The Ben Shapiro Show - The Media’s Not-So-Secret Iran Agenda | Ep. 926

00:00:00.000 The media continue to lose their minds over Trump's killing of Soleimani.

00:00:03.000 The U.S.

00:00:04.000 takes protective steps to prevent further Iranian aggression.

00:00:06.000 And John Bolton signals he could testify in the Senate impeachment trial.

00:00:10.000 I'm Ben Shapiro.

00:00:10.000 This is The Ben Shapiro Show.

00:00:11.000 This show is brought to you by ExpressVPN.

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00:00:24.000 All right.

00:00:24.000 Well, latest breaking developments in the whole saga between the United States and Iran, which, of course, was kicked into high gear last week after Iranian backed militias burned the U.S.

00:00:33.000 embassy.

00:00:34.000 I'm amazed how every news story now begins with the killing of Soleimani.

00:00:38.000 Kassem Soleimani, the head of the terror wing of the Iranian government.

00:00:41.000 I'm just shocked, really, that the media begin every single story with Soleimani's killing as though nothing happened before, as though this was the beginning of time, as though Trump spoke and then there was light.

00:00:52.000 That is not the way any of this worked.

00:00:54.000 Even last week, What precipitated the actual killing of Soleimani was the fact that Iranian-backed militias were attacking a U.S.

00:01:01.000 embassy in Baghdad and trying to burn it down and kill people inside. 0.55

00:01:05.000 That is what precipitated this entire crisis.

00:01:07.000 And there had been months of such precipitous action by the Iranians. 0.99

00:01:10.000 Attacks on Saudi oil facilities.

00:01:12.000 Attacks on shipping in the Straits of Hormuz.

00:01:14.000 Attacks on an American drone.

00:01:16.000 Iranian militias attacking U.S.-backed forces in Iraq.

00:01:19.000 All this had been going on, not just for months, but for years.

00:01:22.000 Like, literally for years.

00:01:23.000 And yet, every single story seems to begin with the killing of Soleimani, as though Trump just woke up one morning and was like, you know what?

00:01:29.000 You know what feels good?

00:01:29.000 You know what I'd love to do today?

00:01:31.000 I'm just gonna kill a guy. 1.00

00:01:32.000 Like, just boom. 1.00

00:01:33.000 Right through the brain.

00:01:35.000 None of that happened.

00:01:36.000 Okay, Trump.

00:01:38.000 Was he actually convinced to do this over a period of months, according to New York Times reporting, by members of his cabinet, including Secretary of State Mike Pompeo?

00:01:45.000 This was not ill thought out.

00:01:47.000 It is not as though the Trump administration just did this on a moment's notice.

00:01:50.000 In fact, how could you even come up with such a killing on a moment's notice?

00:01:53.000 The answer is, you don't.

00:01:54.000 They must have been tracking Soleimani for quite a long time.

00:01:57.000 And yet, every media story begins with Trump killing Soleimani.

00:02:01.000 Why?

00:02:01.000 Because this is supposed to lead to the narrative that it's Trump who's the true aggressor.

00:02:05.000 And that is the Democrat media narrative today.

00:02:07.000 That the Trump administration is doing unprecedented, terrible things.

00:02:10.000 What is the latest unprecedented, terrible thing?

00:02:12.000 Well, apparently the Trump administration is now blocking Iran's top diplomat from addressing the UN Security Council.

00:02:17.000 That'd be Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif. 0.98

00:02:20.000 Zarif came out, like, just a few days ago and suggested that President Trump ought to be assassinated, that he ought to die. 0.97

00:02:26.000 Okay, the Iranian government placed an $80 million bounty on Trump's head. 0.83

00:02:31.000 So, Trump's saying, yeah, you're not coming here, and you're not coming to U.S.

00:02:34.000 soil, and you're not going to this organization that we pay for called the U.N., and you're just gonna jabber there about how terrible we are?

00:02:39.000 You can stick it.

00:02:40.000 You can stick it, buddy.

00:02:42.000 Good for Trump.

00:02:43.000 Now, Zarif is like, wow, that's a violation of international law!

00:02:46.000 It's fun to watch the Iranians suddenly realize that international law violations are a bad thing. 1.00

00:02:51.000 After literally decades of violating international law, after the worst sorts of human rights violations ranging from terror attacks in Lebanon, to attacks on Israel, to attacks in Syria, to backing the Assad regime, which has killed half a million people, to attacks in Yemen, to attacks in Iraq, Suddenly the Iranians crying foul when it comes to, oh, you won't let our ambassador visit New York?

00:03:13.000 The ambassador who recently was talking up the possibility of murdering your president?

00:03:17.000 Wow, violations of international law aplenty here!

00:03:21.000 According to foreignpolicy.com, the Trump administration is barring Iran's top diplomat from entering the United States this week to address the UN Security Council about the U.S.

00:03:29.000 assassination of Iran's top military official in Baghdad, violating the terms of a 1947 headquarters agreement ...requiring Washington to permit foreign officials into the country to conduct UN business, according to three diplomatic sources.

00:03:40.000 Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif requested a visa a few weeks ago to enter the United States to attend a January 9th Security Council meeting on the importance of upholding the UN Charter.

00:03:51.000 So the meeting was about the importance of upholding the UN Charter.

00:03:53.000 Meanwhile, he was mourning, and planning apparently, for the attacks on the U.S.

00:03:59.000 Embassy in Baghdad.

00:04:01.000 This is someone who cares deeply about international law.

00:04:03.000 Probably we should take them super seriously.

00:04:05.000 The Thursday meeting was to provide Tehran's top diplomat with his first opportunity to directly address the world community, since U.S.

00:04:11.000 President Donald Trump ordered the January 3rd drone strike that killed Major General Qasem Soleimani, a top Iraqi militia leader, among others.

00:04:18.000 I'm enjoying the way that the press, again, characterized Soleimani, who was a terrorist.

00:04:23.000 A top Iraqi militia leader?

00:04:25.000 He's an Iranian government official.

00:04:27.000 How exactly would he be an Iraqi militia leader?

00:04:29.000 Only if he was a terrorist who was backing non-governmental violent groups, which is the definition of a terrorist in this context.

00:04:37.000 It's just wild.

00:04:38.000 Okay, but the way that the media characterized this stuff, how could Trump, how could Trump do this?

00:04:43.000 It's just... How could he, how could he block This terrible person, Javad Zarif, from visiting the UN.

00:04:52.000 I mean, without Javad Zarif propagating his propaganda, how would we know what propaganda he was going to use?

00:04:59.000 How would we know?

00:05:00.000 It's just so awful.

00:05:01.000 It's just so awful.

00:05:03.000 It's the media's takes on all of this that are awful.

00:05:05.000 Javad Zarif, for his part, is tweeting out about how terrible all of this is.

00:05:09.000 After suggesting that the Trump administration is a clown administration, and also suggesting that the United States is a quote-unquote rogue regime, Javad Zarif then tweeted out this morning, Wait, wait, adventurism? 0.58

00:05:29.000 So you're telling me the adventurism is Trump killing your terror leader, not you guys using hundreds of billions of dollars in order to support terrorism around the globe against a bunch of sovereign states and their citizens. 0.97

00:05:42.000 No, the real adventurism is killing a terrorist. 0.74

00:05:44.000 Got it.

00:05:45.000 He says, tomorrow we'll host Tehran Dialogue Forum and discuss ways of achieving regional security, including Hormuz Peace Endeavor.

00:05:52.000 Hashtag hope.

00:05:53.000 Because when I think hope, I think Javad Zarif and the Iranian regime.

00:05:57.000 He says, denying me a visa in violation of 1947 UNHQ agreement pales in comparison to Pompeo's threat to starve Iranians.

00:06:05.000 Threat to starve Iranians? 1.00

00:06:06.000 You mean economic sanctions placed against a foreign government?

00:06:10.000 Anytime the foreign government wishes to adhere to the rules of warfare and the rules of international conflict, then those sanctions go away?

00:06:18.000 That's Pompeo threatening to starve Iranians?

00:06:20.000 Trump's bluster about cultural heritage, a war crime?

00:06:23.000 No, bluster is not a war crime.

00:06:25.000 Actually blowing things up that are culturally important for purposes of hurting a culture, that's a war crime. 0.89

00:06:30.000 Threatening to do so?

00:06:32.000 Not so much of a war crime.

00:06:33.000 Hashtag economic terrorism.

00:06:36.000 Economic terrorism.

00:06:37.000 By that he means that we won't do business with Iran.

00:06:39.000 And cowardly assassination.

00:06:40.000 But what are they really afraid of?

00:06:41.000 Truth!

00:06:43.000 Yes, I'm sure that Trump is sitting around really afraid of Javad Zarif's truth. 0.99

00:06:47.000 Alternatively, they don't wish to provide a forum for you to spew your garbage. 1.00

00:06:51.000 For you to spew your garbage. 0.99

00:06:54.000 I'll get to more of the latest developments with regard to Iran in just one second. 0.99

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00:08:18.000 Okay.

00:08:19.000 Other stuff that happened yesterday.

00:08:20.000 It was a very busy day surrounding Iranian developments.

00:08:24.000 There was this giant screw-up Really by the Trump administration in which a US military letter announcing that troops would be repositioned within Iraq in advance of a potential pullout was circulated.

00:08:35.000 And it was unclear where this letter came from, who it was sent to, and why it ended up in the media.

00:08:41.000 Some members of the media immediately ran with this letter.

00:08:44.000 And when they ran with the letter, Everybody sort of assumed that the letter was real, but suddenly Trump had reversed himself, that the United States killed Soleimani, and then we were immediately going to withdraw from Iraq because the Iraqi parliament had passed a non-binding resolution with barely a quorum present in order to get the United States to pull out of Iraq.

00:09:00.000 That was never going to happen, but somehow there was this letter that was circulating.

00:09:04.000 And the media got a hold of it, and without verifying it with the Pentagon, without attempting to lock down exactly where this came from or who it was directed to, they simply ran with it.

00:09:12.000 And this caused A fair bit of heartburn yesterday.

00:09:15.000 According to Huffington Post, Secretary of Defense Mark Esper disputed a U.S.

00:09:20.000 military letter announcing that troops would be repositioned within Iraq in advance of a potential pullout.

00:09:24.000 Esper claims he didn't know where the letter came from and that it was, quote, inconsistent with where we are right now.

00:09:29.000 He said there's been no decision whatsoever to leave Iraq, responding to that letter.

00:09:33.000 The letter was a mistake, Chairman of Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley told reporters.

00:09:36.000 The letter was written by Marine Brigadier General William H. Seeley III and was addressed to an Iraqi defense official.

00:09:42.000 Seeley wrote, quote, In due deference to the sovereignty of the Republic of Iraq, and as requested by the Iraqi Parliament and the Prime Minister, CGTF-OIR will be repositioning forces over the course of the coming days and weeks to prepare for onward movement.

00:09:55.000 That would be referring to the U.S.-led International Task Force to fight the Islamic State.

00:09:58.000 Coalition forces are required to take certain measures to ensure that movement out of Iraq is conducted in a safe and efficient manner.

00:10:04.000 The letter was unsigned.

00:10:05.000 U.S.

00:10:05.000 officials did confirm its authenticity and said that it had been sent and received by the Iraqis.

00:10:10.000 There was no timeline in the letter, so it was unclear completely as to what exactly this letter meant.

00:10:15.000 Normally, in the Middle East, when no timeline is actually locked down, that means there is no timeline present, meaning that if you say, I'm gonna do X someday, that means it's never going to happen.

00:10:26.000 The letter was written the day after Iraq's parliament passed a resolution calling on Prime Minister Adel Abdumati to revoke Iraq's invitation to host U.S.

00:10:32.000 troops, which have helped the country retake control over territory lost to ISIS in 2014.

00:10:37.000 Right now, the United States has about 5,000 troops in Iraq.

00:10:41.000 The non-binding resolution had the support from Shiite lawmakers but no support whatsoever from Sunni and Kurdish members of parliament who boycotted the special session and the vote did not legally require the withdrawal of troops because the parliamentary vote would have had to trigger a meeting by the country's cabinet and right now there is no cabinet because they just have an acting prime minister.

00:10:59.000 So what exactly was the letter designed to do?

00:11:01.000 Absolutely unclear.

00:11:04.000 A top general suggested that this thing was quote-unquote an honest mistake.

00:11:09.000 He said that this was a draft and that the release was an honest mistake, but obviously this led to a fair bit of heartburn in both the United States and Iraq because the prospect of the United States upping the ante by killing Soleimani and then immediately pulling out of Iraq would have been a really bad look and also really bad policy.

00:11:27.000 The Pentagon tamping down on all the silly rumors about the United States targeting cultural sites.

00:11:31.000 Mark Esper, the Secretary of Defense, came out.

00:11:33.000 He said, no, no, no.

00:11:34.000 We are not going to be hitting any of these cultural sites. 0.85

00:11:37.000 This is simply a bunch of nonsense.

00:11:39.000 In comments to CNN, he pushed back.

00:11:42.000 He said that the targeting of Iranian cultural sites would violate the laws of armed conflict, and he said that he would not be obviously moving forward with regard to any of that.

00:11:53.000 In general, according to the U.S.

00:11:55.000 Military Manual, in general, active hostility also may not be directed against cultural property, its immediate surroundings, or appliances in use for its protection.

00:12:03.000 So, all of the media heartburn about that is simply not true.

00:12:06.000 Now, a lot of what Iran is doing here could backfire on them, because right now Iran is announcing That they want to move away from some of the actual requirements of the Iran nuclear deal.

00:12:20.000 So they're still holding within the deal, but they're saying that we are not going to abide by the provisions with regard to restricting our creation of nuclear weapons.

00:12:28.000 But this is in turn triggering the Europeans to have to recognize that the Iranians are actually not abiding by the nuclear deal.

00:12:34.000 So according to Reuters, European parties to the 2015 Iran nuclear deal could launch a dispute resolution process this week that might lead to renewed UN sanctions on Tehran, according to European diplomats.

00:12:43.000 See, there's more than one party here.

00:12:45.000 The United States pulled out of the Iran deal.

00:12:47.000 The Europeans did not pull out of the Iran deal.

00:12:49.000 What that means is that the Europeans have still been funneling money into Iran.

00:12:52.000 But now, the Iranians, trying to punish the United States for killing Soleimani, say that they are going to withdraw from certain aspects of the Iran deal.

00:13:00.000 Well, this is causing the Europeans to be forced to actually withdraw from their aspects of the Iran deal, which could actually hurt the Iranians much worse than it hurts the United States.

00:13:08.000 Iran took a further step back from its commitments to the 2015 pact, with six world powers announcing on Sunday it would scrap limits on enriching uranium, though it said it would continue to cooperate with the UN nuclear watchdog.

00:13:19.000 Iran has criticized Britain, France, and Germany for failing to salvage the pact by shielding Tehran's economy from U.S.

00:13:25.000 sanctions reimposed since 2018, when Washington pulled out of the agreement.

00:13:30.000 Confirming an emergency meeting of the EU's 28 foreign ministers would take place on Friday.

00:13:33.000 An EU diplomat said we must be ready to react to Iran's breaches of the nuclear deal.

00:13:37.000 Again, what's amazing about all of this is that there is this worldwide global press and left assumption that the real aggressors here are not the Iranians. 0.97

00:13:45.000 That the Iranians are really being victimized by sanctions from abroad.

00:13:49.000 This is untrue.

00:13:50.000 Anytime Iran does not want sanctions upon Iran, all they have to do is stop pursuing nuclear weapons and stop pursuing terrorism outside their own borders. 0.56

00:13:59.000 That's it.

00:14:00.000 At that point, all the sanctions go away.

00:14:02.000 Anytime the Iranians want to normalize, they can normalize. 1.00

00:14:05.000 It's amazing to watch as the entire world community circles around this idea, I mean talk about soft bigotry of low expectations, that Iran should simply be expected to be as terroristic and nuclear-seeking as they could possibly want, and it's the rest of the world's job to sort of adjust to that.

00:14:21.000 Absolute sheer nonsense.

00:14:23.000 Asked whether all of this could mean triggering a mechanism that could result in international sanctions being reimposed on Tehran, the envoy said it's increasingly likely, but not yet decided.

00:14:31.000 Friday will be key.

00:14:33.000 Iran, which says its nuclear program is for civilian purposes, which of course is silly because they don't care about global warming over there in Tehran. 0.63

00:14:40.000 That's not one of their big policy priorities. 0.81

00:14:42.000 More policy priorities like oppressing women, hanging gay people from cranes, global warming not high on the policy agenda over there in Iran. 0.98

00:14:50.000 The idea that they need peaceful nuclear power in a country that has vast stores of oil and natural gas is obviously silly. 0.83

00:14:58.000 They've already breached many of their restrictions under the 2015 deal intended to increase the amount of time Tehran would need to accumulate enough fissile material for an atomic bomb from two to three months to about a year.

00:15:08.000 One of the diplomats from Europe said the vagueness of the Iran announcement makes it more necessary than ever to launch the mechanism since its whole purpose is to resolve the differences that we have on all of this.

00:15:16.000 So it turns out that Trump may have just baited the Iranians into forcing the EU to place more sanctions on Iran, which again would put us sort of where we were back before the Iran nuclear deal, isolating Iran, cutting off its economic bloodlines, and therefore preventing them from spreading terrorism across the region.

00:15:33.000 That doesn't solve the nuclear problem, but it certainly puts the regime in Tehran On more slim footing, on shoddier footing.

00:15:42.000 He'll get to more of this and we'll get to the latest reports about how Iran intends to respond to all of this.

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00:16:52.000 Okay, meanwhile, the New York Times Reporting that Ayatollah Khamenei wants the Iranian government to take direct action against the United States.

00:17:02.000 Well, in all likelihood, this is posturing.

00:17:04.000 Here's the thing.

00:17:05.000 Once Soleimani is killed, the regime looks weak.

00:17:07.000 Now they have to look strong.

00:17:08.000 That means a lot of posturing.

00:17:09.000 $80 million bounties on Trump's head.

00:17:11.000 And we're going to strike back in ways that will make the world burn!

00:17:15.000 Okay, the fact is that the Iranians are on notice. 0.97

00:17:18.000 They know that if they do something directly against American troops, President Trump is not going to stand for that.

00:17:23.000 He is not going to sit by idly.

00:17:24.000 He is not going to pay them off.

00:17:26.000 He's not going to re-enter this Iran nuclear deal.

00:17:28.000 And there was a lot of talk in the lead up to the Soleimani killing and the burning of the embassy in Baghdad that the Trump administration was trying to use all sorts of economic leverage in order to force the Iranians back to the table to shore up that Iran nuclear deal and actually make it better.

00:17:43.000 Get them back to the table, negotiate away their terrorist use of money, their ballistic missile testing.

00:17:49.000 The Iranians didn't want to do any of that stuff. 1.00

00:17:52.000 So instead, they are protesting out in the streets.

00:17:54.000 There's a video of Ayatollah Khamenei going around.

00:17:58.000 And which is openly weeping about Soleimani dying and because they're very emotional over there about the killing of a terror leader.

00:18:06.000 And Khamenei is sort of signaling to the rest of the world that it's going to be shock and awe.

00:18:10.000 According to the New York Times, in the tense hours following the American killing of a top Iranian military commander, the country's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, made a rare appearance at a meeting of the government's National Security Council to lay down the parameters for any retaliation.

00:18:21.000 By the way, this does give the lie to the idea that elections in Iran mean anything at all.

00:18:25.000 Remember that time that the Obama administration claimed that the Iranian regime was about to moderate?

00:18:31.000 And that if only we propped up Hassan Rouhani, that this would fix everything?

00:18:35.000 Well now, this has been made clear.

00:18:37.000 The Ayatollah still run that country.

00:18:39.000 And Ayatollah Ali Khamenei just simply walks into the National Security Council and lays it on the line.

00:18:43.000 It's pretty obvious who's in charge over there.

00:18:45.000 It must be a direct and proportional attack on American interests, he said, openly carried out by Iranian forces themselves, according to three Iranians familiar with the meeting.

00:18:53.000 So this is being leaked to the New York Times because the idea here is that Anytime you signal strength to your own people, you're signaling that you're willing to kill a lot of them in order to maintain your grip on the regime.

00:19:02.000 According to the New York Times, it was a startling departure for the Iranian leadership.

00:19:06.000 Since the establishment of the Islamic Republic in 1979, Tehran had almost always cloaked its attacks behind the actions of proxies it had cultivated around the region, but in the fury generated by the killing of the military commander Qasem Soleimani.

00:19:19.000 Yeah, we'll see.

00:19:24.000 We'll see.

00:19:26.000 Color me a bit skeptical that the Iranians are going to go to direct war with the United States because the first person whose head will end up on a platter is Ayatollah Khamenei.

00:19:35.000 It's all fun and games when you're asking other people to die for your cause.

00:19:38.000 It's a very different thing when you yourself are going to be put on the mat by the United States military.

00:19:45.000 Meanwhile, you've got the Obama administration out there still wringing its hands.

00:19:49.000 What are we going to do?

00:19:49.000 What's our strategy here?

00:19:51.000 Well, you know what was a bad strategy as it turns out?

00:19:53.000 Giving lots and lots of money to terrorists.

00:19:55.000 It turns out that was an awful strategy from beginning to end.

00:19:58.000 And when you see the media Tried to claim that Trump ratcheted this thing up, that the Iran nuclear deal was working, that everything was hunky-dory.

00:20:05.000 Just remember, that is not true.

00:20:08.000 In March 2016, the U.S.

00:20:09.000 CENTCOM nominee, General Joseph Votel, this is Obama's nominee, Said that Iran had actually become more aggressive since the advent of the nuclear deal.

00:20:18.000 In January 2016, Obama's Secretary of State John Kerry openly explained, quote, I think that some of the money will end up in the hands of the IRGC, that'd be the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, or other entities, some of which are labeled terrorists.

00:20:30.000 Which is of course exactly what happened.

00:20:33.000 So when you listen to the members of the Obama administration lamenting the notion that Trump might actually reestablish deterrence, recognize that it was the Obama administration that for eight years spent years undercutting deterrence.

00:20:46.000 Eight years undercutting deterrence.

00:20:48.000 Now, if you want to go back further in history, there's a case to be made that one of the big problems here Was the Iraq War itself because the Iraq War created a vacuum for the Iranians to move in that by disbanding the Iraqi military, which was Sunni in the aftermath of the killing of Saddam Hussein, the capture of Saddam Hussein, that in the aftermath of the original invasion, that decision to disband the military created this opening for Iran. 0.62

00:21:09.000 It maximized Iran's regional power. 0.74

00:21:10.000 And then the aftermath of that was Obama attempting to appease Iran.

00:21:13.000 And now this is Trump trying to put the genie back in the bottle, at least trying to With that said, the Obama administration's policy of, let's pay off the Iranians, not only was that a failure, it was a dramatic impetus for the Iranian government to increase its aggression. 0.82

00:21:30.000 So, I'm not going to take advice from members of the Obama administration who are speaking out about how terrible it is that Trump is now re-establishing deterrence.

00:21:40.000 One of those officials, a former Obama State Department advisor named Nassar, who was on CNN yesterday with Block of Wood Chris Cuomo, Vali Nassar, former State Department senior advisor, explaining that, no, I think that if Trump just keeps retaliating, what's he going to do?

00:21:54.000 Just keep retaliating?

00:21:54.000 And the answer is yes.

00:21:56.000 The answer is yes.

00:21:57.000 If you keep hitting American interests, we are going to keep retaliating.

00:22:00.000 What are we supposed to do?

00:22:01.000 Sign a check?

00:22:02.000 We're going to be Iran's whipping boy here? 0.93

00:22:05.000 The Iranians are not locked into some kind of a reaction when you see that kind of passion in the street in Tehran the past few days.

00:22:12.000 You can't say that.

00:22:13.000 You tell the people, OK, it's all done.

00:22:15.000 Go home.

00:22:15.000 We're not going to do anything about it.

00:22:17.000 And then what's the next step for the president is going to hit him again and hit him again.

00:22:21.000 And ultimately, is he going to invade a country of 80 million people?

00:22:25.000 where the capital city is about 2000 miles and two mountain ranges away from the closest port.

00:22:30.000 I mean, has he thought about what Iran would look like, a war with Iran?

00:22:34.000 It will make Afghanistan and Iraq added together, multiplied by two look like child's play. 0.98

00:22:40.000 Hey, no one is talking about war with Iran.

00:22:42.000 Trump doesn't want war with Iran.

00:22:43.000 Nobody is talking about boots on the ground, full-scale war with Iran.

00:22:46.000 Pompeo, who's about as militant on this issue as anybody in the administration, is not talking about any of this.

00:22:50.000 But this is the false choice the Obama administration consistently presented.

00:22:54.000 If you don't pay them off, you have to go to war with them. 0.87

00:22:56.000 No, it turns out that the United States has been in low-level conflict with a wide variety of external enemies for literally decades.

00:23:04.000 No, we're not going to go to full-scale war with Iran, and the last thing Iran wants is to go to full-scale war with the most powerful military in history on the face of the earth.

00:23:12.000 In just a second, we'll get to more media malfeasance.

00:23:15.000 I mean, the media are just...

00:23:17.000 The New York Times particularly is just awful, but it's not just the New York Times.

00:23:21.000 We're gonna get to the media coverage of this stuff.

00:23:22.000 They don't know what the hell they're talking about as per our usual arrangement on foreign policy.

00:23:26.000 We'll get to that in just one second.

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00:25:04.000 Okay, so the media's coverage of this obviously has been absolutely egregious.

00:25:08.000 Absolutely egregious.

00:25:10.000 Example.

00:25:11.000 So, the New York Times, just gonna point this out.

00:25:13.000 The New York Times' original obit of Qasem Soleimani said this.

00:25:18.000 Qasem Soleimani, master of Iran's intrigue and force, dies at 62.

00:25:23.000 Six hours later, they posted this obituary.

00:25:26.000 Sam Weish, who was the last coach to lead the Cincinnati Bengals to the Super Bowl, but who was later fined by the National Football League for barring a female reporter from the team's locker room, has died.

00:25:36.000 So just to contrast the treatment, Sam Weish was a coach who barred a female reporter from the team's locker room.

00:25:43.000 That's in his obit headline from the New York Times on Twitter.

00:25:47.000 Qasem Soleimani, a master terrorist responsible for the deaths of literally tens of thousands of people around the Middle East, mostly Muslims.

00:25:53.000 His headline is, Qasem Soleimani, master of Iran's intrigue and force, dies at 62.

00:25:58.000 I mean, the New York Times is really going to bat for Soleimani.

00:26:02.000 Really going to bat for Soleimani.

00:26:04.000 They tweeted out this morning the sort of tagline for their latest episode of The Daily, which is their daily podcast on news.

00:26:11.000 Here's what they tweeted out.

00:26:12.000 Wow.

00:26:12.000 Isn't that moving?

00:26:13.000 Don't you feel better knowing the New York Times is militating on behalf of one of the world's leading terrorists?

00:26:16.000 Really, really nice stuff.

00:26:17.000 And it isn't just that.

00:26:17.000 strike, he was like a security umbrella above our country.

00:26:21.000 Wow.

00:26:22.000 Isn't that moving?

00:26:23.000 Don't you feel better knowing that the New York Times is militating on behalf of one of the world's leading terrorists?

00:26:28.000 Really, really nice stuff.

00:26:30.000 And it isn't just that.

00:26:31.000 They have an article by a person named Azadeh Moaveney today, a writer and analyst with the International Crisis Group called The Day After War Begins in Iran.

00:26:40.000 The outpouring of grief for Qasem Soleimani is the country's first act of retaliation and this piece is just pure propaganda.

00:26:46.000 It's absolutely pure propaganda.

00:26:49.000 She says, last week, an American drone strike incinerated Iran's top general and national war hero, Major General Qasem Soleimani, along with the senior Iraqi militia commander, in what can only be understood as an act of war.

00:26:59.000 See, it wasn't an act of war when Soleimani, you know, was like ordering strikes against Saudi oil facilities, or when he was attacking shipping and international shipping lanes, or when he was ordering militia To burn down the U.S.

00:27:12.000 Embassy and planning further attacks.

00:27:13.000 None of that was an act of war.

00:27:14.000 It was an act of war when that guy got killed.

00:27:15.000 And all he was, really, was a national war hero, according to this columnist for the New York Times.

00:27:20.000 It's just propaganda.

00:27:20.000 Pure propaganda.

00:27:22.000 This columnist says, Being here again makes me feel that I, an American citizen of Iranian origin, have been here so often before.

00:27:28.000 The cycles of imminent war and upheaval Iranians seem destined to face every few years.

00:27:32.000 Cycles often driven by the whims of the United States and the increasing boldness of Iran. 1.00

00:27:36.000 The whims of the United States?

00:27:38.000 Who sits around thinking that Bush, Obama, Trump... By the way, Bush, Obama, and Trump all campaigned on the same promise not to get into war in the Middle East.

00:27:46.000 All of them did.

00:27:47.000 Barack Obama said he was going to end our endless war.

00:27:49.000 George W. Bush in 2000 campaigned on the notion that he was going to minimize America's military presence.

00:27:54.000 So did Bill Clinton.

00:27:55.000 This has been a consistent feature of American foreign policy since the end of the Cold War.

00:27:59.000 And then reality intrudes because it turns out that Iran is a giant terror state rogue regime. 0.88

00:28:04.000 But according to this columnist, it's just the whims of the United States. 0.95

00:28:07.000 Presidents get up one morning, they're like, those Iranians, we're just going to nail them! 1.00

00:28:11.000 Nail them! 0.95

00:28:12.000 Also, this idea that war and upheaval is just Iranians destined to face the war and upheaval, why don't you look at the Iranian government as maybe the source of the problem?

00:28:23.000 She says, this now feels like a civilizational inheritance, a legacy that my mother bore before me, her mother before her, that I will pass down to my children.

00:28:30.000 Every Iranian family's history is touched with this past in its own way.

00:28:35.000 Okay, the sentences that mean nothing but attempt to boil down opposition to a regime to opposition to Iranians personally, which is just absurd.

00:28:43.000 You know how many Persians I know who are living in the city of Los Angeles and despise the regime?

00:28:48.000 Despise the regime in Iran?

00:28:51.000 There's a reason that thousands and thousands of people over the years have fled Iran.

00:28:55.000 I mean, Jewish Iranians can't even go back. 1.00

00:28:57.000 I mean, Jewish Persians never go back because they're afraid of oppression from the regime, obviously.

00:29:00.000 The American-backed 1953 coup destroyed both my grandfather and great-uncle's careers, until then in service in the government, and sent the latter into exile.

00:29:08.000 Hey, thing that's important to mention, Mosaddegh, the so-called American-backed coup, that was a domestically-driven coup.

00:29:13.000 The American involvement in the 53 coup was not the driving force behind the 53 coup against Mossadegh.

00:29:19.000 In any case, America's support for and then eventual abandonment of the Shah helped shape the 1979 revolution, disrupted all of our lives, with the new authorities expropriating our assets, landing an uncle in prison for belonging to that educated pro-Western class that built modern Iran and saw the revolution as its demise.

00:29:35.000 Again, this columnist now blaming the United States for the fall of the Shah, even though the United States supported the Shah.

00:29:40.000 Now, everything is America's fault, according to this columnist.

00:29:43.000 The fall of Mosaddegh, the rise of the Shah, the fall of the Shah, the Ayatollahs. 0.72

00:29:49.000 Are you sensing a common thread here in this New York Times opinion column?

00:29:52.000 The years that followed, says this opinion columnist, only deepened the Iranian-American chasm.

00:29:57.000 There was the 1979-81 hostage crisis at the American embassy in Tehran, which killed nobody in the end, but poisoned relations to this day.

00:30:03.000 Oh, it killed nobody.

00:30:04.000 You know, it was not really a big deal, you see.

00:30:06.000 It's just that the United States was ticked off that 52 American hostages were taken.

00:30:11.000 The United States scarcely concealed its support for Iraq in the devastating years of the Iran-Iraq War, and in 1988, as the war dragged to a close, continued skirmishing resulted in the U.S.

00:30:19.000 Navy shooting down an Iranian passenger plane flying over Iran's territorial waters, killing 290 people.

00:30:25.000 Deeply regrettable, lamented President Ronald Reagan, but honors and medals for the naval officers.

00:30:30.000 Um, are you suggesting that the United States was purposefully shooting down Iranian passenger planes, that that was not an accident? 0.83

00:30:36.000 This is just, this is coming direct from the Iranian government coffers.

00:30:40.000 I'm not saying this lady's being paid off, I'm just saying the message comes directly from the Iranian government, is being parroted by this person over at the New York Times.

00:30:49.000 For decades now, the United States has often seemed driven to hurt Iran, at times through interventionist policies that were careless and transactional, and then after 1979 with a fierce determination out of proportion to whatever challenge the new system posed.

00:31:02.000 Oh, you see, it's disproportionate for the United States to oppose a vicious, brutal, radical Islamic dictatorship that declares an apocalyptic vision of the future and supports terrorism up to and including the murder of American troops by the thousands. 0.86

00:31:14.000 At a certain point, Iran started retaliating.

00:31:17.000 At a certain point, Iran started- I mean, this is a column in the New York Times.

00:31:21.000 At a certain point, Iran started retaliating, you see.

00:31:24.000 The 1979 revolution was launched with the hostage-taking of four dozen Americans.

00:31:31.000 But at some point, Iran started to retaliate, you see.

00:31:32.000 It was really just the United States' aggression. 0.63

00:31:35.000 In the 1980s, it cultivated regional groups and militias hostile to Washington and encouraged them to take Westerners hostage and staged attacks through these networks.

00:31:42.000 In later years, says this columnist, Iran challenged American roles in the wars of the region and interventions in bordering countries by backing non-state allies that rose to become formidable powers in their own right.

00:31:52.000 That's a nice way of phrasing supporting regional terrorist regimes that cross borders, murder government officials, and threaten foreign countries.

00:31:59.000 This lifted Tehran's gain of asymmetrical leverage into regional influence it probably never conceived of achieving.

00:32:05.000 General Soleimani was behind much of this strategy.

00:32:08.000 Many consider him responsible for the deaths of thousands for his intervention in salvaging Bashar al-Assad's rule in Syria.

00:32:13.000 But to many Iranians, Iraqis, Kurds, and others, he was a pivotal figure in vanquishing the Islamic State.

00:32:18.000 Okay, this is just, this is pure, I've said it's propaganda, this is pure, unfiltered, uncut propaganda.

00:32:26.000 This is the crack cocaine of propaganda.

00:32:29.000 You think that to Kurds, he was a pivotal figure in vanquishing the Islamic State?

00:32:34.000 That the Kurds were sitting around going, you know what we could really use more of is Iranian terrorism? 0.91

00:32:39.000 The Kurds and the Sunni Iraqis just boycotted a session of the Iraqi Parliament dedicated to slamming the United States for killing Soleimani. 0.88

00:32:48.000 So this is just pure made-up nonsense.

00:32:50.000 When she says, to many Iranians, Iraqis, Kurds, and others, I assume she doesn't mean Sunnis.

00:32:54.000 I assume she doesn't mean actual Kurds, because there aren't a lot of them who are real, really pro-Suleimani. 0.98

00:32:59.000 In Syria, for the many Syrians who endured the industrial-scale brutality of the Assad regime, the general led what could only be understood as an offensive force.

00:33:05.000 But Iran's leaders always reminded their people that Syria, the lone Arab country that sided with Iran during the eight-year Iran-Iraq war, could not be abandoned, and that without it, Iran would be vastly more vulnerable in the region.

00:33:16.000 Talk about a non-sequitur.

00:33:17.000 So, hundreds of thousands of people died because Soleimani is supporting Assad.

00:33:21.000 And this columnist's take is that, well, at least Assad supported Iran.

00:33:27.000 It is for these maneuvers, in part, to provide Iran some deterrence against relentless American hostility that General Soleimani is remembered.

00:33:34.000 So it was Soleimani who was deterring the United States, not pursuing regional aggression in every surrounding country.

00:33:39.000 All of them.

00:33:41.000 No, he was trying to deter the United States, which has had, shall we say, a very slim force in place in the Middle East, relatively speaking to the Iranians, who have hundreds of thousands of people in the IRGC, and many thousands of people, more tens of thousands of people, in terrorist groups sponsored by the Iranian government.

00:33:57.000 He had become a patriarch.

00:33:58.000 My God.

00:33:59.000 This piece was published in the New York Times.

00:33:59.000 My God.

00:34:00.000 given at least by the hundreds of thousands who turned out for his funeral, for the hard excesses of the force he commanded, because he secured the land in a time of the Islamic State's butchery, seen as a man of honor and merit among political contemporaries who were usually neither.

00:34:13.000 Of course, he certainly did not impress all Iranians in this way.

00:34:16.000 He had detractors who did not support his regional stratagems.

00:34:19.000 My God.

00:34:21.000 My God.

00:34:23.000 This piece was published in the New York Times.

00:34:25.000 This was published in the New York Times.

00:34:29.000 The mourning for the general, it could be said, is Iran's first act of retaliation.

00:34:33.000 What amounts to an extraordinary four-day state funeral in not one, but two countries.

00:34:38.000 Well, the mourning that's happening in Iraq is those Shiite militias that were actually being paid off by the Iranians. 0.94

00:34:45.000 Just disgusting.

00:34:47.000 I remember as a child, concludes Azadeh Moaveini, a senior gender analyst with the International Crisis Group.

00:34:53.000 I remember as a child, during the years of war with Iraq, my mother telling me about relatives in Iran who gave away their jewelry to aid the war effort.

00:34:59.000 This time, in the face of President Trump's tweets threatening to attack Iran and destroy its sites of cultural heritage, I needn't conjure the unity that comes the day after.

00:35:06.000 The country has gathered to mourn.

00:35:08.000 It is already here.

00:35:10.000 I have a feeling there are a lot of people in Iran who are not super pissed that Soleimani is dead and don't like the regime very much, but you're not going to see them in the streets because they will get shot!

00:35:18.000 It's just unbelievable that the New York Times is doing yeoman's work on behalf of the world's worst human beings.

00:35:24.000 Really, well done, New York Times editors.

00:35:26.000 Okay, we're gonna get to more of the media malfeasance because it's not just random columnists for the New York Times, it is mainstream players in the mainstream media who are making excuses for the Iranian regime and trying to suggest that Trump is the real bad guy in this whole conflict.

00:35:39.000 We'll get to that in one second.

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00:36:11.000 And so the media members of the United States don't know anything about anything.

00:36:20.000 I mean, they can't locate Iran on a map, but they are apparently the best and brightest among us.

00:36:25.000 And their coverage is just egregiously awful and obviously slanted toward the notion that President Trump is the aggressor here.

00:36:31.000 Why? 0.98

00:36:31.000 Because if Iran is the aggressor here, that shows the Iran nuclear deal was garbage. 0.98

00:36:35.000 This is the big problem for members of the media and for many Democrats.

00:36:38.000 If Trump is not the problem here, if Iran is the problem, then that suggests that Iran was never going to moderate and that Iran was never five minutes away from becoming Sweden if only we released pallets of cash to them. 0.60

00:36:48.000 That at no point was Iran seeking moderation.

00:36:50.000 In fact, Iran was seeking regional terrorism, ballistic missile testing, and eventually nuclear development as soon as the timetable on the nuclear deal ended.

00:36:59.000 If it turns out that Iran was bad, the government was bad, is bad, and will continue to be bad, then Trump taking a harsh deterrent action in order to contain them makes a lot of sense. 1.00

00:37:09.000 But that would be a complete rebuke to the Obama administration's repeated lies for years on end that the Iranian government was on the verge of a cataclysmic breakthrough.

00:37:20.000 That Iran was about to change into Switzerland. 0.95

00:37:22.000 They were moments away from moderating and becoming positive.

00:37:25.000 And becoming a positive regional force on behalf of peace.

00:37:28.000 And so the media won't let that happen.

00:37:29.000 So instead, they're just going to slant their coverage.

00:37:31.000 Their coverage is going to be all about how Trump is the real aggressor. 0.98

00:37:34.000 That crazy, rogue... You want to talk about a real terrorist leader? 0.98

00:37:37.000 A real rogue leader? 1.00

00:37:39.000 That is President Trump. 0.98

00:37:40.000 Not Soleimani, the terrorist he just ordered killed. 0.57

00:37:43.000 No, it's Trump. 0.96

00:37:44.000 So you have Richard Engel, who is just the worst.

00:37:46.000 He's the worst foreign policy analyst on the American scene. 0.64

00:37:49.000 He's just terrible. 0.96

00:37:50.000 He's a reporter for NBC and he hates Trump with a passion that cannot be bridled.

00:37:55.000 Here is Richard Engel covering this situation from Tehran and lamenting Soleimani's death.

00:38:00.000 I mean, that's the only way to put it.

00:38:01.000 Like, there was a comment that Nikki Haley made saying that Democratic leadership was lamenting Soleimani's death.

00:38:07.000 I think that that is fair to say for a few Democrats.

00:38:09.000 I don't think that's true for the overall Democratic leadership.

00:38:11.000 It's certainly true for some of the media.

00:38:12.000 Here's Richard Engel.

00:38:13.000 I mean, the way that he is gushingly talking about Soleimani and the way that he is casting aspersions at Trump for killing a terror mastermind, it's pretty astonishing stuff.

00:38:23.000 Now, after this killing, you saw people not only going out in the streets in millions, as Ali was describing, he was there, but throwing articles of their own clothing up onto the coffin so that attendants could rub it on the coffin so that they would have some sort of memento of an object that was close to Qasem Soleimani's body.

00:38:45.000 They turned him into a martyr, if not a saint.

00:38:49.000 And we're seeing now, all around the region, Shiite groups, allies of Iran, speaking in one voice, and that is that U.S. 0.57

00:38:57.000 troops have to leave the region, should be forced out of the region, starting with Iraq. 1.00

00:39:03.000 Wait, you mean that their agenda is exactly the same today as it was yesterday?

00:39:06.000 To force American troops out of the region, which was always their agenda. 0.61

00:39:09.000 I love it.

00:39:10.000 They turn him into a martyr, if not a saint.

00:39:12.000 People rubbing cloths on his coffin.

00:39:14.000 Yeah, people did this for Stalin too, okay?

00:39:15.000 So, like, let's get over the notion that the death of bad people is a bad thing.

00:39:20.000 And that, somehow, this turns people into a martyr.

00:39:25.000 Okay, so either he's alive and planning terror attacks or he's dead and people are sad about it.

00:39:29.000 Those are the two choices.

00:39:29.000 You can pick one.

00:39:31.000 But Richard Engel says this killing backfired.

00:39:33.000 It totally backfired.

00:39:33.000 Really?

00:39:34.000 We're like a week out.

00:39:35.000 How have you... How has it backfired?

00:39:36.000 You're gonna have to explain, Richard Engel, but he has no explanation other than he just doesn't like Trump very much.

00:39:42.000 It has backfired in many ways.

00:39:44.000 It has united people behind Iran when they were not, and it has increased calls for U.S.

00:39:50.000 troops to leave the Middle East, and specifically leave Iran, which is exactly what Soleimani was trying to do.

00:39:57.000 Okay, it's united people who already agreed with Soleimani behind Soleimani's agenda, and Soleimani supporters inside the Iraqi parliament who are Shiite.

00:40:05.000 In other words, nothing changed.

00:40:06.000 But according to Richard Engel, it's all Trump's fault.

00:40:08.000 Again, they have to act as though something actually changed here, because if nothing changed, then Trump was right.

00:40:14.000 And if something changed, if Trump ushered in a new era, then everything that happens from here on in can be blamed on Trump.

00:40:20.000 If it turns out that Trump was just reacting to Iranian aggression, consistent Iranian aggression, since 1979, but accelerated actually, since the dawn of the Iran nuclear deal, then it turns out a lot of this is Obama's fault.

00:40:33.000 In fact, a lot of this is everybody's fault.

00:40:35.000 But mostly the Iranian regime's fault. 0.89

00:40:37.000 And it's the media's fault for pretending that Iran was not a threat as soon as Obama suggested they were not a threat. 0.85

00:40:41.000 Obama basically used the media as a meat puppet. 0.93

00:40:43.000 He stuck his hand up their behind and manipulated their mouths. 1.00

00:40:45.000 Well, don't you think that Iran is no longer a threat? 1.00

00:40:47.000 Yes, I'm Richard Engel, and I think Iran is no longer a threat. 0.86

00:40:51.000 Martha Raddatz over on Good Morning America is also reporting from Tehran.

00:40:55.000 It is an amazing thing.

00:40:56.000 One of the things that has to be done when you cover a terrorist entity like the Iranian government is very often there are restrictions put on reporters as to what they can see and what they can hear.

00:41:07.000 This is true going for like virtually every rogue regime in history.

00:41:11.000 Famously, the USSR had what they called Potemkin villages, where they would set up literally just storefronts, and then they would have people tour, and people were like, oh wow, look at all these brand new stores, they're amazing.

00:41:20.000 Over in the Gaza Strip, for example, if you wish to be a journalist in the Gaza Strip, you can only do what Hamas tells you to do, and if you don't, they expel you.

00:41:26.000 Well in Iran, Martha Raddatz has to put on the Iranian head covering because nothing says powerful independent journalism that speaks truth to power quite like obeying the dictates of the Iranian regime.

00:41:38.000 And when I hear that, well, you know, that's just journalists doing what they have to do.

00:41:41.000 Let's say that Martha Raddatz were visiting the Vatican. 0.56

00:41:44.000 And the Pope wanted her to dress in a particular way.

00:41:46.000 Do you think that she would just go ahead and do that? 0.91

00:41:48.000 If she were visiting Meir Sha'arim in Israel and they asked her to put on a head covering, do you think that she would do it?

00:41:52.000 Or probably not.

00:41:53.000 It turns out that the reason that Martha Raddatz does this is because the Iranian government is, in fact, a tyrannical, anti-woman, brutal regime. 1.00

00:42:00.000 But here is Martha Raddatz suggesting that the real problem, again, always, as always, is the Trump administration.

00:42:06.000 The crowds are massive and emotional.

00:42:08.000 There are many tears here, many signs with Soleimani's picture on them, but the message is also very clear.

00:42:16.000 These people want revenge.

00:42:18.000 Are we human or not?

00:42:20.000 As we made our way through the streets of Tehran, people surrounding us shouting, death to America.

00:42:27.000 We will have very hard revenge of Mr. Trump.

00:42:30.000 Inside the funeral service, the emotion just as powerful.

00:42:35.000 The Supreme Leader of Iran weeping and praying over a coffin draped in the Iraqi flag.

00:42:42.000 This is the largest funeral in Iran since the death of the Ayatollah Khomeini in 1989.

00:42:49.000 Well, I mean, that is pure... Again, that's the uncut stuff, man.

00:42:53.000 They got into the supply.

00:42:54.000 Because that... Look at the weeping and the gnashing of teeth and people saying they will have revenge on Mr. Trump.

00:42:59.000 That lady who said, by the way, that we will have revenge on Mr. Trump, who is she?

00:43:02.000 She has no rights inside Iran.

00:43:04.000 Like, none.

00:43:05.000 Is she running Iranian foreign policy? 0.91

00:43:07.000 Or is it the guy who is crying in front of Soleimani's coffin and who has been supporting terrorism across the region forever?

00:43:15.000 The Washington Post national security columnist, there's a Washington Post national security columnist who tweeted, her name is Sanam Vakil.

00:43:21.000 She tweeted, hard to resist not retweeting this.

00:43:23.000 Okay, what exactly was it that she was retweeting?

00:43:26.000 It was a picture of the Tehran crowd for Soleimani's funeral and the Trump inauguration crowd, right?

00:43:33.000 Look, more people supported Soleimani than supported Trump.

00:43:36.000 And the Washington Post national security columnist tweeted that out.

00:43:40.000 Tweeted that out.

00:43:41.000 No, the media have no bias here.

00:43:42.000 It's not that they hate Trump.

00:43:43.000 Chris Matthews.

00:43:44.000 Look, he's not an objective journalist, so you expect Chris Matthews to be Chris Matthews. 0.93

00:43:48.000 He says Trump's an assassin!

00:43:49.000 I get on in here. 0.96

00:43:50.000 I roll on in here.

00:43:51.000 Harold Rumpel.

00:43:52.000 Pseudo-Rumpel.

00:43:53.000 Coming out of the show.

00:43:54.000 Rolling in here half-drunk.

00:43:55.000 I talk about Soleimani.

00:43:56.000 Heard about him yesterday.

00:43:58.000 Seemed like a nice guy.

00:43:59.000 Maybe not a nice guy, but not a terrible guy.

00:44:01.000 Not like Trump. 0.96

00:44:02.000 Trump's a really bad guy.

00:44:04.000 Amy Klobuchar is sitting over there, eating salad with a comb.

00:44:06.000 What do you have to say, Amy Klobuchar?

00:44:08.000 Go, Chris Matthews, go!

00:44:10.000 Here we are in the assassination business again.

00:44:13.000 I'm sorry.

00:44:13.000 This is a top general.

00:44:14.000 We didn't need to talk to him.

00:44:15.000 If he wasn't operational, he was a leader.

00:44:18.000 We killed this guy, a president of the United States that used to hide from assassination responsibility.

00:44:23.000 This president is bragging about his assassination. 0.65

00:44:26.000 Pompeo is bragging about it.

00:44:28.000 Is there a new deviancy in the American culture that we now support murder-killing of political leaders?

00:44:34.000 Is this what we do now?

00:44:36.000 And I don't think you're an assassin.

00:44:37.000 Anyway, thank you so much.

00:44:38.000 This president is.

00:44:39.000 Anyway, thank you, Senator. 0.97

00:44:40.000 Supporting murder killing of foreign generals. 0.91

00:44:43.000 Like, I hate when people do that.

00:44:45.000 Like, let's say that Hillary Clinton had like, you know, killed like Muammar Gaddafi and then said, we came, we saw he died.

00:44:50.000 What if she said that?

00:44:52.000 And she was like laughing all the time.

00:44:53.000 And then I laughed too.

00:44:54.000 Ah, ah. 1.00

00:44:55.000 But Trump, he killed a terror leader and he's like an assassin. 0.98

00:44:58.000 He probably plays Assassin's Creed! 0.98

00:45:01.000 He probably gets up every morning and plays Assassin's Creed and then he goes out and he assassinates people because he's an assassin mcassin!

00:45:06.000 Assassin! 0.90

00:45:07.000 Come to the show!

00:45:09.000 Chris Matthews, brilliant, brilliant analysis there.

00:45:12.000 MSNBC's Chris Hayes joins also.

00:45:14.000 He says, we're so close.

00:45:15.000 And Chris Hayes is always the guy who puts on the faux solemnity.

00:45:19.000 We're so close to the final meltdown where this is, we're gonna, it's thermonuclear war all the way down.

00:45:25.000 He grabs Rachel Maddow's glasses right off that desk, puts them on, and goes into his Chris Hayes routine.

00:45:30.000 Do it, Chris Hayes.

00:45:31.000 If you are feeling dread and anxiety in this new year, you are not crazy.

00:45:36.000 We are on the precipice of what many imagined as a worst-case scenario of Donald Trump as President of the United States.

00:45:43.000 For all of Trump's narcissism and pettiness and braggadocio and ignorance, thus far, through sheer luck, we have avoided that absolute worst-case scenario of the President essentially plunging the country into a new military conflagration slash geopolitical quagmire.

00:45:59.000 Yes, it's a geopolitical quagmire.

00:46:02.000 Before, it was totally solved.

00:46:03.000 Again, remember, the media's goal here is to defend Obama.

00:46:06.000 That's all this is.

00:46:06.000 They don't care about Iran.

00:46:07.000 They don't care about Iraq.

00:46:08.000 They don't care about any of this.

00:46:09.000 Their goal is to defend Obama because Obama was their guy, and they are going to go down in flames on that titanic of his foreign policy while carrying his drool cup.

00:46:17.000 That's what this is all about.

00:46:18.000 Final note.

00:46:19.000 Final note here goes to Bernie Sanders.

00:46:21.000 Bernie Sanders really summing up what so many on the left think.

00:46:26.000 When Nikki Haley, by the way, says that some Democratic presidential candidates actually have sympathy for Soleimani, Sanders may come to mind here.

00:46:33.000 Bernie Sanders said that President Trump ordering the death of Soleimani is like Vladimir Putin killing dissidents.

00:46:40.000 This guy is, you know, was as bad as he was an official of the Iranian government. 0.95

00:46:45.000 And you unleash, then if China does that, you know, if Russia does that, you know, Russia has been implicated under Putin with assassinating dissidents.

00:46:55.000 So once you're in the business of assassination, you unleash some very, very terrible forces.

00:47:01.000 Oh, well, it's just like as soon as you assassinate, you know, a terrorist who's actually pursuing terrorist attacks.

00:47:06.000 That's just like Vladimir Putin killing people who disagree with his government.

00:47:09.000 Exactly the same thing.

00:47:10.000 How do I know this?

00:47:11.000 Well, because I had my pudding this morning.

00:47:14.000 That is one of your two leading Democratic candidates for president, guys.

00:47:16.000 Well done, everybody.

00:47:17.000 OK, time for a quick thing I like, and then we'll get to a quick thing that I hate.

00:47:21.000 So quick things that I like.

00:47:23.000 Well, there's been a lot of talk about anti-Semitism in New York.

00:47:25.000 It was pretty cool last week.

00:47:26.000 There's something held called Sium Hashas.

00:47:28.000 So this is a quick note to my Orthodox Jewish friends out there.

00:47:31.000 Sium Hashas, the Talmud, is this voluminous set of study texts, basically, that were created in the first millennium.

00:47:42.000 And they were supposed to be a review of the Mishnah.

00:47:44.000 So a quick primer on Jewish law.

00:47:47.000 So basically there's the Torah, which is the five books of Moses, and then there's the Tanakh, which is the more large corpus, right, that has the prophets and it has the writings.

00:47:55.000 And then you have the Mishnah, which is the oral law that was supposedly brought down by Moses from Sinai and then was handed down generation to generation. 0.62

00:48:03.000 That was written down very early on in the first millennium.

00:48:06.000 And then you had the Talmud, which was All the discussion of the oral law and interpretation of the oral law.

00:48:11.000 That comprises, I think, 23 volumes.

00:48:13.000 It is a very, very large work.

00:48:15.000 And it takes 7 years to go through it from beginning to end if you study a page a day.

00:48:19.000 Now, a page a day doesn't sound like much, but when it's in Aramaic, and it's front and back, and it's big blocks of text, that takes a while.

00:48:25.000 It takes 7 years.

00:48:25.000 Well, they had the Siyyam Hashas over at MetLife Field.

00:48:29.000 In New York, 90,000 Orthodox Jews showed up to celebrate the completion of this study cycle.

00:48:36.000 So, while there's a lot of talk about anti-Semitism in New York, it is cool that that many people have participated in the study cycle, ranging from young to old.

00:48:44.000 Pretty neat stuff.

00:48:45.000 By the way, if you are into Dafyomi, so they restarted the cycle, I've started doing Dafyomi, which is to study one page of Talmud a day.

00:48:52.000 If you're into that, there's a great resource put out by the Orthodox Union called alldaf.org.

00:48:55.000 There is my very sectional Again, that's Aldoff.org.

00:48:59.000 That's my very, very sectional thing that I like today.

00:49:02.000 Here's my broader thing that I like.

00:49:03.000 So Sports Illustrated writers have now said they're going to unionize.

00:49:07.000 One of the things that I like best is when members of the left are eaten by the left.

00:49:12.000 It is quite delicious.

00:49:14.000 Sports Illustrator staffers, according to CNN, announced their intention to unionize on Monday, seeking better workplace protections amid turmoil at the Legacy brand.

00:49:21.000 The union represents about 80 staffers in print, digital, and video.

00:49:24.000 Sports Illustrator's magazine staffers were already part of the News Guild of New York.

00:49:28.000 Digital staffers were not.

00:49:29.000 Now both print and digital will be included in the new union that is also with the News Guild.

00:49:34.000 In October, Seattle-based Star Up Maven took ownership of Sports Illustrated and immediately laid off 40 staffers.

00:49:41.000 Then they were going to hire 200 contractors to increase their local sports coverage to compete with outlets like The Athletic.

00:49:47.000 But now, the union says it's unacceptable that they were going to fire anybody and move toward independent contractors.

00:49:52.000 The union said, quote, decisions made by new management over the last few months have put SI's reputation and long-term health at risk.

00:49:57.000 Yes, I'm sure that's what you care about, the union.

00:49:59.000 You could just, by the way, go get your own funding and start your own magazine.

00:50:02.000 But no.

00:50:03.000 What you really want is to drive Sports Illustrated into the dust in order to maintain the employment of people who are not earning their keep.

00:50:09.000 Two dozen employees who lost their jobs were women or people of color. 0.95

00:50:13.000 Who cares?

00:50:15.000 Who cares?

00:50:16.000 Not about people being unemployed, that's bad. 0.52

00:50:18.000 But about, like, is it worse if it's a black guy than a white guy who is now unemployed writing for Sports Illustrated?

00:50:25.000 In the world of sports, there's probably a better shot that if you're a minority you're gonna latch on more easily somewhere else than if you're just a white guy who is writing for your local sports publication.

00:50:33.000 Moreover, Maven's directive to launch a network of team reporters on SI's platform without sufficiently vetting or editorial oversight has already resulted in errors that severely undermine our credibility.

00:50:44.000 This is going to go well.

00:50:46.000 So I am enjoying Sports Illustrated, which swung wildly to the left and hired a bunch of lefties, and now it turns out that they're going to unionize all their employees and kill the profit motive for a magazine that was already in serious trouble.

00:50:57.000 Well done, everybody.

00:50:58.000 Well done, everybody.

00:51:00.000 Okay, you know what?

00:51:00.000 I think that we don't need any things that I hate today.

00:51:03.000 There's just too much to hate already.

00:51:04.000 So we will be back here a little bit later today with two additional hours of content.

00:51:08.000 All your updates on impeachment, John Bolton, everything else.

00:51:11.000 Plus, we will have more for you here tomorrow.

00:51:14.000 So stick around for that.

00:51:15.000 I'm Ben Shapiro.

00:51:15.000 Shapiro, this is The Ben Shapiro Show.

00:51:16.000 The Ben Shapiro Show is produced by Rebecca Dobkowitz.

00:51:25.000 Directed by Mike Joyner.

00:51:26.000 Executive Producer Jeremy Boring.

00:51:28.000 Senior Producer Jonathan Hay.

00:51:29.000 Supervising Producers Mathis Glover and Robert Sterling.

00:51:32.000 Technical Producer Austin Stevens.

00:51:34.000 Associate Producer Colton Haas.

00:51:35.000 Assistant Director Pavel Wydowski.

00:51:37.000 Edited by Adam Sijewicz.

00:51:39.000 Audio is Mixed by Mike Carmina.

00:51:40.000 Hair and Makeup is by Jesua Olvera.

00:51:42.000 Production Assistant Nick Sheehan.

00:51:44.000 The Ben Shapiro Show is a Daily Wire production.

00:51:46.000 Copyright Daily Wire 2020.

00:51:48.000 As the left enters day five of mourning dead Iranian terrorist Qasem Soleimani, the outcry takes an explicitly traitorous turn.

00:51:56.000 We examine an important political reality.

00:51:59.000 You are known by the friends you keep.

00:52:01.000 Then, the most prolific rapist in British history is sentenced to life in prison, but even amid the MeToo movement, virtually no one is reporting on it.

00:52:09.000 We analyze a story that doesn't fit the leftist narrative.

The Ben Shapiro Show - January 07, 2020

The Media’s Not-So-Secret Iran Agenda | Ep. 926

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