington, right?
00:50:46.000So normally this makes no sense, right?
00:50:47.000It makes like no sense legally speaking to sue Remington but what happens is that if you're if you're a good lawyer what you know is that all you have to do with a case like this is get it in front of a jury because you get this in front of a jury and you sit there and the jury rightly is gonna look at the victim in this case the parents of a kid who's been murdered and And they're gonna say, okay, those people have no money, and here's Remington, the company that made the gun, and they have lots of money, so let's give them each 10 million bucks.
00:51:10.000Let's give them each 10 million bucks.
00:51:14.000So, back in 2005, there were a lot of cases like this in the early 1990s, where gun manufacturers were basically being sued out of business.
00:51:20.000by various private parties at the behest of states, liberal states.
00:51:25.000Okay, so in 2005, there was a bill that was passed that said, okay, we can't have lawsuits that are being launched on false auspices in order to go get a gun manufactured just because you don't like gun manufacturers.
00:51:35.000So now there's this lawsuit by the Sandy Hook family, and the Connecticut Supreme Court basically overrules the federal law, which is incorrect.
00:51:42.000And the Supreme Court says, okay, we're going to allow the lawsuit to stand.
00:51:54.000And so what you're starting to see is companies like Remington that are carving off sort of separate LLCs to limit their liability.
00:52:01.000An LLC is a limited liability corporation.
00:52:03.000So what they're starting to do is they will have, if they're being sued under the auspices of marketing defect, then they will carve off Remington Marketing, for example.
00:52:10.000So that way, if Remington Marketing gets sued, it doesn't bankrupt the rest of Remington Manufacturer, for example.
00:52:15.000All of this is not good for the law-abiding gun owner who just wishes to purchase a gun.
00:52:20.000None of it is actually good for legal fairness in the country because you shouldn't be able to just sue a company because you don't like a bad person use their product.
00:52:27.000It's like suing a knife company because OJ Simpson stabbed Nicole Brown.
00:52:33.000That would be a very bizarre, bizarre application of tort law.
00:52:37.000And yet, this is exactly what the left wants to do.
00:52:38.000The left has tried every avenue they can think of to bankrupt gun companies.
00:52:42.000They've suggested, for example, that gun companies be treated as though they are creating a public nuisance, as though they are polluting the air, which is idiotic.
00:52:51.000Because again, I have several guns sitting in my house right now.
00:52:55.000It is not the same as a gun manufacturer spewing toxic waste into a lake or something.
00:53:00.000So they've tried to say that this should be treated as also a disease, that the Center for Disease Control should study gun violence, which is absurd.
00:54:02.000We don't actually have information on that.
00:54:05.000It's a very, It's a very dangerous ruling and it does not bode well for the future of gun rights in this country.
00:54:10.000You bankrupt every gun manufacturer in the country, it's going to be very difficult for anybody to access the guns that they ought to have under the Second Amendment.
00:54:17.000Remington's appeal was titled Remington Arms vs. Soto.
00:54:19.000The Connecticut case was Soto vs. Bushmaster.
00:54:23.000The Times noted that the Sandy Hook family's suit had used one of six narrow exemptions to the 2005 law to argue that Remington violated Connecticut's Unfair Trade Practices Act.
00:54:31.000The suit said the gunmaker recklessly marketed the AR-15-style rifle to disturb young men through product placement in violent video games and advertising pitches like, consider your man card reissued and the opposition will bow down.
00:54:45.000Well, again, that would be presumably in a video game.
00:54:48.000I don't think anyone really believes that Remington meant to sell weapons to violent criminals who kill children.
00:54:56.000In a brief filed by 22 members of the House of Representatives that supported Remington's appeal, they wrote, in enacting the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act of 2005, Congress expressly recognized that lawsuits seeking to hold manufacturers and sellers of firearms liable for the criminal conduct of third parties were not only without foundation in hundreds of years of common law and jurisprudence of the United States,
00:55:14.000but also improperly sought to use the judicial branch to circumvent the legislative branch of government to regulate interstate and foreign commerce through judgments and decrees that weaken and undermine important principles of federalism, state sovereignty, and comedy between sister states.
00:55:28.000Connecticut Senator Richard Blumenthal, who's a radical on the gun issue, he issued a statement saying, Sandy Hook families have successfully surmounted a sweetheart federal statute favoring gun companies.
00:55:37.000Again, it is not a sweetheart federal statute.
00:55:39.000It is merely a recognition that the left is abusing tort law and will continue to abuse tort law in order to go after, on the one hand, pockets that are deep, and on the other hand, causes that they don't like.
00:55:51.000Okay, well that brings us to the end of the show.
00:56:04.000So, last week was the Parsha Lech Lecha.
00:56:07.000I talked about it on the radio show, but I didn't talk about it on the podcast.
00:56:09.000That was about Abraham leaving his home, and I talked a little bit about the importance of leaving your home in order to pursue the adventure that is guaranteed to you in the United States of America.
00:56:18.000This week, the Jews read the portion of the Bible called Vayera.
00:57:18.000And Hagar and Ishmael are out of water and they're suffering and Hagar basically leaves Ishmael under a bush and she's crying and then God comes to Hagar and says, you know, pick up your eyes and you'll see that there's an oasis over here and...
00:57:50.000And God says, well, at this point, he hasn't done anything.
00:57:54.000At this point, he doesn't deserve to die, and Hagar doesn't deserve to die.
00:57:57.000I can't judge people based on the stuff that they are going to do.
00:57:59.000I can only judge people based on the stuff that they have done.
00:58:02.000Right, intent is not anything, and future events, even if God knows them, he can't punish you for, or he won't punish you for events that you have not actually taken place in as of yet.
00:58:12.000Which is a good window into how we should think of other people in our society, by the way.
00:58:16.000You should judge people on what they have done.
00:58:18.000You should not judge people based on your assumption of what they will do, which goes to the whole pro-abortion argument that maybe we should abort more.
00:58:25.000This is sort of the freakonomics argument that abortion of impoverished children is going to lower the crime rate.
00:58:52.000Okay, the problem is that if you actually look at the text, that's not actually what's going on.
00:58:55.000If you look at the text, what you see is that God says that he is going to... God says to Abraham, I want you to take your son, your only son, and I want you to take him up to a place that I'm going to show you, and there I want you to sacrifice him.
00:59:07.000Now, he doesn't say, I want you to kill him.
01:00:20.000I think that in the time that Abraham was conveying Isaac to Har Hamoria, which by the way, in Jewish tradition, is the Temple Mount, and when he was doing this, Abraham came to a realization, God wasn't ordering him to slay his son, He was ordering him to sacrifice his son.
01:00:39.000And what does that mean, to offer his son?
01:00:41.000Well, what it means is that every time you have a kid, every time you have a kid, you have to decide what values you want your kid to have.
01:00:47.000And there are certain values that, in today's society, make your kid more susceptible to danger.
01:00:50.000And this has been true throughout history.
01:00:51.000It's particularly true for Jews, but it's been true for Christians.
01:00:54.000It's been true for anybody who stands for a particular value system.
01:00:57.000What values do you inculcate in your kids?
01:00:58.000We live in a time when we are supposed to inculcate no values in our kids.
01:01:02.000By no values, the secular left means secular left values.
01:01:05.000You're supposed to let your five-year-old choose their gender.
01:01:06.000You're supposed to let your five-year-old choose their morality.
01:01:09.000The Rousseauian Emile version of life is supposed to apply.
01:01:14.000And one of the things you take into account is, should I teach my kids things that make life more difficult because they are the principled things to do?
01:01:22.000And this has been a very real life and death struggle for a lot of Jews over the course of time, particularly, right?
01:01:27.000Because why would you raise your kid Jewish if you know that your kid is going to be targeted?
01:01:31.000Why would you raise your kid Jewish if you know that that's going to make their life harder?
01:01:35.000And what God is saying to Abraham is, you have to be willing to not only act out my will in your life, you have to be willing to teach your children eternal true values, even if it means that it puts them in harm's way.
01:01:48.000Now, Abraham had faith that God would not end up requiring him to actually put his own son to death, and God doesn't require him to put his son to death, right?
01:01:56.000He offers a different sacrifice there on the top of the mountain.
01:01:59.000But over the course of history, in a very real way, Jews have, and people of every faith really, of many faiths, and of many principles, have had to stack their own safety up against the reality of principle.
01:02:14.000And they've had to stack their children's safety up against the reality of principle.
01:02:18.000And these are all decisions that we as parents have to make.
01:02:33.000You have to make the decision that, yeah, your kid might suffer a little bit more for standing up for the right thing.
01:02:37.000But that's what being a moral parent is all about, instructing your kid in the right thing, in the moral thing, in the true thing, even if it means sacrificing some short-term joy in order to achieve long-term fulfillment.
01:02:48.000Okay, well, we will be back here next week on Monday, or we have two additional hours coming up later today, so we'll see you then.