The Ben Shapiro Show - The Israel Impasse | Ep. 863

00:00:00.000 Israel's elections end with no clear winner, President Trump receives support from a feisty Corey Lewandowski, and the woke scolds come for Joe Biden and comedy.

00:00:07.000 I'm Ben Shapiro.

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

00:00:10.000 Absolute chaos in this Israeli election.

00:00:16.000 I will bring you the results and I will explain how those results work.

00:00:19.000 I am familiar with the system over there.

00:00:21.000 We'll get to that in just one second.

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00:01:37.000 Okay, so Israel had its second election in like eight months yesterday, and that followed another election just a few months ago in which an impasse was created after Benjamin Netanyahu apparently had a majority bloc formed, and a man named Navigdor Lieberman, who was his former defense minister and actually a former member of and a man named Navigdor Lieberman, who was his former defense minister and actually a Yeah.

00:01:57.000 He took his party, the Yisrael Beiteinu party, and basically refused to form a coalition with Netanyahu, so long as Netanyahu was, in his words, pandering toward the religious parties in Israel.

00:02:08.000 So, there are several competing cross-currents in Israeli politics.

00:02:12.000 In the United States, abroad, everybody tends to think that Israeli politics is mainly and centrally about Policy toward the Palestinian Authority, or policy toward Europe, or policy toward the United States, and that simply is not true in much the same way that policy in the United States and politics in the United States are largely not about foreign policy.

00:02:30.000 And in the United States, most of the stuff we think about is domestic policy.

00:02:33.000 In Israel, most of the stuff that people think about is domestic policy, specifically because there is a widespread consensus ever since the Second Intifada of 2000-2001 There's a widespread consensus that there is no peace to be negotiated with a bunch of terrorists, which of course is true. 1.00

00:02:48.000 And this is the dirty little secret of Israeli politics that the press seem to want to ignore.

00:02:52.000 That dirty little secret is that even if Benjamin Netanyahu does not end up as Prime Minister of Israel, there is no world in which there are bilateral negotiations with the Palestinian Authority ending with a peace deal.

00:03:02.000 It's not a thing that's going to happen.

00:03:04.000 Kachov LeVlam, the blue and white party.

00:03:06.000 In Israel, which is led by a former IDF chief of staff named Benny Gantz, who right now, the Europeans are attempting to try him for war crimes or some such because if you ever served in the Israeli military, the Europeans will try to try you for war crimes.

00:03:21.000 Benny Gantz is not going to fundamentally shift Israeli foreign policy.

00:03:24.000 He may shift domestic policy with regard to economics.

00:03:27.000 Bibi has been, Netanyahu, has been a liberalizing prime minister in terms of trying to free the economy.

00:03:34.000 He has also worked hand-in-glove with a lot of the religious parties.

00:03:37.000 And this is another competing cross-current in Israel.

00:03:39.000 So there are a bunch of domestic competing cross-currents in Israeli politics, as I mentioned.

00:03:43.000 One is economic.

00:03:45.000 The foundations of the state of Israel are socialistic.

00:03:48.000 If you go back to the foundation of the state of Israel, it was founded on the socialist ideal.

00:03:52.000 People lived on kibbutzim, which were basically communes.

00:03:54.000 That fell apart.

00:03:55.000 Israel has been moving in a more capitalist direction ever since, which is why it is one of the world's tech leaders now, which is why there are a lot of companies that are based in Israel.

00:04:03.000 It is leaps and bounds ahead of a lot of other countries on a per capita basis in terms of technological development and education.

00:04:10.000 That is because of a liberalization of the economy, but there's a significant and huge social welfare state in the state of Israel, and that's been a source of tension in the state of Israel.

00:04:19.000 And then another major source of tension has been the religious versus the secular in Israel.

00:04:23.000 So the state was founded by secular Zionists, people who believed that there needed to be a homeland for Jews to keep them safe, but weren't particularly religious, didn't have a lot of relationship with traditional Jewish religion.

00:04:33.000 And then there's a big block of people living in Israel who are very religious, and there's all sorts of conflict over Public laws.

00:04:40.000 Like, for example, should the buses run on Shabbat?

00:04:42.000 Should the buses run on Sabbath?

00:04:44.000 Why are we publicly funding buses to run on the Jewish day of rest? 0.90

00:04:44.000 The religious say, no. 0.90

00:04:48.000 It is a Jewish state.

00:04:49.000 And secular Israelis saying, right, it's a state for the Jews. 0.82

00:04:52.000 It's a Jewish state where Jews are supposed to be safe.

00:04:56.000 But it is not a Jewish state in terms of ritual law.

00:04:59.000 Okay, so that's one area of conflict.

00:05:00.000 A smaller one.

00:05:01.000 A bigger one is whether the so-called Haredim, the media called them ultra-Orthodox, but basically it is a sect of Orthodox Judaism, whether the Haredim should serve in the military.

00:05:11.000 Because the military is overwhelmingly secular, a lot of the...

00:05:14.000 The Haredim say they don't want to serve in the military, and so they get some sort of religious exemption. 0.97

00:05:19.000 Now, on a personal level, I'm not in favor of the religious exemption.

00:05:22.000 On a personal level, my belief is that if a secular Israeli is serving in the military, then a religious Israeli should serve in the military.

00:05:31.000 That everybody should serve in the military in Israel, and there are things called Hester Yishivot, where there are a bunch of Orthodox Jews who do serve in the military in Israel, and that should become the model in Israel, this sort of religious Zionist movement, and that's a powerful movement in Israel.

00:05:43.000 But the conflict between the more Orthodox parties and the secular parties broke out into the open a couple of years ago, within the last couple of years.

00:05:51.000 Because Benjamin Netanyahu's coalition in Israel, it's not a two-party system.

00:05:55.000 It's a multi-party system.

00:05:56.000 You have to have a bunch of parties that form a majority and they all have to get together and then they have to form a majority of the Knesset in order to govern.

00:06:04.000 Bibi's coalition has been formed with the help of the so-called right-wing parties as well as with the religious parties.

00:06:11.000 So that would be parties like Yisrael Beiteinu, which is a secular but right-wing party, particularly when it comes to foreign policy, as well as parties like Shas or UTJ, United Torah Judaism, which are the religious parties and vote largely based on religious concerns and subsidies to religious communities and all of that.

00:06:27.000 So, Yisrael Beiteinu decided, Avigdor Lieberman, who has a real dislike for Bibi Netanyahu, there's a significant personality clash between the two of them.

00:06:35.000 And that is partially because Netanyahu has a long history of basically stymieing the growth efforts of people within the Likud.

00:06:42.000 So one of the weird things about Israeli politics also is that a lot of the other parties in Israeli politics were started by people who were castoffs from the Likud.

00:06:50.000 In other words, people who wanted to succeed Netanyahu, and Netanyahu wasn't making room for them.

00:06:54.000 Because in Israel, very often, the leadership of the party sort of moves on to make room for the up-and-comers.

00:07:01.000 So you have a bunch of people who are outside of Likud now, outside of Netanyahu's party, who started their own parties because Netanyahu was not really allowing them a path to power.

00:07:11.000 So that would include Ayelet Chaked. 0.99

00:07:13.000 Ayelet Chaked is a very... She's been noted in the foreign media because she's very attractive. 1.00

00:07:19.000 She also happens to be a brilliant lawyer.

00:07:21.000 She was Justice Minister under Benjamin Netanyahu.

00:07:24.000 And now she is the head of a different party. 0.97

00:07:26.000 She's the head of another right-wing party that is also led by Naftali Bennett, who also used to be a member of Likud, I believe.

00:07:32.000 And then you have Benny Gantz, who I believe also used to be a member of Likud, leading Kachov Levan.

00:07:36.000 And you have Yigdor Lieberman, who used to be a member of Likud, leading Yisrael Beitenu.

00:07:40.000 Bibi has maintained power at the expense of kicking out, or forcing out, or convincing people to leave, moving them out of Likud. 0.56

00:07:50.000 And this has led to an erosion in the size and umbrella status of Likud, but it has led to Bibi Netanyahu being able to maintain power with a series of coalition governments.

00:07:58.000 So anyway, a couple of years ago, Avigdor Lieberman basically made it clear that he and Netanyahu were significantly at odds, and he was not going to sit in a government that was led by Netanyahu.

00:08:10.000 Okay, so it looked as though Netanyahu might cut a deal with Lieberman.

00:08:13.000 And the deal was going to be that he was going to force the religious groups with which he was already in a coalition. 0.61

00:08:20.000 He's going to force those groups to do things they didn't want to do.

00:08:24.000 He might think about trying to push some of them into more military service or cutting subsidies or any of that sort of stuff.

00:08:30.000 And Lieberman was pushing very hard for that, Netanyahu said no, and so the government fell apart.

00:08:34.000 There was an election, and Lieberman was still the kingmaker.

00:08:37.000 And if Igor Lieberman is a clever political player, he was still the kingmaker, because basically you had two blocks inside of Israeli politics.

00:08:44.000 You had Likud and the right-wing parties and the religious parties, and then you had Blue and White, which the media are calling center-left, but it really is not a center-left party.

00:08:52.000 It's sort of a slightly to the left of Likud party.

00:08:55.000 A central left party would have been in the old days labor, but labor is no longer really even a player.

00:09:00.000 It's kind of amazing.

00:09:02.000 Blue and white with the rest of the left and the Arab party. 0.72

00:09:05.000 So 20% of Israel's population is Arab and Muslim, which again goes to the idea that Israel is an apartheid state.

00:09:12.000 The third largest party in the Knesset is a Muslim Arab party, right?

00:09:16.000 The joint list.

00:09:16.000 Okay, so.

00:09:18.000 That other block also had like 55 seats and Lieberman was the kingmaker.

00:09:22.000 Well, Bibi had a coalition he could have formed with Lieberman but they couldn't cut a deal so Bibi called new elections.

00:09:26.000 This was the second round of the elections and they result in exactly the same situation.

00:09:31.000 So Bibi ends up with basically 56 seats in the right-wing coalition.

00:09:35.000 The center-left and joint list end up with 55 seats or 56 seats.

00:09:41.000 The results are still coming in, in their coalition.

00:09:44.000 And Lieberman ends up being the swing.

00:09:45.000 So there's a lot of talk about how exactly all of this ends up, right?

00:09:50.000 Does it end up that Lieberman sides with the center-left and the joint list?

00:09:53.000 Does he side instead with Netanyahu and the religious parties and they somehow find a way to bridge that gap?

00:09:59.000 Or do they do what Lieberman wants?

00:10:01.000 What Lieberman wants is he wants to be seen as the kingmaker in what they call a unity government.

00:10:04.000 A unity government is where people from across the aisle come together and then they just form a broad coalition for purposes of governing.

00:10:10.000 And what he wants is for Cajol the Levan, which is Netanyahu's chief rivals, to join a coalition government with Netanyahu's Likud and Lieberman holding them together. 0.65

00:10:20.000 And that would be an extremely strong majority.

00:10:24.000 Because if you have blue and white, which has I think 32 seats, and you have Likud, which also has 32 seats, or 33, and you add those together, it's 55, and then you have Lieberman on top of that, you now have 64, you can add in...

00:10:36.000 You can add in another bunch of seats from probably the right-wing, I yell at Shaqqaid, Naftali Bennett party. 1.00

00:10:42.000 You end up with probably well over 70 seats.

00:10:45.000 Now, the problem with the unity government is it's kind of fragile, right?

00:10:48.000 Because people don't get along so well, right?

00:10:49.000 They don't have a lot of shared political priorities.

00:10:52.000 So again, three options on the table.

00:10:55.000 Lieberman joins the central left and the Arab party.

00:10:58.000 To create a majority coalition.

00:11:00.000 That's not going to happen.

00:11:01.000 So the media are invested in the idea that's going to happen.

00:11:03.000 It's not going to happen.

00:11:04.000 Okay, Lieberman is not joining a coalition with the Muslim Arab Party joint list in Israel.

00:11:09.000 The reason being, members of that party, the parties that formed that joint, it's called the joint list because it used to be a bunch of smaller parties that all joined together to create a joint list.

00:11:18.000 Those parties have openly in the past called for the destruction of the State of Israel.

00:11:21.000 Lieberman is a hawk on security.

00:11:23.000 It would be like John Bolton joining a coalition with Ilhan Omar.

00:11:27.000 It's not going to happen.

00:11:28.000 Avigdor Lieberman is not joining a majority coalition with the Joint List, and he has said so.

00:11:32.000 It's not me saying that, it's Avigdor Lieberman saying that.

00:11:34.000 The media, because they hate Netanyahu so much, they keep acting as though Lieberman is going to join that coalition and cast Netanyahu completely out of power.

00:11:41.000 That is not a thing that's going to happen.

00:11:43.000 So, the other two possibilities are that Lieberman joins the right-wing coalition because Netanyahu pays him off with something.

00:11:49.000 Netanyahu gives him a particularly juicy post.

00:11:52.000 He puts a bunch of members of Yisrael Beiteinu into the government in various posts.

00:11:56.000 He makes concessions to Yisrael Beiteinu with regard to the religious parties.

00:12:01.000 And Lieberman is able to pry out of Netanyahu what he wasn't able to pry out of Netanyahu before, and Netanyahu remains prime minister.

00:12:07.000 Or alternatively, you end up with a rotating prime ministership.

00:12:11.000 And there was some talk about this after the last election, that basically, you would end up with almost what the founders envisioned when they had the president elected as the person with the most vote, and the vice president became the second most voted person.

00:12:23.000 And you ended up with this weird government where Thomas Jefferson was serving in John Adams' administration.

00:12:30.000 It's kind of like that.

00:12:31.000 You would end up with Benny Gantz as part-time prime minister, and you'd end up with Bibi Netanyahu as part-time prime minister, and Lieberman as the power broker between the two.

00:12:39.000 Those are the two available choices.

00:12:40.000 And if none of those choices happen, we get another election, and they just keep doing this thing until they form a coalition.

00:12:46.000 So that is where things sit.

00:12:47.000 The way the media are playing this as big loss for Bibi Netanyahu.

00:12:51.000 Except I'm not sure that Netanyahu really thought that things were gonna radically change from the last election cycle.

00:12:55.000 In fact, the best thing for Bibi Netanyahu is for Bibi Netanyahu probably to enter the unity government.

00:13:00.000 Now, I don't know if Netanyahu believes that.

00:13:01.000 But Netanyahu may believe that his best path is to continue to maintain power by cutting a deal with Lieberman.

00:13:09.000 And Lieberman is going to exact a heavy price in order to make that happen.

00:13:13.000 There's been a lot of talk in Israel about whether Netanyahu's relationship with Trump didn't pay off to his benefit, that he was saying that he's super tight with Trump, and that the Israeli public was basically like, well, it doesn't have to be you, it could be Benny Gantz negotiating with Trump.

00:13:25.000 Also, he had mentioned the possibility of a joint defense pact, and Trump Had not come through with anything like that in the days leading up to the election.

00:13:33.000 There was this idea that maybe he had undermined Netanyahu.

00:13:36.000 Jerusalem Post was talking about that.

00:13:38.000 I don't think that's really the case.

00:13:39.000 I think the people are just frustrated that Netanyahu didn't form a government last time.

00:13:42.000 And so they voted exactly the same way this time that they did last time.

00:13:45.000 Which makes sense.

00:13:47.000 If we re-held the vote of 2016, in 2017, it would probably look a lot like the vote of 2016.

00:13:52.000 So, that is where things currently lie.

00:13:55.000 I think that the most likely outcome probably is the unity government.

00:13:58.000 I think that that would be the smartest thing for Netanyahu to do, because Netanyahu is currently under the possibility of indictment.

00:14:02.000 He can't be indicted while he is the sitting prime minister.

00:14:05.000 So, so long as he is the sitting prime minister, rotating power with Benny Gantz, it's not bad for him.

00:14:09.000 Plus, let's be real about this.

00:14:11.000 Benny Gantz, who's this general, the head of the Kachov Levan, the blue and white party, Benny Gantz is an enigma wrapped in a mystery wrapped in a riddle.

00:14:19.000 Nobody knows anything about him.

00:14:21.000 They know sort of his military background.

00:14:23.000 He's a lot like a lot of other former Israeli leaders who have a military background, but they've kept their politics pretty hidden.

00:14:29.000 That'd be people like Yitzhak Rabin, who ended up on the left, and Ehud Barak, who's also an IDF chief of staff, who ended up on the left.

00:14:35.000 It would also include People like Ariel Sharon, who ended up on the right, but not near as right as people thought he was going to be, who was a general in the Israeli army.

00:14:43.000 Israel has a habit of electing high-ranking military men to positions of power because Israel is constantly in a tenuous international situation with regard to security.

00:14:50.000 But if the Israeli public see a rotating prime ministership between Bibi and Benny Gantz, or a shared power arrangement between the two of them, It's pretty obvious who's going to win that public relations battle.

00:15:05.000 Benny Gantz is not good at this.

00:15:07.000 They've been hiding Benny Gantz basically behind a tree this whole election cycle.

00:15:11.000 And Benny Gantz has said five words maybe for the entire election cycle.

00:15:15.000 So if he actually ends up in power, I do not think that that is a long-lasting arrangement.

00:15:21.000 Now the other possibility...

00:15:23.000 is that the Likud actually ousts Netanyahu in order to cut a deal with Lieberman.

00:15:29.000 That is sort of the out of left field possibility, is that the internal Likud battle takes place and somebody else, like a second tier person, there are a few names that are floating around, ends up taking over the leadership of Likud.

00:15:42.000 He cuts a deal with Lieberman and he ends up becoming the next prime minister.

00:15:45.000 What does this mean for foreign policy?

00:15:47.000 The answer for foreign policy is it doesn't mean a hell of a lot.

00:15:50.000 Really, it does not mean a hell of a lot.

00:15:51.000 Because again, there's a widespread Israeli consensus. 0.76

00:15:54.000 Iran wants to murder us. 0.99

00:15:56.000 Hezbollah wants to murder us. 0.98

00:15:57.000 Hamas wants to murder us. 0.74

00:15:58.000 This is what Israelis think. 0.98

00:16:00.000 And the Europeans don't like us.

00:16:02.000 And Trump's our friend. 0.68

00:16:03.000 And we're not cutting a deal with a bunch of terrorists who want to murder us.

00:16:06.000 That is the internal Israeli consensus over there.

00:16:09.000 That's not changing, whether Benny Gantz ends up in power or whether Netanyahu ends up in power.

00:16:14.000 And it's going to be a widespread surprise to the left when Benny Gantz ends up basically governing like Bibi Netanyahu would on foreign policy.

00:16:23.000 And it'll be fascinating to see how they react to that, frankly, because they've always posed it as that Bibi Netanyahu was the obstacle to peace in the Middle East.

00:16:30.000 The obvious truth is that it is all the terrorists that surround Israel that are the obstacle to peace in the Middle East. 0.86

00:16:36.000 And then I predict what you will see Is the media turn on the Israeli public and suggest that the Israeli public is the real obstacle.

00:16:43.000 So it's no longer Netanyahu.

00:16:45.000 It's no longer Benny Gantz.

00:16:46.000 It's all the people who elect these people.

00:16:47.000 If only they would elect, they'd bring back the Meretz party.

00:16:50.000 If only they bring back Shalom Arshav, then bring back the Peace Now party from the mid-90s, then everything would be healed and be all better. 0.94

00:16:57.000 The media have a vested interest in trying to portray the Israel-Palestinian conflict as Israel's fault. 1.00

00:17:04.000 It is a bunch of crap. 1.00

00:17:05.000 It has always been a bunch of crap. 1.00

00:17:07.000 They will continue to press that forward. 0.99

00:17:08.000 They've tried to blame it on Netanyahu so they can avoid the baseline reality, which is that the Israeli public are not going to make concessions to terrorists.

00:17:17.000 But I think they're soon to be disabused of the notion that this is just a Netanyahu policy.

00:17:22.000 This is an Israeli policy. 0.85

00:17:23.000 Israelis are not cutting deals with Mahmoud Abbas's terrorist Palestinian Authority or Hamas or Islamic Jihad or Hezbollah.

00:17:31.000 They're not doing any of those things.

00:17:33.000 Okay, coming up in a second, we'll talk about Mike Pompeo, who's heading to the Middle East to figure out Iran strategy.

00:17:37.000 First, let's talk about the importance of a business card.

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00:18:56.000 Okay, so Mike Pompeo, meanwhile.

00:18:59.000 is headed over to the Middle East to figure out Iran's strategy.

00:19:03.000 It's unclear the Iran strategy that is actually being pursued at this point.

00:19:07.000 As I say yesterday, I think that the actual foreign policy of the United States is, was, and kind of always will be muddled through because the American people aren't interested in empire building.

00:19:16.000 I think correctly so.

00:19:17.000 The American people are also not interested in full-scale isolationism because every time the United States gets isolationist, we get a Pearl Harbor or a 9-11.

00:19:24.000 So we end up kind of being mildly reactive.

00:19:28.000 Yeah, we're present in the world.

00:19:29.000 We have bases all over the place.

00:19:30.000 We have a strong military, and we can react to threats, but we don't want long-term occupations or invasions.

00:19:36.000 We're not into that sort of thing.

00:19:38.000 And so what happens when there's a hotspot like Iran tends to be the possibility of a flare-up, and then it kind of recedes.

00:19:45.000 Iran is the herpes outbreak of the Middle East, the Iranian government. 0.98

00:19:50.000 They flare up, and then they sort of recede.

00:19:52.000 So Mike Pompeo is trying to create a policy right now.

00:19:55.000 The Washington Post reporting, That the Trump administration has announced that Pompeo would fly to the Persian Gulf on Wednesday to discuss a response to an attack on Saudi oil facilities as Iran's Supreme Leader ruled out any direct talks with the United States.

00:20:07.000 Pompeo's spur-of-the-moment trip, which will include stops in Saudi Arabia and the UAE, underscores the danger that tensions with Iran could spiral into military conflict.

00:20:16.000 President Trump has said Iran was probably responsible for the attack, that he would like to avoid a war Pompeo has assigned blame more directly.

00:20:23.000 Obviously, obviously does not wish for there to be a war with Iran at this point.

00:20:27.000 This is why I've suggested that the likeliest solution here is that the United States pledges to strengthen the defense of Saudi Arabia without pledging any sort of aggressive action against Iran.

00:20:37.000 I think that's probably the happy medium where the U.S.

00:20:40.000 ends up.

00:20:40.000 We maybe end up helping flag some tankers in the Straits of Hormuz and guiding those tankers through the Straits of Hormuz against the possibility of Iranian aggression, reestablishing some sense of deterrence.

00:20:52.000 The weekend attack, which the United States says it believes originated in Iran, despite claims by rebels in Yemen that they carried it out, appears to have dashed all hope that Trump might meet with Iranian President Hassan Rouhani at the UN General Assembly in New York.

00:21:03.000 While the Iranians, I don't think, were all that interested in face-to-face meetings with Trump, I think they're more interested in pressuring the Europeans to break with Trump and undermine the JCPOA, the revocation of the Iran nuclear deal.

00:21:17.000 The Europeans want to surrender to Iran. 0.84

00:21:19.000 It is pretty much that simple.

00:21:20.000 The Europeans want Iran to get their money.

00:21:23.000 They want Iran to be part of the world economy.

00:21:25.000 And they don't care if Iran spreads terrorism all over the Middle East. 0.79

00:21:29.000 They simply don't care.

00:21:30.000 Because they figure the U.S.

00:21:31.000 is going to foot the bill anyway if something goes wrong.

00:21:33.000 Which unfortunately has been European foreign policy since basically the late Cold War.

00:21:38.000 You know, the fact that Trump, when Trump says that Europeans have not paid their fair share for defense, that is technically true. 0.99

00:21:45.000 I mean, the United States basically footed the bill for all of European defense for several decades during the Cold War, and that allowed them to live high on the hog in terms of social welfare programs.

00:21:54.000 Well, Europe can pursue that policy again, but there will be some tragic consequences to that policy.

00:22:00.000 And you're starting, by the way, to see those consequences in terms of the outbreak of nationalist sentiment in Europe, largely driven By the increase in unvetted Muslim refugees coming from the Middle East into the heart of Europe and creating all sorts of social schisms. 0.98

00:22:16.000 The Iran Supreme Leader Ayatollah al-Khamenei said all the officials in the Islamic Republic unanimously believe there will be no negotiations at any level with the United States.

00:22:24.000 Again, they're trying to pressure the Europeans. 0.93

00:22:25.000 This is not about the United States at this point.

00:22:28.000 I think that the way this ends probably is with the United States trying to strengthen, shore up Saudi defenses without getting involved in a conflict.

00:22:36.000 Okay, meanwhile, There's a new NBC Wall Street Journal poll out.

00:22:40.000 Joe Biden continues to lead the 2020 Democratic field.

00:22:43.000 Elizabeth Warren continues to steal support from Bernie Sanders.

00:22:46.000 So she's not actually taking support from Joe Biden.

00:22:49.000 She's taking support from Bernie Sanders.

00:22:50.000 And sooner or later, Sanders is going to have to open up the guns.

00:22:54.000 See, if these poll results are real, sooner or later, Bernie Sanders is going to have to go to war with her. 0.99

00:22:59.000 So this was the question.

00:23:01.000 As I said last week, before the last debate, there was basically a Mexican standoff, like at the end of Good, the Bad, and the Ugly, in which Joe Biden was pointing his guns at Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, and Warren was pointing at Sanders and Biden, and Sanders was pointing at Warren and Biden, but nobody wanted to fire.

00:23:16.000 Because if you're the first person to fire, you lose.

00:23:18.000 That was the basic rule.

00:23:19.000 It was a reservoir dog standoff scenario.

00:23:22.000 It was, it was, Joe Biden wanted to watch Elizabeth and Bernie go to war and wreck each other.

00:23:27.000 And Warren wanted Sanders and Biden to go to war and wreck each other.

00:23:32.000 And Biden, and they all want the other two to go to war.

00:23:35.000 Sanders wants Warren and Biden to go to war and wreck each other.

00:23:37.000 That was the basic math.

00:23:39.000 But if Elizabeth Warren starts stealing away enough support from Bernie Sanders, he's not going to have a choice, but he has to wreck her. 0.82

00:23:45.000 Because he's hoping that if he wrecks her, then maybe those people come back flooding to him.

00:23:49.000 And if he sits still, he's out of the race.

00:23:52.000 So we'll get to those poll results in just one second.

00:23:54.000 First, let's talk about how hard it is to create healthy habits.

00:23:57.000 You know, when you are trying to get in the habit of working out every day, trying to get in the habit of eating healthy, and people will talk about diets, but diets end up being yo-yo kind of things, where you go on the diet, and then you get off the diet, and it ain't great, or you start exercising because you're really enthusiastic, and like a week later, you're not enthusiastic anymore, and you stop the diet.

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00:25:18.000 OK, so here are the latest poll results.

00:25:21.000 There are two new polls out.

00:25:22.000 They both show Joe Biden up.

00:25:24.000 They both show Bernie Sanders down.

00:25:26.000 That is the trend.

00:25:27.000 So there's been, let's see, four polls taken since the debates last week, and two of them Have Biden up a lot larger and two of them have Biden up a lot smaller.

00:25:38.000 So there's a political morning consult poll that came out yesterday and the polling period was, let's see, today is the 18th.

00:25:45.000 So the polling period would have been Saturday through Monday.

00:25:49.000 And that poll, the Political Morning Consul poll, showed Biden with 32, Sanders with 20, Warren with 18.

00:25:56.000 So basically Biden way ahead, and Warren and Sanders neck and neck.

00:25:59.000 There's a SurveyUSA poll, same basic period, and it shows Biden at 33, Warren at 19, Bernie at 17.

00:26:03.000 So Warren ahead of Bernie.

00:26:08.000 But still close.

00:26:09.000 Then there's the NBC News Wall Street Journal poll, and this is the one that has got to have Bernie Sanders in a panic.

00:26:15.000 It has Joe Biden up at 31, Elizabeth Warren at 25, and Bernie Sanders at 14.

00:26:20.000 In other words, the media attention on Elizabeth Warren is driving people from Bernie Sanders over to Elizabeth Warren.

00:26:26.000 Now, I'd suggested that last week's debate was a blown opportunity for Warren, that if she wanted to make a strong move, then she would have to, at some point, go after Biden.

00:26:36.000 That she's figuring if she bides her time, it'll be okay.

00:26:38.000 I still think that she blew an opportunity.

00:26:39.000 I think that she receded into the field.

00:26:42.000 But it is also true that she is becoming the default, not-Biden, not-Sanders candidate.

00:26:46.000 And that is something, right?

00:26:47.000 I mean, just being there and being the person who is not slow, moderate, gaffy Joe, and also not being Bernie crazy Sanders, It's a thing.

00:26:58.000 It's a thing.

00:26:58.000 There's room for that.

00:27:00.000 Being progressive enough for some of the Sanders people, but being not crazy enough for some of the Biden people, that's not a bad place to be.

00:27:07.000 Is it enough for her to win the primaries? 0.88

00:27:09.000 I don't know.

00:27:09.000 Because again, she has no black support.

00:27:11.000 Like, none. 0.85

00:27:12.000 None whatsoever.

00:27:13.000 And she's received just fawning media attention. 0.99

00:27:16.000 Absolutely fawning.

00:27:17.000 The New York Times, fawning over the fact that she brought out several thousand people to Central Park in New York yesterday.

00:27:23.000 And Donald Trump rightly pointing out to the media, guys, if you stop in the middle of 42nd Avenue in New York City, there are like a thousand people there. 0.99

00:27:32.000 If you can't draw a crowd in New York City, you suck at politics.

00:27:34.000 Kamala Harris drew like 10,000, 20,000 people to her lead off in Sacramento. 0.92

00:27:38.000 So drawing a big crowd, as Mitt Romney learned at the end of the 2012 election, does not mean that you're going to win an election.

00:27:44.000 Trump is right about that.

00:27:46.000 With that said, there are two polls, both of them show Warren up over Sanders now.

00:27:51.000 NBC News Wall Street Journal, Biden 31, Warren 25, Sanders 14.

00:27:56.000 Economist YouGov, this one has always been very favorable to Elizabeth Warren, actually.

00:28:02.000 The last time they did this poll, this Economist YouGov poll, it showed Biden and Warren basically even, so she's actually dropped a little bit in this poll, from what I see.

00:28:09.000 Biden at 26, Warren at 21, Sanders at 14.

00:28:12.000 So that means that she's closed within striking distance of Biden, but she would have to convince half of Sanders' support to move over to her.

00:28:20.000 And I wonder if that's the case.

00:28:21.000 I do wonder if that's the case, because it seems to me that the Bernie bros, the people who love Bernie, they gotta be looking at Warren and saying, she's a phony. 0.98

00:28:29.000 She's a fraud. 1.00

00:28:31.000 And this is not someone sufficiently committed to our communist way of life.

00:28:35.000 And I think that there will come up, it's still very early, there will come a point somewhere in here where Warren starts to earn some negative media attention.

00:28:43.000 It happens to every candidate.

00:28:44.000 They got their ups and their downs.

00:28:45.000 She started with a real bad down with the, I'm Native American, oh wait, no I'm not.

00:28:49.000 That was real bad.

00:28:50.000 And then she's had a consistent uptick.

00:28:53.000 In media energy and attention and sycophantic coverage directed at her for months.

00:29:00.000 And that's led to this increasing steady rise.

00:29:03.000 As opposed to some of the other candidates who've added up to now.

00:29:05.000 Like Beto started here and just went directly down.

00:29:09.000 That was Beto's candidacy.

00:29:10.000 Elizabeth Warren starts down and has been trending up.

00:29:14.000 But it's still early.

00:29:16.000 There's still room for people to go after Elizabeth Warren. 0.99

00:29:19.000 Even Stephen Colbert was tempted to do that last night.

00:29:21.000 He asked her about the whole, you know, you keep saying that you're not going to raise taxes on the middle class or you avoid the question and you're avoiding the question.

00:29:28.000 There hasn't been Medicare for all before.

00:29:32.000 You keep being asked in the debates, how are you going to pay for it?

00:29:35.000 Are you going to raise the middle class taxes?

00:29:36.000 How are you going to pay for it?

00:29:39.000 Are you going to raise the middle class taxes?

00:29:41.000 So here's how we're going to do this.

00:29:44.000 Costs are going to go up for the wealthiest Americans, for big corporations.

00:29:50.000 Taxes?

00:29:50.000 What do you mean by cost?

00:29:51.000 Yeah.

00:29:52.000 And hard-working middle-class families are going to see their costs go down.

00:29:57.000 But will their taxes go up?

00:29:59.000 Well, but here's the thing.

00:30:00.000 No, but here's the thing.

00:30:01.000 I've listened to these answers a few times before.

00:30:03.000 Okay, and then he keeps saying, like, good for Stephen Col... I've never said these words before.

00:30:08.000 Good for Stephen Colbert.

00:30:09.000 So Stephen is kind of... Colbert is basically a Bernie bro.

00:30:13.000 Stephen Colbert asking her a very straight question and not getting a straight answer.

00:30:16.000 Eventually, this is going to come back to haunt Elizabeth Warren.

00:30:19.000 There is this image of her as this pristine progressive and it's such nonsense. 0.97

00:30:23.000 She is just as phony as Kamala Harris. 1.00

00:30:24.000 She's just better at it. 0.73

00:30:26.000 And I think that the progressive left is going to wake up to this.

00:30:28.000 And when that happens, there's going to be a virulent reaction and there will be an internecine war between Joe, not between Joe Biden, between Elizabeth Warren and between Bernie Sanders.

00:30:36.000 That internecine war is coming.

00:30:39.000 You remember, Bernie actually did this same routine with Hillary Clinton early in the primaries. 0.99

00:30:44.000 Early in the primaries, he said, I don't care about her dumb emails. 0.98

00:30:47.000 And then by the end of the race, he was like, remember those emails, guys? 0.99

00:30:50.000 Remember that?

00:30:50.000 That was weird.

00:30:52.000 Bernie Sanders steered clear of Hillary until it became clear he could not steer clear of Hillary anymore.

00:30:57.000 Well, you're going to see the same thing happen with Elizabeth Warren.

00:31:00.000 He went on The View and he was like, Elizabeth and I are good friends.

00:31:03.000 We've been good friends for 20 years.

00:31:05.000 At a certain point, he's going to start flinging pudding at her.

00:31:08.000 Here, take this, chocolate pudding!

00:31:11.000 And that's the way this is going to go, because it can't go any other way.

00:31:15.000 I mean, if he starts to lose support, who the hell is he gonna go after, Joe Biden?

00:31:18.000 Really, there's no case for that.

00:31:19.000 Now, in a second, we're gonna talk about the great hope for Elizabeth Warren, and it lies not in stealing Bernie Sanders' support, but in finishing Joe Biden.

00:31:28.000 Because again, Joe Biden's base of support is heavily minority.

00:31:31.000 A lot of black voters really like Joe Biden.

00:31:34.000 Why?

00:31:34.000 Well, because he is stapled to Barack Obama's pant leg.

00:31:37.000 He is the chicken who crossed the road. 0.83

00:31:39.000 Barack Obama was the chicken who crossed the road, and Joe Biden is the person stapled to the chicken's pant leg.

00:31:45.000 That is what happened here.

00:31:46.000 Joe Biden is a hanger-on.

00:31:47.000 He's always been a hanger-on.

00:31:49.000 But that's not a bad place to be with black voters in the United States, among whom Barack Obama is still extraordinarily popular.

00:31:55.000 We'll get to Joe Biden in just one second.

00:31:58.000 First, let's talk about your sleep quality.

00:31:59.000 So I'm on the road.

00:32:00.000 You know what that means.

00:32:01.000 I'm not sleeping as well as I would were I at home.

00:32:03.000 Not just because my wife is not here, but also because the quality of my bed is not as good.

00:32:08.000 I'm staying in a nice hotel, but let me tell you, my mattress at home, way more comfortable.

00:32:12.000 Why?

00:32:12.000 Because I'm using Helix Sleep.

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00:32:28.000 They will match you to a customized mattress that will give you the best sleep of your life.

00:32:33.000 As I say, I cannot wait to get home right now, specifically because I need some sleep.

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00:32:53.000 Get up to $125 off at HelixSleep.com slash Ben.

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00:33:01.000 HelixSleep.com slash Ben.

00:33:03.000 Go check them out right now, okay?

00:33:04.000 In just a second, we'll get to Joe Biden and the only attack that matters on Joe Biden.

00:33:10.000 We'll get to that in just one second.

00:33:12.000 We'll also get to Corey Lewandowski really going at it with the House Judiciary Committee Democrats.

00:33:17.000 For some good and some ill.

00:33:19.000 We'll get to that in one second.

00:33:20.000 First, you have to go over to dailywire.com and subscribe.

00:33:22.000 If you do that, you spend $9.99 a month or $99 a year, you get the rest of this show live.

00:33:27.000 You also get two additional hours of me every single day, on video, on demand, without commercials.

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00:33:34.000 You also get the Michael Moll's show, if that's a thing that you want.

00:33:37.000 Don't know why you would.

00:33:37.000 But we have Matt Wall, she's great.

00:33:39.000 And we also have Andrew Klavan, who is mediocre.

00:33:41.000 So we have a lot of mediocre to great and one bad host.

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00:34:05.000 We are the largest, fastest growing conservative podcast and radio show in the nation.

00:34:09.000 So as I've now been saying for several weeks, there are two lines of attack on Joe Biden that have been used.

00:34:21.000 One is that he's old and we keep seeing him gaffe.

00:34:23.000 So for example, he said yesterday that the child tax credit that he's pushing could put 720 million women back in the workforce, which is a weird stat considering there are 330 million people in the United States.

00:34:36.000 So I'm not sure where he's coming up with the other 400 million people and why all of them are women. 0.98

00:34:41.000 Is this a weird Joe Biden fantasy?

00:34:42.000 A lot of shoulders to rub there.

00:34:42.000 Who knows.

00:34:44.000 But Joe, is that sort of stuff going to hurt Joe Biden?

00:34:47.000 No, that's not going to hurt Joe Biden because again, we all know he's slow old Joe and he gaffes all the time.

00:34:55.000 He's been gaffing for years, right?

00:34:56.000 He was called Uncle Joe because he was the kind of dopey uncle at the Thanksgiving party who would have one too many beers and stumble into the den while you're watching football and knock over the chips, right?

00:35:06.000 That's who Uncle Joe was when he was Uncle Joe.

00:35:08.000 Now he's just Grandpa Joe, and he can't stumble into the room anymore and knock over the chips.

00:35:12.000 He basically just sort of conks out on the 1970s-era recliner with his feet up and his shoes off.

00:35:19.000 That's Joe Biden now.

00:35:21.000 I say in a general election, I don't think that hurts him.

00:35:23.000 I mean, I think that a return to normalcy, even if the normalcy is just basically a comatose human being, that's not a horrible pitch.

00:35:31.000 But in a primary, it ain't going to help him too much.

00:35:33.000 But at the same time, it's not going to hurt him too much.

00:35:34.000 We all know who he is.

00:35:36.000 You know, they keep pretending that gaffe upon gaffe upon gaffe.

00:35:39.000 I promise you, Elizabeth Warren's gaffes, it seems like far bigger than a gaffe that she just keeps lying about whether she's going to raise middle class taxes. 0.99

00:35:46.000 It seems like that's not a gaffe.

00:35:48.000 That's like an actual policy fail for Elizabeth Warren.

00:35:51.000 So, you know, I don't think that's going to hurt him.

00:35:54.000 The second line of attack on Joe Biden is that he has to be canceled.

00:35:58.000 And this one, again, I have a hard time believing that this is going to hurt him simply because the nature of the messengers carrying the attack are not capable of hurting him.

00:36:07.000 So Kamala Harris briefly hurt Joe Biden when she went to the, you didn't want forced busing, even though she didn't want forced busing and nobody wanted forced busing in the 1970s. 1.00

00:36:14.000 And she briefly hurt him with the, You were hanging out with segregationists, and he was like, no, they're just senators, and I was working with them, and some of them are bad people, and I said so.

00:36:25.000 She briefly heard him because she had the credibility to speak on the issue, because in our era of identity politics, a white person saying that to Joe Biden has no impact.

00:36:32.000 A black candidate saying that to Joe Biden has some impact.

00:36:35.000 And then her poll numbers started to drop and his started to rise again.

00:36:39.000 And he wasn't supremely damaged by any of that.

00:36:41.000 Elizabeth Warren playing that card ain't gonna have any sort of, like, that ain't gonna work at all. 1.00

00:36:45.000 Elizabeth Warren is whiter than the backside of this piece of paper. 0.79

00:36:48.000 I mean, she is as white as snow. 0.99

00:36:50.000 Elizabeth Warren is whiter than I am and that is pretty damned white. 1.00

00:36:54.000 I mean, I clap on one and three gang. 0.99

00:36:56.000 I mean, she is she she is very white. 0.94

00:36:58.000 And so her going after Biden's base of support is likely unavailing.

00:37:03.000 And so instead, what you're seeing is some of the so-called opinion journalists in the media Some of the professors of history going after Joe Biden on her behalf, hoping that if they knock him down, that she will rise up again.

00:37:14.000 I don't think that that is likely to work particularly well, but they're going to try.

00:37:19.000 Marsha Chatelain is the distinguished associate professor of history at Georgetown University, and she has a piece in The Washington Post today called Joe Biden isn't the only Democrat who has blamed black America for its problems.

00:37:32.000 She says, former Vice President Joe Biden spent Sunday at the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama, speaking on the anniversary of a bombing there that killed four black girls.

00:37:39.000 The candidate has had some trouble handling issues involving race.

00:37:43.000 After conceding that institutional segregation and redlining banks exist, Biden veered away from a logic that might have called for some strands of reparative justice.

00:37:51.000 Instead, he turned to the old liberal playbook, castigate black families.

00:37:54.000 Look, he started, you talk about education.

00:37:56.000 After rightly suggesting higher wages for teachers and more funding for schools with Title I designation, Biden reminded listeners that teachers, a profession that is majority white, cannot do it alone.

00:38:05.000 They have, he said, every problem coming to them.

00:38:07.000 And the way to improve outcomes in segregated schools would be simply to send social workers to visit black families to teach them how to raise their children better, complete with the record player on at night to expose kids to more words.

00:38:17.000 While Biden was criticized roundly for that answer, it fit quite neatly into the grand American political tradition of evading serious conversation about the legacy of slavery by expressing displeasure with the victims of it.

00:38:28.000 Well, I'm sorry if you knock up a woman and then leave, that is not you being a victim of slavery, that's you being a bad person.

00:38:37.000 I mean that... No.

00:38:38.000 The answer is no.

00:38:39.000 You don't get to blame the personal decision that you made to have a child out of wedlock with a person with whom you were not married on slavery.

00:38:47.000 Because you were not enslaved, that person was not enslaved, their parents were not enslaved, their grandparents were not enslaved, their great-grandparents were likely not enslaved, their great-great-grandparents maybe were enslaved, probably you're talking about their great-great-great-grandparents.

00:38:58.000 So no, you don't get to do that.

00:39:00.000 But I guess the idea is that if Joe Biden suggests that if you are going to prosecute criminality or encourage parents to spend more time on education in the home or encourage parents to stay married, that this is the vestiges of slavery, of victim-blaming, I don't think that I don't think that dog hunts, but I think that the left would like for that dog to hunt.

00:39:19.000 And so they're going to continue pushing that.

00:39:21.000 We'll see if the Democratic Party falls for it.

00:39:23.000 I have my doubts about that.

00:39:25.000 So predictions.

00:39:26.000 I think that Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders will go to war in quite short order.

00:39:30.000 I think that Joe Biden is going to sit this one out.

00:39:32.000 And I think that Joe Biden will probably benefit from that war at least a little bit.

00:39:37.000 OK, meanwhile, there was a big hearing yesterday At the House Judiciary Committee, Democrats called Corey Lewandowski.

00:39:42.000 Why?

00:39:43.000 Well, when Corey Lewandowski was an aide to Donald Trump, Trump, according to the Mueller Report, called on Corey Lewandowski to deliver a letter to Jeff Sessions, basically firing him for not firing Robert Mueller.

00:39:54.000 And Lewandowski conveniently just didn't do it, right?

00:39:57.000 Corey Lewandowski was like, that's kind of a bad idea.

00:39:58.000 We're not going to do that.

00:40:00.000 And it was in the Mueller Report.

00:40:01.000 There was talk about whether it amounted to obstruction.

00:40:04.000 There's an argument, yes.

00:40:05.000 There's, I think, a more solid argument, no.

00:40:07.000 Although I definitely see the argument for yes.

00:40:10.000 But it's all in the Mueller Report.

00:40:12.000 Democrats can't let the Mueller Report go because the Mueller Report did not recommend prosecution.

00:40:15.000 It didn't make any recommendation at all.

00:40:17.000 And as it turns out, it would have been very difficult to prove obstruction of justice on the basis of the allegations that were made in the Mueller Report.

00:40:25.000 Democrats don't even want to impeach on that basis.

00:40:28.000 And Nancy Pelosi does not want to impeach on the basis of the Mueller Report. 0.76

00:40:32.000 Democrats nonetheless have to prove their mettle to their own supporters, and so they called forth Corey Lewandowski, and it went really poorly for them, because it turns out that you know what Corey Lewandowski is fantastic at?

00:40:41.000 Grandstanding.

00:40:42.000 I mean, really great at it.

00:40:43.000 And Democrats were sending mixed messages.

00:40:45.000 On the one hand, they were like, you know, Corey, if you delivered that letter, that would have been obstruction of justice.

00:40:50.000 That was really bad.

00:40:51.000 On the other hand, they're like, you're a chicken for not having delivered. 0.72

00:40:54.000 You're a chicken for not having delivered.

00:40:56.000 Here is Needles Cohen, Steve Cohen. 0.95

00:40:59.000 I call him Needles because he really, he resembles in both face and manner, Needles from Back to the Future 2, trying to tempt Marty McFly into a game of chicken.

00:41:08.000 Here's Steve Cohen saying to Corey Lewandowski that he's a chicken.

00:41:11.000 Steve Cohen, I don't know what his thing with chicken is.

00:41:13.000 You remember he actually went to a press conference to call somebody a chicken and he actually brought along like a KFC container.

00:41:21.000 I don't know, what's the obsession with chicken?

00:41:23.000 I don't get it.

00:41:23.000 Here's Steve Cohen.

00:41:24.000 Donald Trump talked to you outside normal channels so there'd be no record of anything that he asked you to do to obstruct justice.

00:41:31.000 Nothing to do with that at all.

00:41:33.000 The President knew what he was doing was wrong.

00:41:35.000 Mr. Sessions knew what he was doing was wrong.

00:41:37.000 Mr. McGahn knew what he was doing was wrong.

00:41:39.000 You seemed to be the only person who didn't think it was wrong.

00:41:43.000 But Mr. Trump was wrong.

00:41:44.000 Because at the last minute, you got cold feet.

00:41:47.000 You chickened out.

00:41:49.000 The President's trust was misplaced.

00:41:51.000 You decided not to do what you told the President you were going to do.

00:41:54.000 And you handed it off to somebody else. 0.90

00:41:57.000 Yeah, McFly, you chicken! 0.90

00:41:59.000 You chicken!

00:41:59.000 Lewandowski isn't going to confess to committing a crime.

00:42:03.000 Like, what does Steve Cohen think he's doing?

00:42:05.000 And this whole thing ended up being a debacle because Lewandowski basically just said to Democrats, you're not getting anything else out of me.

00:42:10.000 So this is a waste of my time.

00:42:11.000 Here's Lewandowski talking to Jerry Nadler, the chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, saying, why am I even here? 1.00

00:42:16.000 This is stupid. 0.99

00:42:18.000 We as a nation would be better served if elected officials like yourself Concentrate your efforts to combat the true crises facing our country, as opposed to going down rabbit holes like this hearing. 1.00

00:42:28.000 Instead of focusing on petty and personal politics, the committee focused on solving the challenges of this generation.

00:42:33.000 Imagine how many people we could help, or how many lives we could save.

00:42:38.000 Okay, yeah, so Lewandowski doing that routine, it's not a bad routine.

00:42:42.000 So the good of Corey Lewandowski is he did call out the Democrats repeatedly for political grandstanding.

00:42:49.000 And so Lewandowski completely derailed the impeachment hearing.

00:42:51.000 I mean, he just went after people with hammer.

00:42:53.000 He wants to run for Senate in New Hampshire, so it's a good political moment for him.

00:42:56.000 Here he is pretty much fully derailing this impeachment hearing.

00:43:01.000 Mr Lewandowski, is it correct that as reported in the Mueller report on June 19, 2017, you met alone in the Oval Office with the President?

00:43:09.000 Is there a book and page number you can reference me to, please?

00:43:11.000 I don't have a copy of the report in front of me.

00:43:13.000 Volume 2, page 90.

00:43:15.000 Could you read the exact language of the report, sir?

00:43:16.000 I don't have it available to me.

00:43:18.000 I don't think I need to do that, and I have limited time.

00:43:21.000 Did you meet alone with the President on that date?

00:43:24.000 Congressman, I'd like you to refresh my memory by providing a copy of the report so I can follow along.

00:43:28.000 You don't have a copy with you?

00:43:29.000 I don't have a copy of the report, Congressman.

00:43:32.000 Mr. Chairman, I request that the clock be stopped while this charade is sorted out.

00:43:38.000 Okay, and then Lewandowski went after Sheila Jackson Lee. 0.71

00:43:41.000 So she was in fact ranting about how Trump is a criminal.

00:43:44.000 And he was like, why are you ranting at me? 0.96

00:43:45.000 Stop ranting at me.

00:43:46.000 Look, it's entertaining.

00:43:48.000 Is it good?

00:43:49.000 No, I mean, Corey Lewandowski was engaged in bad activity with Trump.

00:43:52.000 I mean, Trump was in fact telling him to go fire somebody in his administration because he didn't like the investigation that was being conducted.

00:43:59.000 Now, was he attempting to obstruct the Mueller investigation?

00:44:02.000 I mean, not really, because Mueller didn't find anything.

00:44:05.000 Sort of goes to intent here, as opposed to Trump just being irritable and volatile and saying things.

00:44:11.000 I mean, that's why, again, I see it would be difficult to prosecute.

00:44:13.000 I think that it probably doesn't amount to obstruction because you have to have intent to obstruct in order to do that.

00:44:17.000 And Trump does have the executive capacity to fire Robert Mueller.

00:44:20.000 I mean, he works for the executive branch.

00:44:22.000 But here's Corey Lewandowski ripping into Sheila Jackson Lee.

00:44:25.000 We will expose the truth.

00:44:27.000 The president can hide behind you any longer.

00:44:30.000 You should be here to be telling the truth.

00:44:34.000 The truth will set you free and the American people.

00:44:37.000 I yield back.

00:44:38.000 The time of the gentlelady has expired.

00:44:39.000 The witness may answer the question.

00:44:41.000 I don't believe there was a question, Congressman.

00:44:44.000 Yes, there was.

00:44:45.000 Could you repeat the question?

00:44:46.000 I didn't hear it.

00:44:46.000 I'd be happy to repeat the question.

00:44:48.000 It's just a rant.

00:44:50.000 Okay, and that is actually true. 1.00

00:44:51.000 I mean, because all of these house hearings are really stupid. 0.99

00:44:54.000 The truth is, when was the last time you watched a house hearing and you were like, oh! 1.00

00:44:57.000 A new piece of information we didn't know! 0.99

00:44:59.000 It's all grandstanding crap. 0.97

00:45:01.000 Now, was it all good for Corey Lewandowski? 0.99

00:45:03.000 No, because the fact is that Corey Lewandowski and the Trump administration do engage in dishonesty fairly regularly with the media.

00:45:08.000 So Corey Lewandowski was asked by a lawyer named Barry Burke. 0.95

00:45:11.000 This is the new thing, is that Democrats are calling in lawyers to do the questioning they suck at.

00:45:15.000 They call in this lawyer, Barry Burke.

00:45:16.000 And Barry Burke plays a clip of Lewandowski on MSNBC saying that he'd never had any communication about Robert Mueller with Donald Trump.

00:45:23.000 And here's Lewandowski being like, yeah, okay, so I lied.

00:45:25.000 What you gonna do about it?

00:45:26.000 What you gonna do about it?

00:45:29.000 I don't ever remember the President ever asking me to get involved with Jeff Sessions or the Department of Justice in any way, shape, or form ever.

00:45:38.000 Did you hear that, sir?

00:45:40.000 That was you saying on MSNBC, you don't ever remember the President ever asking you to get involved with Jeff Sessions or the Department of Justice in any way, shape, or form.

00:45:53.000 That wasn't true, was it, sir?

00:45:55.000 I heard that.

00:45:56.000 And that was not true, was it?

00:45:57.000 I have no obligation to be honest with the media just because they're just as dishonest as anybody else.

00:46:03.000 Okay, that is a hell of a line.

00:46:04.000 Now, here's the thing.

00:46:06.000 He's admitting to lying, right?

00:46:08.000 Publicly lying.

00:46:09.000 But I think that this is, it is kind of baked into the cake.

00:46:11.000 I mean, unfortunately, this is the state of our politics.

00:46:13.000 Is that bad?

00:46:13.000 Yeah, it's bad.

00:46:14.000 It's bad.

00:46:15.000 You shouldn't lie to the media.

00:46:16.000 At the same time, is it baked into the cake?

00:46:18.000 Politically speaking, did this hurt Trump in any way?

00:46:21.000 The answer is no, and you can see that the media were really disappointed that it didn't.

00:46:24.000 An NBC correspondent just came out and said, listen, this hearing was a failure.

00:46:27.000 It was a total fail.

00:46:29.000 Insofar as this was an effort to get a particular narrative out, today has been rocky.

00:46:34.000 Yes, Sally, I think it's largely been a failure and I think it's in part because Democrats have been more interested in getting their moment on television of yelling at Corey Lewandowski and making the point and winning the argument rather than patiently questioning him.

00:46:50.000 OK, and that, of course, is exactly true.

00:46:53.000 It's exactly true.

00:46:55.000 And because everybody feels like everything is a political football these days, nobody's going to like.

00:46:59.000 Did anyone was anyone under the wild misimpression that Corey Lewandowski is like a deeply honest human being?

00:47:04.000 If so, I'm wondering why and why they would be under that misimpression.

00:47:07.000 So it hurts Democrats more than it hurts Republicans. 0.98

00:47:10.000 But it just reinforces the fact that Democrats are there to pander, Republicans are there to pander, and everything kind of sucks. 0.90

00:47:17.000 Now, meanwhile, the polarization of the American public continues apace, with woke scolds doing their best to ruin every aspect of American life.

00:47:25.000 I'm very excited that Merriam-Webster Dictionary has now added the non-binary pronoun they to the dictionary.

00:47:31.000 Because when I look at a book for definitions of words, what I want is a made-up definition of a word That has never been used this way in all of human history.

00:47:40.000 A plural noun used as a singular noun to refer to a singular gender.

00:47:46.000 We're going to use a plural noun.

00:47:48.000 And Merriam-Webster is going to go along with this, which just demonstrates once and for all that logic has gone out the window.

00:47:53.000 People are tailoring science to meet politically correct demands.

00:47:56.000 People are tailoring language to meet politically correct demands.

00:48:00.000 Merriam-Webster, according to the Washington Post, has added a new definition of the word they to its dictionary, declaring the pronoun may be used to refer to a single person whose gender identity is non-binary.

00:48:10.000 They, according to the Washington Post, is a liberating pronoun for many non-binary individuals.

00:48:15.000 What the hell is a liberating pronoun? 0.80

00:48:17.000 How does a pronoun liberate you?

00:48:19.000 Were you in shackles and then someone said they and now you're out of the shackles?

00:48:23.000 What kind of nonsense is this?

00:48:24.000 For many Americans, the use of they as a singular pronoun can be ungrammatical and confusing.

00:48:28.000 That would not be for many Americans.

00:48:29.000 That would be for all Americans, unless you're talking about the small group of SJWs who decide we have to redefine all of language in order to meet politically correct demands.

00:48:39.000 It is insane.

00:48:41.000 And then you wonder why people, like the same people who demand truth, truth, absolute truth.

00:48:45.000 We're the media and we want the truth.

00:48:48.000 Also, they is a singular pronoun.

00:48:51.000 Not what now?

00:48:55.000 Obviously, look, honesty has taken a backseat on all sides to whatever is the political motivation of the day.

00:49:00.000 This is just sort of an encapsulating perfect example.

00:49:03.000 Okay, time for a thing I like and then we'll do a quick thing that I hate.

00:49:08.000 So, things that I like today.

00:49:10.000 I've mentioned Howard Zinn before on the program.

00:49:12.000 For people who have never read Howard Zinn's awful book, A People's History of the United States, which is basically A pastiche of horrible things about the United States taken out of context, out of historical context.

00:49:22.000 A history that basically paints the United States the same as Nazi Germany.

00:49:26.000 A history that suggests that the United States is uniquely responsible for every evil the world has ever seen. 1.00

00:49:31.000 Howard Zinn was a garbage, a garbage historian and his book is terrible. 1.00

00:49:35.000 There's a good book debunking all of Howard Zinn's stupid ideas by Mary Graybar. 1.00

00:49:40.000 The book is called Debunking Howard Zinn, exposing the fake history that turned a generation against America. 0.98

00:49:45.000 His book is still a massive bestseller.

00:49:46.000 If you ever watched Good Will Hunting, it's invoked as like the apotheosis of American history by the brilliant Matt Damon character. 0.98

00:49:53.000 And that's how I knew that Matt Damon was an idiot in that film, was because he's citing Howard Zinn. 0.70

00:49:57.000 If you want to know what Howard Zinn was, namely a Marxist, if you want to know why his history is incorrect, Just take a look at the book. 0.98

00:50:04.000 American history does have shades.

00:50:06.000 American history has good and it has bad.

00:50:08.000 But according to Howard Zinn, it was all bad.

00:50:09.000 Like, every aspect of it was bad.

00:50:11.000 Even the best parts were bad.

00:50:13.000 I mean, Howard Zinn spends a significant portion of a people's history of the United States explaining why Lincoln was bad and why he didn't really want to free the slaves.

00:50:20.000 I mean, it's pretty astonishing stuff.

00:50:21.000 But this book is good.

00:50:23.000 Debunking Howard Zinn.

00:50:24.000 Go check it out right now.

00:50:26.000 Okay, time for a quick thing that I hate.

00:50:32.000 Okay, so Sean Spicer was on Dancing With The Stars.

00:50:34.000 So I will admit that Dancing With The Stars may in fact be one of the things that I hate. 1.00

00:50:38.000 Like I think that this is just, it is the apex of American stupidity and maybe Western stupidity generally. 1.00

00:50:44.000 I assume they like this sort of thing in Europe as well. 1.00

00:50:46.000 I mean, if you've ever seen the Eurovision concert, there's a lot of dumb in that as well.

00:50:49.000 But Dancing With The Stars, which is basically where we take a bunch of B-listers and then we try to prepare them to dance and then we watch them.

00:50:56.000 It does feel like the late days of Panem when you watch Dancing With The Stars.

00:51:01.000 In any case, Sean Spicer, the former White House press secretary who was widely derided for his bizarre sort of hostage videos from the White House press secretaryship, where he would be asked a question and he didn't want to give the answer, and so he would kind of stare into the distance and try to blink the answer in Morse code.

00:51:19.000 In any case, Sean Spicer, who was ousted pretty early on in the Trump administration, is now on Dancing with the Stars.

00:51:24.000 And here is what it looked like.

00:51:27.000 - Former White House Press Secretary, Sean Spicer.

00:51:31.000 - Head to the world!

00:51:36.000 Everybody, here we go! - When you're feeling sad and low, we will take you where you gotta go. - Hi, Steve, yeah, hold tight! - Yeah, well listen, I will give it to Sean Spicer.

00:51:54.000 It takes courage to wear that shirt.

00:51:57.000 And to play the bongos and to dance.

00:51:59.000 That is the thing.

00:52:00.000 That's not actually a thing I hate. 1.00

00:52:02.000 So the thing that I hate is that all of this is stupid. 1.00

00:52:04.000 But all of... I mean, come on. 1.00

00:52:05.000 The whole... Is this intelligent television?

00:52:07.000 Did it make your life significant?

00:52:09.000 No. 1.00

00:52:10.000 But of course it's stupid. 1.00

00:52:11.000 That's the whole point. 1.00

00:52:11.000 It's kitschy. 1.00

00:52:12.000 I get it.

00:52:12.000 It's kitschy.

00:52:13.000 And it's fun kitsch.

00:52:15.000 The left went nuts.

00:52:17.000 How could you possibly treat Sean Spicer like any other B-list celebrity?

00:52:21.000 After all, this man ruined the United States.

00:52:25.000 The same people, by the way, who made Donald Trump into Donald Trump, right?

00:52:28.000 They took a man who was a B-list celebrity in the 1990s and then turned him back into an A-list celebrity in the 2000s with a kitschy reality show in which he fired people or pretended to fire people.

00:52:39.000 Those same people are like, we can't humor Sean Spicer.

00:52:44.000 We can't humor Sean Spicer.

00:52:46.000 And the Washington Post has a piece called, Dancing with the Stars Perfected a Formula for Kitschy Escapist Joy.

00:52:51.000 Can it survive today's politics?

00:52:54.000 Critic Linda Stassi snarked of the premiere, ABC must have gone to the well, or maybe that's the cesspool, and dredged up some of the lowest-level celebrities available in the country today for this competition show.

00:53:05.000 But then the Post had to run a headline that said, Dancing is a Swinging Success, because people were perfectly willing to watch Dancing with the Stars.

00:53:12.000 But they are very angry with Sean Spicer.

00:53:15.000 On Monday's episode, Spicer donned a lime green shirt with ruffled sleeves and performed a salsa to the Spice Girls' Spice Up With Your Life with professional partner Lindsay Arnold.

00:53:24.000 In a pre-recorded introduction, Spicer noted his time in the White House was tumultuous and that he finally felt it was time to have some fun.

00:53:30.000 The judges were not impressed with Spicer's dance skills, awarded him 12 points out of 30, the second lowest score of the night.

00:53:36.000 Some fans of the show complained loudly, as did high-profile ABC personnel.

00:53:40.000 I deeply abhor this decision by the company I work for and truly love, tweeted Grey's Anatomy showrunner Krista Vernoff.

00:53:47.000 I have a question.

00:53:48.000 Is being on Dancing with the Stars like receiving the Presidential Medal of Freedom?

00:53:52.000 Is this something we have to take with a great level of seriousness?

00:53:54.000 Oh my god, they rewarded Sean Spicer, one of history's greatest monsters, with a slot on Dancing with the Stars, dancing to the Spice Girls in a lime green shirt while playing the bongos?

00:54:04.000 Does he deserve that kind of honor?

00:54:07.000 Everybody, lighten up.

00:54:09.000 Seriously, lighten up.

00:54:09.000 Like, if Robert Gibbs had shown up on Dancing with the Stars, would I have been like, oh my god, I can't believe they had Robert Gibbs on Dancing with the Stars.

00:54:18.000 This is so stupid. 0.99

00:54:20.000 Even the show's affable host, Tom Bergeron, recently released a statement suggesting he was disappointed by a choice as political as Spicer. 1.00

00:54:27.000 Really?

00:54:28.000 Really? 1.00

00:54:28.000 It's all so dumb. 1.00

00:54:31.000 It's intensely dumb. 1.00

00:54:32.000 But this is every aspect of American life now has to turn wildly political. 0.98

00:54:36.000 If you can't deal with a guy you didn't like as press secretary, who was not super great at being press secretary, dancing the salsa on TV, I suggest that you get a life because you don't have enough of one.

00:54:48.000 All right, we'll be back here later today with two additional hours of content.

00:54:51.000 Otherwise, we'll see you here tomorrow.

00:54:52.000 I'm Ben Shapiro.

00:54:52.000 This is The Ben Shapiro Show.

00:54:58.000 The Ben Shapiro Show is produced by Robert Sterling.

00:55:01.000 Directed by Mike Joyner.

00:55:02.000 Executive producer, Jeremy Boring.

00:55:04.000 Senior producer, Jonathan Hay.

00:55:06.000 Our supervising producer is Mathis Glover.

00:55:08.000 And our technical producer is Austin Stevens.

00:55:11.000 Assistant director, Pavel Wydowski.

00:55:13.000 Edited by Adam Siovitz.

00:55:14.000 Audio is mixed by Mike Koromina.

00:55:16.000 Hair and makeup is by Jesua Olvera.

00:55:18.000 Production assistant, Nick Sheehan.

00:55:19.000 The Ben Shapiro Show is a Daily Wire production.

00:55:22.000 Copyright Daily Wire 2019.

00:55:24.000 Hey everybody, it's Andrew Klavan, host of The Andrew Klavan Show.

00:55:27.000 You know, some people are depressed because the American Republic is collapsing, the end of days is approaching, and the moon has turned to blood.

00:55:33.000 But on The Andrew Klavan Show, that's where the fun just gets started.

The Ben Shapiro Show - September 18, 2019

The Israel Impasse | Ep. 863

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