The Ben Shapiro Show - The Russian Connection | Ep. 582

00:00:00.000 President Trump does a presser with Vladimir Putin and the world goes insane.

00:00:03.000 Democrats cry treason and we deconstruct some culture.

00:00:06.000 I'm Ben Shapiro.

00:00:07.000 This is The Ben Shapiro Show.

00:00:12.000 So first off, let me remind you that if you haven't heard already, this August, I am taking The Ben Shapiro Show live to audiences in Dallas and Phoenix.

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00:01:42.000 Okay, so.

00:01:44.000 President Trump did a press conference with Vladimir Putin yesterday.

00:01:47.000 It was bad.

00:01:48.000 It was not a good press conference.

00:01:49.000 The President of the United States essentially sided with Vladimir Putin over his own intelligence agencies who, lest we forget, work for him.

00:01:56.000 These are the people who work for him.

00:01:57.000 If he doesn't like how the intel agencies are doing their job, he can replace their leadership, which he has already done with the FBI.

00:02:03.000 Yeah, he has his own CIA hidden there.

00:02:05.000 The dude has all of the people he wants in place.

00:02:08.000 So if he doesn't like his own intel agencies and what they're telling him, he has every capacity to find new, more honest intelligence agencies.

00:02:14.000 He's not actually doing that, which suggests that he knows full well that the idea that the Russians were attempting to interfere in the election is true. 0.89

00:02:21.000 Now, does that mean that the Russians actually swung the election to Trump?

00:02:24.000 No.

00:02:24.000 Does it mean that President Trump colluded with the Russians?

00:02:27.000 No.

00:02:27.000 But the problem for President Trump

00:02:29.000 is that he is personally so egotistical that he believes that any sort of aspersion that is cast at the presidential election of 2016 must be false, because he believes that he won fair and square, and that means that anything anybody says about what went wrong in 2016 with the Russians, all of that is an attempt merely to undermine his grand victory, and therefore anyone who claims that the Russians were attempting to hack into the election system, basically, all those people are simply unwilling to accept that Hillary lost.

00:02:59.000 Listen, I'm willing to accept that Hillary lost, and it is also true that the Russians were attempting to monkey with our electoral system. 0.99

00:03:06.000 And they're attempting to monkey with our election cycle, with the news cycle, by hacking into the DNC, the DCCC, and the Hillary Clinton campaign.

00:03:13.000 Well, all of this manifested itself in a pretty awful way yesterday when President Trump got up to the podium with Vladimir Putin.

00:03:18.000 There are a lot of people soft-pedaling this today.

00:03:20.000 A lot of people, on the right particularly, suggesting that this wasn't a big deal and none of it really matters.

00:03:25.000 Yesterday I said, I'm not sure that it matters a lot in terms of Vladimir Putin invading other countries.

00:03:29.000 I'm not sure that it matters a lot in terms of actual hard-headed foreign policy.

00:03:33.000 But it does matter in terms of the American perception of our own intelligence agencies.

00:03:36.000 And it matters with regard to Vladimir Putin's perception that he can play with Trump when it comes to monkeying with our news cycle and hacking into enemies of President Trump.

00:03:45.000 President Trump did a real disservice yesterday.

00:03:47.000 What he did was really rather unprecedented in modern American history.

00:03:53.000 I don't mean completely unprecedented, because you do have Barack Obama who sent pallets of cash to the Iranian mullahs.

00:03:57.000 You do have Barack Obama who pledged flexibility on a hot mic to the Russian government.

00:04:01.000 But to go before the entire world and suggest that your own intelligence agencies are wrong, and a thug piece of human debris like Vladimir Putin is right when he lies about how he didn't hack into the DCCC or the DNC or Hillary Clinton's campaign,

00:04:15.000 When you do that, you're doing a real disservice to the American intelligence agencies, as well as to America in general.

00:04:19.000 You can't do that.

00:04:20.000 Well, President Trump did do it.

00:04:21.000 So Trump had this presser with Vladimir Putin, and he starts off by saying, our relationship has never been worse, but he solved it.

00:04:29.000 Our relationship has never been worse than it is now.

00:04:35.000 However, that changed as of about four hours ago.

00:04:42.000 I really believe that.

00:04:43.000 OK, well, if you really believe that four hours ago the change happened, then you're in the same category as George W. Bush, who said he looked into Vladimir Putin's eyes and saw his soul, or Barack Obama, who sent Hillary Clinton to bring a reset button that was mismarked.

00:04:57.000 It said something else on the button.

00:05:00.000 That's the same category. 0.72

00:05:01.000 So that in and of itself, it's foolish, but it's not particularly damaging.

00:05:05.000 Then we get to the damaging stuff. 0.66

00:05:06.000 So President Trump is asked about the sort of decline in the relationship between Russia and the United States.

00:05:12.000 And he did something that if it came from the lips of Barack Obama would have been perfectly predictable.

00:05:17.000 He said everyone is to blame, particularly the United States.

00:05:20.000 I hold both countries responsible. 1.00

00:05:23.000 I think that the United States has been foolish. 0.99

00:05:26.000 I think we've 1.00

00:05:27.000 All been foolish. 0.99

00:05:28.000 We should have had this dialogue a long time ago. 0.98

00:05:31.000 Not a long time, frankly, before I got to office.

00:05:34.000 And I think we're all to blame.

00:05:36.000 And nobody signed up for this.

00:05:37.000 When President Trump says, America first, when he says, make America great again, it doesn't mean blame America first.

00:05:42.000 America is not responsible in the decline of the relationship with Russia.

00:05:45.000 Vladimir Putin invaded two sovereign states in the last 10 years.

00:05:49.000 Two of them.

00:05:50.000 And the United States did very little about it.

00:05:52.000 Vladimir Putin turned Iran into a sphere of influence, and Syria into a sphere of influence, and the United States did very little about that.

00:05:58.000 Now, was the United States wrong not to do more about these things?

00:06:01.000 Of course the United States is wrong not to do more about these things, but that's sort of like saying that the bus and the person run over by the bus are equally responsible for the accident.

00:06:08.000 Pedestrian has the right of way.

00:06:10.000 The United States is not responsible for Vladimir Putin actually invading surrounding countries and murdering dissenting journalists and murdering dissenting politicians.

00:06:18.000 The United States is not responsible for any of that stuff.

00:06:20.000 And for Trump to suggest anything different is Howard's in Noam Chomsky territory.

00:06:23.000 And then it gets worse.

00:06:24.000 So the president is obviously very upset with the Mueller collusion.

00:06:29.000 Investigation.

00:06:30.000 And he has a right to be upset about that because he says I didn't collude.

00:06:32.000 There's not a lot of evidence to suggest that he did collude at this point.

00:06:36.000 And so he launches into a rant about how the probe is a disaster for the country.

00:06:39.000 Well, the problem is the probe is doing a couple of things.

00:06:42.000 The probe is looking into the possibility that the Trump campaign works with Russia.

00:06:45.000 And Trump, I think, has a right to be upset about that.

00:06:47.000 I think he has a right to be upset with the idea that the intelligence agencies, as led by people like Peter Strzok, were biased against him in their attempt to pin Russian collusion on him and his campaign.

00:06:57.000 I think he has every right to be upset about that, but he does not have a

00:07:00.000 I have a right to be upset about intelligence agencies coming up with an estimate that says that the Russians hacked the DNC and the DCCC and the Hillary campaign.

00:07:07.000 All of that is very well verified.

00:07:08.000 All of our intelligence agencies agree on that.

00:07:11.000 So when Trump says that the probe is a disaster for the country, what he really should be saying is any suggestion that I colluded with Vladimir Putin is a disaster for the country because it's not true.

00:07:19.000 But when he undermines the intelligence agencies by throwing out the baby with the bathwater, you got a problem.

00:07:24.000 Here he is talking about the probe.

00:07:25.000 I think that the probe is a disaster for our country.

00:07:30.000 There was no collusion at all.

00:07:32.000 It was a clean campaign.

00:07:34.000 I beat Hillary Clinton easily. 1.00

00:07:37.000 There was no collusion.

00:07:38.000 I didn't know the president.

00:07:41.000 There was nobody to collude with.

00:07:43.000 There was no collusion with the campaign.

00:07:45.000 Okay, all of that is not great, but it's not the worst thing in the world.

00:07:48.000 Then we get to the actual worst quote.

00:07:49.000 Okay, the worst quote is, he says, Vladimir Putin protests.

00:07:52.000 And Putin says, listen, I have nothing to do with this hacking.

00:07:55.000 It's not me.

00:07:56.000 Niet.

00:07:57.000 Right?

00:07:57.000 It's not, I had nothing to do with any of this.

00:07:59.000 And Trump, instead of saying, listen, Vladimir, you and I disagree about this.

00:08:03.000 My intelligence agencies came to a different conclusion.

00:08:05.000 They're my intelligence agencies.

00:08:07.000 And I have to take what they say at face value because they're the ones who are doing this hard work.

00:08:11.000 Instead, Trump takes his intelligence agencies and he dumps them directly under the bus.

00:08:15.000 It's really bad.

00:08:16.000 It's really bad.

00:08:27.000 He just said it's not Russia.

00:08:29.000 I will say this, I don't see any reason why it would be, but I really do want to see the server.

00:08:36.000 But I have, I have confidence in both parties.

00:08:40.000 So I have great confidence in my intelligence people.

00:08:43.000 But I will tell you that President Putin was extremely strong and powerful.

00:08:51.000 Okay, this is weak, mean stuff.

00:08:55.000 This is weak.

00:08:56.000 It looks like Trump got unmanned by Putin here.

00:08:58.000 That's what it looks like, just for any objective viewer.

00:09:00.000 If you're not a Trump fan, if you are a Trump fan, you at least have to try and be objective as to what happened yesterday.

00:09:06.000 Trump looked like he was bullied by Vladimir Putin on that podium.

00:09:09.000 He looked like Vladimir Putin owned him on that podium.

00:09:11.000 He makes a couple of statements that are worthy of explication in that particular quote.

00:09:15.000 So first, the president says, I really do want to see the server.

00:09:18.000 Now, this goes to his suggestion that the DNC has not turned over its servers to the FBI because the DNC is hiding something.

00:09:24.000 So the theory goes something like this.

00:09:26.000 The FBI goes to the DNC and they say, listen, we think you've been hacked by the Russians.

00:09:29.000 And the DNC says, no, we're not going to show you anything.

00:09:32.000 Which would be suspicious if that had been the case.

00:09:33.000 If they had said, we're not going to show you anything because we are trying to hide something, because we actually leaked out these documents ourselves, because it was Seth Rich or something, then you'd be suspicious.

00:09:43.000 But that's not actually what happened.

00:09:44.000 OK, let me give you the facts on the DNC server, because there's a lot of fiction that's going around today.

00:09:50.000 And I think that fostering that fiction is not useful.

00:09:52.000 So the theory on the right seems to be, by some on the right, and Sean Hannity talked about it last night on his show.

00:09:57.000 I think Sean is wrong.

00:09:59.000 Basically, the theory on the right is,

00:10:01.000 That the DNC is hiding something so they didn't turn over their servers to the FBI, but the FBI somehow came to the conclusion it was the Russians anyway.

00:10:09.000 And here's what Trump said yesterday.

00:10:13.000 He said, I've been wondering that.

00:10:18.000 I've been asking that for months and months.

00:10:19.000 I've been tweeting it out, calling it out on social media.

00:10:21.000 Where is the server?

00:10:22.000 I want to know, where is the server?

00:10:23.000 And what is the server saying?

00:10:25.000 Okay, so here is the real story about the server.

00:10:28.000 Okay, a server is a physical entity.

00:10:31.000 You do not have to grab a physical entity that has on it computer materials and bring it outside the offices of the DNC in order to examine those materials in the same way that you can remotely access your computer from home

00:10:42.000 The FBI has the capacity to remotely access the material on those servers.

00:10:46.000 The Daily Beast has a pretty good look at this today.

00:10:48.000 They say when cyber investigators respond to an incident, they capture the evidence in a process called imaging.

00:10:53.000 They make an exact byte for byte copy of the hard drives.

00:10:55.000 They do the same for the machine's memory.

00:10:57.000 They capture evidence that would otherwise be lost at the next reboot, and they monitor and store the traffic passing through the victim's network.

00:11:03.000 This has been standard procedure in computer intrusion investigations for decades.

00:11:06.000 The images, not the computer's hardware, provide the evidence.

00:11:09.000 Both the DNC and the security from CrowdStrike hired to respond to the breach have said repeatedly over the years they gave the FBI a copy of all the DNC images back in 2016.

00:11:18.000 So the DNC didn't have to turn over its physical servers because they were still using those during the campaign.

00:11:23.000 The FBI had access to the imaging via CrowdStrike and via the DNC.

00:11:27.000 James Comey said as much in his testimony.

00:11:29.000 He said he wanted direct access to the DNC servers for purposes of accessing their live network, and this is where the DNC turned the FBI down.

00:11:35.000 Now, is that suspicious?

00:11:36.000 Apparently, it's not all that uncommon.

00:11:38.000 According to the Daily Beast, when the computers belong to a cooperating victim, seizing the machines is pretty much out of the question, said James Harris, a former FBI cybercrime agent who worked on a 2009 breach at Google that's been linked to the Chinese government.

00:11:49.000 In most cases, you don't even ask.

00:11:50.000 You just assume they're going to make forensic copies.

00:11:52.000 So this isn't anything nefarious, per se.

00:11:53.000 The DNC was not covering for a leak of material to the Russians.

00:11:55.000 There are a bunch of people saying, well, CrowdStrike, CrowdStrike's a democratic firm.

00:12:13.000 Well, not really.

00:12:14.000 CrowdStrike is also used by the RNC.

00:12:16.000 So I think it's important to get rid of misinformation because it prevents clarity.

00:12:20.000 I want everything that we believe to be based at least on a certain number of facts.

00:12:23.000 Now, in just a second, I'm going to get to Vladimir Putin's response to all of this.

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00:13:42.000 Okay, so, Vladimir Putin responds to President Trump, and you can see, he looks like the cat that just ate the canary.

00:13:51.000 I mean, he is so gleeful, he is so happy about all of this. 0.59

00:13:54.000 Here is Putin, a dictatorial thug who murders dissidents, talking about how, you know, there's no reason why President Trump shouldn't believe me. 0.99

00:14:03.000 I mean, he's such a weasel. 0.98

00:14:04.000 You're gonna hear the translator here, here's what Putin had to say. 0.88

00:14:07.000 As to who is to be believed and who is not to be believed, you can trust no one if you take this.

00:14:15.000 Could you name a single fact that would definitively prove the collusion?

00:14:22.000 This is utter nonsense.

00:14:26.000 Okay, you have to see the body language here.

00:14:30.000 I mean, Putin is so comfortable, he's so happy up there.

00:14:33.000 I love that line.

00:14:34.000 As to who is to be believed, and who's not to be believed, you can trust no one.

00:14:38.000 Okay, spoken like a former KGB agent.

00:14:40.000 And then, he was asked specifically if he wanted Trump to win the election, and here's what he had to say.

00:14:45.000 Isn't it natural to be sympathetic towards a person who is willing to restore the relationship with our country, who wants to work with us?

00:14:53.000 Now, do I really think that Vladimir Putin was attempting to rig the election for Donald Trump in any serious way?

00:14:58.000 No.

00:14:58.000 I believe the intelligence community's assessment that he was attempting to mess with the election in order to create chaos.

00:15:04.000 And guess what?

00:15:05.000 He just created a lot more chaos yesterday, because now half the country believes that Donald Trump is in the pocket of Vladimir Putin.

00:15:09.000 Now, I don't think Donald Trump is in the pocket of Vladimir Putin.

00:15:12.000 I think that Donald Trump is an egomaniac who likes being complimented, who likes having his shoulders massaged.

00:15:16.000 Putin massages his shoulders, and Mueller doesn't, so he doesn't like Mueller and he does like Putin.

00:15:20.000 I think it really is almost that simple.

00:15:23.000 And Putin knows this, which is why he says, of course I was trying to get Trump elected.

00:15:26.000 He knows what kind of chaos that's going to cause at home.

00:15:29.000 He knows that that causes gridlock and anger in the American political system.

00:15:32.000 That is Putin's goal.

00:15:33.000 So what that requires is for people on the right to recognize that Trump needs to put his ego behind him and recognize who Putin is.

00:15:38.000 We'll talk about who Putin is in just a second.

00:15:40.000 And at the same time, folks on the left have to understand that every time they scream collusion to the sky without any evidence, every time they suggest that we are in crisis mode or that Trump has committed some act of treason, all they are doing is giving Putin what he wants in a certain sense, which is a certain level of chaos in the American political system.

00:15:55.000 OK, so how bad a guy is Putin?

00:15:57.000 So Putin was on with Chris Wallace.

00:15:58.000 And Chris Wallace at Fox News really grilled Putin.

00:16:01.000 He started off by asking Putin about NATO.

00:16:03.000 And Putin essentially said that NATO should never expand because NATO is a threat to Russia.

00:16:07.000 There is an opportunity for bilateral contacts with member states, which was done with Poland, with Romania, which now station and deploy elements of the strategic anti-missile defense of the United States.

00:16:20.000 Moving this NATO infrastructure towards our borders would be a threat, and the reaction would be extremely negative.

00:16:28.000 Okay, and then Putin follows that up.

00:16:30.000 He's asked specifically about whether they have compromise on Trump, right?

00:16:32.000 This is the theory from the left, is the reason Trump is doing all this is because Putin has the p-tape or some such nonsense.

00:16:37.000 And Putin says, no, I don't have any compromise.

00:16:40.000 Now, can you trust Putin saying he doesn't have any compromise?

00:16:42.000 Of course not!

00:16:42.000 The guy's a KGB spy!

00:16:44.000 Like, why in the world would you trust Vladimir Putin?

00:16:46.000 That said, he does say that he doesn't have any compromise material on Trump, though.

00:16:49.000 If he did, would you expect him to announce it on Fox News?

00:16:51.000 That would be great, right?

00:16:52.000 In the middle of the interview, they say, do you have compromise on Trump?

00:16:54.000 He goes, of course! 1.00

00:16:56.000 I have tape of Trump being pinned on by a Russian prostitute. 1.00

00:16:59.000 That's not going to happen. 0.99

00:17:00.000 Anyway, here's him talking about it with Chris Wallace.

00:17:03.000 Whether we have something on them.

00:17:05.000 We don't have anything on them.

00:17:07.000 There can't be anything on them. 0.98

00:17:09.000 I don't want to insult President Trump when I say this and I may scum.

00:17:17.000 Okay, my favorite part of this interview is the part where Chris Wallace tries to hand Vladimir Putin the indictment, right?

00:17:28.000 This indictment put out by the Mueller investigation of these 12 Russians, and Putin refuses to look at it. 0.98

00:17:33.000 He says, utterly ridiculous, just utterly ridiculous. 0.85

00:17:35.000 And this is the guy that Trump says he believes as much as the intelligence agencies. 0.98

00:17:39.000 Do you really believe that someone acting from the Russian territory could have influenced the United States and influenced the choice of millions of Americans? 0.98

00:17:51.000 This is utterly ridiculous.

00:17:52.000 I'm not asking whether they influenced, I'm asking whether they tried. 0.90

00:17:56.000 Okay, and Putin refuses to answer that question.

00:17:59.000 Look how clever Putin is there, right?

00:18:00.000 So, Chris Wallace asks him, did you try to influence the election?

00:18:03.000 Putin says, we never could have influenced the election.

00:18:05.000 If we influenced the election, then Trump would lose.

00:18:08.000 So we never influenced the election.

00:18:10.000 He's playing to an audience of one there, and the audience he's playing to is President Trump.

00:18:14.000 Okay, the worst part of this interview, and also the best part, is the part where Putin is specifically asked about him murdering his political opponents.

00:18:19.000 His answer here is such a Bond villain answer.

00:18:21.000 And you can just see that the camera slowly pulls back, and Vladimir Putin is petting a hairless cat.

00:18:26.000 It's really unbelievable.

00:18:28.000 Here is Vladimir Putin being asked whether he murders his political opponents.

00:18:31.000 Well, haven't presidents been killed in the United States?

00:18:33.000 Have you forgotten about it?

00:18:36.000 Well, has Kennedy been killed in Russia or in the United States?

00:18:40.000 Or Mr. King?

00:18:46.000 What happens at the clashes between police and civil society and several ethnic groups?

00:18:54.000 Spectacular stuff from Vladimir Putin right there.

00:18:56.000 So do you kill your political opponents?

00:18:58.000 Well, Kennedy killed in United States.

00:19:01.000 Martin Luther King killed United States. 0.92

00:19:03.000 Right, they were assassinated by criminals. 0.51

00:19:07.000 You're the government of Russia. 0.99

00:19:09.000 I'd make fun of Vladimir Putin more except that I know that he kills people. 0.67

00:19:11.000 So I'm a little bit, I'll be honest with you. 0.51

00:19:13.000 I'm gonna steer clear of that one because I'm fond of breathing.

00:19:17.000 But this is the guy who Trump decided that he wanted to favor in these negotiations.

00:19:21.000 This is the guy that Trump wanted to compliment and pat on the head during these negotiations.

00:19:26.000 If you had watched that press conference with the sound off, what you would have assumed is that Putin was the powerhouse in the room and Trump was the weakling.

00:19:32.000 Okay, we had the same sort of phenomenon when Obama was president.

00:19:35.000 He always felt like the weakest guy in the room.

00:19:36.000 Well, Trump, that's supposed to be the opposite of what he is, right? 0.89

00:19:38.000 He's the brash, bold, rude American who goes in there and knocks heads together. 1.00

00:19:42.000 He's the guy who goes into NATO and 0.80

00:19:43.000 Tells the Germans they better pay up. 1.00

00:19:45.000 He's the guy who goes up to Canada and tells Justin Trudeau that he looks stupid with that hair, right? 1.00

00:19:49.000 That's that's the guy who the American people elected. 0.99

00:19:51.000 They didn't elect the guy who goes in there and then talks about how Vladimir Putin is really a nice guy when you get to know him and how Vladimir Putin's assessment of the 2016 election is more accurate than that of his own intelligence agencies.

00:20:02.000 Now, what's the practical impact of any of this?

00:20:04.000 Does Putin actually believe that Trump is such a weakling that he can now walk into Lithuania or Latvia or Estonia?

00:20:10.000 He can walk into the Baltic states and he can just take them over and that Trump will do nothing about it?

00:20:14.000 I don't think that's what he thinks.

00:20:15.000 But I think that Putin is just really happy that the United States seems embroiled in this chaos that he has helped create and that is exacerbated every day by the dual problem of Trump's ego and the left's 0.86

00:20:25.000 Brutal and ridiculous attempt to paint Trump as a Russian colluder.

00:20:29.000 Those are two sides of the same coin, and both of them are pleasing Vladimir Putin infinitely. 0.98

00:20:34.000 They're really, really pleasing Vladimir Putin.

00:20:38.000 Of course.

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00:21:31.000 But when you take their OMAX soft gel and you put it in the freezer, when it comes out, it actually remains clear because it is that pure.

00:21:36.000 It is clinically tested, so it's safe for you and your family.

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00:21:51.000 Meanwhile, Robert Mueller has brought a new indictment.

00:21:53.000 The person charged in this indictment is a lady named Maria Butina. 0.88

00:21:56.000 She's 29.

00:22:14.000 And she is basically this redheaded supposed gun rights activist who spends an awful lot of time since 2013 going to Republican functions and ingratiating herself with pro-gun rights people. 0.99

00:22:25.000 And then she was using those pro-gun rights people to get to politicians. 1.00

00:22:27.000 So she'd say, I want you to fix me up with Congressman Dana Rohrabacher, for example.

00:22:31.000 And somebody at the gun rights organization would say,

00:22:33.000 Well, this seems like a nice pro-gun rights lady from Russia. 1.00

00:22:36.000 I'll fix her up with Dana Rohrabacher, and then she would go and try and create a back channel between those Congress people and members of the Russian government. 1.00

00:22:41.000 This is what the indictment basically says.

00:22:43.000 So according to law and crime, the woman who the Department of Justice has charged for allegedly failing to properly register as a Russian operative... 1.00

00:22:50.000 Well, in the United States, apparently bragged several times she helped the campaign of President Trump communicate with the Russian government.

00:22:55.000 Maria Butina, 29, was charged Saturday.

00:22:57.000 The complaint was not unsealed until Monday, July 16th.

00:23:00.000 Butina's alleged bragging about the Trump campaign connections was reported in February 2017 by the Daily Beast.

00:23:05.000 The original report is now getting renewed attention due to the criminal complaint.

00:23:09.000 The Daily Beast report says she was in business with Republican activist Paul Erickson and previously worked with Alexander Torshin, a member of Vladimir Putin's political party, who once served as a Russian senator before becoming a leader of the Central Bank of Russia.

00:23:21.000 So Paul Erickson, it should be said, is a very

00:23:24.000 active member of sort of upper-ranking Republican circles.

00:23:28.000 Now, Paul Erickson hobnobs with a lot of prominent Republicans.

00:23:30.000 I've met Paul Erickson at, like, a David Horowitz Freedom Center event, and always seemed like a nice guy.

00:23:35.000 Apparently, he had formed some sort of company with this Maria Butina, but there are no allegations that he actually violated the law.

00:23:41.000 So the big question is whether people who are fixing up Butina with actual members of the American government knew she was a Russian agent, and whether the people in the American government knew she was a Russian agent, and even if they did know she was a Russian agent,

00:23:51.000 There's nothing wrong with the back channel so long as no actual illegal activity took place.

00:23:55.000 So there are a bunch of holes that still have to be filled in.

00:23:57.000 The left, however, is jumping to the conclusion that Butina is the go-between between Trump and the Russian government and that she is the nexus of all collusion.

00:24:05.000 Those charges are not in this indictment.

00:24:06.000 So this is people jumping to conclusions in a pretty significant way.

00:24:10.000 Butina reportedly bragged about the Trump campaign twice.

00:24:12.000 Once during a November 12, 2016 birthday party said to have been attended by Erickson and Trump campaign aides at a cafe near American University in Washington, D.C., she brazenly claimed she'd been part of the Trump campaign's communication with Russia to individuals who were present said, according to the Daily Beast.

00:24:27.000 However, Dr. Svetlana Savranskaya, who is a professor at American University, said that Butina made the same claim in class.

00:24:32.000 That was the second time she bragged about the alleged connection.

00:24:35.000 Supposedly, she tried to broker a meeting between Trump and Putin in 2016.

00:24:38.000 Okay, but that doesn't necessarily mean election collusion.

00:24:41.000 They could have met for any reason.

00:24:42.000 You know, presidential candidates meet with a lot of foreign powers.

00:24:45.000 That doesn't necessarily mean that they are colluding with those foreign powers to change the effects of an election. 0.51

00:24:50.000 People, however, are jumping to the most ridiculous conclusions about all of this.

00:24:54.000 My favorite is this political reporter today who tweeted out this morning a picture from the Oval Office, a picture of President Trump moving to shake hands with Sergey Lavrov, who's the foreign minister of Russia, as well as Ambassador Sergey Kislyak. 0.88

00:25:08.000 And then in the very, very background, there's a redhead. 0.80

00:25:10.000 There's a redhead in the background. 1.00

00:25:12.000 It's kind of a pretty redhead. 1.00

00:25:14.000 And Emily Singer, who reports for Mike, tweeted out, Okay, thousands and thousands and thousands of retweets.

00:25:18.000 Only one problem.

00:25:19.000 It's not that lady.

00:25:20.000 It was Kerry Lutkins from the National Security Council.

00:25:32.000 And she deleted the tweet.

00:25:34.000 So, you know, people jumping to conclusions trying to paint Trump as a Russian collaborator when in reality, Trump is just an ego, an egotist driven by that ego to say silly things from time to time and say dangerous things from time to time.

00:25:46.000 Again, one of the big problems I see here is that because President Trump is so invested in countering the narrative that the election was monkeyed with,

00:25:53.000 It's led him down a path of defending some pretty bad people.

00:25:55.000 So here's President Trump defending Paul Manafort.

00:25:58.000 Paul Manafort has been under investigation by American intelligence agencies for years and they have a lot of goods on him.

00:26:04.000 But here's Trump defending Manafort when really what he should be doing is saying, I didn't know anything about Manafort when I hired him.

00:26:09.000 I was told by the RNC that he'd be a good guy to hire.

00:26:11.000 So I hired him and then he turned out not to be a good guy and I fired him.

00:26:14.000 Hey, all of which is accurate.

00:26:15.000 Manafort was walking around the Republican halls of power for years and years and years and years.

00:26:18.000 He's closely associated with Elliot Brody, the former finance chair of the Republican Party.

00:26:22.000 He had connections at the highest level of the Republican Party.

00:26:25.000 All Trump has to say here is, I didn't know much about Manafort.

00:26:27.000 I hired him.

00:26:28.000 And then I fired him when something went wrong.

00:26:29.000 Instead, he now finds himself defending Paul Manafort because he wants to rebut any accusation that the Russians had any part in the election.

00:26:36.000 So now he's become a press agent for the Russians, which is, why is Trump doing this?

00:26:40.000 Like, why?

00:26:40.000 How is this productive in any way?

00:26:42.000 With Paul Manafort, who really is a nice man, you look at what's going on with him, it's like Al Capone.

00:26:50.000 Well, I mean, it sort of is like Al Capone in the sense that Manafort broke the law.

00:26:53.000 So there's that.

00:26:54.000 And then President Trump was on with Sean Hannity last night.

00:26:57.000 And I can tell you this.

00:26:58.000 There are a lot of folks in the White House who were not supremely happy with the president of the United States' comments yesterday.

00:27:04.000 And they were dreading the fact that Trump was going to go on with Sean Hannity, not because they dislike Sean, they love Sean, but simply because they knew that Sean has a tendency to double down on every worst excess that Trump has.

00:27:14.000 And that's what happened on national TV last night.

00:27:16.000 Trump bragged to Hannity about Putin denying the Russian meddling.

00:27:19.000 Why exactly?

00:27:21.000 Why is this good for Trump?

00:27:22.000 Why?

00:27:22.000 If you want to help President Trump's administration, why is this good?

00:27:25.000 One week ago, one week, eight days ago, the President of the United States nominated Brett Kavanaugh for the Supreme Court.

00:27:30.000 And I was pretty happy about that.

00:27:32.000 So were the vast majority of Republicans.

00:27:34.000 It was a winning moment for President Trump.

00:27:36.000 A couple of weeks ago, the President of the United States was on the upswing.

00:27:39.000 And now the President of the United States had a very bad two weeks, and I think he had the second worst day of his presidency yesterday after Charlottesville.

00:27:45.000 And yet he was on national TV doubling down on all of this.

00:27:48.000 Doubling down on it.

00:27:50.000 Why?

00:27:50.000 Because when you have an echo chamber, you tend to double down on the things you believe, whereas if you were to open your ears a little bit, you might recognize that two things can be true at once.

00:27:58.000 One, Trump did not collude with Russia.

00:28:00.000 Two, Russia did attempt to influence the election.

00:28:02.000 Both of these things are true.

00:28:03.000 The left can't accept that Trump didn't collude, and Trump can't accept that Russia interfered.

00:28:08.000 As I hear as Trump defending Vladimir Putin on Sean Hannity's show last night, I hate this so much, I can't even tell you.

00:28:14.000 I think it's a huge mistake by President Trump, and I think that it's driving a lot of Americans to believe things that are just not true.

00:28:20.000 And I am more committed to the truth than I am to a political agenda.

00:28:24.000 The truth is that the Russians, as an American,

00:28:26.000 The Russians attempting to interfere in our election is a bad thing.

00:28:28.000 It was bad when the Russians attempted to interfere by providing President Obama more flexibility in 2012.

00:28:34.000 And it is bad that the Russians were attempting to hack all of these various democratic sources during the election cycle. 0.94

00:28:39.000 But here is Trump defending Putin to Hannity.

00:28:41.000 First of all, he said there was no collusion whatsoever.

00:28:43.000 I guess he said as strongly as you can say it, they have no information on Trump.

00:28:50.000 We get questions on the witch hunt.

00:28:53.000 And I don't think the people out in the country buy it, but the reporters like to give it a shot.

00:28:59.000 I thought that President Putin was very, very strong.

00:29:02.000 Okay, what is this very, very strong nonsense?

00:29:04.000 It's the same thing about Kim Jong-un.

00:29:06.000 Of course he's strong, he's a dictator.

00:29:08.000 But he's a dictator of a third-rate country.

00:29:09.000 Okay, Russia, as a nation, has the same GDP as Italy.

00:29:13.000 And we're treating Russia as though it's some sort of grand world power that Trump has to cope with on the world stage in the weakest possible way.

00:29:20.000 I saw Judge Jeanine came out today, and she said, what would you expect Trump to do?

00:29:24.000 Go out there and shoot Putin?

00:29:25.000 I didn't realize that these were the two options. 1.00

00:29:26.000 Shooting Putin in the face, 0.99

00:29:29.000 Or surrendering to him publicly. 0.99

00:29:30.000 I didn't realize these were the two options.

00:29:31.000 I thought there was a whole range of options between those two.

00:29:34.000 By the way, if Trump had shot Putin in the face, I think even Putin would have appreciated the manliness of that.

00:29:38.000 If Trump had actually just gone up there and shot Putin on Fifth Avenue, I think that Putin probably would have said, more power to you, Mr. President. 0.99

00:29:44.000 At least you have the balls to do it. 0.99

00:29:46.000 But instead, what we got was President Trump acting very foolishly. 1.00

00:29:49.000 Now, with all that said, 0.63

00:29:51.000 There are two sides to the coin when it comes to the promulgation of a nasty politics in the country.

00:29:58.000 What Trump did yesterday is inexcusable.

00:30:02.000 In a different way, just as bad, is the Democratic overreaction. 0.98

00:30:06.000 And the reason I say that is because when you have people claiming treason, instead of, this is stupid, this is a problem, it's really terrible, when you have people claiming treason or making claims that the Russians would be happy that you're making, 0.96

00:30:18.000 That's not helpful either. 0.96

00:30:19.000 I'll talk about that in just a second.

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00:31:21.000 So the reaction to President Trump's press conference with Putin should be twofold.

00:31:25.000 One, it should be people saying, that was really inappropriate.

00:31:28.000 The President of the United States should never be dumping his own intelligence services under the bus for a KGB agent.

00:31:32.000 And number two, let's look at the practical ramifications of what he did.

00:31:36.000 So, does it mean that Putin's going to invade surrounding countries?

00:31:38.000 Probably not.

00:31:39.000 Does it mean that Vladimir Putin is going to get more aggressive on the world stage?

00:31:42.000 Maybe, maybe not.

00:31:43.000 Although, last time he got aggressive on the world stage, we bombed Syria. 0.94

00:31:46.000 Does it mean that the intelligence agencies are going to feel a lot more unjustified heat?

00:31:50.000 Yes.

00:31:50.000 Does it mean that there's going to be more political dissension in the United States?

00:31:53.000 Yes.

00:31:53.000 Was a good no.

00:31:55.000 That, I think, is a relatively objective take on what is going to come out from all of this.

00:31:59.000 Because President Trump operates pretty independently of his own administration.

00:32:03.000 His own administration, when it comes time to make policy, actually goes and makes the policy, and Trump says a lot of stuff.

00:32:07.000 I've been saying it for literally years, literally years, that his slogan shouldn't be, make America great again, it should be, I say a lot of stuff, because Trump says a lot of stuff.

00:32:15.000 Okay, and that means that a lot of people don't take the stuff he says particularly seriously.

00:32:18.000 I don't think Vladimir Putin takes Trump seriously enough on policy that he's gonna go invade surrounding countries, believing that Trump is gonna allow him to do that.

00:32:25.000 And, it is important to mention, that in this terrible press conference, Trump did say at least one good thing.

00:32:30.000 He said, listen, we still have our disagreements about Crimea.

00:32:33.000 So he didn't come out and say, listen, Putin gets to keep Crimea.

00:32:35.000 He said that the United States and Putin disagree on Crimea.

00:32:38.000 So when it comes to territorial aggression by the Russians, Trump did not signal weakness.

00:32:41.000 He signaled weakness when it came to Russian interference in American elections.

00:32:46.000 And he signaled weakness because his own egotism got in the way of his better sense, I think.

00:32:50.000 Okay, so that's the practical take. 0.78

00:32:52.000 The non-practical take is that Trump is a traitor, Trump is a Russian agent, all of this is because Trump is some sort of Manchurian candidate, and yet that's exactly what Democrats are suggesting, which is what Putin wants. 0.86

00:33:01.000 What Putin wants is to drive chaos in the United States. 0.93

00:33:04.000 His actual goal is to make us all hate each other, and suspicious of each other, and think that we are all foreign agents of an evil power.

00:33:11.000 That is exactly what Vladimir Putin wants, and the Democrats are eager to jump to that because they think they're going to make electoral gain off the back of that, and they may be right.

00:33:18.000 Hey, there was a generic ballot, a generic congressional ballot out yesterday.

00:33:21.000 It shows Democrats are back up to an eight point lead, which is wave territory for Republicans.

00:33:24.000 So Democrats think that the more overboard they go on this stuff, the better it is for them electorally.

00:33:29.000 It may very well be, but it ain't good for the country.

00:33:31.000 Here was Chuck Schumer yesterday saying millions of people are going to wonder if Putin has dirt on Trump after Trump's behavior.

00:33:37.000 Millions of Americans will continue to wonder if the only possible explanation for this dangerous behavior is the possibility that President Putin holds damaging information over President Trump.

00:33:52.000 Why would you give credence to that?

00:33:53.000 There's not a lot of credence to that.

00:33:54.000 Why wouldn't you just say the obvious? 0.89

00:33:56.000 Again, the obvious thing is that it's the unifying feature of all of the silly things he's done.

00:34:01.000 Whether it is firing Comey precipitously, or whether it is attempting to defend Mike Flynn, or whether it's attempting to defend Paul Manafort, or whether it was what he did with Putin yesterday, or whether it's him talking about firing Rod Rosenstein.

00:34:12.000 There's one unifying thread.

00:34:13.000 Trump's ego.

00:34:14.000 That's the unifying thread.

00:34:15.000 Now the left is seeing a unifying thread in Trump colluded with Russia.

00:34:18.000 That is a lot more far-fetched than Trump is an egomaniac, which he has been for legitimately his entire life.

00:34:23.000 This is a guy who used to call the New York Post to report on them his amorous adventures with various starlets, and he would make things up and claim that his name was John Miller and he was his own PR agent.

00:34:34.000 That's the guy we're talking about.

00:34:35.000 Is it more likely that that guy is an egotist who will say stuff to protect his ego, or is it more likely that that guy is a secret Russian agent moving around the back channels of the Kremlin in order to do Vladimir Putin's dirty bidding?

00:34:47.000 Which one is more likely?

00:34:48.000 Which one is more likely?

00:34:49.000 Okay, in any case, the left decides that it's worthy of going nuts, so John Brennan,

00:34:53.000 Okay, so.

00:35:16.000 Every time you say treasonous, there's such a thing as, you know, treasonous behavior.

00:35:21.000 I get that.

00:35:22.000 And I get that there is such a thing as using the word treason colloquially.

00:35:26.000 You don't actually mean that Trump should receive the death penalty.

00:35:29.000 But the overwhelming use of the word treason yesterday on the part of the left suggests that there are some people who really believe that not only should Trump be removed from office, but that he has committed acts of treason.

00:35:37.000 Coming from the same people who cheered when Barack Obama sent blank pallets of cash to terrorists in Iran, I find all of this more than slightly irritating.

00:35:46.000 But this was the line last night.

00:35:48.000 Stephen Colbert did the same thing.

00:35:49.000 He said that this was, this was treason.

00:35:51.000 This is great comedy here from Stephen Colbert, one of our, one of our great American comedians.

00:35:56.000 We got, uh, what did he say?

00:35:57.000 He said egotism.

00:35:58.000 Hold on.

00:35:58.000 Egotism plus naivete.

00:36:02.000 All right.

00:36:03.000 Times false equivalence equals... Yeah, it's treason.

00:36:11.000 All right.

00:36:12.000 Yeah, it's treason.

00:36:13.000 So that's treason.

00:36:14.000 Again, the double standard when it comes to treason is pretty stunning right here.

00:36:18.000 And if people were just using this colloquially, I think that'd be one thing.

00:36:21.000 I think it's also rich coming from people who believe that it was totally fine when Barack Obama was pledging flexibility to the Russian government in 2012.

00:36:27.000 I don't buy it.

00:36:29.000 Okay, that was not the worst of it.

00:36:32.000 It got even worse.

00:36:33.000 Okay, so the worst of it actually came courtesy of some woman named Jill Winebanks.

00:36:39.000 I'd never heard of her.

00:36:40.000 But Jill Winebanks, apparently a former Watergate prosecutor, and she's on with Ali Velshi over at MSNBC.

00:36:47.000 So she is talking about how terrible this was, and she runs out of ways to call this terrible.

00:36:52.000 Here's what she has to say.

00:36:53.000 And I would say that his performance today will live in infamy as much as the Pearl Harbor attack or Kristallnacht.

00:37:01.000 And it's really a serious issue that we need to deal with.

00:37:06.000 The Pearl Harbor attack, 2,400 Americans dead, Kristallnacht, the murder of 90-plus Jews, and the beginning of the run-up to the Holocaust. 0.98

00:37:14.000 Yeah, it was exactly like that when the President of the United States said some dumb crap about the intelligence agencies. 0.97

00:37:19.000 Exactly, exactly the same thing. 0.98

00:37:20.000 It didn't stop there, okay?

00:37:22.000 It just, it got worse and worse over the course of the day, and it's gotten worse even today.

00:37:27.000 The left's desire to go above and beyond on this stuff is really astonishing.

00:37:31.000 So let's take, for example, CNN's Jim Acosta.

00:37:33.000 So Jim Acosta,

00:37:35.000 The left has this bizarre tendency to attribute gay feelings to people that it doesn't like. 0.94

00:37:42.000 So the same left that will say, not that there's anything wrong with that, that homosexuality is something worthwhile and wonderful, and if you ever make a gay joke, then this means you are a dramatic homophobe, 0.96

00:37:51.000 We'll make gay jokes about Barack. 0.98

00:37:52.000 We'll make gay jokes about Donald Trump on a regular basis. 0.99

00:37:55.000 So here's Jim Acosta, the most obnoxious reporter over at CNN. 0.97

00:37:59.000 Jim Acosta loves that dude, so Jim Acosta, find you somebody who loves you like Jim Acosta loves Jim Acosta.

00:38:03.000 Here's Jim Acosta on CNN yesterday explaining that it looked like a marriage, but it was unclear who was the wife between Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin.

00:38:11.000 I don't know which side is the bride and which side is the groom, Anderson, but it sort of feels like we're at a wedding here.

00:38:16.000 And on the other side of the room are friends from the Russian Federation.

00:38:20.000 It feels like we are at a wedding between Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin.

00:38:24.000 This is actually before the press briefing, right?

00:38:26.000 That was actually before the press briefing.

00:38:27.000 So he was already foreseeing that there was going to be some sort of a consummation of the wedding night on stage.

00:38:33.000 Very weird to see reporters do this sort of stuff.

00:38:37.000 Then, of course, there is the New York Daily News, which, of course, hates President Trump.

00:38:41.000 They put out a cover, and the cover looked something like this.

00:38:43.000 It said, And then it shows a picture of Donald Trump shooting Uncle Sam in the head while holding hands with Vladimir Putin.

00:38:52.000 Is this sort of stuff going to raise the temperature such that there'll be a serious assassination attempt on Trump?

00:38:57.000 I gotta say, I don't think that would surprise me at this point.

00:39:00.000 When you spend all your days thinking that Donald Trump is essentially Thanos, and that he is gathering infinity stones, and he's gonna snap his fingers, and everyone's going to die, or at least half the people are going to die,

00:39:10.000 Would it surprise me if somebody takes a pot shot at Trump and that the temperature has been raised because of this?

00:39:16.000 That would not surprise me in any real way.

00:39:18.000 Now, would that be the fault of the New York Daily News?

00:39:20.000 No.

00:39:21.000 But what they're doing here is immoral.

00:39:22.000 It's immoral to suggest that Trump is shooting Uncle Sam in the head by doing this.

00:39:26.000 Is what he did wrong?

00:39:27.000 Yes, it's wrong.

00:39:27.000 I spent the first half hour of the show today talking about just how wrong this is.

00:39:31.000 But to suggest that Trump is murdering America by attacking the intelligence agencies, I find a little bit much.

00:39:38.000 And then, of course, there's Trevor Noah over on Comedy Central, officially named the second unfunniest person in the world.

00:39:43.000 Samantha Bee, of course, is the least funny person on planet Earth. 1.00

00:39:46.000 Here is Trevor Noah going after President Trump using the vulgar language to which he has become accustomed.

00:39:51.000 So now, the formerly purposeless meeting between Trump and Putin had a meaning, right?

00:39:56.000 It was time for Trump to put his foot down. 0.99

00:39:58.000 And he did, right on America's dick. 0.99

00:40:02.000 Just classiness all the way through. 1.00

00:40:04.000 And super funny because he said the word dick, right? 0.90

00:40:06.000 When you say that word, then that means that you are really, really funny, is what I've come to learn from our comedic masters over at Comedy Central. 0.62

00:40:13.000 Okay, with all of this said, what's the final outcome?

00:40:16.000 Here's the final outcome.

00:40:17.000 In two weeks, nobody remembers any of this.

00:40:18.000 Really, that's the final outcome.

00:40:20.000 This looks like a black splat on Trump's resume, and nothing materializes barring some sort of precipitous action by Putin that Trump doesn't counter.

00:40:26.000 That is the actual outcome of this.

00:40:28.000 How do I know this?

00:40:29.000 Because after Charlottesville, everybody forgot about it in three weeks.

00:40:32.000 And it's only been one week since we selected a Supreme Court justice and nobody remembers the dude's name.

00:40:36.000 Because the news cycle is just this fast.

00:40:38.000 So people suggesting this is the end of the world, we're never going to recover.

00:40:41.000 No, we'll recover and we'll go on.

00:40:43.000 And if anything, there's a good case to be made that Trump's behavior actually increased the perception of the intelligence agencies around the country, except with regard to people who think that every word that comes out of Trump's mouth is invariably true and wonderful, and that he's playing 17-degree underwater, upside-down, hungry, hungry hippos.

00:40:58.000 But I think the likelihood is that most people do what you are doing today, what most people are doing today.

00:41:03.000 They look at Trump saying stuff and they say, look at that dude.

00:41:06.000 Dude says a lot of stuff.

00:41:08.000 Dude says a lot of stuff.

00:41:09.000 And because he says a lot of stuff, I'm not going to take any particular thing that he says on an individual level incredibly seriously.

00:41:15.000 And I don't think that's inappropriate.

00:41:16.000 I think discounting what President Trump says is something that's been done domestically.

00:41:20.000 I think it's being done on foreign policy.

00:41:21.000 It was done with regard to NATO just last week.

00:41:23.000 President Trump ripped into NATO, and there was a suggestion that Trump was going to pull out of NATO.

00:41:27.000 And you know what the NATO folks said?

00:41:28.000 They said, yeah, we had a great meeting.

00:41:30.000 NATO's doing great.

00:41:31.000 Because they just ignored him.

00:41:32.000 And I think when it comes to what Vladimir Putin said about the intelligence agencies and Trump siding with him, is it a bad moment for Trump?

00:41:38.000 Yes.

00:41:38.000 Does it demonstrate a lack of character in President Trump?

00:41:40.000 Yes.

00:41:41.000 Does it have any long-lasting ramifications?

00:41:42.000 Does it undermine the entire presidency?

00:41:44.000 Does it mean that Trump can't get good things done anymore?

00:41:47.000 No, it doesn't mean any of those things.

00:41:48.000 But I think it would be worthwhile for Republicans to note when President Trump does bad things because it is intellectually dishonest not to do so.

00:41:54.000 And also, don't push President Trump to double down on the bad.

00:41:57.000 Even Newt Gingrich and Laura Ingraham were on Trump over this thing.

00:42:00.000 It's not about people being anti-Trump, being all over Trump for what he said. 0.99

00:42:03.000 It's about anybody with any sense of objectivity realizing that if Barack Obama had said the same thing, we would have been all over his ass. 0.99

00:42:09.000 OK, and when Trump says that kind of stuff, then he deserves the flack he gets. 0.97

00:42:12.000 OK, time for some things I like and then some things I hate, and then we'll deconstruct the culture in a pretty serious way.

00:42:17.000 So let's start with things I like.

00:42:19.000 So I just read a great compendium of sports pieces by the columnist Gay Talese.

00:42:24.000 The book is called The Silent Season of a Hero.

00:42:27.000 All right.

00:42:45.000 He writes really well.

00:42:46.000 Not only does he write really well, he was described by Tom Wolfe as one of the founders of sort of the new journalism.

00:42:51.000 The new journalism was this idea of narrative journalism, this long form journalism where it wasn't just about the who, what, where, when, why.

00:42:56.000 Instead, it was also about drawing characters and writing nonfiction in a way where you could actually feel the characters.

00:43:03.000 The book is really fun and worth reading.

00:43:05.000 Again, The Silent Season of a Hero, a sports writing of Gaytolis, who's actually quite a good columnist.

00:43:09.000 Interesting guy, Gaytolis.

00:43:10.000 He actually came out and he suggested that he understood why Trump won.

00:43:13.000 He's a real New Yorker, Gaytolis, and so I think he sees Trump as sort of a 1960s Rat Pack figure, which, come to think of it, is not a terrible description of the president for all the good and all the ill.

00:43:21.000 Okay, time for a couple of things that I hate.

00:43:27.000 Alrighty, so, today we begin, again, with Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.

00:43:33.000 Got her name right this time.

00:43:34.000 So Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, she said, we played her yesterday on Firing Line with Margaret Hoover, talking specifically about how she knew nothing about the Middle Eastern conflict.

00:43:42.000 It turns out she knows nothing about economics either.

00:43:44.000 Here she is explaining that capitalism is something that didn't exist in the past and someday won't exist again.

00:43:49.000 And I will explain why she is both wrong and possibly right.

00:43:53.000 Unemployment is low because people are working 60, 70, 80 hours a week and can barely feed their kids.

00:44:00.000 And so I do think that right now, when we have this no-holds-barred, Wild West hyper-capitalism, what that means is profit at any cost.

00:44:13.000 Capitalism has not always existed in the world and it will not always exist in the world. 1.00

00:44:18.000 Okay, she says the beginning of that is so unbelievably stupid it is almost impossible to describe how stupid it is. 1.00

00:44:24.000 She actually said in this interview that unemployment is low because people are holding two jobs. 1.00

00:44:29.000 That would make unemployment high. 1.00

00:44:31.000 You idiot. 1.00

00:44:32.000 Because if one person holds two jobs, one person is out of work. 1.00

00:44:34.000 Presumably.

00:44:35.000 So, yes, that makes no sense at all.

00:44:37.000 Thank you for that.

00:44:38.000 Also, I like how she strings together all of these buzzwords from Occupy.

00:44:41.000 It's hyper-capitalist.

00:44:42.000 Tell me, Alexandria.

00:44:46.000 Tell me, what is the difference between capitalist and hyper-capitalist?

00:44:50.000 I mean, is it like with, like, the Millennium Falcon?

00:44:52.000 There's, like, drive, and then there's hyperdrive?

00:44:53.000 Like, you sit there with Chewy, and you pull the lever, and boom!

00:44:55.000 Zoom!

00:44:56.000 You're gone, and now you're in hypercapitalism?

00:44:57.000 What the hell is she even talking about?

00:44:59.000 The highest tax rate in the country is, like, over 40%.

00:45:02.000 People who are making a lot of money in this country are paying 45% of their income to the government.

00:45:07.000 But we have a hypercapitalist system here in the United States that is heavily regulated in virtually every aspect of the system.

00:45:12.000 It's hypercapitalist. 1.00

00:45:13.000 So that's idiotic. 0.99

00:45:14.000 The part she says about capitalism not always existing and it won't exist in the future, that part is true. 0.98

00:45:18.000 Okay, it is true that capitalism has not always existed.

00:45:21.000 That's why most of the world was impoverished for most of human history.

00:45:24.000 Then we got capitalism.

00:45:25.000 And guess what?

00:45:26.000 Capitalism is freaking amazing.

00:45:28.000 Capitalism raised half the world from abject poverty since 1980.

00:45:30.000 The number of people on planet Earth living in abject poverty since 1980 has been sliced in half.

00:45:37.000 The reason that Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez was able to make a living as a barkeep with a degree in economics from Boston University, which obviously is worth nothing, is because she's living in a capitalist society and she has to wear nice dresses and have her special lipstick that everybody loves. 1.00

00:45:53.000 Capitalism is the greatest force for human prosperity ever and it is not closed.

00:45:57.000 Jonah Goldberg basically says that capitalism is artificial because it says you have to respect other people's property rights and that centralized planning is not the way to do things even though there are a bunch of people who believe they're so wise they can run the entire economy from top down.

00:46:10.000 It's unnatural for capitalism to thrive.

00:46:12.000 He's correct.

00:46:13.000 It is unnatural for capitalism to thrive.

00:46:14.000 When capitalism dies, what you're going to see is not going to be a return to wonder in the economy because there was no wonder in the economy before capitalism.

00:46:22.000 Capitalism is free markets.

00:46:23.000 They are the greatest, most moral economic system ever devised by man, specifically because they were not devised by man.

00:46:29.000 They were devised by the idea that you were supposed to leave each other alone, which I thought was a good thing.

00:46:33.000 Okay, time to deconstruct the culture.

00:46:35.000 So each week, when we can, we try to go through a piece of culture that you or your kids are listening to, and we try to deconstruct what is happening in the culture because, as my good friend Andrew Breitbart used to say, culture is upstream of politics. 0.93

00:46:46.000 Many more people will watch this garbage Ariana Grande video. 1.00

00:46:49.000 Grande? 1.00

00:46:50.000 Grande?

00:46:51.000 Video?

00:46:51.000 God is a woman.

00:46:53.000 And first, before we even play the video, I want to show you how immature Ariana Grande is as a person. 1.00

00:46:58.000 Not just because she actually went to a donut shop in Lake Elsinore, California a couple years ago, licked one of the donuts behind the display case and put it back, which is just gross, but because she's a puerile child. 0.93

00:47:09.000 Okay, she's not a child, she's a woman. 1.00

00:47:11.000 She's a woman, but she acts like a child. 0.99

00:47:13.000 So here's what she tweeted out.

00:47:14.000 Somebody tweeted at her, God is a woman tonight. 1.00

00:47:16.000 So her new song is called God is a Woman. 1.00

00:47:18.000 We'll analyze just how stupid this nonsense is in a second. 1.00

00:47:20.000 It says, God is a woman tonight. 1.00

00:47:22.000 What's your favorite word?

00:47:23.000 And she tweets back, P-U-S-S-Y. 0.99

00:47:25.000 She tweets back the curse word for the vulgarity that President Trump famously used with regard to female genitalia. 1.00

00:47:34.000 If that's your favorite word, I would suggest that you are an 11-year-old. 0.92

00:47:37.000 Like really, if your favorite word is a curse word for a genital, then you are a small child who's obsessed and in an arrested stage of development. 0.83

00:47:47.000 It's like how my two-year-old's favorite word right now is poop, because he's two. 0.97

00:47:51.000 Okay, Ariana Grande's favorite word, if your favorite word describes your genitals, and it's not just genitals, it's your genitals, then I would suggest that you need some meaning in your life. 0.97

00:48:01.000 And that's not all she tweeted. 0.96

00:48:01.000 She then tweeted, 0.96

00:48:03.000 P-word is, it's a privilege. 1.00

00:48:06.000 I-S-S-A.

00:48:07.000 P-word is a privilege, not is a.

00:48:10.000 P-word, ISSA Privilege.

00:48:11.000 So, somebody notified Daryl Issa, whose name is spelled exactly the same way, the House Chairman on Government Oversight, to let him know, the Congressman from California, because apparently, P-word, ISSA Privilege, which is very exciting.

00:48:25.000 Okay, so, she did all of this in advance of a new song that she has put out called God is a Woman.

00:48:31.000 Now, God isn't a woman. 1.00

00:48:32.000 God isn't a man.

00:48:33.000 God isn't a person.

00:48:35.000 God is an eternal being who exists beyond space and time.

00:48:38.000 This has been true for every deist who has ever lived.

00:48:41.000 Anyone who believes in a one God, any theist, believes that God is not a man, God is not a woman, God is an eternal being who exists beyond space and time and who designed the universe in which we live and is the force holding up that universe.

00:48:55.000 That is the basic idea of God.

00:48:57.000 But because we are now pagan, and we have entered a pagan period in which everything can be devolved down to your genitals and how much pleasure they give you, God is apparently a woman. 0.72

00:49:04.000 So here is Ariana Grande, Grande, Grande-goo, singing, God is a woman. 0.92

00:49:10.000 And she is, of course, hijacking all the great elements of Western civilization in order to do this.

00:49:14.000 So you'll see at the very end that there is a picture from the Sistine Chapel in which she has substituted herself for God reaching out to Adam in the Sistine Chapel.

00:49:24.000 Because this is what we do now.

00:49:25.000 What we do is we take great works of art, we take the history of Western civilization, and then we destroy it on the shoals of our own hedonism. 0.99

00:49:31.000 So we have Beyoncé and Jay-Z talking about ape crap. 0.98

00:49:35.000 In the Louvre, in front of some of the great sculptures ever created. 1.00

00:49:38.000 And then we have Ariana Grande hijacking the Sistine Chapel to talk about her vagina, which is just lovely. 1.00

00:49:47.000 I mean, it really spells, I think, it's a good descriptor of where we've gone with our civilization. 0.94

00:49:51.000 Perhaps when she realizes this doesn't actually generate any sort of meaning in your life, that your genitals don't give you meaning, and that anybody who lives by their genitals will also likely die by their genitals from an STD, then perhaps we'll get a society that cares about meaning again.

00:50:04.000 But here is Ariana Grande making the case for why God is a woman, which does, if, by the way, if God is a woman, why osteoporosis? 0.99

00:50:11.000 Yeah, just, just wondering.

00:50:12.000 So here, here is, here's Ariana Grande warbling God is a woman. 1.00

00:50:19.000 We're good to go.

00:50:44.000 Okay, so for those who can't see, she's naked in paint and then here she is on a bed with like 73 other people because this is what God is, right? 1.00

00:50:52.000 God is a woman having sex with lots of people. 1.00

00:50:55.000 Now, my favorite part of this is that Ariana Grande says sex is amazing because sex gives life. 1.00

00:51:01.000 Right, but she's pro-abortion, so I'm wondering how that works. 0.98

00:51:04.000 And then there's, in this video, a bunch of fat white guys who are yelling at her. 0.96

00:51:08.000 So I guess that she will eventually use this video of me talking about her to suggest that I don't appreciate that God is a woman. 1.00

00:51:14.000 You're right, I don't appreciate God as a woman because that's the stupidest garbage I've ever heard in my life. 1.00

00:51:17.000 God isn't a woman, God isn't a man, and God certainly is not Ariana Grande, an idiotic 22-year-old who can't warble more than an octave. 1.00

00:51:23.000 That's just ridiculous. 1.00

00:51:25.000 And boiling down, by the way, spirituality and decency and life-giving and the universe to sex is just... 1.00

00:51:35.000 It's such a teenage, stupid point of view. 1.00

00:51:38.000 If your life revolves around sex, you have the emptiest life. 1.00

00:51:41.000 You have an empty life. 0.91

00:51:42.000 Sex is wonderful in the right context. 1.00

00:51:43.000 Sex is a glorious thing in the right context, but boiling down all of human enjoyment and meaning in the world to sex makes you an animal. 0.98

00:51:51.000 It's not that God is a woman. 0.98

00:51:52.000 It's that people are animals, okay?

00:51:54.000 In her world, this is a better view of what God is in her world, right?

00:51:56.000 These little chipmunks, these ferrets.

00:51:59.000 What is this here?

00:52:00.000 Groundhogs popping out and making weird faces at the camera. 0.63

00:52:03.000 Very exciting stuff here from Ariana Grande.

00:52:06.000 What I love is that this thing's already been viewed tens of millions of times, of course, because the reality is nobody's actually going to imbibe the message.

00:52:13.000 The message is in her clothing.

00:52:15.000 The message is in the fact that she's there in body paint. 0.97

00:52:18.000 I'm old enough to remember when people used to worship at the altar people like Ella Fitzgerald.

00:52:24.000 This is the very closing image, is her in the Sistine Chapel, reaching out, surrounded by a bunch of women.

00:52:30.000 Of course, it has to be women of color so that all of the Rolling Stone folks can say that this is a recreation of great art, but in a more diverse way. 0.93

00:52:37.000 Very important to do that.

00:52:41.000 Really, it's upsetting that so many young people watch this sort of stuff and think there is some sort of empowerment or meaning in this. 1.00

00:52:46.000 If you find empowerment in this, you're a fool. 0.99

00:52:48.000 This is the least empowering thing. 1.00

00:52:50.000 If you are empowered because you have genitals, guess what? 0.99

00:52:52.000 Dogs have genitals too. 1.00

00:52:54.000 Virtually every living creature has genitals. 1.00

00:52:56.000 It's not empowering to have genitals. 0.88

00:52:57.000 It's empowering to use the stuff between your ears.

00:53:00.000 It's empowering to use your reason. 0.95

00:53:01.000 It's empowering to live a life that has actual meaning beyond sticking your genitals in particular places. 0.99

00:53:08.000 And if God is your genitals, then not only does God not exist, you don't exist as a human being. 1.00

00:53:13.000 You're just an animal rutting around in the dirt. 1.00

00:53:16.000 Okay, so.

00:53:18.000 I'm sure she'll use that for her next music video, or if not, then oh well.

00:53:22.000 Okay, we'll be back here tomorrow with all the latest.

00:53:23.000 I'm Ben Shapiro.

00:53:24.000 This is The Ben Shapiro Show.

00:53:29.000 The Ben Shapiro Show is produced by Senya Villareal, executive producer Jeremy Boring, senior producer Jonathan Hay.

00:53:35.000 Our supervising producer is Mathis Glover, and our technical producer is Austin Stevens.

00:53:39.000 Edited by Alex Zingaro.

00:53:41.000 Audio is mixed by Mike Karamina.

00:53:42.000 Hair and makeup is by Jesua Alvera.

00:53:44.000 The Ben Shapiro Show is a Daily Wire Ford Publishing production.

00:53:47.000 Copyright Ford Publishing 2018.

The Ben Shapiro Show - July 17, 2018

The Russian Connection | Ep. 582

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