The Ben Shapiro Show - The Rigging Of The 2024 Election

00:00:00.000 All righty, so today the former president of the United States is expected to appear in person for his arraignment in federal court in Washington, D.C.

00:00:07.000 So we're going to get another O.J. 0.94

00:00:08.000 Simpson day, where the president is trailed by helicopters as he leaves Mar-a-Lago, and then he gets on a plane, and then he goes to Washington, D.C., and then he goes into a courthouse, and then he exits a courthouse.

00:00:17.000 And we're going to get all the usual hullabaloo about how this is historic, and it's the biggest thing that's happened in the United States since ever, and it's like an amazing, amazing day for the left.

00:00:25.000 They're all going to be celebrating.

00:00:26.000 They're all going to be woohooing.

00:00:27.000 It's going to be so exciting.

00:00:29.000 We've done this several times at this point because Trump, of course, had to go to New York for an arraignment.

00:00:33.000 And then he had to be in Florida and Miami for an arraignment.

00:00:35.000 Now he has to be in Washington, D.C.

00:00:36.000 for an arraignment.

00:00:36.000 So it's the arraignment world tour here with the Trump campaign.

00:00:40.000 And this is not Donald Trump's fault because this indictment is garbage. 0.93

00:00:43.000 The indictment, as I discussed yesterday, is charging crimes that are not actual crimes. 0.96

00:00:48.000 They are suggesting that Donald Trump, for example, committed some sort of fraud against the government of the United States, which is a lie.

00:00:54.000 That is not, in fact, how that law works.

00:00:56.000 What they wanted to charge him with was incitement.

00:00:58.000 What they really wanted to charge him with was he is the one who created the riot on January 6th.

00:01:02.000 But the problem is it doesn't fulfill the actual elements of incitement because incitement under American law requires that you actually tell people to go do the thing.

00:01:08.000 It is not enough to say, well, you know, I really, really don't like that guy.

00:01:11.000 And then somebody goes and they burn down the guy's house.

00:01:13.000 That's not enough.

00:01:14.000 You have to say, I want you to go to that guy's house and burn down his house and here's his address. 0.63

00:01:18.000 The latter is incitement.

00:01:20.000 Trump didn't do that.

00:01:21.000 He said on January 6th, go peacefully protest, patriotically protest at the Capitol building.

00:01:26.000 And then he didn't do enough to get people out.

00:01:29.000 But again, that's not the same thing as incitement.

00:01:31.000 That is not an actual crime.

00:01:32.000 It's just him being a bad president at that time.

00:01:36.000 Which, again, his activities during January 6th, I think were egregious.

00:01:39.000 I think his activities between the election and January 6th, particularly in the aftermath of state certification of votes, I think it was wrong.

00:01:45.000 I think it was false.

00:01:45.000 I think none of that is a crime.

00:01:47.000 It turns out you can do lots of things in America that I personally think are egregious, wrong, and damaging to the country that are not crimes.

00:01:52.000 It happens pretty much all the time and every single day.

00:01:55.000 So, former President Trump, again, he's going to show up in Washington, D.C.

00:02:00.000 In order to be arraigned.

00:02:02.000 And this just underscores the fact that not only could President Trump's life be at risk here because he now faces 78 felony charges across three criminal cases.

00:02:11.000 If Trump were convicted on all counts, according to Politico, and given the maximum statutory penalty for each one, he would face a whopping 641 years in prison.

00:02:19.000 Which I assume means he would not survive prison, although he is 70% preservatives at this point because he eats so much McDonald's and Diet Coke.

00:02:28.000 That is not counting additional criminal charges he might face in Georgia.

00:02:32.000 The actual plausible criminal term is probably nothing like that.

00:02:35.000 In both state and federal courts, judges have wide latitude in sentencing.

00:02:38.000 None of the crimes Trump has been charged with carry a mandatory minimum sentence.

00:02:41.000 Defendants with no prior criminal record rarely receive the maximum.

00:02:45.000 And sending Trump to prison could raise pretty unprecedented practical and legal issues, given the fact that right now, he's the most likely person to be the Republican candidate for president.

00:02:53.000 So there is the actual real possibility that Donald Trump could be campaigning from prison in the middle of next year, which again, high drama.

00:03:02.000 And maybe, I mean, I would love to see a presidential debate in which Joe Biden Being corrupt with Hunter and having violated the law?

00:03:09.000 You could theoretically have a presidential debate in which you have the candidates in actual jail cells across from each other at Folsom and just shouting at each other across the hallway as flaming bedsheets fall around them, which frankly would be more entertaining than most presidential debates at this point.

00:03:21.000 But is this a miscarriage of justice?

00:03:23.000 Yeah, I mean, this indictment should not go forward.

00:03:25.000 I discussed it at length yesterday.

00:03:27.000 Not only that, it is very clear that Jack Smith wants this stuff prosecuted like as fast as humanly possible.

00:03:33.000 Donald Trump's defense attorney, John Lauro, he said prosecutors want to force a trial in 60 to 90 days.

00:03:38.000 So if I get my math right, that means that they want to force the trial in like October, November, sometime presumably before the primaries begin.

00:03:47.000 The prosecutor says, let's go to trial, I'm ready in 70 days.

00:03:50.000 Fair enough, you're not ready in 70 days.

00:03:52.000 How about 90?

00:03:52.000 How about six months?

00:03:53.000 How about before the elections?

00:03:54.000 How about he had three and a half years, why don't we make it equal, okay?

00:03:58.000 The bottom line is that they have 60 federal agents working on this, 60 lawyers, all kinds of government personnel, and we get this indictment and they want to go to trial in 90 days.

00:04:10.000 Does that sound like justice to you?

00:04:12.000 Well, maybe.

00:04:12.000 justice? The prosecutor's not here to say, maybe he's investigating so that he's ready to go to

00:04:17.000 trial. Is it justice to force a former president of the United States to trial in 90 days when

00:04:23.000 you've had three years to investigate? Well, as you well know.

00:04:25.000 So there are two things that are happening right here from a sort of political perspective.

00:04:32.000 One is, the entire election cycle will now be about January 6th.

00:04:35.000 It'll be about Donald Trump's activities, his legal activities, it'll be about classified documents.

00:04:39.000 That is what the election is going to be about.

00:04:41.000 And that is what Democrats want the election to be about.

00:04:42.000 They would love nothing better than that.

00:04:44.000 This is why you have Michael Beschloss, who's the world's worst historian and writes speeches for Joe Biden, comparing January 6th to 9-11, which again, this is such an absurdity.

00:04:52.000 I'm sorry.

00:04:52.000 January 6th was a rally that turned into a fairly small-scale riot in the context of the 2020 riots, which was the most damaging riots in American history in terms of property damage and many lives were lost.

00:05:05.000 Michael Bush lost comparing a bunch of dolts going into the Capitol building.

00:05:10.000 And by the way, killing no one, okay?

00:05:12.000 Because the reality is that the one officer who died, Brian Sicknick, died afterward, and it is unclear that the cause of death was directly related to January 6th.

00:05:20.000 But put all that, the only person who actually was killed that day was Ashley Babbitt, of course.

00:05:24.000 Comparing that to 9-11, in which 3,000 Americans died in a full-scale attack on the United States, including both the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

00:05:32.000 Comparing that to Pearl Harbor, like, Michael Beschloss is, he is a terrible historian, but this is the narrative.

00:05:40.000 Pearl Harbor, 1941.

00:05:42.000 We were bombed.

00:05:44.000 Our system was very much in danger.

00:05:46.000 Our democracy, many people were giving it up and saying that, you know, the democracy had seen its last days.

00:05:53.000 Franklin Roosevelt helped to put a coalition together at the last minute to save democracy and freedom around the world.

00:06:02.000 9-11, 2001.

00:06:04.000 Osama bin Laden and other terrorists hated our democracy, tried to destroy it. 0.91

00:06:09.000 You see where I'm going.

00:06:11.000 What we see in this indictment is that on January 6, 2021, Donald Trump, just like those other threats to American democracy, tried to destroy our system.

00:06:24.000 Okay, so he is now comparing Donald Trump to Osama bin Laden and Hirohito.

00:06:29.000 This is where Democrats want to go, and they'd love to run this election.

00:06:31.000 They ran the selection playbook in 2020.

00:06:33.000 They ran the selection playbook in 2022.

00:06:35.000 And it actually went pretty well for them.

00:06:38.000 I remember a lot of us were pretty exercised about what I think is still the worst presidential speech I've ever seen given.

00:06:43.000 Joe Biden's bizarre and fascistic speech in front of the Independence Hall, where he completely misread what liberty is and then declared all of his political opponents enemies of the Republic.

00:06:53.000 Blood Red Independence Hall with the soldiers flanking him in the background.

00:06:55.000 You remember all of that.

00:06:56.000 But it actually worked out fairly well politically for him, so Democrats want to rerun that playbook.

00:07:00.000 So that is point number one.

00:07:02.000 Point number two is that if you bog down your political opponent with lawsuit after lawsuit after lawsuit, criminal case after criminal case after criminal, that keeps him pretty busy.

00:07:11.000 And not only that, if you hit him with a bunch of criminal cases that are pretty obviously politically motivated, it elevates him in the primaries.

00:07:17.000 So Democrats are getting kind of all the things they want here.

00:07:19.000 We'll get to that in just one second.

00:07:20.000 First, Let us talk about the fact that Big Tech, Big Government, these are not trustworthy sources.

00:07:26.000 They would like to silence any dissenting voices into submission.

00:07:29.000 In fact, they work hand in glove together.

00:07:30.000 There's literally a story out today that the White House contacted Facebook and asked them to ding DailyWare's traffic, like degrade DailyWare's traffic in 2021.

00:07:38.000 We don't trust Big Tech.

00:07:39.000 We don't trust Big Government.

00:07:41.000 You shouldn't either.

00:07:41.000 This is why you should Fight back against having your voice censored by both by using ExpressVPN.

00:07:47.000 The problem with big tech, they don't just attempt to censor you, they track what you do online.

00:07:49.000 They actually monetize your data and your traffic.

00:07:52.000 They match your activities, your true identity, using your device's unique IP address.

00:07:55.000 When I use ExpressVPN, they can't see my IP address at all.

00:07:58.000 My identity is anonymized by a secure VPN server.

00:08:00.000 Plus, ExpressVPN encrypts 100% of my internet data for protection from hackers and eavesdroppers.

00:08:05.000 ExpressVPN is by far the best VPN I've tried.

00:08:07.000 It is the VPN rated number one by Business Insider and countless other tech publications.

00:08:11.000 What I love most about ExpressVPN, it couldn't be easier to use.

00:08:14.000 The app has one button.

00:08:15.000 You tap it, you're protected.

00:08:16.000 It is indeed that simple.

00:08:17.000 ExpressVPN might be the premiere sponsor of the show.

00:08:20.000 It is the best VPN on the market.

00:08:21.000 I use it every day.

00:08:22.000 You should too.

00:08:22.000 Stop letting big tech and big government censor and track you.

00:08:24.000 Defend your rights.

00:08:25.000 Protect yourself.

00:08:25.000 ExpressVPN.com slash Ben.

00:08:27.000 That's E-X-P-R-E-S-S-V-P-N.com slash Ben. 0.99

00:08:29.000 To get three months for free, visit ExpressVPN.com slash Ben to learn more.

00:08:33.000 Okay, so.

00:08:35.000 This is, in effect, an attempt to quote-unquote rig the 2024 election.

00:08:40.000 Now again, when I say rig, I mean it in the sort of generic sense.

00:08:42.000 I don't mean electoral fraud.

00:08:44.000 I don't mean Democrats shipping in ballot boxes in the middle of the night or dead people voting in Chicago in 1960 or stealing an election for Al Franken over Norm Coleman in Minnesota.

00:08:53.000 That stuff does happen.

00:08:54.000 That's not what I'm talking about here.

00:08:55.000 What I'm talking about here is the pre-rigging of the 2024 election by essentially Making Donald Trump the Republican nominee, knowing that the amount of baggage he brings into the general is going to drag him down in the general election.

00:09:07.000 Because that seems to be the most predictable way that this election cycle goes.

00:09:10.000 It is very difficult to believe that independents are going to think like Republicans and conservatives on these issues.

00:09:15.000 Because most people don't watch this stuff at the granular level.

00:09:17.000 If you listen to this show, you are more politically informed than about 98% of the American public.

00:09:22.000 The rest of the public, a huge percentage of the public does not follow this stuff closely.

00:09:25.000 And so when they see headline after headline after headline suggesting that Donald Trump is a criminal, if they are not in the 40% base of Donald Trump, if they're in that 10%, which tends to be less engaged, tends to be less informed, which tends to not listen to conservative podcasts, but may turn on CNN every so often, that the people who catch the news, whether they're not reading the sports section, For those people, do you think they're going to be granularly involved in whether the DOJ was weaponized against Donald Trump?

00:09:55.000 Because after all, Donald Trump has been arguing that for years.

00:09:57.000 He was right, but those arguments kind of are baked into the cake.

00:10:00.000 So the question becomes both practical and messaging.

00:10:04.000 On a practical level, how is Donald Trump going to contend with the fact that he is likely to have at least four ongoing criminal trials in the middle of this election cycle?

00:10:12.000 How's he gonna do that?

00:10:13.000 We already know that his super PAC is spending every dollar they have raised, all of them, on his legal fees right now.

00:10:18.000 So first of all, Donald Trump's supposed to be a billionaire.

00:10:20.000 He shouldn't be using his super PAC money for that.

00:10:22.000 Donald Trump should be paying his own legal bills.

00:10:24.000 And when you donate money to Donald Trump, it should not go toward his legal defense.

00:10:27.000 It should go toward defeating Joe Biden by building up a grassroots operation.

00:10:31.000 I mean, that's just simple politics.

00:10:33.000 But, put that aside.

00:10:34.000 Even if you're fine.

00:10:35.000 By the way, Donald Trump could have started a separate legal fund, and then if you wanted to give to his legal fund, you could have.

00:10:39.000 That's not what he did.

00:10:39.000 But, put all of that aside.

00:10:41.000 Every dollar Donald Trump is bringing in is being spent right now on legal.

00:10:45.000 Every moment that Donald Trump is online is being spent thinking about legal.

00:10:49.000 Every so often he sideswipes Ron DeSantis just to kind of keep him down, but most of his focus right now is going to be on the legal cases and ranting about Jack Smith and stuff.

00:10:57.000 Well, that's an awful expenditure of time for a presidential candidate who needs to run an election in swing states in order to win.

00:11:04.000 Beyond that, think about the practicalities.

00:11:06.000 Think about the court dates.

00:11:07.000 Think about where he actually has to physically be.

00:11:10.000 In many of these cases, he's going to have to be for days or weeks.

00:11:15.000 Florida for his case on classified documents, or in Washington D.C.

00:11:19.000 for the January 6th indictments, or in Georgia for electoral interference indictments that are shortly to be coming, or in New York for the Stormy Daniels nonsense.

00:11:28.000 He's going to have to be in all of those places.

00:11:29.000 Just on a practical level, this is a very, very difficult case for Donald Trump to run.

00:11:33.000 It's a very rough race.

00:11:35.000 Because they've set up all of these obstacles.

00:11:36.000 Again, this is why I say it's been rigged.

00:11:38.000 Once you bring a bunch of specious allegations against Trump and you lock him up in terms of his time and his money for the next year and a half, that is a form of rigging the election.

00:11:46.000 And as a as another component of this, by doing this, you're also helping to rig the Republican primaries in a bizarre sort of way.

00:11:53.000 When all of the media coverage goes toward Donald Trump, it sucks all the air out of the room.

00:11:57.000 Nobody else can compete.

00:11:58.000 It means that Donald Trump, with all of his baggage, is likely to be the nominee because everybody on the Republican side of the aisle, myself included, We all look at Trump and we're like, that guy's being victimized and we would like to give him as much power as he can have in order to smack back.

00:12:10.000 I get it.

00:12:11.000 I totally get it.

00:12:12.000 But here's the thing.

00:12:13.000 If he loses, none of that, the power of a nomination is no greater than the power of a not nomination.

00:12:19.000 The power of the presidency is the thing you need.

00:12:21.000 If Donald Trump doesn't win, giving him the nomination doesn't actually help him one iota.

00:12:26.000 Like not one little bit.

00:12:29.000 You need somebody who can win.

00:12:30.000 If that person wins, presumably they could pardon him theoretically of federal charges.

00:12:34.000 They could remake the DOJ.

00:12:36.000 That's the thing we should all be focused on if we actually care about fixing the system and making sure that you don't get bad indictments against political opponents.

00:12:42.000 But that requires victory.

00:12:43.000 So the question really, as always, comes back to victory.

00:12:46.000 So, again, that's practicality number one, is his time being stacked up.

00:12:52.000 Him being basically jammed up all the way until election day with criminal cases.

00:12:58.000 And then again, there's message number two, which is the message that Democrats are going to ram down, push it, push it, push it, push it.

00:13:04.000 And these criminal cases allow them to do it every day because Trump is going to be in court talking about it every day, on Truth Social talking about it.

00:13:10.000 If there's one person who likes talking about Trump more than Joe Biden, it's Donald Trump.

00:13:13.000 He loves it.

00:13:14.000 It's his favorite thing.

00:13:15.000 We're gonna get an entire election cycle of that.

00:13:17.000 So, maybe that's something that you're up for, for dramatic purposes, or out of loyalty to Trump on some sort of personal level.

00:13:25.000 I don't blame you for it, I get it.

00:13:28.000 I'm just asking, is it the thing that is most likely to result in actual victory?

00:13:35.000 As we'll see in a second, it is quite probable that Joe Biden basically set all of this up, at least in terms of the incitements that are now coming down from Jack Smith.

00:13:42.000 We'll get to that in just one second.

00:13:44.000 First, we have a great dog.

00:13:46.000 His name is Happy.

00:13:47.000 He's very cute.

00:13:47.000 He got groomed yesterday.

00:13:48.000 Not like, you know, not like in middle school.

00:13:51.000 He got actually, like, cleaned and groomed, and he is a very, very cute dog.

00:13:56.000 He's a Havanese, and so his hair is growing long, and he looks like a mini version of Chewbacca. 0.99

00:14:02.000 All our kids love him, which is why we want him to live a long and healthy life.

00:14:05.000 This is also why we give him rough greens every single morning.

00:14:08.000 The dog food you've been giving your dog is dead food.

00:14:10.000 It doesn't have a lot of nutritional value.

00:14:11.000 I mean, look at it.

00:14:12.000 It is like brown dots or something.

00:14:15.000 Green food, better for your dog.

00:14:16.000 Rough greens boosts happy's food back to life.

00:14:18.000 It can do the same for your dog.

00:14:19.000 You don't have to go out and buy new dog food.

00:14:20.000 You just sprinkle some rough greens on their food every day.

00:14:22.000 It contains all the necessary vitamins and minerals your dog is not getting from their regular dog food.

00:14:26.000 Happy loves his Ruff Greens.

00:14:27.000 He dives into them every day.

00:14:29.000 Ruff Greens is the only supplement your dog will ask for by name.

00:14:31.000 Ruff Greens.

00:14:32.000 You get it?

00:14:32.000 It's a joke.

00:14:33.000 It's a pun.

00:14:34.000 Naturopathic.

00:14:34.000 Dr. Dennis Black, the founder of Ruff Greens, is so confident this product will improve your dog's health, he's offering my listeners a free Jumpstart Trial Bag.

00:14:41.000 Go to ruffgreens.com slash ben.

00:14:42.000 Let Ruff Greens bring your dog's food back to life. 0.99

00:14:44.000 That is r-u-f-f greens.com slash ben today.

00:14:47.000 Or call 833 MY DOG 33.

00:14:48.000 That is 833 MY DOG 33.

00:14:48.000 Okay, so.

00:14:52.000 Did Joe Biden rig a lot of this sort of stuff?

00:14:55.000 I mean, the answer is, it kind of sounds like it.

00:14:57.000 This is an article from March 31st, 2023, just a few months ago.

00:15:02.000 Biden said, what the Biden Justice Department will do is let the Department of Justice be the Department of Justice.

00:15:07.000 Let them make the judgments of who should be prosecuted.

00:15:09.000 They are not my lawyers.

00:15:10.000 They are not my personal lawyers.

00:15:12.000 But, and this is the New York Times reporting, back in March, he does have opinions.

00:15:17.000 In the past, Mr. Biden privately told his close circle of advisors that Mr. Trump posed a threat to democracy and should be prosecuted for his role in the events of January 6th, according to two people familiar with his comments.

00:15:27.000 He also told confidants he wanted Attorney General Merrick Garland to stop acting like a ponderous judge and to take decisive actions.

00:15:35.000 Well, that's weird that he then did those things.

00:15:38.000 And this is very much like when Barack Obama said, wouldn't it be great if the IRS, wouldn't it be great if the IRS went after all my political opponents?

00:15:45.000 That'd be great.

00:15:46.000 They deserve it.

00:15:47.000 And then magically the IRS did just that.

00:15:49.000 And then people are like, well, you didn't order them to do it.

00:15:50.000 Right, when you say publicly you want the people who work for you to do a thing, typically they tend to do the thing.

00:15:56.000 If I were to suggest on my show that I want my team to get me a birthday cake tomorrow for no reason, I assume somebody would probably hear that and maybe go get a birthday cake tomorrow.

00:16:07.000 Even if I didn't explicitly tell them, by the way, guys, I don't need the birthday cake.

00:16:10.000 But that is the way that this sort of stuff works.

00:16:14.000 When the boss says a thing and he says it in public, the subordinates tend to do the thing.

00:16:20.000 Is it a coincidence that Joe Biden wanted these things to happen and now they are magically happening?

00:16:24.000 Is it also a coincidence that Barack Obama apparently told Joe Biden earlier this summer that Donald Trump's political strengths could actually be a problem for him?

00:16:36.000 And so maybe, maybe, it might be kind of nice if something would happen to that guy, right?

00:16:39.000 I mean, if he just got hit with a bunch of indictments, that wouldn't be a terrible thing.

00:16:43.000 According to the Washington Post, at the lunch held in late June at the White House residence, Obama promised to do all he could to help get the president reelected, according to two people familiar with the meeting.

00:16:52.000 But he also warned that Donald Trump's political strengths, including an intensely loyal following, a Trump-friendly conservative media ecosystem in a polarized country, underlined his worry that Trump could be a more formidable candidate than many Democrats realize.

00:17:04.000 Well, you know what is a great way to undercut that opposition is by locking him up with a bunch of false legal charges that could, in Washington, D.C., quite probably result in a conviction.

00:17:15.000 Neil Kagel, former federal prosecutor, he says this will almost certainly result in a conviction, which, again, it's in Washington, D.C., so yeah, there's a real good shot.

00:17:22.000 And free speech, I mean, Trump's defense has been, well, I just said it, I didn't actually do anything.

00:17:27.000 But that is never your defense in the law.

00:17:30.000 Like, you and I, if I, you know, order you to kill someone, you know, or, you know, conspire with you to kill someone through my words, or, you know, something like that, that doesn't mean that I like, well, it's only speech, therefore, I can't be prosecuted.

00:17:44.000 That's thoroughly bogus.

00:17:46.000 I think more generally, Jack Smith's indictment here, It is not clean.

00:18:01.000 It is not calculated.

00:18:02.000 It does not pack a punch.

00:18:03.000 It is an op-ed masquerading as an indictment, but it doesn't matter.

00:18:06.000 It's in Washington, D.C.

00:18:08.000 There's every possibility that Donald Trump could be convicted and convicted in short order in Washington, D.C.

00:18:12.000 In terms of the danger to Trump, Again, you have to stack it up in sort of two categories.

00:18:17.000 One is the actual solidity of the legal case.

00:18:20.000 In terms of the solidity of the legal cases that are currently outstanding against Trump on the criminal basis, by far, the most grave charges are the classified documents charges.

00:18:27.000 Those ones, there's pretty solid evidence that Trump did the thing.

00:18:30.000 That's not with regard to the political concerns.

00:18:32.000 The political concern, of course, is the double standard with Hillary, but it's a whole different thing.

00:18:36.000 In terms of which charges are the most dangerous in terms of the stuff that Trump has violated, the rankings go Florida case, D.C.

00:18:44.000 indictment, which again is specious, and Manhattan indictment, which is super duper specious.

00:18:48.000 In terms of actual danger to go to jail, D.C.

00:18:51.000 is by far number one.

00:18:52.000 By far number one.

00:18:53.000 Because it's a Washington, D.C.

00:18:54.000 jury.

00:18:54.000 And that makes a huge difference in this case.

00:18:57.000 And Democrats know it.

00:18:58.000 They want to jam him up.

00:18:59.000 This is...

00:19:00.000 It is rigging it when if suddenly there are a bunch of legal cases that arose against Joe Biden just prior to the election in which he had to sit in the dock, a bunch of DAs decided to just try him month after month after month for a bunch of specious charges.

00:19:11.000 Yes, that would be a form of election rigging in the same way as a form of election rigging when the federal government literally lied to people about whether Hunter Biden's laptop was real, causing social media censorship of the New York Post story.

00:19:25.000 You have a singular experience of January 6th.

00:19:26.000 as I've said, is the Democratic message, which is that Donald Trump is the worst person to ever 0.96

00:19:29.000 person. And Nancy Pelosi is trotting that one out. 1.00

00:19:32.000 Apparently she's heartbroken. There's nothing I hate more than crocodile tears. This is like crocodile

00:19:37.000 tears, just in extremis.

00:19:39.000 You have a singular experience of January 6th. As you read the indictment,

00:19:46.000 what was your reaction and what jumped out to you?

00:19:51.000 It's heartbreaking for our country to have a president of the United States with this

00:19:56.000 list of charges against him.

00:20:00.000 And I just want to commend the January 6th committee, the House committee, bipartisan committee, Bennie Thompson and Liz Cheney and all the members of the committee and the staff for the work that they did.

00:20:14.000 They made a foundation of facts about facts and the law and made a criminal referral to the Justice Department.

00:20:25.000 So, um, she seems very heartbroken, doesn't she?

00:20:28.000 Or maybe she's super happy this gets to be the narrative going forward.

00:20:31.000 And this leads us to our favorite thing.

00:20:33.000 Two things can be true at once.

00:20:34.000 I'm gonna get to all the things that can be true at once in just one second.

00:20:37.000 First, this show is supported by Grand Canyon University.

00:20:41.000 Grand Canyon University, I visited.

00:20:42.000 It's a beautiful, beautiful place.

00:20:43.000 It's an affordable private Christian university with a vibrant campus in Phoenix, Arizona.

00:20:47.000 It's ranked top 20 in the country according to Niche.com.

00:20:50.000 GCU is a missional, Christ-centered university that strives to foster a culture of community, giving, and impact.

00:20:55.000 GCU's goal is to help you develop into a servant leader who makes a difference through finding your purpose and fulfilling God's plan.

00:21:00.000 It's a beautiful campus.

00:21:01.000 The students are just wonderful.

00:21:02.000 I've spoken there before.

00:21:03.000 With 330 academic programs, over 270 online as of June 2023, GCU integrates the free market system with a welcoming Christian worldview into your bachelor's, master's, or doctoral degree.

00:21:12.000 You'll have support from your own university counselor who takes a personalized approach to helping you achieve your goals.

00:21:16.000 Find your purpose at GCU Grand Canyon University.

00:21:19.000 Private.

00:21:19.000 Christian.

00:21:20.000 Affordable.

00:21:20.000 Visit gcu.edu today.

00:21:23.000 Okay, so...

00:21:24.000 Now we get to the two things can be true at once.

00:21:26.000 It can be true the Democrats are trying to rig the election in their own favor by both elevating Donald Trump in the primaries and also degrading him in the general with all of these legal cases which achieve all of those things both for narrative purpose and for actual practical day-to-day time on target purposes for Donald Trump.

00:21:41.000 It can also be true that Donald Trump made some of this bed himself.

00:21:46.000 I mean, there are a lot of people who are very angry at Mike Pence today.

00:21:49.000 And they think that Mike Pence should have come out strong against the indictment.

00:21:52.000 I hear.

00:21:53.000 Again, I think that he should have.

00:21:54.000 I think he should have said this indictment is specious.

00:21:56.000 It doesn't appear to be legally predicated.

00:21:58.000 But Mike Pence was also the guy who Donald Trump was lying about for like three months.

00:22:04.000 He was the person who Donald Trump was basically directing all ire in the universe at.

00:22:10.000 His own vice president, who had been absolutely loyal to him for four years.

00:22:13.000 There was no more loyal servant of Donald Trump's policy positions in the White House than Mike Pence for four long years.

00:22:19.000 And on a dime, Trump swiveled on him and just clocked him in the face repeatedly by lying.

00:22:24.000 It was a lie that Mike Pence had the unilateral ability to overturn the election.

00:22:27.000 It is not true.

00:22:28.000 Justice Kamala Harris does not have the unilateral ability to overturn the election.

00:22:31.000 And I'm constantly amazed by anyone who gives any credence to this legal theory.

00:22:34.000 And there were people who were doing it for like several months.

00:22:38.000 I can't see any reason to do it other than for a sort of nefarious purpose in the sense of self-aggrandizement because it was so obviously legally specious and silly.

00:22:46.000 The vice president does not have the capacity to simply put aside state-certified votes.

00:22:51.000 If he did, that would make him a dictator. 0.95

00:22:53.000 That's silly.

00:22:53.000 Okay, but, you know, two things can be true.

00:22:56.000 One, Trump and Pence should have said that the indictment is specious.

00:23:00.000 And also, Donald Trump radically mistreated Mike Pence.

00:23:02.000 There is no question about this.

00:23:04.000 And Mike Pence is not wrong to talk about that.

00:23:07.000 Here was Pence talking about that yesterday.

00:23:10.000 Let's be clear on this point.

00:23:12.000 It wasn't just that I asked for a pause.

00:23:15.000 The president specifically asked me, and his gaggle of crackpot lawyers asked me to literally reject votes, which would have resulted in the issue being turned over to the House of Representatives, and literally chaos would have ensued.

00:23:31.000 So Martha, people can read the indictment, and frankly, I've said before, I had hoped it had not come to this point.

00:23:40.000 You know, I don't know if the government can meet the standard, the burden of proof, beyond reasonable doubt, for criminal charges.

00:23:48.000 But the American people deserve to know that President Trump and his advisers didn't just ask me to pause, they asked me to reject votes, return votes, essentially to overturn the election.

00:24:04.000 Don't be angry at Mike Pence for what Donald Trump did.

00:24:05.000 I mean, I'm sorry.

00:24:07.000 You can be angry at Mike Pence for, again, not coming out against the indictment strong.

00:24:11.000 But it's Donald Trump who made his bed with regard to Mike Pence.

00:24:13.000 So Trump then tweeted out, I feel badly for Mike Pence,

00:24:16.000 who is attracting no crowds, enthusiasm, or loyalty from people who as a member of the Trump administration

00:24:20.000 should be loving him.

00:24:21.000 By the way, it should be noted at this point that of all of the cabinet officials who served under Donald

00:24:25.000 Trump, a grand total of four have currently endorsed him.

00:24:27.000 He didn't fight against election fraud, which we will now be easily able to prove based on the most recent fake indictment and information, which will have been made available to us, finally, a really big deal.

00:24:36.000 The VP had power Mike didn't understand, but after the election, the RINOs and DEMs changed the law, taking that power away.

00:24:42.000 Donald Trump talking about loyalty with regard to Mike Pence is really pretty gross.

00:24:47.000 This falls under the two things can be true at once rule.

00:24:49.000 Donald Trump shouldn't be indicted.

00:24:50.000 These are not crimes.

00:24:52.000 They're just very, very, very bad behavior and bad activity.

00:24:55.000 It can also be true that Donald Trump relied on advisors who are some of the worst advisors in American history. 0.93

00:25:00.000 Sidney Powell is a kook. 0.97

00:25:01.000 She was a kook the whole time. 1.00

00:25:03.000 Everybody who's watching should have said that she was a kook the whole time. 1.00

00:25:06.000 We looked at her claims and we established on the show that her claims were kookery from basically the very beginning.

00:25:12.000 He had on Rudy Giuliani on his legal team.

00:25:14.000 It turns out that Rudy seems to be now, unfortunately, he went from being America's mayor when he was a terrific mayor of New York, an American hero in the aftermath of 9-11, and a pretty formidable presidential candidate at the beginning of the 2008 race, into a man who appears to be a habitual drunk.

00:25:30.000 I mean, there's an outlet out, there's a lawsuit out right now from a former assistant in which the former assistant accuses him of sexual harassment and other And and other sort of sexual misconduct.

00:25:45.000 And I'm just going to she has tapes of Giuliani talking to her.

00:25:50.000 Giuliani, again, it's these are the people that Trump had around him.

00:25:53.000 These are the best people.

00:25:55.000 Two things can be true at once.

00:25:56.000 Donald Trump should not be indicted and Donald Trump does not surround himself with the best people.

00:25:59.000 This is a direct quote from Rudy Giuliani's tape.

00:26:02.000 OK, get ready with the bleeper, guys.

00:26:03.000 Here we go.

00:26:04.000 He's talking to a. An assistant named Noel Dunphy.

00:26:09.000 Okay, and she is apparently suing him again, as I say, right now in civil court.

00:26:15.000 And here is the transcript of a tape. 1.00

00:26:18.000 Mr. Giuliani, come here, big d**k. Come here, big d**k. Your d**ks belong to me. 1.00

00:26:22.000 Give them to me. 1.00

00:26:23.000 Indiscernible. 1.00

00:26:23.000 I want to claim my d**k. I want to claim my d**k. I want to claim my d**k. These are my d**k. 1.00

00:26:28.000 Miss Dunphy. 1.00

00:26:29.000 Oh, yeah. 0.97

00:26:30.000 Mr. Giuliani, these breasts belong to me. 0.94

00:26:32.000 No one else can get near these, okay?

00:26:33.000 I don't care if they're flirting or they give you business cards.

00:26:35.000 These are mine.

00:26:36.000 You got it?

00:26:37.000 Miss Dunphy.

00:26:37.000 Yes.

00:26:38.000 Mr. Giuliani, understand? 0.91

00:26:40.000 I'm very f***ing possessive.

00:26:41.000 I've gone easy on you. 0.94

00:26:42.000 Miss Dunphy.

00:26:43.000 I don't know.

00:26:44.000 Mr. Giuliani, I've been easy on you.

00:26:45.000 Miss Dunphy, you're pretty tough, honey.

00:26:48.000 Mr. Giuliani, I've been easy on you.

00:26:50.000 Give them to me.

00:26:51.000 These were the people that Donald Trump surrounded himself with in the middle of the election cycle.

00:26:56.000 Is that like a good thing?

00:26:58.000 Is that what you want in a candidate?

00:27:02.000 Just because you are being prosecuted and persecuted by your political opponents doesn't mean that you are actually good at the thing or that you aren't making obstacles for yourself by hanging out with people like Rudy Giuliani.

00:27:14.000 For example, while Rudy Giuliani shows up at like Four Seasons Gardening with hair dye dripping down his face.

00:27:21.000 Does that sound like the mark of a good candidate?

00:27:25.000 Again, Donald Trump is a lot of things.

00:27:26.000 I've said before, he's a genius for telescoping the id of the Republican base.

00:27:32.000 He's a genius for it.

00:27:33.000 He can put his finger directly on the pulse of the Republican base.

00:27:36.000 He feels what they feel, and that is an extraordinary power.

00:27:38.000 Also, he has no discipline whatsoever.

00:27:40.000 He surrounds himself with the absolute worst people who apparently are there just based on some sycophantic level of personal loyalty to him.

00:27:50.000 And he is not a meticulous tool on behalf of his own positions.

00:27:53.000 He is not.

00:27:54.000 If he were, he would have done a better job in the last year of his presidency, which frankly was a disaster area.

00:27:59.000 The first three years of his presidency, his kind of personal foibles were not in any way really hampering the efficacy of his program.

00:28:06.000 The last year was a disaster.

00:28:07.000 It was when Black Lives Matter, COVID handling, and all of this stuff. 0.87

00:28:12.000 It was kind of a disaster.

00:28:14.000 So the question is, is that the person, and then put aside the electoral record, is that the person that Republicans want to nominate?

00:28:21.000 Do you wish to be suckered by Democrats into doing precisely the thing they would like you to do, which is to nominate Donald Trump so they can hit him with 83 false indictments between now and the election, lock him up, and hit him with a media wave suggesting that he is a criminal?

00:28:33.000 And do you think that Donald Trump is going to be able to overcome all of those obstacles?

00:28:37.000 Do you think that's likely?

00:28:39.000 Is that the most plausible solution here?

00:28:41.000 Or is it possible the best thing that could happen is for Joe Biden not to be president anymore so we can fix the problems?

00:28:46.000 So we can fix the problems.

00:28:48.000 And this brings us to the other candidates inside the Republican race.

00:28:51.000 Again, Ron DeSantis is still the solid number two.

00:28:53.000 There is no number three.

00:28:54.000 All the talk about anybody else rising inside the Republican polling just is non-existent.

00:29:00.000 Right now, if you wish to see someone aside from Donald Trump nominated, it is DeSantis or bust.

00:29:06.000 The RealClearPolitics polling average has Trump at 54, and it has DeSantis at 18, and it's everyone else below 5%.

00:29:11.000 No one else is gaining steam.

00:29:13.000 No one else is picking up traction.

00:29:15.000 Not Tim Scott, who's stuck at 3%.

00:29:16.000 Not Nikki Haley, who's stuck at 4%.

00:29:17.000 Not Mike Pence, who's stuck at 4%.

00:29:19.000 Not Vivek Ramaswamy, who's stuck at 5%.

00:29:22.000 And certainly not the inimitably, absolutely magnetic Doug Burgum, who you've never heard of.

00:29:29.000 So.

00:29:32.000 DeSantis is finally doing the thing that he needs to do, which is he is aggressively finding people on the left to punch.

00:29:37.000 So according to Politico, DeSantis has now agreed to debate Gavin Newsom on Fox News, which is good.

00:29:44.000 Now, Newsom is a very clever guy, so DeSantis is really going to have to prep for this.

00:29:48.000 This is the debate that really the country should have is whether we wish to be more like Florida or whether we should be more like California.

00:29:53.000 I have a personal stake in this debate since I literally moved my family from California to Florida and my company from California to Florida and Nashville.

00:30:01.000 So, the... I'm fascinated by this.

00:30:04.000 I think that it would be the debate that actually is worth watching as opposed to, you know, two old men screaming at each other about their personal corruption.

00:30:10.000 Or alleged personal corruption.

00:30:12.000 This debate should be interesting.

00:30:13.000 According to Politico, the Florida Republican and California Democrat have repeatedly sparred over policies in their respective states, each representing one side of the ideological spectrum through occupying different political perches.

00:30:24.000 DeSantis is trailing Trump for the Republican presidential nomination.

00:30:26.000 Newsom is basically running as a shadow candidate in case Joe Biden should fall over and smack his head.

00:30:34.000 On Wednesday, DeSantis agreed to the debate.

00:30:37.000 So it should be a fascinating development.

00:30:39.000 It's something that DeSantis obviously needs to do.

00:30:40.000 And he needs to show that he can be a better candidate, a better weapon against the left than Trump is.

00:30:42.000 are November 8th or November 10th.

00:30:44.000 And Hannity would be the sole monitor.

00:30:47.000 So it should be a fascinating development.

00:30:51.000 It's something that DeSantis obviously needs to do.

00:30:53.000 And he needs to show that he can be a better candidate, a better weapon

00:30:57.000 against the left than Trump is.

00:30:58.000 I've been saying this for a while.

00:30:59.000 It's not about which Republican candidate can tear down Trump because

00:31:03.000 no Republican candidate can tear down Trump.

00:31:04.000 It's about demonstrating to Republicans that the best person to achieve the agenda that Republicans want to see achieved, and to stop, for example, the weaponization of the DOJ, the person most likely to beat Joe Biden is the person who should get the nomination.

00:31:16.000 Right now, the polling data is not suggesting that it's DeSantis above Trump.

00:31:20.000 That can change, and it can change pretty quickly.

00:31:23.000 I just, again, remind people that the candidate who is Not facing down four separate criminal indictments between now and the election is probably going to not have quite as many obstacles as the guy who is.

00:31:38.000 It seems tautological, but it's worth noting.

00:31:41.000 Again, not an emotional argument, just a purely factual argument.

00:31:45.000 Who is more likely to win?

00:31:46.000 The guy who has to spend all of his time in court or the guy who doesn't have to spend all of his time in court and who also doesn't hire, you know, some of the worst advisors in the history of advice.

00:31:55.000 Okay, in just one second, more breaking news on Joe Biden and Hunter Biden.

00:32:00.000 Devin Archer did an interview with Tucker Carlson, and good for Tucker for getting the interview because honestly, it's kind of astonishing that Devin Archer would sit down with him given his legal situation, but we'll get to that in just a moment.

00:32:09.000 First, a good life insurance plan can give you peace of mind that if something happens to your family, we'll have a safety net to cover mortgage payments, college costs, or other expenses.

00:32:15.000 Life insurance through your workplace might not offer enough protection for your family's needs.

00:32:19.000 It won't follow you if you leave your job.

00:32:20.000 Since life insurance typically gets more expensive as we age, now would be the time to buy.

00:32:24.000 Policy Genius makes it easy to compare life insurance quotes from top companies and find your lowest price.

00:32:29.000 I've had life insurance on me for years and years and years and years.

00:32:31.000 It makes me comfortable that God forbid something happens to me, my family will be taken care of, my company will be taken care of.

00:32:36.000 Let me tell you from personal experience, it is very satisfying to check life insurance off your list.

00:32:40.000 You can do it with Policy Genius today.

00:32:42.000 With Policy Genius, you can find life insurance policies starting at just $25 per month for a million dollars in coverage.

00:32:47.000 Some options offer coverage in as little as a week and avoid those unnecessary medical exams.

00:32:50.000 PolicyGenius's licensed agents work for you, not the insurance companies.

00:32:53.000 That means they don't have an incentive to recommend one insurer over another so you can actually trust their guidance.

00:32:58.000 No added fees.

00:32:58.000 Your personal information remains private.

00:33:00.000 Your loved ones deserve that financial safety net, and you deserve a smarter way to find and buy it.

00:33:03.000 Head on over to PolicyGenius.com slash Shapiro.

00:33:05.000 Click the link in the description.

00:33:06.000 Get your free life insurance quote.

00:33:07.000 See how much you could save.

00:33:09.000 That's PolicyGenius.com slash Shapiro.

00:33:12.000 Also, Give your son and his values a fighting chance with Jeremy's Back to College deals.

00:33:17.000 Get up to 20% off select razor and men's care bundles.

00:33:23.000 Behold, I present to you shampoo.

00:33:26.000 And here is conditioner.

00:33:28.000 I have been informed by reliable sources you should not do shampoo and conditioner in one bottle.

00:33:32.000 That doing so makes you a peasant.

00:33:35.000 Instead, feel like a wealthy individual with both shampoo and conditioner.

00:33:40.000 All from Jeremy's Razors.

00:33:41.000 These are paraben free.

00:33:42.000 Don't know what paraben is.

00:33:43.000 Sulfate free.

00:33:45.000 Don't know what those are, but they seem bad.

00:33:46.000 And they're woke-free, and they're made right here in the United States. 0.78

00:33:49.000 And get him that Precision 5 razor with the welded steel blades, a sturdy tungsten handle, and flip-back trimmer.

00:33:53.000 Unlike your kid's radical professors, Jeremy's aims to groom his face, not his worldview or other parts of him.

00:33:58.000 Go to jeremysrazors.com for major deals on back-to-college bundles today.

00:34:04.000 Okay, meanwhile, more breaking news on Devin Archer.

00:34:07.000 Apparently, Fox News has now gained access to the transcript of the conversation between Devin Archer and congressional investigators.

00:34:13.000 According to Fox News, Devin Archer, Hunter Biden's former business partner, told investigators that Hunter used his, quote, very powerful name to, quote, add value in pitching and securing foreign business ventures.

00:34:24.000 Archer said that Hunter Biden, quote, would not be so overt or overtly say, we're going to use my dad for this.

00:34:28.000 Instead, Archer said that he would use it to get leverage.

00:34:31.000 He said, quote, defensive leverage, that the value is there in his work.

00:34:34.000 The value that Hunter Biden brought to it was having, you know, there was the theoretical was corporate governance, but obviously given the brand, that was a large part of the value. 0.99

00:34:40.000 Yeah, they weren't bringing in Hunter Biden, a drug addicted, crack addicted, whore addicted, derelict to do corporate governance. 0.98

00:34:47.000 That's not exactly the person that you're like, hey, you know that guy who's a crack hound? 0.99

00:34:51.000 The one who's snorting Parmesan cheese off the carpet?

00:34:53.000 Let's bring him in for corporate governance.

00:34:57.000 I sit on the board of a large privately held company.

00:34:59.000 That would be Daily Wire.

00:35:01.000 I also sit on the board of a publicly held company, a NASDAQ traded company.

00:35:05.000 And let me just tell you, we don't do corporate governance with crack addicts.

00:35:08.000 That's not how it works.

00:35:10.000 I don't think it was the sole value, but I do think it was a key component to the value," said Devin Archer.

00:35:14.000 It was the sole value?

00:35:15.000 It wasn't a key component.

00:35:16.000 What else is a value?

00:35:17.000 Like, what is the value of Hunter Biden?

00:35:19.000 Across his entire life, what is the value of him?

00:35:22.000 Like, really, name a productive thing that Hunter Biden has done other than having a last name that is the same as that of a senator, VP, and then president.

00:35:30.000 Archer told investigators that Hunter put his father, then VP Joe Biden, on speakerphone while meeting with business partners at least 20 times.

00:35:38.000 Archer said that the idea was to, quote, sell the brand.

00:35:40.000 He said, that brought the most value to the brand.

00:35:42.000 It was Hunter Biden and him.

00:35:43.000 We would discuss having, you know, an understanding of D.C.

00:35:45.000 and that was a differentiating component of us being able to raise capital.

00:35:47.000 He added, it wasn't as specific as, you know, the vice president's son, but obviously the brand carried.

00:35:51.000 You don't have to say it.

00:35:52.000 I mean, honest to God, you don't have to say it.

00:35:55.000 Like if Don Trump Jr.

00:35:56.000 walks into a room and he says, you know, I have connections.

00:35:58.000 Who do you think he's saying he has connections to?

00:36:01.000 His literal name is Don Trump Jr.

00:36:03.000 Hunter Biden's literal name is Hunter Biden.

00:36:06.000 When asked if Archer and Hunter would tell business partners they had unique access because of E.P.

00:36:10.000 Biden, Archer said, yes.

00:36:11.000 We would say we had unique understanding of D.C.

00:36:12.000 and how it operates and how that, you know, could positively reflect on the terms of our business.

00:36:17.000 Referring to Burisma, Archer told investigators Hunter used the brand of Joe for having doors open, which sent the right signals for Burisma to carry on its business and be successful.

00:36:25.000 Archer said, my only thought is I think Burisma would have gone out of business if it didn't have the brand attached to it.

00:36:30.000 When pressed, Archer just kept repeating that.

00:36:32.000 He kept saying they were able to survive for as long as they did just because of the brand.

00:36:36.000 Because people would be intimidated to mess with them.

00:36:38.000 Archer explained.

00:36:39.000 In what way?

00:36:39.000 Legally.

00:36:41.000 Well, that's interesting.

00:36:42.000 They felt that if they messed with Burisma legally, that the brand would come in?

00:36:45.000 Let me spell that out.

00:36:46.000 They were afraid that if they messed with Burisma legally, the Vice President of the United States might withhold a billion dollars in aid to get the prosecutor fired?

00:36:52.000 Is that what they were afraid of?

00:36:53.000 The brand?

00:36:54.000 Interesting.

00:36:55.000 And meanwhile, Devin Archer did an interview with Tucker Carlson, in which he openly said selling access to Joe was certainly an abuse of soft power.

00:37:04.000 I guess I'm pivoting against the lie that I'm hearing people tell with a straight face.

00:37:08.000 Congressman Goldman, for example, that we don't really know what was going on.

00:37:12.000 Really?

00:37:13.000 You're taking a call from the vice president and you put it on speaker.

00:37:16.000 It's not just, hey, dad, I'm in a meeting with some buddies.

00:37:19.000 Right.

00:37:19.000 It's, let me put my dad, the vice president, on speaker.

00:37:23.000 Yeah.

00:37:24.000 Yep.

00:37:24.000 In the rear view, it's an abuse of soft power, I'd say.

00:37:28.000 An abuse of soft power.

00:37:32.000 Interesting.

00:37:34.000 It is certainly an abuse of soft power.

00:37:36.000 And then Tucker reveals a letter that Joe Biden actually sent Evan Archer, thanking him for just being besties with testes with his son.

00:37:44.000 I hope you enjoyed lunch.

00:37:45.000 Thanks for coming.

00:37:46.000 Sincerely, Joseph R. Biden Jr.

00:37:49.000 P.S.

00:37:49.000 Handwritten, happy you guys are together.

00:37:53.000 So there are many levels here.

00:37:55.000 But here's the Vice President of the United States saying to you, a man in his mid-30s, who's not a government official, I'm sorry I was occupied with the guy who runs the world's largest country.

00:38:05.000 I would much rather talk to you and thank you.

00:38:08.000 And he was thanking me and thanking Hunter, I think, at the end of the day for bringing this idea of this government regulatory strategic advisory business into the private equity world.

00:38:18.000 And I think he was excited about the prospects for Hunter and, you know, he was just thanking me.

00:38:25.000 I think it was a nice gesture.

00:38:27.000 But he's the Vice President of the United States and he's talking about foreign business deals with you and thanking you for that.

00:38:34.000 I think, again, it goes back to my earlier point, and yeah, I think I hit, at the time, I think I hit the jackpot in finding the regulatory environment or company that can navigate right to the top.

00:38:46.000 But, you know, obviously, as time's told, you know, being a little bit too close to the sun ends up burning you.

00:38:53.000 Okay, so at this point, I think that we can point out that there will be a fallback defense, because the defense that Joe didn't know what was going on is obviously a lie.

00:39:01.000 The idea that Joe was not involved in any way with his son's businesses is obviously a lie.

00:39:06.000 All these things are clearly lies.

00:39:08.000 So we're gonna get to the final.

00:39:09.000 The final defense here is gonna be, Joe, of course Joe did it.

00:39:11.000 He had to.

00:39:12.000 Hunter was a derelict.

00:39:14.000 Hunter was a beautiful boy going through a rough time.

00:39:18.000 A wonderful artist in his soul, who was stripping his brother's widow.

00:39:22.000 Among other women. 0.99

00:39:23.000 While doing crack. 0.89

00:39:24.000 And trafficking h***. 0.95

00:39:25.000 And all that.

00:39:26.000 A wonderful... And Joe loved his... Because he loves family.

00:39:30.000 Joe's a family man.

00:39:31.000 There's one final obstacle to that defense, though.

00:39:33.000 And that was the fact that he was ignoring a four-year-old girl who actually is genetically his granddaughter.

00:39:38.000 So he was ignoring her.

00:39:39.000 And now, they've decided that the real reason he was ignoring her is because he loves his family too much.

00:39:45.000 Too much.

00:39:46.000 That's also why you ignore members of your family.

00:39:47.000 You love them too much.

00:39:49.000 According to NBC News, in recent weeks, President Joe Biden realized his silence was no longer tenable, that it was time for him to publicly recognize his four-year-old granddaughter caught up in a bitter child support case involving his son Hunter.

00:40:00.000 People familiar with the matter said.

00:40:01.000 But before he could do so, he wanted to take one final step, getting the green light from his son, which he received last week, one source said.

00:40:07.000 And on Friday, Biden finally spoke out about his seventh grandchild, whom for years he wouldn't so much as acknowledge in public.

00:40:13.000 Now the president wants to meet little Navy Joan Roberts of Arkansas and dispel the notion that he was ignoring a vulnerable member of the Biden family tree that is at the root of his political identity, according to the people familiar with the matter.

00:40:23.000 Oh, he wants to meet her?

00:40:24.000 Yeah, when?

00:40:25.000 Like, he's gonna meet Navy Joan approximately the time that he visits East Palestine, Ohio.

00:40:31.000 Or the border.

00:40:35.000 Same trip, probably.

00:40:37.000 He's gonna go to East Palestine, visit the train derailment.

00:40:40.000 Remember he was gonna do that?

00:40:41.000 Never happened.

00:40:42.000 Yeah, Navy Joan, she's gonna be a frequent White House guest. 1.00

00:40:45.000 Never.

00:40:47.000 Family dramas typically play out in private, though rarely when the nation's first family is involved.

00:40:51.000 The president, who has wrapped himself in family throughout his career, is now in an improbable twist, having to explain why he publicly ghosted a young girl, who is as much his grandchild as any of the others whose high school graduations he attends, or who playfully call him Pop.

00:41:02.000 Publicly claiming Navy Joan is a member of his family may offer Biden a measure of peace.

00:41:05.000 Politically, however, it also serves to blunt a GOP line of attack.

00:41:08.000 No, it doesn't.

00:41:09.000 No, it doesn't.

00:41:10.000 It's obvious that he was ignoring his granddaughter because he doesn't care about that granddaughter.

00:41:15.000 He doesn't care about the granddaughter because Hunter clears the checks for him.

00:41:20.000 The White House declined to comment on any of the family developments, including whether Biden wants to meet his granddaughter in person.

00:41:24.000 Instead, a White House aide referred to Friday's statement and called the issue a private family matter.

00:41:28.000 That's weird that it's a private family matter.

00:41:31.000 Again, I love that they're now claiming privacy.

00:41:32.000 No one knows any of Biden's other grandchildren other than Navy Jones specifically because he doesn't ignore any of his other grandchildren, so it's not a story.

00:41:40.000 Joe Biden is a bad man.

00:41:41.000 He's a very vulnerable candidate.

00:41:44.000 Republicans have an opportunity to run against that vulnerable candidate.

00:41:46.000 And it's particularly true because I am not sold on the idea that the economy is in solid state.

00:41:51.000 I know that everybody in the media are already turning eagerly to the idea.

00:41:56.000 That the economy is going to be just fine.

00:41:58.000 That there will be no recession.

00:41:59.000 I have some doubts.

00:42:01.000 You know who else has doubts, as it turns out?

00:42:03.000 The Fitch Credit Rating Service.

00:42:06.000 So, remember Bidenomics?

00:42:07.000 It's so amazing.

00:42:08.000 Bidenomics means that Fitch Ratings has now downgraded the U.S.

00:42:12.000 government's credit rating.

00:42:13.000 Weeks after, President Biden and congressional Republicans came to the brink of a historic default, warning about the growing debt burden and political dysfunction in Washington.

00:42:21.000 Well, you know, one way to solve the debt burden is to stop spending $7 trillion a year.

00:42:27.000 But the Biden White House is like, nah, Fitch just got it wrong.

00:42:29.000 That's probably what it is.

00:42:30.000 Fitch got it wrong.

00:42:30.000 Now, I will remind you that when Moody's downgraded Israel's credit, like a few weeks ago in the aftermath of judicial reform in Israel, the entire media cited this as evidence that Israel's economy is about to collapse.

00:42:41.000 It has not yet collapsed.

00:42:42.000 When Fitch downgrades America's credit rating because we are spending way too much money and we will never catch up, When President Biden took office, their own measures started to track back towards AAA.

00:43:00.000 If you add that observation to the economic tailwinds that are ongoing now, despite the Fitch's, I think, out-of-step forecast about where the economy is headed, I think you recognize why some folks yesterday were calling this, and I'm now quoting from a bunch of different statements from mostly non-partisan people, bizarre, inept, arbitrary, absurd, strange, puzzling timing.

00:43:23.000 And so we view that as problematic.

00:43:26.000 Well, there's only one problem with this, which is that America owes way, way, way too much money, and that it's just a reality, and nobody is going to take this on at all.

00:43:35.000 The fact is, again, because we have jacked up our interest rates, that means that the interest payments that we are taking on our new debt is going to be extraordinarily high.

00:43:42.000 The amount of money we're going to have to dedicate to paying off all of our creditors for decades to come is extraordinary.

00:43:48.000 Net interest is going to reach $745 billion in the 2024 fiscal year.

00:43:52.000 That is three quarters of all discretionary spending excluding defense in the United States.

00:43:57.000 That's just the interest on our debt, and it's only going to get larger.

00:44:01.000 Again, the fact is that as a share of GDP, the projection of U.S.

00:44:05.000 debt as a share of gross domestic product continues to rise absolutely astonishingly and dramatically, which is one reason why you're starting to see credit downgrades.

00:44:13.000 That's going to continue so long as the program of the United States is to spend more and more and more money.

00:44:17.000 The Biden administration, their plan is denial.

00:44:19.000 And so the strategy of the Biden administration is to pretend that, you know, that doesn't matter, as always.

00:44:24.000 So Janet Yellen, proud feet, she says that it's puzzling to get this credit downgrade.

00:44:29.000 And this administration deeply cares about fiscal responsibility, which is strange because people who care about fiscal responsibility don't spend $7 trillion a year In the longer term, the United States remains the world's largest, most dynamic and most innovative economy, with the strongest financial system in the world.

00:44:51.000 Fitch's decision is puzzling in light of the economic strength we see in the United States.

00:44:57.000 I strongly disagree with Fitch's decision, and I believe it is entirely unwarranted.

00:45:02.000 Fiscal responsibility is a priority for President Biden and me.

00:45:07.000 Earlier this year, The president signed debt limit legislation that included over a trillion dollars in deficit reduction.

00:45:17.000 His budget would also improve the fiscal outlook by reducing the deficit by 2.6 trillion dollars over the next 10 years.

00:45:27.000 Yeah, right.

00:45:28.000 They're going to reduce the deficit, guys.

00:45:30.000 By that, they mean that they are going to supposedly spend less money over what we actually are paying than they did previously.

00:45:38.000 Not that they're going to reduce the debt.

00:45:39.000 That's not a thing that is going to happen.

00:45:41.000 By the way, the economy is still on tenderhooks here because, as the Wall Street Journal points out, earnings season is still Coming.

00:45:48.000 We're going to find out how the earnings of these companies are going to do and we'll see how that impacts the stock market.

00:45:52.000 While stocks have climbed, corporate profits have fallen.

00:45:54.000 According to the Wall Street Journal, companies in the S&P 500 are set to log a roughly 7% year-over-year decline in earnings for the second quarter.

00:46:01.000 Which, again, it's hard to see how the stock market keeps increasing while earnings are going down.

00:46:05.000 We are also going to see the jobs market that is cooling pretty rapidly.

00:46:09.000 U.S.

00:46:10.000 employers added about 200,000 jobs in June.

00:46:12.000 That is the smallest monthly payroll gain since late 2020.

00:46:15.000 The July employment report is coming out this Friday.

00:46:18.000 Wage growth has slowed as well.

00:46:20.000 And we're seeing fewer and fewer job openings.

00:46:22.000 So again, what goes up must come down.

00:46:24.000 The economy went up way too fast in terms of just the heat, and it's gonna come down.

00:46:30.000 I have very little faith that the Biden administration has somehow avoided the pitfalls of reality.

00:46:36.000 Okay, time for a quick thing I like, and then we'll do a few things that I hate.

00:46:40.000 So, things that I like today.

00:46:43.000 I enjoy when people who do not have leverage sometimes believe they have leverage.

00:46:50.000 It's kind of funny.

00:46:52.000 So, for example, Rachel Zegler is an actress.

00:46:55.000 Now, there are many, many, many actresses. 0.93

00:46:57.000 Like, every barista in Los Angeles is an actress. 0.99

00:47:02.000 Rachel Zegler is an actress who is on Broadway. 0.97

00:47:05.000 There are many, many, many people who travel for Broadway and who are quite talented.

00:47:08.000 It turns out in a country of 340 million people, there are a lot of talented people who are actors, actresses, singers.

00:47:14.000 But Rachel Zegler believes that she has leverage. 0.56

00:47:16.000 Even though, again, no one, truthfully in Hollywood, no one has the capacity to open a movie anymore.

00:47:23.000 Like, just no one does.

00:47:24.000 The number of stars who can open a movie in America, that is down to basically Chris Pratt.

00:47:30.000 No one opens, Tom Cruise, Chris Pratt, that's the entire list.

00:47:33.000 You know who's not on that list is Rachel Zegler. 0.90

00:47:35.000 Rachel Zegler, however, is part of the actor strike and she says that um because she she essentially 0.53

00:47:41.000 Promotes the labor theory of value when it comes to acting here. Uh, yeah, this is this is not going to be how this

00:47:47.000 this labor strike gets solved If i'm going to stand there 18 hours in a dress of an

00:47:52.000 iconic disney princess I deserve to be paid for every hour that it is streamed online

00:47:57.000 Uh, well then you could negotiate that in your contract, but you're not I noticed

00:48:02.000 So, what she's saying there is that because she's standing there in a Disney dress, she should get paid for every hour that Snow White and the non... that Latina Snow White and the non-dwarf dwarves of various diverse backgrounds and sexual orientations, for every hour that's... I mean, the bad news for her is that's going to get streamed, like, for two hours.

00:48:23.000 So it's not going to be amazing.

00:48:25.000 But even put that aside, that is not how markets work.

00:48:30.000 Did she take the actual risk?

00:48:32.000 Is she inputting the capital into the making of that film? 0.92

00:48:35.000 Or is she getting paid a salary in order to do that film? 1.00

00:48:37.000 A pretty lucrative salary, I would imagine.

00:48:40.000 She could negotiate for a point, right?

00:48:43.000 There are actors who have done that in the past, gotten very rich doing that.

00:48:46.000 Does she have the market power to do that? 1.00

00:48:47.000 The answer is of course not.

00:48:48.000 Then you just go down the street and hire somebody else.

00:48:50.000 So good luck to her in her leverage play. 1.00

00:48:53.000 That's not how business works.

00:48:54.000 Okay, time for a couple of things that I hate.

00:49:00.000 So there are some people today who are laughing and celebrating at the separation between Justin Trudeau and his wife.

00:49:05.000 First of all, I didn't even know that dude was married to a lady.

00:49:07.000 But, in any case, Justin Trudeau, that's a Babylon Bee joke, by the way, so credit to the Babylon Bee.

00:49:12.000 In any case, Justin Trudeau, who is for sure not Fidel Castro's son, In any case, he and his wife, Sophie, said Wednesday they have separated after 18 years of marriage.

00:49:24.000 The way that they announced this is on their respective Instagram accounts, which is the way that most honorable people do this thing when you have three kids, is you go to your Instagram accounts and then you let the world know that you don't like each other anymore.

00:49:33.000 Sophie and I would like to share the fact that after many meaningful and difficult conversations, we have made the decision to separate, Justin Trudeau said on Instagram, and they both asked for privacy.

00:49:42.000 A separate statement from the couple said they've signed a legal separation agreement.

00:49:45.000 They remain a close family, and Sophie and the Prime Minister are focused on raising their kids in a safe, loving, and collaborative environment.

00:49:50.000 Both parents will be a constant presence in their children's lives, and Canadians can expect to often see the family together.

00:49:55.000 I'm sure the Canadians will be absolutely thrilled.

00:49:58.000 They have two boys, 15 and 9, and a 14-year-old daughter, so congratulations to them on helping to completely screw up their kid's life, even worse than it is screwed up, being public figures.

00:50:06.000 The two met in June 2003 at a charity gala.

00:50:10.000 Justin Trudeau in his memoir said they chatted and flirted for much of the evening, then they went on a dinner date.

00:50:14.000 And then he said, I felt a giddy sense that Sophie would be the last woman I ever dated.

00:50:17.000 And that lasted until it didn't.

00:50:19.000 They were married in Montreal in May, 2005.

00:50:23.000 She apparently worked as a TV host.

00:50:25.000 She became an entertainment correspondent in Quebec.

00:50:29.000 She said in March, 2015, I can tell you right away, no marriage is easy.

00:50:33.000 I'm almost kind of proud of the fact that we've had hardship because we want authenticity.

00:50:36.000 We want truth.

00:50:38.000 Uh, the reason I put this in Things I Hate is because, again, the... the kind of... no one should ever revel in somebody else's divorce when they're a kid.

00:50:47.000 Because it screws up kids incredibly badly.

00:50:50.000 The kind of soft-peddling of the effects of divorce on children in our society is astonishing.

00:50:54.000 And what's amazing is that it's become so rote.

00:50:57.000 If you go back to, like, the late 1970s, before no-fault divorce became a sort of commonplace aspect of American life, and you watch a movie like Kramer vs. Kramer, which talks about the effects of divorce on children, divorce is devastating to kids.

00:51:11.000 It is devastating.

00:51:12.000 It rocks their world.

00:51:13.000 It destroys their world.

00:51:15.000 It destroys whatever feeling of safety they have and predictability they have.

00:51:18.000 It takes one of their parents out of the house.

00:51:20.000 I mean, it's just, it's horrific.

00:51:21.000 So, the fact that these people who've been married for 18 years have decided to divorce while their kids are still, their youngest is nine, that's a disaster area.

00:51:30.000 It really, really is.

00:51:32.000 And this is why, you know, barring, there are reasons to divorce.

00:51:37.000 Abuse, cheating, right?

00:51:39.000 There are real reasons to divorce.

00:51:41.000 But if none of that is happening, it's just people like, I don't feel like living with you anymore, Uh, you're, you're doing the wrong thing.

00:51:46.000 Your kids come first.

00:51:48.000 That's, that's really quite bad.

00:51:50.000 Okay, so, a couple more things I hate today.

00:51:52.000 Apparently, Mia Khalifa, who is a former porn star who has now become some sort of social media star, she is giving marital advice. 0.98

00:52:02.000 So, I have a general rule.

00:52:03.000 I don't take marriage advice from people who have shtooped half the human population. 1.00

00:52:07.000 Just a general rule.

00:52:09.000 And here's Mia Khalifa giving marital advice. 1.00

00:52:14.000 She's also, by the way, a rabid anti-Semite. 1.00

00:52:15.000 Here we go. 0.84

00:52:17.000 Oh, we're comparing stats.

00:52:18.000 Baby girl doesn't know that I am Tom Brady at this game.

00:52:22.000 Married at 18.

00:52:23.000 Divorced at 21.

00:52:24.000 Second marriage.

00:52:25.000 Married at 25.

00:52:26.000 Divorced at 28.

00:52:28.000 Third engagement.

00:52:29.000 Engaged at 29.

00:52:30.000 Ended it at 30.

00:52:32.000 But I kept the ring.

00:52:34.000 I'm still keeping Tom Brady on his toes.

00:52:38.000 We should not be afraid to leave these men.

00:52:42.000 We are not stuck with these people.

00:52:44.000 Marriage is not a sanctimonious thing.

00:52:48.000 It is paperwork.

00:52:49.000 It's a commitment you make to someone.

00:52:53.000 But if you feel like you're not getting anything from that commitment and you're trying, you gotta go.

00:53:00.000 You gotta go.

00:53:00.000 You have to go.

00:53:03.000 I know it's difficult to fill out paperwork and to make appointments and to do all of these things, but this is your f***ing life. 0.90

00:53:10.000 Do you want to be stuck with someone? 0.95

00:53:14.000 Period.

00:53:17.000 That is terrible marital advice.

00:53:19.000 Also, that's not what the word sanctimonious means.

00:53:22.000 In the words of Mandy Patinkin, I do not think that word means what you think it means.

00:53:27.000 I think what she was going for was, there's no sanctity to marriage, which is a hell of a statement considering that literally it is the most sanctified institution.

00:53:35.000 It is the institution with the most sanctity in human history.

00:53:39.000 But to her, it's just a piece of paper, so I have a question.

00:53:41.000 Why sign the piece of paper at all?

00:53:43.000 Getting marital advice from a lady who just reads you a list of her marriages, this is like somebody giving you financial advice after going bankrupt eight times.

00:53:50.000 Well, you know, paying off your debts, it's not something you have to do.

00:53:54.000 I mean, you sign a document saying you're supposed to pay off your debts, but there is bankruptcy.

00:53:58.000 Why are you committing to paying off your debts, man?

00:54:01.000 I mean, it's just a piece of paper.

00:54:03.000 You don't just go to court and declare bankruptcy.

00:54:06.000 What's the problem?

00:54:08.000 Okay, gentlemen, stay far, far away from this human because this is not a person that you want to be in a relationship with.

00:54:15.000 Also, I love you.

00:54:15.000 It just means it's a commitment.

00:54:16.000 A commitment I can violate whenever I please and leave, which is not what we call a commitment.

00:54:21.000 Just genius level stuff there from, again, a wise, wise human.

00:54:26.000 Okay, final thing that I hate today.

00:54:27.000 So, this one is actually quite important.

00:54:30.000 We now have actual open evidence that the Biden White House asked Facebook to degrade the traffic of Daily Wire, my company.

00:54:38.000 According to Just the News and John Solomon, the memos...

00:54:42.000 Suggest that the Biden White House inquired in meetings with Facebook executives asking whether Facebook could tweak its algorithm to showcase stories from the New York Times and Wall Street Journal over content posted by, quote, polarizing conservative journalists and commentators in early 2021.

00:54:53.000 The memos, reviewed by Just the News, chronicle a series of meetings between the White House digital director, Rob Flaherty, and executives from Facebook, now known as Meta, in spring 2021, as the first questions about the efficacy and safety of the COVID-19 vaccine began surging on social media.

00:55:08.000 The memos delivered recently under subpoena to the House Judiciary Committee make clear the White House was actively interacting with Facebook and sometimes pressuring the social media giant to moderate content in a way that would encourage more Americans to get inoculations.

00:55:19.000 On April 14, 2021, for instance, the White House's flarity asked Facebook whether it could promote The New York Times and Wall Street Journal over The Daily Wire.

00:55:28.000 Flaherty asked Facebook employees, quote, if you were to change the algorithm so that people were

00:55:32.000 more likely to see New York Times, Wall Street Journal, any authoritative news source over

00:55:36.000 Daily Wire, Tommy Lahren polarizing people, you wouldn't have a mechanism to check the material impact?

00:55:40.000 Daily Wire, of course, we are a site that filed a landmark lawsuit challenging the OSHA

00:55:47.000 VAX mandate under Joe Biden.

00:55:50.000 We were the only major company in the United States on the right to actually file a lawsuit against the OSHA vax mandate, while other major media American companies on the right were actively forcing their employees to get the shot.

00:56:00.000 We were suing the federal government to stop it.

00:56:03.000 Well, we are not afraid to sue the federal government again.

00:56:05.000 We are not afraid to sue the Biden White House.

00:56:07.000 First of all, there may be criminal violations right here.

00:56:11.000 Flaherty is cited in the notes as asking the question because, candidly, there is not a lot of trust toward Facebook.

00:56:15.000 And the Biden White House wanted to know whether the platform was, quote, finding things that are effective that you aren't doing to combat resistance to vaccines.

00:56:22.000 In terms of interventions, know that there are groups that are hotspots.

00:56:25.000 Admins have to approve posts.

00:56:26.000 If violating content approved gives the group a strike.

00:56:29.000 I'm uncovering new examples on comments.

00:56:31.000 Public figures on comments might be contributing more.

00:56:33.000 The notes quote the Facebook executives as saying, So we are absolutely pleased to look into the effects on our business of the Biden White House engaging in an absolute First Amendment violation.

00:56:45.000 There's no question this is a First Amendment violation.

00:56:47.000 It is as simple as that.

00:56:48.000 It is a First Amendment violation because the federal government cannot force or even pressure a private company into censoring information.

00:56:55.000 That is a First Amendment violation pretty clearly.

00:56:57.000 And as my friend and lawyer Kurt Schlichter says, it's a criminal violation.

00:57:01.000 Government officials were attempting to use government power to suppress the civil rights of American citizens.

00:57:06.000 I mean, that is right.

00:57:08.000 So maybe there will be a criminal indictment here.

00:57:09.000 Maybe there should be.

00:57:10.000 Certainly, we are examining all of our legal options at this point, and we have no hesitancy whatsoever about going at the Biden and White House again.

00:57:16.000 We did it before.

00:57:17.000 We'll do it again.

00:57:18.000 It cost us, like, millions of dollars to go after the OSHA VAX mandate.

00:57:21.000 We helped overturn the thing and prevent 80 million Americans from having to take the shot if they didn't want to take it.

00:57:26.000 We are perfectly happy to do the exact same thing with the Biden White House right now to stop them from ever violating the civil rights of Americans by pressuring Facebook and other social media companies again.

00:57:37.000 And by the way, we have looked at the traffic on our website and whether it declines in the aftermath of this conversation.

00:57:43.000 Suffice it to say, evidence will be presented.

00:57:46.000 This is... It's an astonishing story.

00:57:50.000 It truly is.

00:57:51.000 Alrighty.

00:57:52.000 Coming up, we're going to be joined by Trent Horn to discuss pro-life apologetics and his abortion debate on the Whatever Podcast.

00:57:57.000 If you're not a member, become a member.

00:57:59.000 Use code SHAPIRO at checkout for two months free on all annual plans.

The Ben Shapiro Show - August 03, 2023

The Rigging Of The 2024 Election

Episode Stats

Summary

Transcript