The New York Times says that the testimony from William T. J. Taylor was a bombshell . But is it? Or was there nothing new to be learned from it? And why is the media so focused on the optics and not the substance of the testimony? Ben Shapiro takes a look at the media coverage of the hearings, and asks whether there was any bombshell testimony at all. The Ben Shapiro Show is sponsored by ExpressVPN. To find a list of our sponsors and show-related promo codes, go to gimlet.fm/sponsorships and use promo code: CRIMINALS at checkout to get 10% off your first month with discount code CRIMIALS. The show is also available on most major podcast directories, including Audible, iTunes, and Podcoin. Thanks for listening and share the podcast with your fellow podcasting friends! Ben Shapiro is a writer, comedian, and podcaster. His latest novel Other Words For Smoke is out now, which is out in paperback! If you haven t yet, you can get a copy of the book, "The Devil Next Door" for free on Amazon Prime, wherever you get your hard drive, for only $99.99, and includes an ad-free version of the podcast is available on Audible and Vimeo for free. . The book is available in Kindle and Audible for only 99 places nationwide. You can get 20% off for a limited edition edition edition of The Devilproof paperback edition of the novelist edition, The Devil's Guide to the White House Journalist, out now. by clicking here. You won't have to pay postage, they won't get a discount anywhere else, but you'll get a free shipping deal, they'll get the book for that too get it for free, too get a $99, but they'll also get the ad-only deal, and it'll be shipping it on the best of course, and they'll have it on Prime Video, too, and shipping it's also get all that'll get you an ad free, free shipping, and a limited promo code, too will you get it'll get it's best of all, free of course you'll be getting all that, plus a $5 stars and a lifetime of VIP access, and all other places get $5, plus shipping and shipping is free, plus all other options, plus they'll receive all kinds of other goodies, too!
00:00:44.000They say their goal is to transform what might seem like an abstract debate over foreign policy into high crimes and misdemeanors in the public mind.
00:00:49.000As Republicans argue, there is no case for impeachment.
00:00:53.000He says, William Taylor was the witness that Democrats had hoped Robert Mueller would be, but was not.
00:00:57.000The image, at least, of a wise, fatherly figure with Kevlar credibility Expressing restrained but unmistakable disapproval of what he found when he turned over the rock.
00:01:10.000House Democrats let off their highly anticipated impeachment hearings on Wednesday.
00:01:14.000with a figure projecting probity, a combat veteran turned career diplomat who narrated with a deep baritone voice reminiscent of Walter Cronkite's what he saw as the corruption of American foreign policy to advance President Trump's personal political interests.
00:01:27.000It was not clear that minds were changed.
00:01:31.000Is whether any minds were changed or whether the testimony itself changed anything or offered anything that was bombshell anew as opposed to, he appeared to be a gray fox, this William Taylor fellow.
00:01:56.000Vindman, hero of the Republic, and now it's William Taylor, hero of the Republic.
00:01:59.000Now, listen, you look at his public service, the guy is, in fact, a hero of the Republic for his public service.
00:02:05.000But that does not mean that he testified as to anything impeachable yesterday.
00:02:09.000And yet the media are making this out to be really about the optics.
00:02:11.000And that, in the end, really is sort of, it betrays the agenda.
00:02:15.000The agenda here is that this is all about the optics and not about anything new.
00:02:19.000Nothing new has actually happened here.
00:02:20.000That's the dirty little secret, because we're going to go through the testimony yesterday, and nothing new, no new ground was broken.
00:02:26.000Instead, it was all the same ground that we've heard before, sort of trod over repeatedly.
00:02:31.000And so in terms of substance, I don't think the American people are going to hear anything new that changes their mind.
00:02:36.000But in terms of optics, the Democrats are hoping that if they bring out a bunch of gravely voiced, very somber speakers who have long histories in American foreign policy, then this will somehow turn the American public against Trump.
00:02:48.000Well, if people cared about that, Trump wouldn't be president.
00:02:51.000Donald Trump was not elected because people had a ton of respect for America's institutions.
00:02:55.000He was elected specifically because people did not have a ton of respect in America's institutions, and putting out somebody with Walter Cronkite's voice isn't going to change any of that, just on a purely political level.
00:03:05.000But the New York Times says it was not clear that minds were changed.
00:03:08.000Certainly, they were not inside the room and most likely not elsewhere on Capitol Hill, where Republicans and Democrats were locked into their positions long ago.
00:03:14.000Nor were there any immediate signs that the hearing penetrated the general public.
00:03:18.000While major television networks broke into regular programming to carry it live, there was little sense of a riveted country putting everything aside to watch, a la Watergate.
00:03:25.000Okay, so then what are we talking about?
00:03:28.000This is my favorite line from the New York Times.
00:04:02.000Over the course of five hours of relatively sober testimony, interrupted by fewer partisan histrionics than might've been expected, Mr. Taylor, the top American diplomat in Ukraine, and George Kent, a deputy assistant secretary of state, according to the New York Times, laid out what they saw of the president's efforts to pressure a foreign power to provide damaging information about his Democratic rivals.
00:04:20.000Mr. Taylor was the star witness Democrats have sought.
00:04:51.000A chiseled face and reassuring gray hair after a lifetime of service to his country.
00:04:54.000But where Mr. Mueller seemed unsteady and uncertain last summer, when he testified about his special counsel investigation into Russian interference, Mr. Taylor came across as calm, confident, and in command.
00:05:10.000With a more in sadness than anger tone, he told lawmakers that in decades of public service under administrations of both parties, he had never seen any president warp foreign policy for his own personal advantage, the way Mr. Trump tried to do.
00:05:20.000But, Mr. Taylor was careful to retain an official neutrality on what Congress should do with his testimony, and when lawmakers tried to goad him into taking a more political stance, he smiled serenely and declined to take the bait.
00:05:31.000Okay, so this was the take from the New York Times, and the take from the Washington Post was quite similar.
00:05:36.000The take from the Washington Post says new testimony ties Trump more directly to Ukraine pressure campaign.
00:05:44.000After weeks in which President Trump's top aides have figured as the major players in the Ukraine narrative testimony in the first few hours of the public impeachment hearings Wednesday thrust Trump himself back to center stage.
00:05:54.000Acting Ambassador to Ukraine William Taylor told lawmakers about a previously unknown effort by the president to make sure Ukraine was looking into his political opponents.
00:06:01.000A phone conversation he said Trump had with the top U.S.
00:06:03.000diplomat Asking about the status of the investigations.
00:06:07.000The phone conversations described by Taylor gave Democrats a chance to renew questions about Trump's personal involvement in the effort to push Ukraine to investigate his political opponents while the United States withheld security assistance and a sought-after White House meeting.
00:06:22.000We'll hear about exactly what Taylor had to say on this in just one second.
00:06:26.000Okay, but the media are trying to claim basically that the testimony, even though it didn't change things, it probably should change things.
00:06:33.000Even though it didn't make things any different, even though there wasn't anything new, there was something brand new.
00:09:19.000The Democrats thought they were going to have a big day yesterday and it turned out not to be a big day for them yesterday.
00:09:24.000It started off with Adam Schiff at the very opening saying this this process was meant to be a punishment for criminal activity not a punishment for political activity but a lot of the testimony was based around the opposite idea that a bunch of people who are in the foreign policy establishment didn't like Trump's foreign policy and they were angry at Trump's foreign policy and that's the real reason why they were going after Trump, right?
00:09:43.000The real reason they're going after Trump is because they disagreed with him withholding aid from Ukraine and they couldn't see why he was doing it.
00:09:50.000Now, does that mean that Trump was doing something that was corrupt or does it mean they just disagreed with him about the foreign policy?
00:09:55.000Here is Adam Schiff at the opening suggesting that impeachment was originally meant to be a punishment for criminal activity, which sort of cuts.
00:10:00.000Again, he hasn't proved any criminal activity here.
00:10:02.000Our answer to these questions will affect not only the future of this presidency, but the future of the presidency itself and what kind of conduct or misconduct the American people may come to expect from their commander in chief.
00:10:17.000There are few actions as consequential as the impeachment of a president.
00:10:22.000While the founders did not intend that impeachment be employed for mere differences over policy, they also made impeachment a constitutional process Okay, so again, he's saying this is not a political thing, it's a criminal thing, and yet they have yet to bring forth the elements necessary to prove any sort of criminal abuse of power.
00:10:43.000Schiff, I do love that Schiff is doing this routine where he pretends that he's reserving judgment.
00:10:48.000He simultaneously said that he's reserving judgment and also that Trump's abuse of power is terrible, which means he's not reserving judgment, obviously.
00:10:54.000Here's Adam Schiff suggesting that he is reserving judgment in all of this.
00:10:58.000That's right, he's opening an impeachment inquiry where he's reserving ju- Like, really, if you believe this, I've got a bridge in Brooklyn.
00:11:02.000It's available for just a couple of dollars and I can make this magic happen just for you right now.
00:11:07.000Here's Adam Schiff talking about reserving judgment.
00:11:09.000I'm reserving judgment on the ultimate questions once the testimony is complete about what should follow from this.
00:11:20.000It is certainly the case that The founders were deeply concerned that a president of the United States one day may be elected to office that would put his or her interests above the country, that would sacrifice our national security either to get a political or personal favor or owing to some foreign influence.
00:11:44.000That's the sound of a man holding off on judgment, flanked by a bunch of other people holding off on judgment, namely Democrats who are going to vote for impeachment, right?
00:11:51.000So listen, this thing's already been preset.
00:11:54.000That's why when Devin Nunes, who is the Republican chair of the House Intelligence Committee, is the Republican leader in the House Intelligence Committee, when he says that this is just a low-rent sequel to the Russia hoax, that has some credibility, given the fact that it does feel like a partisan hit by Democrats.
00:12:09.000Now that doesn't mean that there aren't questions to be asked about Trump's behavior, I've said this all along, but does this feel like a partisan exercise?
00:12:14.000You bet your ass it feels like a partisan exercise.
00:12:18.000Ambassador Taylor and Mr. Kent, I'd like to welcome you here.
00:12:21.000I'd like to congratulate you for passing the Democrat Star Chamber auditions held for the last weeks in the basement of the Capitol.
00:12:32.000It seems you agreed, witting or unwittingly, to participate in a drama.
00:12:38.000But the main performance, the Russia hoax, has ended.
00:12:42.000And you've been cast in the low-rent Ukrainian sequel.
00:12:47.000Okay, so that's an overstatement because, again, we don't know exactly what all the evidence is, but there is a widespread perception in the United States, and I think that it's a well-based perception, that this is more of a partisan effort than it is really an effort to curb the misuse of the power of the presidency.
00:13:01.000Okay, so then we get to the actual testimony, and here is the problem for the Democrats.
00:13:05.000The actual testimony didn't really change anything.
00:13:10.000So, the only real bombshell yesterday is that Bill Taylor suggested that he heard somebody from his staff tell him about a conversation that he overheard with President Trump in which Trump was talking about investigations.
00:13:23.000And he didn't hear Trump's side of the conversation, apparently he only heard the person on the other side of the conversation.
00:13:28.000And this is Bill Taylor's account of this magical, magical conversation.
00:13:33.000So Taylor had suggested That there was a previously unknown effort by the president to make sure Ukraine was looking into his political opponents, a phone conversation he said Trump had with a top U.S.
00:13:42.000diplomat asking about the status of the investigations.
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00:16:44.000Okay, so, here is Bill Taylor drawing a very strong conclusion from the fact that he talked to people, to people.
00:16:50.000Here's Taylor saying, well, you know, Trump cares more about investigating Biden than Ukraine.
00:16:55.000Well, he's talked to people, and those people have talked to people, and those people in turn have talked to other people who once talked to somebody who knew Trump.
00:17:01.000So your staff member over here is the president asking about the investigations, meaning Burisma and the Bidens in 2016.
00:17:09.000And Ambassador Sondland told President Trump that the Ukrainians were ready to move forward?
00:17:17.000And I think you said that after the call, when your staff asked Ambassador Sondland what President Trump thought of Ukraine, his response was that President Trump cares more about the investigations of Biden?
00:18:35.000Okay, so again, that is their perception, and that does not really make much of a difference.
00:18:40.000I'm sure the Democrats believe the same thing.
00:18:41.000I'm sure there are some people who, again, it's plausible, who believe that Giuliani's sole task in Ukraine was to dig up dirt on Biden, but that would not really explain why he was so concerned with, for example, the CrowdStrike server, which was an evidence-less conspiracy theory, nor does it really explain why he was concerned about Ukrainian interference in the 2016 election, because that has nothing to do with Biden.
00:19:07.000So George Kent is this undersecretary of state.
00:19:09.000He's the man who you will see if you subscribe to the show, who you will see sitting next to Bill Taylor.
00:19:14.000He doesn't get the same sort of enormous media plaudits that Taylor does, right?
00:19:18.000Because he wears a bowtie, which means that he doesn't have as much gravitas, because bowties don't have as much gravitas as reassuring gray hair, obviously.
00:19:24.000Well, Kent He basically suggested many of the same things that Taylor did, but he made some claims that were also a little bit outlandish.
00:19:35.000I mean, his testimony was a little bit more colorful, actually, which is, I think, why the media is not covering it so much.
00:19:40.000He said a couple of things that cut in favor of President Trump, and he said a couple of things that cut against President Trump.
00:19:45.000The first thing that he said is he was asked about conditions being placed on Ukrainian aid, and he said, yeah, conditions have always been placed on Ukrainian aid.
00:19:53.000Which again is true and cuts in favor of the idea that the president has plenary power over placing conditions on Ukrainian aid so long as it is not a specific design to go after a domestic political opponent.
00:20:03.000There are and always have been conditionality placed on our sovereign loan guarantees for Ukraine.
00:20:09.000Conditions include anti-corruption reforms as well as meeting larger stability goals and social safety nets.
00:20:15.000The International Monetary Fund does the same thing.
00:20:18.000Congress and the executive branch work together to put conditionality on some security assistance in the Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative.
00:21:13.000I said, well, I don't think Trump has the intent to eat a hamburger.
00:21:15.000Obviously, I am joking when I say that.
00:21:17.000But I think that the problem for Trump is that it is difficult to discern what the man's intent is because he doesn't tend to have large-scale focused intent over long periods of time.
00:21:39.000You say that he doesn't have the capacity to put together plans for years.
00:21:41.000And now you have swiveled, and you are saying that he has this very specific plan to get Joe Biden.
00:21:46.000And not only does he have this plan to get Joe Biden, and he has deployed Giuliani, he has told Giuliani to cover his tracks by asking about crowd strike and Ukrainian interference in the 2016 election.
00:21:55.000And he has also told Sondland that he wants investigations into ancillary matters not involved with Biden just to cover his tracks.
00:22:05.000Okay, well, even George Kent's testimony seems to suggest more that Rudy Giuliani was mucking things up than that Trump had specific intent to get Joe Biden, even though he believes that Trump had specific intent to get Joe Biden.
00:22:14.000Here is George Kent suggesting that it was really Giuliani's interference that was screwing with the president's head.
00:22:20.000Over the course of 2018 and 2019, I became increasingly aware of an effort by Rudy Giuliani and others, including his associates Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman, to run a campaign to smear Ambassador Yovanovitch and other officials at the U.S.
00:22:35.000The chief agitators on the Ukrainian side of this effort were some of those same corrupt former prosecutors I had encountered, particularly Yuri Lutsenko and Viktor Shokin.
00:22:45.000They were now peddling false information in order to extract revenge against those who had exposed their misconduct.
00:22:52.000Okay, so, if that is the case, they were peddling false information, and that that was being peddled to Giuliani, who was peddling it to Trump, Is that specific intent to get Joe Biden?
00:23:00.000Because again, the whole thing comes down to Trump's intent.
00:23:03.000Did he intend to get Joe Biden or was that part of his bigger ball of random thoughts about Ukraine and his general antipathy toward Ukraine?
00:23:11.000Okay, we're gonna get to more of George Kent's testimony and then we'll get to the other issues plus the performance of the various players in this drama.
00:23:17.000We'll get to all of that in just one second.
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00:24:38.000One of them is true and one of them, not so much.
00:24:40.000So here's the one that, the thing that he says that is true.
00:24:43.000He says, there is no factual basis to the CrowdStrike theory.
00:24:45.000Now remember, if you go back to that June 25th phone call between President Trump and Vladimir Zelensky, the president of Ukraine, what you see is that Trump is demanding a few things or requesting a few things.
00:24:53.000Requesting is probably more accurate from the transcript of the, or the memo That sort of summarizes the transcript of the phone call.
00:25:02.000One, he wants an investigation into Ukrainian corruption surrounding the 2016 election.
00:25:07.000Two, he wants an investigation into CrowdStrike because he has this weird theory that Hillary Clinton's server was actually not handed over to the FBI because it had been hacked by the Ukrainians, not by the Russians.
00:25:18.000And that CrowdStrike, the firm that did the actual analysis, is owned by a Ukrainian.
00:25:22.000And therefore, Hillary Clinton's actual server is buried somewhere in a forest outside of Kiev.
00:25:59.000Well, just because Trump believed that bleep loony theory does not mean that he was out to get Joe Biden.
00:26:05.000In fact, it tends to support the idea that he was out to protect America's interests as he wrongly perceived them with regard to CrowdStrike.
00:26:11.000So here's George Kent knocking down the CrowdStrike theory.
00:26:14.000When he talks about this CrowdStrike and the server, what do you understand this to be a reference to?
00:26:21.000To be honest, I had not heard of CrowdStrike until I read this transcript on September 25th.
00:26:26.000Do you now understand what it relates to?
00:26:29.000I understand it has to do with the story that there's a server with missing emails.
00:26:37.000I also understand that one of the owners of CrowdStrike is a Russian-American.
00:26:45.000I'm not aware of any Ukrainian connection to the company.
00:26:48.000Okay, and then Kent says something, so all of that is true.
00:26:51.000And then Kent is asked about Ukrainian interference in the 2016 election.
00:26:54.000Now here he's got a problem, because the fact is that Politico reported, as did other outlets, that there was a nexus between the Ukrainian embassy and the Hillary Clinton campaign, and that a woman named Alexandra Chalupa had been visiting the Ukrainian embassy trying to dig up dirt on Paul Manafort.
00:27:06.000Okay, those are public reports from Politico.
00:27:09.000Here's George Kent saying there's no factual basis to claim that Ukraine interfered in the 2016 election.
00:27:13.000That may be true with regard to Ukraine and hacking into servers, but it is certainly not true with regard to their coordination with the DNC and Hillary Clinton.
00:27:20.000Now are you aware that this is all part of a larger allegation that Ukraine interfered in the 2016 election?
00:27:55.000Taylor and Kent basically saying that they, they think very strongly.
00:27:59.000They have opinions and those opinions are very strong opinions.
00:28:02.000And those very strong opinions mean that Trump did a very, very bad thing.
00:28:06.000The only thing that we got new from either of the testimonies here is Bill Taylor suggesting that he had an aide who overheard Gordon Sondland talking to Trump and talking about investigations and how the Ukrainians were going to accede to Trump's request so he should release the aide, right?
00:28:20.000That puts pressure on Gordon Sondland, but again, I'm wondering why it is that Bill Taylor is testifying as to what his aide heard from Sondland as opposed to, you know, the aide coming forward and testifying as to what he heard from Sondland, because now we are not talking about Even a secondhand report of what Trump said.
00:28:34.000We don't even know what Trump said on the other end of the line.
00:28:37.000All we know is that, apparently, according to Bill Taylor, Trump talked to Sunland, Sunland was at some sort of public restaurant, one of Taylor's aides was at the same restaurant and overheard Sunland's side of the conversation, and then the aide went and talked to Bill Taylor.
00:28:49.000So, Bill Taylor is now three degrees removed from President Trump.
00:28:52.000I am more closely related to Kevin Bacon than that.
00:28:55.000Again, that doesn't mean that the account of the conversation is false.
00:28:58.000It just means that it doesn't say anything about what Trump was even saying on the other side of the conversation.
00:29:02.000And this is a point you're going to hear Republicans hammer home in just one moment.
00:29:06.000Because this really was the Republican counterattack was, you're bringing forth these star witnesses and none of them have ever had a conversation with Trump.
00:29:12.000They're removed from the actual Policymaking apparatus.
00:29:16.000And that, by the way, is their complaint, right?
00:29:17.000Their complaint is, we were removed from the policymaking apparatus.
00:29:20.000We were not part of these conversations.
00:29:23.000Either you're mad that you were not part of the conversations, and therefore you are not privy to the information that people who were part of the conversations are privy to.
00:29:30.000Or, you were part of the conversation, but you don't have enough evidence to get Trump.
00:29:35.000And both of them establish that you are not, in fact, star witnesses, that you are, in fact, just the best the Democrats can offer right now, because the fact is that if you actually wanted to break down what was going on in Trump's mind, you need to talk to one of three or four people.
00:29:47.000Rudy Giuliani, Gordon Sondland, who will be called, you need to talk to Mick Mulvaney, maybe John Bolton.
00:29:55.000I'm not aware that anybody else was privy to the mind of President Trump.
00:29:58.000And yet Democrats and the media are trotting up Bill Taylor, who, again, has never spoken to Trump, and George Kent, who has never spoken to Trump.
00:30:05.000You're going to hear Republicans hammer home this point, and it is a very telling point.
00:30:08.000We're going to get to that in just one second.
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00:32:37.000All righty, so here's the problem, right?
00:32:45.000All of these witnesses, as I say, Taylor, Kent, these are people who are not first-hand witnesses to events that actually matter.
00:32:51.000They are second-hand witnesses to all of the actual information that is flowing.
00:32:55.000They are third-hand, fourth-hand witnesses in some cases.
00:32:58.000And this is how you end up with the bizarre spectacle of one of the Democrats on the House Intelligence Committee.
00:33:04.000His name is Quigley, suggesting that hearsay can be better evidence than direct evidence, which is just no, no, that's incorrect, sir.
00:33:14.000I think the American public needs to be reminded that countless people have been convicted on hearsay because the courts have routinely allowed and created, needed, No, that's Mike Quigley from Illinois being a horrible lawyer, apparently.
00:33:42.000Hearsay is generally not better than direct evidence.
00:33:44.000And when he talks about the exceptions to hearsay, exceptions to the hearsay rule generally include things like party admissions and statements against interest, but it actually has to include, you know, like the party themselves, not like a third party saying something or a dying declaration, which again comes directly from the party or past recollection record, right?
00:34:17.000So Republicans are going to hammer down on all of this at least Stefanik.
00:34:24.000Well, actually, let's start with Mike Turner.
00:34:25.000Representative Mike Turner from, I believe, Ohio.
00:34:28.000He says, listen, you keep talking about Trump's thought processes.
00:34:32.000You've never actually met the president or had contact with the president, have you?
00:34:35.000Ambassador Taylor, is that you testified in your prior testimony that you have not had any contact with the president of the United States, is that correct?
00:34:48.000So, not only no conversations with the President of the United States about Ukraine, you've not had any contact with the President of the United States, correct?
00:34:56.000So, you both know that this impeachment inquiry is about the President of the United States, don't you?
00:35:01.000I mean, the man that neither one of you have had any contact with, you're the first up witnesses.
00:35:07.000I just find that a little amazing that the first up would be two people who've never had any contact with the President himself.
00:35:15.000Yes, this would be the operative point, right?
00:35:17.000And this is the reason why I've been saying all along that if the Democrats actually wish to get Trump, they need to bring in people who spoke directly to Trump or Trump himself, right?
00:36:19.000I mean, you can even see even Bill Taylor looks a little bit like flustered by this because, of course, it's true.
00:36:24.000I mean, listen, I know that his gray hair is reassuring, but it is also true that the guy has no actual inside information.
00:36:30.000He's not privy to the thought process that would make this bribery as opposed to just a normal exercise of foreign policy power in a way that the foreign policy establishment doesn't like.
00:36:40.000Or even if it's an abnormal exercise of foreign policy power, that doesn't make it illegitimate as an impeachable form of foreign policy power exercise.
00:36:49.000Even if you think that it's bad, that doesn't make it impeachable.
00:36:52.000I tend to think that this is bad policy based on bad information, funneled by Rudy Giuliani.
00:37:12.000Ambassador Taylor recalls that Mr. Morrison told Ambassador Taylor that I told Mr. Morrison that I conveyed this message to Mr. Yarmouk on September 1st, 2019 in connection with Vice President Pence's visit to Warsaw and a meeting with President Zelensky.
00:37:24.000We got six people having four conversations in one sentence, and you just told me this is where you got your clear understanding.
00:37:32.000Again, I think this is what the American people are going to take away.
00:37:35.000Jordan doing an excellent job of pointing this out, or as Democrats would claim, obfuscating the issue.
00:37:40.000But I think that that's actually a fair point, which is that these people are in a chain of communication that isn't the actual chain of communication that matters, and they acknowledge as such.
00:37:49.000And Kent basically acknowledged they were outside the actual chain, the unofficial chain of information upon which Trump was making his decisions.
00:38:00.000Now, where Republicans are on a little bit weaker ground is when they try to argue that if the Democrats proved their case, it still would not be impeachable.
00:38:06.000So you have Elise Stefanik, who is an excellent young Congresswoman from New York, and she says, you know, there are a couple of key facts Democrats are ignoring here, and those key facts make it so that this is utterly unimpeachable conduct.
00:38:16.000I think this is an overstatement by Elise Stefanik.
00:38:18.000For the millions of Americans viewing today, the two most important facts are the following.
00:38:51.000And trying to establish those motives through the testimony of somebody who once heard of Trump, who once ate at the same restaurant of Trump, is not going to do it.
00:38:58.000And then you have the Republican stronger defense.
00:39:00.000This is the one Trump wants them to push, which is, he never did anything wrong.
00:39:03.000And that one, I think, is a lot harder to push.
00:39:06.000In this impeachment hearing today, where we impeach presidents for treason or bribery or other high crimes, where is the impeachable offense in that call?
00:39:11.000We're going to need to hear the impeachable offense here.
00:39:12.000In this impeachment hearing today where we impeach presidents for treason or bribery or other high crimes, where is the impeachable offense in that call?
00:39:21.000Are either of you here today to assert there was an impeachable offense in that call?
00:39:29.000Okay, but it's not just in that call, right?
00:39:32.000I mean, that is also a bit of a misnomer.
00:39:34.000They're just trying to analyze this fairly.
00:39:36.000Nobody is claiming that the call itself is the impeachable offense.
00:39:39.000They are claiming that the policy linked to the call for several months here was the impeachable claim.
00:39:45.000Again, all that Trump has to do, like any good defense case, he doesn't have to prove that he is, quote-unquote, innocent of any bad activity.
00:39:52.000He just has to show that he didn't do anything criminal.
00:39:55.000And the criminal activity at issue here is bribery, which includes an intent.
00:40:01.000The Democrats will read intent out of the law when it is convenient to them, and they will read intent into the law when it is convenient to them.
00:40:07.000So Hillary Clinton takes classified information, puts it on her own personal homebrew server in her bathroom, And Jim Comey will say, no, no, no, that's not prosecutable because she didn't have intent to expose that information to prying eyes.
00:40:20.000Sure, she had intent to misuse classified information, but she didn't have intent to expose that information to the Russians or to anybody else, to prying eyes.
00:40:27.000And he read an intent element that is not in the law into the law.
00:40:42.000If you actually want to prove intent, you have to prove intent.
00:40:46.000Well, President Trump reacted to all of the hearings yesterday.
00:40:49.000He got a bit personal with Adam Schiff, of course.
00:40:52.000He said that Adam Schiff had to bring in a ringer because he's not capable of doing his own questioning, which, of course, is sort of true.
00:40:57.000Republicans, by the way, also brought in a ringer, so it's not a perfectly fair statement, but here is Trump going after Schiff.
00:41:15.000I see they're using lawyers that are television lawyers.
00:41:18.000They took some guys off television, you know.
00:41:21.000I'm not surprised to see it because Schiff can't do his own questions.
00:41:24.000Okay, there's Trump just taking a shift on Schiff.
00:41:27.000It's pretty solid stuff right there from President Trump, what you would come to expect.
00:41:31.000Now, the only headline that may come out of this is that, remember, the only thing that's new in any of this testimony is Taylor testifying again.
00:41:39.000And one of his aides overheard Gordon Sondland, the ambassador to the EU, talking to Trump about investigations.
00:41:44.000Trump is asked about this and he says he doesn't remember any of the, he doesn't remember any phone call referenced by Taylor here.
00:41:53.000The one thing I've seen that Sondland said was that he did speak to me for a brief moment and I said, no quid pro quo under any circumstances.
00:42:15.000The only thing, and I guess Sondland has stayed with his testimony, that there was no quid pro quo.
00:42:21.000Okay, so Trump is saying the only conversation I had with Sondland is one in which I explicitly told him that there was not a quid pro quo.
00:42:27.000Sondland of course says he believes that there was in fact a quid pro quo.
00:42:31.000This could get Trump in trouble if Sondland were to get up and say, no, no, no, I actually There was a phone call, and Taylor was right, and we did talk about it in the investigation.
00:42:39.000Presumably, Trump could just say, I didn't remember that conversation.
00:42:41.000Trump could also theoretically say, it was the same conversation as the one where I said no quid pro quo, because you didn't hear my side of the conversation.
00:42:47.000But that is the only new news from this entire day, is that Taylor claimed there was another call, Trump says he doesn't remember another call.
00:42:54.000So we'll find out the truth about that because someone's going to testify.
00:42:56.000Okay, so is any of this devastating or bombshell?
00:42:59.000Is anything that we've said so far a devastating bombshell tossed into the middle of impeachment or is it basically just Democrats putting on a TV show for people?
00:43:07.000And it's obvious which this is because you can see how the media are analyzing it.
00:43:10.000The New York Times, for example, called in their television critic to actually do an analysis.
00:43:21.000James Ponowizek, who is their TV critic, wrote a piece for the New York Times called, A Tale of an Irregular Channel, Playing on Many Channels.
00:43:28.000In the middle of the testimony of William B. Taylor Jr., the top American diplomat in Ukraine that opened the House impeachment hearings Wednesday, a guessing game broke out on social media.
00:43:47.000It's telling that all these comparisons were to old-school news anchors because I think what people were hearing in Mr. Taylor's gravelly composure was the voice.
00:43:54.000Not so much of another person, but another time.
00:43:57.000A time of authoritative voices that a wide audience found credible.
00:44:00.000It was like a science fiction story in which someone turns on an old radio and hears a staticky broadcast from the past.
00:44:06.000Even the text of Mr. Taylor's introduction had a Cronkitean ring.
00:44:09.000I am not here to take one side or the other, he said.
00:44:11.000My sole purpose is to provide facts as I know them.
00:44:56.000But she says, of course, Representative Jim Jordan took his seat Wednesday morning at the opening of the public impeachment hearings on Capitol Hill, wearing nothing but his shirt sleeves.
00:46:24.000But Jordan, in his role as representative of the American people, couldn't be bothered to suit up.
00:46:30.000When Jordan was interviewed recently by a Wall Street Journal reporter about why he doesn't wear a jacket, he said, quote, I'm not even sure.
00:46:38.000After a pause, he admitted he does wear a jacket when the rules require him to do so, as when he's on the House floor.
00:46:43.000And he wears a jacket when he aims to be respectful, such as when he's in the company of the president or on a visit to the White House.
00:46:48.000Presumably he doesn't consider sitting alongside his colleagues during a matter of national importance to be a situation that deserves his high regard.
00:46:54.000I remember that time when Barack Obama didn't wear a jacket in the Oval Office and some people were like, oh, that's terrible that he didn't do that.
00:46:59.000Ronald Reagan always used to put on a jacket and we were like, how dare you say that about Barack Obama?
00:47:03.000Now it's Jim Jordan doesn't wear a jacket and it's the end of the world.
00:47:07.000By the way, I just should point out that despite the fact there was no devastating bombshell testimony yesterday, listen to CBS talk about the devastating bombshell testimony yesterday.
00:48:02.000It's been parodied so much in movies like Airplane.
00:48:04.000You forget that the movie is actually pretty good.
00:48:06.000It also is a relic of a time, and when you watch it, you realize that that time, the 1970s, as scuzzy and terrible as it was in a wide variety of ways, that our sensitivities now would not allow a movie like this to be made.
00:48:19.000I mean, John Travolta, his character, spoiler alert from a movie that is nearly 50 years old at this point, but spoiler alert, John Travolta at one point attempts to nearly rape a female character in the movie and she ends up being friends with him at the end of the movie.
00:48:34.000That would certainly not be allowed in a movie today.
00:48:36.000It's a very gritty movie and people forget how gritty the movie is because it's about disco.
00:48:39.000But here is a little bit of the preview for Saturday Night Fever.
00:49:44.000A lot of protesters showed up outside, which is, I mean, more power to them.
00:49:47.000I said last night, like, if you show up in 20 degree weather to actually protest, more power to you, because I've been to so many schools where it is cold, and protesters say they're going to show up, and then they chicken out.
00:49:55.000So at least in Boston, they have the power of their convictions.
00:49:57.000They were protesting me, suggesting that I was a racist, because the name of the speech was, America wasn't built on slavery, it was built on freedom.
00:50:03.000They were suggesting I was going to make light of slavery.
00:50:05.000I then spent 45 minutes explaining the role of slavery in America's history, it's great evil, and the transition away from slavery, and America's defeat of slavery, and defeat of Jim Crow segregation.
00:50:15.000And so it didn't go quite how the left thought it was going to go because the left has this weird picture of conservatives as people who deny American history, which of course is not true.
00:50:22.000It is the left that frequently denies American history in favor of a darker version of American history that simply isn't true.
00:50:27.000There are a bunch of protesters of all sides.
00:50:30.000There are some people who showed up from sort of the nationalist conservative side of the aisle.
00:50:36.000There were a few alt-righters who showed up as well.
00:50:38.000There were some people who, there's a transgender protester.
00:50:43.000But, this is sort of, this is how things should go on campus, right?
00:50:46.000It was an open conversation, everybody had a good time, but that is not what is happening on our college campuses.
00:50:51.000Now, it is very, very, very bad, obviously, if you allow this sort of thing to go on.
00:50:56.000The University of Florida has a student body president, and this student body president is now, apparently, facing impeachment for allowing Donald Trump Jr.
00:51:25.000The opposition party is determined to remove him.
00:51:28.000His allies maintain he did nothing wrong, but this impeachment inquiry is taking place far from Washington.
00:51:32.000Even though the football stadium known as The Swamp looms nearby, student representatives at the University of Florida introduced a bill on Tuesday.
00:51:39.000To impeach Michael Murphy, the student body president, accusing him of improperly using student fees to pay one of President Trump's sons to speak on campus.
00:51:47.000It all began when Mr. Murphy, a senior, invited Donald Trump Jr.
00:51:49.000and Kimberly Guilfoyle, a former Fox News host and advisor to the president's campaign, to speak on campus and paid them $50,000 with university funds.
00:51:56.000Some students say the payment was a violation of the student senate code and possibly the law.
00:52:00.000Okay, does any of that mean it's illegitimate to invite a public figure like Donald Trump Jr.
00:52:22.000Students who drafted the impeachment bill personally handed Murphy a copy of it on Tuesday night.
00:52:27.000They argue in the bill that Murphy's use of student funds violates the Student Senate Code, which forbids spending student fees to support a political party.
00:53:48.000Well, if you subscribe, then you get full access to our Daily Wire backstage, which we'll be discussing impeachment and many other issues of the day.