The Ben Shapiro Show - The Ukraine Problem | Ep. 866

00:00:00.000 President Trump defends himself from allegations he pressured Ukraine to investigate Joe Biden, Democrats ramp up their attacks, a quarrel over impeachment, and Elizabeth Warren surges in Iowa.

00:00:09.000 Straight from our brand new Ben Shapiro Show studios, this is The Ben Shapiro Show.

00:00:13.000 That's right, folks.

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00:00:44.000 We're going to get to actual material in just one second.

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00:00:48.000 But first, there's a lot of talk of war with Iran leading to increasing geopolitical insecurity, skyrocketing national debt.

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00:01:57.000 Okay, so the big story of the day is the continued fallout from the whistleblower report that has not yet been revealed.

00:02:11.000 Remember, we still don't know what's in this whistleblower report, so to recapitulate for folks who may not have been following this story with all of its requisite gravity, So, here is the story.

00:02:20.000 The story is that there was a whistleblower inside the intelligence community, informed the Inspector General of the intelligence community that there was some sort of urgent violation that had taken place.

00:02:30.000 If this violation had been deemed urgent, it would have had to be reported to Congress.

00:02:35.000 So, the inspector general says, you're right, it is urgent, and then declares that this is going to go to Congress.

00:02:41.000 At this point, the director of national intelligence, the acting director of national intelligence steps in and he says, well, hold up just a second.

00:02:47.000 This isn't urgent under the applicable law.

00:02:50.000 Because under the applicable law, typically, for a whistleblower complaint to be deemed urgent, it has to deal with actual intelligence.

00:02:56.000 It can't just be that the intelligence community heard about something criminal that's bad that's going on, that doesn't actually have to do with the intelligence community, and then reported it to the inspector general, and then reported it to Congress.

00:03:07.000 Instead, it has to deal with the actual intelligence community.

00:03:10.000 Well, supposedly, this report didn't have to do with the intel community at all.

00:03:14.000 It had to do with President Trump on the phone with Ukraine.

00:03:16.000 So, the Democrats immediately shift to, this is a cover-up, Obviously, Trump is trying to hide something.

00:03:21.000 And then we get a kind of slow leak about the information that was in this whistleblower report.

00:03:26.000 So what was in the whistleblower report?

00:03:28.000 Well, the whistleblower report, all that we know so far is that President Trump had conversations with the president of Ukraine and supposedly in those conversations, the president of the United States Repeatedly suggested that the Ukrainian government investigate Joe Biden.

00:03:43.000 Why?

00:03:43.000 Well, because Joe Biden and Hunter Biden, father and son relationship, they have a nexus with Ukraine.

00:03:48.000 Hunter Biden was made the CEO or a board member of some organization in Ukraine called Burisma.

00:03:56.000 In Ukraine, at the same time that Joe Biden was pressuring the Ukraine to fire a prosecutor who was overseeing the Hunter Biden case.

00:04:05.000 So the scandal, which started to break maybe earlier this year, last year, that scandal was supposedly that Joe Biden had personally attempted to hold up $1 billion in loan guarantees to Ukraine until Ukraine fired a prosecutor.

00:04:18.000 That prosecutor was overseeing Hunter Biden's possible investigation at the time.

00:04:23.000 So now President Trump comes along and he's apparently telling the Ukrainian president, you know, it'd be great, Zelensky, it'd be great if you just investigate Joe Biden because, I mean, did anyone really invest?

00:04:32.000 Now, look, the Trump campaign has four months been attempting to push the Ukrainian government to investigate Joe Biden.

00:04:39.000 Rudy Giuliani has been going over there for a year.

00:04:39.000 And this is not a secret.

00:04:42.000 Trying to investigate himself, trying to cooperate with government sources in Ukraine to find out whether, in fact, Hunter Biden was under investigation by this prosecutor and whether Joe Biden exerted his authority in order to hold back American taxpayer dollars to get the prosecutor ousted to protect his son, Hunter.

00:04:57.000 And there are all sorts of serious questions to be asked about Joe Biden's relationship with Hunter Biden, because as it turns out, Hunter Biden has led a rather dissolute life, and Hunter Biden has taken serious advantage of the fact that his dad happens to be Joe Biden.

00:05:10.000 He's gotten a series of cush positions in which he has paid hundreds of thousands of dollars, basically because daddy was a senator and then a vice president.

00:05:17.000 So we're going to get into those allegations in just a second.

00:05:20.000 Well, President Trump over the weekend came out and he said, yeah, you know, I did talk with Ukrainians about Joe Biden, but that is not a big deal.

00:05:29.000 According to The New York Times, President Trump acknowledged on Sunday he raised corruption accusations against former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr.

00:05:36.000 during a phone call with Ukraine's leader.

00:05:37.000 A stunning admission, according to The New York Times, as pressure mounted on Democrats to impeach Trump over allegations he leans on a foreign government to help damage a political rival.

00:05:46.000 In public and in private, many Democrats said the evidence that has emerged in recent days indicating that Mr. Trump pushed the Ukrainian government to investigate Mr. Biden and his administration's stonewalling of attempts by Congress to learn more or changing their calculations about whether to charge him with articles of impeachment.

00:06:02.000 The influential chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, who has resisted such action, said the House might now have crossed the Rubicon in light of the new disclosures.

00:06:09.000 So that would be Adam Schiff, who came out and said, the Rubicon may have been crossed.

00:06:13.000 We may now have to look at impeaching President Trump over all of this.

00:06:16.000 So here is Adam Schiff saying as much.

00:06:19.000 You know I have been very reluctant to go down the path of impeachment, but if the president is essentially withholding military aid at the same time that he is trying to browbeat a foreign leader into doing something illicit, that is providing dirt on his opponent during a presidential campaign, then he may force us to go down this road.

00:06:38.000 I have spoken with a number of my colleagues over the last week, and this seems different in kind, and we may very well have crossed the Rubicon here.

00:06:47.000 Okay, well, the Rubicon that he is noting is something that has not been shown yet.

00:06:50.000 So as I explained last Friday, when this whole thing came up, and last Thursday, if President Trump engaged in an actual quid pro quo, if he did what he's accusing Joe Biden of doing, if he said to the Ukrainians, $250 million in military aid is not forthcoming unless you investigate Joe Biden, that is using American taxpayer dollars for a campaign quid pro quo, that is obviously a violation of law, it is a violation of bribery statute, and President Trump should be impeached.

00:07:15.000 Really, a quid pro quo with a foreign government to investigate your political rival is, in fact, a violation of law and impeachable.

00:07:23.000 If, however, this is just Donald Trump getting on the phone and saying to the Koreans, you know, it'd be great if you guys really investigate Joe Biden.

00:07:28.000 You know, that'd be great.

00:07:30.000 Is that impeachable?

00:07:31.000 Well, that is not what Adam Schiff is saying right there.

00:07:34.000 Adam Schiff is saying, no, not so much.

00:07:37.000 Adam Schiff himself is saying the quid pro quo has to be there.

00:07:40.000 Well, why?

00:07:41.000 Because President Trump has a rather bad habit of mouthing off, as you may have noticed.

00:07:45.000 Because he is a man named Donald Trump, who does very Donald Trump-like things, as it turns out.

00:07:49.000 Well, Jim Garrity has a piece over at National Review in which he talks about this, and he's correct. 0.82

00:07:54.000 He says, "Donald Trump believes that just about everyone "he doesn't like must be corrupt or engaged in law-breaking "of some manner and should be investigated." Earlier this week, he tweeted out, "Look at the Obama book deal "or the ridiculous Netflix deal.

00:08:05.000 "Then look at all the deals made by the Dems in Congress, "the Congressional Slush Fund, and lastly, the IG reports.

00:08:11.000 "Take a look at them.

00:08:12.000 "Those investigations would be over fast." So he wanted like Obama's book deal investigated.

00:08:17.000 He wanted his Netflix deal investigated.

00:08:20.000 Trump indicated that law enforcement should investigate the Clintons over Jeffrey Epstein.

00:08:24.000 He called for an investigation of corrupt government in Baltimore.

00:08:28.000 He suggested that Elijah Cummings should investigate himself.

00:08:30.000 He called on law enforcement to subpoena all records having to do with the Clinton Foundation.

00:08:34.000 This is all since July.

00:08:36.000 President Trump is constantly asking people for investigations, mainly because he's been subjected to a lot of investigations, and so he's like, well, turnabout is fair play.

00:08:45.000 He's twice called on the FEC and the FCC to investigate whether Saturday Night Live is colluding with the Democratic Party.

00:08:53.000 So, Jim Garrity's point over at National Review, he says, It's reasonable to worry about the politicization of law enforcement at a moment like this, but so far there's not much evidence for it.

00:09:06.000 He said, what's more, Trump speaks constantly as if he's convinced that some sort of colossal, ruinous scandal is lurking behind each one of his foes, and all of them could be ruined if federal investigators could look just hard enough.

00:09:16.000 So it shouldn't be the least bit surprising that Trump and allies like Rudy Giuliani believe that Hunter Biden's work for a giant gas company in Ukraine must be not merely unsavory or created the appearance of a conflict of interest, but somewhere along the line, the Bidens must have broken the law.

00:09:30.000 Should the President of the United States repeatedly call for law enforcement investigations of his political enemies based upon rumors, media reports, and his own theories?

00:09:37.000 No, of course not.

00:09:39.000 But Donald Trump does a lot of those kinds of things.

00:09:41.000 Does this enter a different area if the President is promising X to foreign officials in exchange for an investigation?

00:09:47.000 Well, it depends on the specifics, says Jim Garrity. 0.96

00:09:51.000 He says, that insert Trump foe here is a real crook. 0.99

00:09:53.000 Everybody knows it. 0.99

00:09:54.000 Everybody's saying so.

00:09:55.000 If you guys caught him and nailed him to the wall, I'd be thrilled.

00:09:57.000 It's probably just Trump being Trump.

00:09:59.000 Honestly, like if you had to ballpark what Trump said in this conversation, do you think it was more along the lines of, you know, we got this $250 million in aid and maybe it's forthcoming and maybe it's not.

00:10:11.000 I don't know.

00:10:11.000 But if you just investigate Joe Biden, it's forthcoming.

00:10:14.000 Do you think it's that or do you think that it's, do you think the conversation went something like this?

00:10:18.000 Zelensky, who's the head of Ukraine, going, and Trump going, and Zelensky being like, and Trump being like, and Zelensky being like, and Trump being like, I mean, like, which sounds more like Trump?

00:10:28.000 we're not doing that and trump being like but it'd be great if you did and zolensky being like well no and trumping oh okay how's everything else going i mean like which sounds more like trump and a lot of this has to do with whether you see president trump as a serious thinker like a person who thinks through the things he says or a guy who just says stuff you know It's very difficult to square the sort of 4D chess President Trump that so many people have in their heads on the right, and the 4D chess Trump that so many people on the left have in their heads, right?

00:10:57.000 They simultaneously will claim that he's an idiot and a mastermind. 1.00

00:11:00.000 With who Trump is in reality, which is a guy who says lots of stuff. 0.99

00:11:04.000 As I have said before, President Trump's tombstone one day will eventually read, Donald Trump, 45th President of the United States. 0.99

00:11:11.000 He said a lot of crap, right? 0.99

00:11:12.000 That is what President Trump does. 0.99

00:11:14.000 And frankly, I think that President Trump would say the same thing to, like, Emmanuel Macron.

00:11:18.000 I think he'd get on the phone with the Prime Minister of France, and Macron would be like, Mr. President, how are you?

00:11:23.000 And Trump would be like, can you investigate Joe Biden?

00:11:26.000 And Macron would be like, I don't know what you're talking about.

00:11:29.000 And Trump would be like, well, I don't know, you're French.

00:11:33.000 Right, we're not Ukrainian.

00:11:35.000 But you all sound the same to me.

00:11:36.000 Like, the chances that Donald Trump was seriously offering a quid pro quo to the Ukrainians, hey, that would take forethought. 0.69

00:11:43.000 So color me a little bit skeptical of all that.

00:11:47.000 Nonetheless, this is driving the narrative today.

00:11:50.000 Nancy Pelosi has issued a letter to her colleagues in the House basically suggesting that impeachment may be on the table in the near future.

00:12:00.000 It says, Dear Colleague, On Thursday, Acting Director of National Intelligence Joseph McGuire will appear before the House Intelligence Committee in an open hearing.

00:12:07.000 At that time, we expect him to obey the law and turn over the whistleblower's full complaint to the committee.

00:12:11.000 We also expect that he will establish a path for the whistleblower to speak directly to the House and Senate Intelligence Committees as required by law.

00:12:18.000 The Intelligence Community Inspector General, who was appointed by President Trump, has determined that the complaint is both of urgent concern and credible, and its disclosure relates to one of the most significant and important of the Director of National Intelligence's responsibilities to the American people.

00:12:32.000 The administration's blocking of acting DNI McGuire from providing Congress with the whistleblower complaint calls upon him to violate the federal statute, which unequivocally states that the DNI shall provide Congress this information.

00:12:44.000 Well, it also has conditions under which the information is to be provided, including that it has to deal with the intelligence community, not with the president.

00:12:50.000 The administration is endangering our national security and having a chilling effect on any future whistleblower who sees wrongdoing.

00:12:57.000 We must be sure that the president and his administration are always conducting our national security and foreign policy in the best interest of the American people, not the president's personal or political interest.

00:13:06.000 Okay, well, okay, that Sure, it would be great if Congress did that.

00:13:11.000 You know what else would be great?

00:13:12.000 If Barack Obama had not pledged flexibility to the Russians in the run-up to the 2012 election.

00:13:15.000 It would have been great if Teddy Kennedy back in the 1980s had not been working with the Russian government to undermine Ronald Reagan.

00:13:20.000 It would have been fantastic if Hillary Clinton had not been working with, yes, the Ukrainian government to dig up dirt on President Trump. 0.61

00:13:26.000 To pretend that the area of foreign policy is where all of the honor of the American people still resides.

00:13:34.000 Yeah, not so much.

00:13:36.000 Not so much.

00:13:36.000 I mean, I'm old enough to remember when Nancy Pelosi was traveling to the Middle East to undercut George W. Bush's foreign policy, so.

00:13:43.000 Anyway, she says, I'm calling on Republicans to join us in insisting that the acting DNI obey the law as we seek the truth to protect the American people and our Constitution.

00:13:50.000 This violation is about national security.

00:13:53.000 If the administration persists in blocking this whistleblower from disclosing to Congress a serious possible breach of constitutional duties by the president, they'll be entering a grave new chapter of lawlessness, which will take us into a whole new stage of investigation immediately.

00:14:05.000 Thank you for your patriotism.

00:14:07.000 Best regards, Nancy.

00:14:08.000 So a couple of things.

00:14:09.000 One, I honestly think that we should find out what exactly the whistleblower is complaining about.

00:14:14.000 So I think the Republicans probably should work with Nancy Pelosi to pry loose this whistleblower complaint if If the Trump administration provides no clarity on what happened here.

00:14:24.000 But, there are a couple of details that are being left out of a lot of the reporting here, and we do need to mention them.

00:14:30.000 We'll get to that in just one second.

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00:15:40.000 Okay, so a couple of details about this whistleblower complaint.

00:15:43.000 Because remember, we still don't actually know what Trump said in the conversation.

00:15:48.000 So all of this is speculation.

00:15:49.000 We do know that Trump said something about Joe Biden to the Ukrainian president.

00:15:53.000 The Ukrainian president then came out and said, No, I didn't initiate an investigation.

00:15:57.000 So this sounds a lot like the second half of the Mueller report, honestly.

00:15:59.000 So the second half of the Mueller report was Donald Trump saying to everyone in earshot, this Mueller guy's annoying.

00:16:04.000 Can we get rid of him?

00:16:06.000 And everybody going, nope.

00:16:07.000 And Trump going, all right.

00:16:09.000 And then just sort of moving on with his life for the next month.

00:16:11.000 And then he comes back and he's like, you know who annoys me?

00:16:14.000 Robert Mueller.

00:16:15.000 And they're going, well, leave him alone, Mr. President.

00:16:18.000 All right.

00:16:18.000 And he just sort of moves on for another month.

00:16:20.000 This sounds exactly like that.

00:16:22.000 He says to Zelensky, can you go investigate Joe Biden?

00:16:25.000 And Zelensky's like, no, Mr. President, I'm not doing it.

00:16:27.000 And Trump's like, OK.

00:16:28.000 And he just sort of moves on.

00:16:30.000 There's another problem is that the whistleblower here, we thought, I mean, if you'd read those reports on Thursday and Friday, it sounds like the whistleblower was listening in on the phone call with Donald Trump and Zelensky, the president of Ukraine.

00:16:42.000 As it turns out, not so much.

00:16:44.000 According to CNN, the whistleblower didn't have direct knowledge of the communications.

00:16:49.000 Didn't have direct knowledge of the communications.

00:16:51.000 Instead, the whistleblower's concerns came in part from learning information that was not obtained during the course of their work.

00:16:57.000 Okay, well, then how is he making an intelligence whistleblower claim?

00:17:02.000 He didn't gain the intelligence through the intelligence process, nor does it have to do with intelligence sources and methods.

00:17:09.000 Those details have apparently played a role in the administration's determination that the complaint didn't fit the reporting requirements under the intelligence whistleblower law.

00:17:17.000 The official said, it's hard to know the potential exposure faced by the president.

00:17:22.000 So we still, like, that's kind of amazing, right?

00:17:24.000 That would have been a detail that we should have known.

00:17:26.000 Because originally on Wednesday, when the Washington Post broke this report, they referenced a promise Trump allegedly made to Ukraine.

00:17:33.000 But nowhere beyond that have we actually heard what the promise was.

00:17:36.000 Instead, we've heard a lot of Trump solicitation.

00:17:39.000 Right?

00:17:39.000 In the same way that Trump publicly solicited Vladimir Putin to put Hillary Clinton's emails out there.

00:17:43.000 I mean, that was not really, like, a secret.

00:17:45.000 He went out on the campaign trail and was like, Vlad, if you got the emails, break them.

00:17:48.000 Do it.

00:17:49.000 Love it.

00:17:49.000 Live it.

00:17:50.000 Okay, but, so, is this anything new?

00:17:53.000 Now, is it bad?

00:17:55.000 Of course it's bad!

00:17:56.000 The President of the United States should not be calling on foreign leaders to investigate his political opponents.

00:18:00.000 Yes, that's a bad thing.

00:18:02.000 Also, as I have mentioned, among the other bad things that presidents have done, but that are not impeachable, Barack Obama caught on tape, pledging the Russians flexibility in the lead up to the 2012 election.

00:18:13.000 Hillary Clinton working openly with the DNC and members of the Ukrainian government to dig up dirt on President Trump.

00:18:21.000 So lots of bad stuff happens here and all of it is worthy of condemnation.

00:18:24.000 The question here is whether something criminal happened that is worthy of impeachment.

00:18:28.000 Okay, so President Trump has now responded to all of this.

00:18:30.000 He said, we'll consider releasing some details of the phone calls.

00:18:35.000 He said the conversation, by the way, was absolutely perfect.

00:18:37.000 This is clip one.

00:18:38.000 As far as my conversation was perfect, it was a perfect conversation.

00:18:44.000 It was it couldn't have been any better.

00:18:46.000 But we'll make a determination about how to release it, releasing it, saying what we said.

00:18:53.000 It was an absolutely perfect conversation.

00:18:55.000 Perfect 10 conversation.

00:18:57.000 Like a 19-year-old model. 0.80

00:18:58.000 A beautiful, perfect, unbelievable conversation.

00:19:02.000 It wasn't just a good conversation, guys.

00:19:03.000 It was the best conversation.

00:19:05.000 The greatest of all conversations.

00:19:07.000 I mean, like, Socrates Versus Socrates versus his various interlocutors.

00:19:14.000 Not even close.

00:19:15.000 Donald Trump with Zelensky.

00:19:16.000 The perfect conversation.

00:19:18.000 And then President Trump says, I don't want to hurt Biden.

00:19:18.000 The greatest.

00:19:21.000 OK, this is where you start going, OK, Mr. President, let's let's not go too thick on the on the peanut butter here.

00:19:26.000 There's President Trump.

00:19:28.000 Vice President Biden did a terrible thing the way he put it.

00:19:31.000 I'm not looking to hold him to anything.

00:19:34.000 I'm not looking to hurt him with respect to his son.

00:19:38.000 Joe's got a lot of problems.

00:19:39.000 Joe's got enough problems without that.

00:19:42.000 But what he said was a terrible thing.

00:19:44.000 There was no pressure.

00:19:46.000 That was not pressure.

00:19:47.000 I know when I give pressure.

00:19:49.000 And that was not pressure.

00:19:51.000 Okay, so, President Trump then went on a rampage on Twitter explaining all of this.

00:19:55.000 He said, now the fake news media says I pressured the Ukrainian president at least eight times during my telephone call with him.

00:19:55.000 of this.

00:20:01.000 I'm going to read this in straight voice.

00:20:03.000 Say, I can't do Trump voice for the next eight paragraphs.

00:20:05.000 I mean, this is a five paragraph essay.

00:20:06.000 He says this supposedly comes from a so-called whistleblower who they say doesn't even have a firsthand account of what was said.

00:20:12.000 More Democrat crooked media con.

00:20:14.000 Breaking news.

00:20:15.000 The Ukrainian government just said they weren't pressured at all during the nice call.

00:20:18.000 Sleepy Joe Biden, on the other hand, forced a tough prosecutor out from investigating his son's company by threat of not giving big dollars to Ukraine.

00:20:25.000 That's the real story.

00:20:26.000 Now that the Democrats and the fake news media have gone bust on every other of their witch hunt schemes, they're trying to start one just as ridiculous as the others, called the Ukraine Witch Hunt, while at the same time trying to protect sleepy Joe Biden. 0.87

00:20:37.000 Will fail again. 0.86

00:20:38.000 The fake news media and their partner, the Democratic Party.

00:20:40.000 I mean, I told you this thing's a book.

00:20:41.000 The fake news media and their partner, the Democratic Party.

00:20:44.000 Want to stay as far away as possible from the Joe Biden demand that the Ukrainian government fire a prosecutor who was investigating his son or they won't get a very large amount of U.S.

00:20:53.000 money.

00:20:53.000 So they fabricate a story about me and a perfectly fine and routine conversation I had with the new president of Ukraine.

00:20:58.000 Nothing was said that was in any way wrong.

00:21:00.000 But Biden's demand, on the other hand, was a complete and total disaster.

00:21:03.000 The fake news knows this, but don't want to report.

00:21:05.000 The Radical Left Democrats and their fake news media partners, headed up by Little Adam Schiff and batting 0 for 21 against me, are at it again.

00:21:12.000 They think I may have had a dicey conversation with a certain foreign leader based on a highly partisan whistleblower statement.

00:21:18.000 Strange that with so many other people hearing or knowing of the perfectly fine and respectful conversation that they would not have also come forward.

00:21:24.000 Do you know the reason why they did not?

00:21:25.000 Because there was nothing said wrong.

00:21:27.000 It was pitch perfect!

00:21:28.000 Another fake news story out there.

00:21:29.000 It never ends.

00:21:30.000 Virtually anytime I speak on the phone to a foreign leader, I understand that there may be people listening from various U.S.

00:21:35.000 agencies, not to mention those from the other country itself.

00:21:38.000 No problem. 0.76

00:21:39.000 Knowing all of this, is anyone dumb enough to believe I would say something inappropriate with a foreign leader while on such a potentially heavily populated call? 0.86

00:21:45.000 I would only do what is right anyway and only do good for the U.S. 0.75

00:21:49.000 And then later he made more remarks about all of this.

00:21:52.000 He said the problem is when you're speaking to foreign leaders, you don't want foreign leaders to feel they shouldn't be speaking openly and good.

00:21:57.000 You have to be talking to people.

00:21:59.000 And the same thing for an American president.

00:22:01.000 You want them to be able to express themselves without knowing that not every single word is going to be out and going all over the world.

00:22:05.000 Now, this is fair.

00:22:06.000 OK, this particular critique that Trump is making is absolutely fair.

00:22:09.000 The president of the United States has a lot of conversations that are not meant for public scrutiny.

00:22:14.000 A lot of conversations with foreign leaders in which highly classified stuff is said.

00:22:18.000 You do want him to be able to have open conversations without whistleblowers going and seeing a political problem and then reporting that to the legislative branch because the president is indeed the commander-in-chief.

00:22:30.000 So all of that happens to be true.

00:22:32.000 And having whistleblowers who are making complaints that have nothing to do with the intelligence community, which is the actual maybe problem here, is a serious problem.

00:22:40.000 But To go to the core of it, President Trump is basically saying, I did nothing wrong.

00:22:44.000 There was no quid pro quo.

00:22:45.000 Rudy Giuliani then said the same thing.

00:22:47.000 Giuliani went on Twitter.

00:22:49.000 He said, whistleblower story like Kavanaugh's story is blowing up.

00:22:55.000 Now no mention of money or quid pro quo.

00:22:57.000 So appropriate conduct.

00:22:58.000 Now we must look at Biden family pattern of corruption of selling his public offices for five decades.

00:23:02.000 Pattern of corruption enabled by swamp.

00:23:06.000 Okay, so the Republican Trump administration position is Trump didn't do anything wrong.

00:23:09.000 The person who did something wrong here is Joe Biden.

00:23:13.000 And Joe Biden is just sitting there like, what did I do, man?

00:23:15.000 Why am I even part of this story?

00:23:17.000 And the answer is you're part of the story because your relations with your son, Hunter, Are a problem for your campaign.

00:23:25.000 Like a real problem.

00:23:26.000 According to the Washington Post this morning, a whistleblower complaint about President Trump made by an intelligence official centers on Ukraine.

00:23:33.000 According to two people familiar with the matter, which has set off a struggle between Congress and the executive branch, Jim Garrity says if the discussion is about Ukraine, it probably revolves around the Trump campaign's interest in what Hunter Biden did for Ukrainian companies in the tail end of the Obama administration.

00:23:47.000 And Garrity says, when the Obama campaign was vetting Joe Biden to be vice president in the summer of 2008, one of the most sensitive issues they examined was the relationship between the senator and his family connection to a large Delaware bank called MBNA.

00:24:00.000 The bank was the largest donor to Biden's campaigns over his career.

00:24:03.000 Hunter hired Hunter Biden in 1996, made Hunter a vice president by 1998 when he was 28 years old.

00:24:09.000 Hunter departed to do a short stint in the Department of Commerce, but he kept a $100,000 a year retainer from the bank.

00:24:14.000 After returning to the private sector as a lawyer in Washington working for a lobbying firm, the Bidens insist that Hunter's lobbying work never crossed paths with his father's work in the Senate.

00:24:23.000 But during this time, Joe voted in favor of a bankruptcy reform bill that MBNA and other banks supported, and that many Democrats, including then-Senator Barack Obama, opposed.

00:24:32.000 Elizabeth Warren will probably at some point jump in here. 1.00

00:24:35.000 When you're the son of a famous senator or VP, doors keep opening for you.

00:24:38.000 By 2014, Hunter Biden had been a bank vice president, lawyer, partner at a mergers and acquisitions firm, attempted to purchase a hedge fund, founded two consulting firms, and shortly after his father started his second term as VP, joined the U.S.

00:24:50.000 That ended badly.

00:24:50.000 Naval Reserve.

00:24:51.000 He was discharged after about a year for failing a drug test.

00:24:54.000 We'll get to more of Hunter Biden and why this could, in fact, this scandal could, in fact, blow back on Joe Biden and make Elizabeth Warren the nominee.

00:25:00.000 We'll get to that in just one second.

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00:26:12.000 OK, so back to Hunter Biden.

00:26:13.000 So this whole subject of investigation that Trump wants and of controversy that started all this stuff is Hunter Biden's relationship with Joe.

00:26:22.000 Hunter has had a very checkered life and a very checkered career, and he relied heavily on his dad's help.

00:26:27.000 Returning to the investment world, writes Jim Garrity, Biden's business partners included Jonathan Lee, who ran a Chinese private equity firm, Bohai Capital.

00:26:34.000 In April 2014, at age 44, Hunter Biden joined the board of directors for Burisma Holdings, the largest non-governmental-run natural gas company in Ukraine.

00:26:43.000 Not everyone in the Obama administration was comfortable with Hunter's new business partners, according to The New Yorker.

00:26:47.000 Quote, Hunter's meeting with Lee and his relationship with BHR attracted little attention at the time.

00:26:52.000 But some of Biden's advisers were worried that Hunter, by meeting with a business associate during his father's visit, would expose the VP to criticism.

00:26:58.000 The former senior White House aide said that Hunter's behavior invited questions about whether he was leveraging access for his benefit, which just wasn't done in that White House.

00:27:07.000 Optics really mattered, and that seemed to be cutting it pretty close, even if nothing nefarious was going on.

00:27:12.000 Apparently, several members of Biden's staff said that they had been too intimidated to talk to Joe Biden about all of this.

00:27:17.000 Everyone who worked for him has been screamed at.

00:27:19.000 A former advisor told me.

00:27:21.000 Others said they were wary of hurting his feelings.

00:27:23.000 One business associate told me that Biden, during difficult conversations about his family, got deeply melancholy, which to me is more painful than if someone yelled and screamed at me.

00:27:31.000 It's like you've hurt him terribly.

00:27:32.000 That was always my fear, that I'd be really touching a very fragile part of him.

00:27:37.000 At the very least, Hunter's business dealings created the appearance of a conflict of interest.

00:27:42.000 And that was true also with regard to Ukraine.

00:27:45.000 There is a perception that Hunter was on the loose, potentially undermining his father's message when he took a role at Burisma.

00:27:52.000 In a 2018 appearance before the Council on Foreign Relations, Biden described the time he threatened to withhold foreign aid from the Ukrainian government unless they fired a prosecutor named Viktor Shokin.

00:28:01.000 The argument from the Obama administration is that Shokin was resisting reform efforts But one of the problems is that he was preparing a corruption probe into Burisma Holdings, which was Hunter Biden's company, right?

00:28:13.000 Hunter Biden was on the board of directors. 0.99

00:28:15.000 So all of this could come back just in time to truly bite Joe Biden directly on the butt. 0.98

00:28:22.000 And that could be a real problem. 0.90

00:28:23.000 Meanwhile, Democrats are, of course, ramping up impeachment talk.

00:28:26.000 They are getting very frustrated.

00:28:28.000 Many of the more Shall we say enthusiastic members of the Democratic Party have been pushing for impeachment for a while, and now they're really ramping up their game.

00:28:37.000 You saw Adam Schiff already saying, well, if there's a quid pro quo, maybe we'll talk impeachment.

00:28:40.000 Well, very unlikely they uncover a quid pro quo.

00:28:42.000 You see, Nancy Pelosi suggests that we are entering a grave new era of lawlessness, which, again, is not calling for impeachment, but is Drawing closer to it.

00:28:50.000 You've got Elizabeth Warren, who is the odds-on favorite to become the next Democratic nominee at this point. 0.98

00:28:55.000 We'll get to polling in a second.

00:28:57.000 Here she is yesterday calling for impeachment of President Trump over these allegations.

00:29:01.000 Congress failed to act, and now Donald Trump has shown that he believes he is above the law.

00:29:12.000 He has solicited another foreign government to attack our election system. 0.58

00:29:20.000 It is time for us to call out this illegal behavior and start impeachment proceedings right now.

00:29:27.000 Now, of course, the impeachment goes nowhere because you'd actually have to have proof of a crime in order to get a majority.

00:29:31.000 Well, you need 60 votes in the in the Senate in order to actually oust the president from office.

00:29:36.000 So likely an impeachment vote succeeds in the House, but does not succeed in the Senate of the United States.

00:29:41.000 But Democrats at this point are starting to warm up to all of this as we get closer to 2020.

00:29:44.000 They're making the calculation there won't be blowback if the story is bad enough.

00:29:49.000 And unlike the Trump-Russia allegations, Where there was some smoke, but no fire in the end, as it turned out.

00:29:55.000 Here, they can say that the conversation itself is really the problem, that there's something very bad.

00:29:58.000 And there is something bad about going to a foreign government and asking them to investigate your political opponent.

00:30:03.000 Now, as I've said, in the past, there are lots of various candidates, particularly Democrats, who have gone to foreign sources for information on their opponents, have made offers to try and undercut Republican presidents.

00:30:15.000 Now, that's nothing new, but this The question for Democrats is politically whether this appears to be serious enough that they finally have the momentum to go after President Trump on impeachment on all of this.

00:30:27.000 AOC, she tweeted out that, like ripping into fellow Democrats, the question is how long Nancy Pelosi can withstand the internal pressure. 1.00

00:30:33.000 AOC tweeted out, at this point, the bigger national scandal isn't the president's law-breaking behavior.

00:30:37.000 It is the Democratic Party's refusal to impeach him for it.

00:30:40.000 And you're starting to see this exact line gain momentum.

00:30:44.000 Now, as I say, the Democrats have yet to make a case that Trump actually did something illegal here.

00:30:49.000 And we'll see Renato Mariotti, legal affairs columnist for Politico, trying to stretch and twist and turn to get to why this is impeachable, even though it's not criminal.

00:30:57.000 We'll get to that in just one second.

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00:32:19.000 Alrighty, we're going to get into the case that Democrats are making on impeachment, even though no criminality has yet been uncovered, and we don't even know the details.

00:32:26.000 of the whistleblower complaint at this point.

00:32:28.000 We'll get to that in a second.

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00:33:17.000 Okay, so the Democrats are trying to broaden out the quid pro quo allegation into a Trump did something impeachable allegation.

00:33:34.000 And obviously impeachment is not an actual legal standard.

00:33:39.000 High crimes and misdemeanors is not a legal standard, meaning that let's say that you impeach the president for sneezing.

00:33:43.000 You can do that.

00:33:44.000 And that's not challengeable in the Supreme Court.

00:33:47.000 So, Democrats can impeach Trump for whatever they want, but if they actually hope to have a shot of ousting him from office and leaving Vice President Pence as the President of the United States, presumably the only way to do that would be to actually uncover a crime.

00:33:58.000 Well, Democrats have not yet done that.

00:34:00.000 Renato Mariotti is the legal affairs columnist for Politico magazine, former federal prosecutor, and he has a piece today in Politico titled, Trump didn't bribe Ukraine, it's actually worse than that.

00:34:10.000 And here is where things start to get dicey for the Democrats.

00:34:12.000 If they are just saying that Trump behaved badly, then you have to start putting that into the context of, what have other presidents done to behave badly but was not impeachable?

00:34:21.000 And this is where it gets dicey.

00:34:23.000 So he says reports that Trump pressured Ukrainian president Vlad the Mirza Lensky to investigate the son of Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden has prompted a flurry of speculation that Trump, by withholding military aid, has committed bribery or extortion.

00:34:35.000 This is wrong and even counterproductive to efforts to hold Trump accountable.

00:34:40.000 If what Trump is accused of doing is true, it is a kind of corrupt conduct that the criminal system is not equipped to handle.

00:34:45.000 Labeling his behavior with criminal terms such as bribery and extortion not only misunderstands the statutory language, it gives Trump and his supporters ammunition with which to defend themselves, making impeachment harder to achieve.

00:34:56.000 He says the impulse to label this as a potential crime is flawed legally and even strategically, even if true.

00:35:01.000 This is not a case that would end up in a criminal proceeding, even if Trump were no longer in office.

00:35:07.000 So he says, you know, presidents push foreign governments to take official acts all the time.

00:35:11.000 The Constitution contemplates the president will interact with foreign leaders and use his or her power to persuade them to do things that help the United States.

00:35:17.000 What is abhorrent about the alleged conduct here is not that Trump is pushing a foreign government to do something, but rather that he might have used his presidential power to get a foreign government to help him win the next election.

00:35:27.000 This is self-serving and corrupt, but it is difficult to think of this alleged activity as extortion.

00:35:32.000 He says it's hard to construe the alleged conduct as a threat against Ukraine in the manner contemplated by the extortion statute.

00:35:38.000 This is not to say there aren't crimes on the books that better match what Trump is alleged to have done.

00:35:41.000 So maybe it's a campaign finance crime.

00:35:44.000 But he says what Trump is alleged to have done is not a garden variety crime.

00:35:47.000 It's worse.

00:35:48.000 This, again, is a columnist named Renato Mariotti, who is the legal correspondent for Politico.

00:35:54.000 He says what Trump is alleged to have done is not garden variety crime, it's worse.

00:35:57.000 It involved misusing $250 million in aid appropriated by Congress for his benefit.

00:36:01.000 Okay, now you are accusing him of doing something you don't have a record of him doing.

00:36:06.000 And he says that this is not a criminal justice system issue, that it really is just a Trump behaving badly issue.

00:36:13.000 He says, labeling Trump's alleged conduct bribery or extortion cheapens what is alleged to have occurred and does not capture what makes it wrongful.

00:36:19.000 It's not a crime.

00:36:20.000 He invited a foreign nation to influence the 2020 presidential elections on the heels of a nearly three-year investigation.

00:36:25.000 Now, here's where it gets dicey for Democrats.

00:36:27.000 If what you are suggesting, Renato Mariotti, is that inviting foreign governments to affect the American election, is something deeply, deeply, deeply wrong, and I generally agree it is, then you do get into the Barack Obama saying to the Russians in the run-up to 2012 that he would have greater flexibility up to the election if they would back off a little bit.

00:36:46.000 That is obviously requesting official action from the Russians that would benefit Barack Obama electorally.

00:36:52.000 And as a vague rule, that sort of stuff does happen all the time.

00:36:57.000 Leaders, Democrat and Republican, look for foreign policy wins that they can get from their friends in the lead-up to an election.

00:37:02.000 That's fairly regular.

00:37:04.000 What's different here is that he's specifically asking for an investigation into a political rival.

00:37:08.000 But the investigation never took place and apparently wasn't even taken seriously by the Ukrainian president.

00:37:14.000 So take example, Philippe Raines, who is a long held to be sort of a hard-nosed, cutting, biting, brutal kind of hard-nosed political agent for Hillary Clinton.

00:37:26.000 He was Hillary Clinton's hatchet man for a long time.

00:37:28.000 He was on Fox News.

00:37:29.000 He said, well, your heads would explode if Hillary did anything like this. 1.00

00:37:32.000 There is no reason for Joe Biden's name to come up in that conversation once, twice, eight times.

00:37:38.000 Whether it's promising, threatening, quid pro quo, demanding, whatever it is, that is crossing the line.

00:37:45.000 And yes, there is a problem with that.

00:37:48.000 And let's just say for a moment Hillary Clinton had won and Donald Trump was challenging her again next year, and we were talking about Hillary Clinton talking to a foreign leader to help her find dirt on one of the Trump kids, your heads would be exploding.

00:38:01.000 Okay, there's only one problem, which is that she literally did that in 2016. 0.99

00:38:04.000 So she wasn't the president at the time, she literally, and the DNC, literally coordinated with the Ukrainian embassy to try and dig up dirt on Donald Trump.

00:38:12.000 Politico reported that in 2017.

00:38:14.000 We talked about it at extensive length last week, so if you missed last week's podcast, Hillary Clinton did do that.

00:38:20.000 And it wasn't criminal.

00:38:21.000 It was bad.

00:38:22.000 It wasn't criminal.

00:38:23.000 In the same way that Donald Trump requesting that Vladimir Putin release Hillary Clinton's emails was bad but not criminal.

00:38:27.000 Lots of stuff's been happening, folks.

00:38:29.000 That's bad but not criminal.

00:38:30.000 Jake Tapper did sort of the same thing.

00:38:32.000 And Jake's a good reporter, but he went after Steve Mnuchin.

00:38:34.000 He said, what if Democrats tried this sort of stuff?

00:38:38.000 For instance, President Obama had pressured a foreign leader, Putin, or the President of Ukraine, anyone, and said, I want you to look into Donald Trump Jr., or I want you to look into Eric Trump.

00:38:50.000 International businessmen, both of them.

00:38:52.000 Would you not find that inappropriate?

00:38:55.000 Again, I'm not going to speculate on that.

00:38:57.000 What I do find is inappropriate is the fact that Vice President Biden, at the time, son, did very significant business dealings in Ukraine.

00:39:06.000 I, for one, find that to be concerning.

00:39:09.000 And to me, that's the issue perhaps that should be further investigated.

00:39:12.000 Okay, so the Trump campaign is going to keep pressing in on the Hunter Biden thing.

00:39:15.000 Now, they are pursuing a strategy that you've seen Scott Adams, who's the Dilbert creator and sort of the Trump whisperer.

00:39:23.000 He suggested that Trump often does this and meshes himself in scandals where the headline that ends up being elevated from the scandal is actually deleterious to Democrats.

00:39:32.000 So the Trump-Russia stuff ended up elevating Hillary's email scandal, for example. 0.88

00:39:35.000 So he would say that this whole conversation ends up really hurting Joe Biden most.

00:39:39.000 And I think there is a lot of truth to that.

00:39:40.000 But to go back to the point that if Obama asked a foreign leader to investigate Donald Trump Jr., The allegation by Andy McCarthy and others in the Republican camp is that the Obama administration literally coordinated to try and raise dirt about Donald Trump and Russia in the middle of the 2016 election.

00:39:55.000 And that the entire Trump-Russia election conspiracy theory was being pumped by Hillary Clinton, funneled through Hillary Clinton's campaign and Fusion GPS to the FBI, who then, under the auspices of people like Loretta Lynch, investigated the thing.

00:40:11.000 And that is the allegation from the right.

00:40:13.000 So we don't have to speculate about the right's reaction.

00:40:16.000 It would be bad.

00:40:16.000 And the left's reaction is similarly bad.

00:40:18.000 And is any of it criminal?

00:40:19.000 Not really, but it does underscore how dirty things have gotten, generally speaking.

00:40:23.000 Now, who is the big beneficiary from all of this?

00:40:26.000 It isn't really Donald Trump, right?

00:40:27.000 Donald Trump is going to, there's going to be impeachment talk and Ukraine talk.

00:40:30.000 It's certainly not Joe Biden, who is now going to be dragged into the center of this kicking and screaming.

00:40:34.000 I mean, the man already doesn't know where he is, people.

00:40:36.000 He's already— Why are you taking me away from the early bird dinner at Denny's?

00:40:41.000 Where are we now?

00:40:42.000 Are we in Ukraine?

00:40:44.000 The person who's going to benefit from all of this is Elizabeth Warren, who does have the momentum.

00:40:48.000 Right now, there's a poll out from the Des Moines Register, CNN, and Mediacom, and it shows that Warren has pulled into a slight lead in Iowa.

00:40:55.000 According to that poll, She now holds a two percentage point lead with 22% of likely Democratic caucus goers saying she is their first choice for president. 0.92

00:41:03.000 This is her first lead.

00:41:04.000 Former VP Biden, who has led each of the register's three previous 2020 cycle polls, follows her at 20%.

00:41:09.000 Bernie Sanders has fallen to third place with 11%.

00:41:13.000 She's drawing a lot of support from Bernie.

00:41:15.000 This is why I've been saying for a while that this is going to get fun.

00:41:17.000 At some point, Bernie Sanders must open up his socialist guns on Elizabeth Warren and point out that she is wildly, wildly disingenuous.

00:41:25.000 The president of Seltzer and Company, which conducted the poll, said, This is a major, first major shakeup.

00:41:30.000 It's the first time we've had someone other than Joe Biden at the top of the leaderboard.

00:41:33.000 Pete Buttigieg follows the three leaders as the favorite of 9% of poll respondents.

00:41:37.000 He's really running for vice president at this point.

00:41:41.000 The race is far from settled.

00:41:42.000 Just one in five likely Democratic caucus goers say their minds are made up.

00:41:45.000 63% say they could still be persuaded to support a different candidate.

00:41:48.000 But there's no question that the momentum right now is with Elizabeth Warren.

00:41:52.000 If you look at the other state polls, So Joe Biden nationally has a pretty wide lead.

00:41:57.000 He still has a 10 point lead nationally.

00:41:59.000 He's at about 30% according to the RealClearPolitics poll average.

00:42:03.000 Elizabeth Warren is about 20%.

00:42:05.000 But if you look at Iowa, Warren has pulled into about a three point lead in the RealClearPolitics poll average.

00:42:11.000 And the latest polls from New Hampshire are still not particularly recent.

00:42:15.000 The latest polls from New Hampshire were taken September 6th to September 11th, so about two weeks ago before a lot of the surge.

00:42:23.000 And in that latest poll, Biden was up on Sanders just one and Warren just six.

00:42:28.000 So there is a good shot that by this point, the next poll will show that Warren is indeed up in New Hampshire as well, would be my prediction.

00:42:36.000 He's only up slightly in Nevada too.

00:42:39.000 It's South Carolina where Joe Biden really has his Has his advantage.

00:42:45.000 But if you look at the elections calendar, it may be too late for him by then, because they remember the Democrats in the aftermath of all the hubbub about about Bernie Sanders being jobbed during the presidential campaign in 2016.

00:42:58.000 They front loaded all of their caucuses. 0.83

00:43:00.000 You've got the Iowa caucus happening February 3rd, 2020, the New Hampshire, the New Hampshire primary happening on February 11th, 2020.

00:43:07.000 You have the Nevada presidential caucuses on Saturday.

00:43:12.000 Saturday, February 22nd.

00:43:14.000 And then you have South Carolina happening at the 29th.

00:43:17.000 So maybe, maybe if Joe Biden is lucky, if you're, if you're forecasting this, and again, we're months away, so a lot could happen.

00:43:23.000 You could have, you could have Elizabeth Warren win Iowa, win New Hampshire. 0.99

00:43:27.000 You could have Biden come back and win Nevada and South Carolina.

00:43:30.000 And then you get Super Tuesday and Super Tuesday I don't know that Biden has enough momentum to run away with things.

00:43:37.000 He probably wins the southern states.

00:43:38.000 He probably wins Alabama.

00:43:39.000 He wins Arkansas.

00:43:40.000 Elizabeth Warren probably wins California. 0.97

00:43:42.000 She probably wins Colorado. 1.00

00:43:43.000 She probably wins Maine. 1.00

00:43:44.000 She certainly wins Massachusetts. 1.00

00:43:46.000 She probably wins Minnesota. 1.00

00:43:48.000 She probably wins Oklahoma. 1.00

00:43:50.000 So it's going to be, it's going to be neck and neck.

00:43:53.000 I mean, Biden is really suffering.

00:43:54.000 And the fact is that as this story about Hunter Biden and Joe Biden takes the front pages over, that is going to be very bad because Elizabeth Warren's entire schtick, of course, is that this was the swamp.

00:44:04.000 Like now would be a great time for Elizabeth Warren to start attacking Joe Biden about that MBNA bank deal that Hunter Biden was part of.

00:44:12.000 Again, she's been anti the banking industry.

00:44:15.000 She's got the enthusiasm.

00:44:17.000 The media love her, love her.

00:44:20.000 So Joe Biden and Elizabeth Warren, by the way, who are also simultaneously campaigning over the weekend in the same place.

00:44:27.000 So they decided to go join the picket line alongside striking General Motors worker in Detroit.

00:44:33.000 Joe Biden went to a GM assembly plant in Kansas City, Kansas, because there's nothing that the American people like better than strikes.

00:44:40.000 The Democratic presidential candidates, according to the New York Times, have been chasing labor support all summer.

00:44:45.000 Now, as the UAW, one of the nation's largest unions, stages a strike that has drawn words of support from President Trump, Democrats are seizing the moment to align themselves with workers in public in dramatic ways.

00:44:54.000 Senator Elizabeth Warren walking the picket line.

00:44:56.000 Joe Biden doing it as well.

00:44:58.000 Bernie Sanders is planning to join striking workers in Detroit on Wednesday.

00:45:03.000 So they're all campaigning for the same workers and they're making the case.

00:45:07.000 I mean, Elizabeth Warren is stopping by to make the case that she is going to make a play for the white working class vote, which is really an area where she is lagging. 1.00

00:45:14.000 And she's got basically all of the college educated Democratic voters want to vote for Elizabeth Warren. 1.00

00:45:18.000 A lot of the white blue collar workers want to vote for Joe Biden.

00:45:21.000 And a lot of the black folks in the United States, black voters want to want to vote for Joe Biden.

00:45:25.000 She's trying to carve into that right now. 0.74

00:45:27.000 And she may be successful in doing that. 0.58

00:45:29.000 And I think that If Trump's goal with this Ukraine stuff was to tear down Joe Biden right now, which makes sense because he runs steadier against Elizabeth Warren than Joe Biden, he may achieve his goal whether or not the Democrats want it.

00:45:43.000 OK, meanwhile, Washington, D.C.

00:45:45.000 may be shut down by climate rebels.

00:45:46.000 Ooh, they're going to bring the city to a standstill.

00:45:48.000 Now, once again, do they have any actual program?

00:45:52.000 Of course not.

00:45:53.000 Their goal is just to suggest that if you don't That if you criticize them, you don't care about climate change.

00:45:59.000 Which is supremely irritating.

00:46:02.000 I mean, there are these climate change activists, these youth climate strikers.

00:46:05.000 Like, what are they striking from?

00:46:06.000 Going to school?

00:46:07.000 Guess what?

00:46:07.000 You weren't being paid to go to school.

00:46:09.000 You striking from your own education is a problem for you, but it's not particularly smart.

00:46:14.000 But again, we're going to pretend that this is all just an act of true bravery that changes the world.

00:46:19.000 Yada, yada, yada.

00:46:20.000 Anyway, they're out there striking from, again, you can't really strike from school because you're not paid to go to school.

00:46:26.000 The schools don't lose based on you not being there.

00:46:29.000 And in fact, many of the schools incentivized kids to come to this sort of thing, where they just spouted their emotions and were supposed to take seriously emotions if they come from 17-year-olds.

00:46:37.000 So here are some of the climate change activists admitting that they have a paralyzing fear of the future, which makes sense considering they are the freest, most prosperous young people in the history of humanity.

00:46:45.000 I am here to speak for the trees.

00:46:49.000 I'd like to acknowledge my privilege and my background.

00:46:52.000 I am here for the people who are suffering and dying because of our country's decisions.

00:46:58.000 And we are not here to talk about our sacrifices and our doom and gloom and nonexistence.

00:47:04.000 We are here to create!

00:47:06.000 We do not have time to be polite.

00:47:10.000 This is a revolution.

00:47:12.000 We are creating this movement every day because every day of inaction drives more action from us!

00:47:21.000 Holy.

00:47:22.000 Okay, so, um, first of all, if my child acts like that, they get a timeout.

00:47:28.000 When my five-year-old acts like this, she gets a time out. 1.00

00:47:30.000 Screaming into a microphone.

00:47:32.000 I don't even know what you want.

00:47:34.000 I don't even know what you want.

00:47:35.000 What do you want?

00:47:37.000 Okay, you want the earth to not be as warm.

00:47:39.000 What would you like us to do about this?

00:47:40.000 This is my big problem.

00:47:41.000 And Barack Obama, of course, incentivizes all this sort of nonsense because this is the kind of president he was as well.

00:47:45.000 Well, he tweeted out, One challenge will define the future for today's young generation more dramatically than any other.

00:47:51.000 Climate change.

00:47:52.000 The millions of young people worldwide who have organized and joined today's climate strike demand action to protect our planet, and they deserve it. - What do they deserve?

00:48:01.000 Demanding action.

00:48:02.000 Like, what does that mean?

00:48:04.000 My daughter demands action from me every morning, and I don't know what she wants if she just comes in and says, I demand action! 1.00

00:48:09.000 It's like, what do you want from me?

00:48:11.000 Would you like to get dressed?

00:48:12.000 Do you want me to get you some food?

00:48:13.000 Like, what are we talking about here?

00:48:16.000 And I'm sorry, but that is not political activism.

00:48:18.000 That's just you screaming at things.

00:48:20.000 See, the thing is, when you take a politically active stance, normally you have to have a program attached to it.

00:48:25.000 When I speak at the March for Life, I'm pretty sure I know what the March for Life folks want.

00:48:27.000 They want more legislation to stop abortion.

00:48:32.000 They would like to defund Planned Parenthood.

00:48:33.000 They have a specific program.

00:48:35.000 You gotta have a specific program, folks, if you want people to take you seriously.

00:48:39.000 But of course, none of these people have a specific program.

00:48:41.000 The whole goal here is to morally castigate people who point this out.

00:48:45.000 So you have Bill Nye, the supposed science guy, saying, well, you know, it's time for a change.

00:48:50.000 Listen, dude, just because you, like, did cool science experiments with baking soda back when I was 11 does not mean that you are proposing anything doable.

00:49:00.000 And that bow tie is getting old.

00:49:02.000 So are you.

00:49:03.000 Greetings everyone, Bill Nye here.

00:49:05.000 Thank you students for getting out there and calling attention to climate change and the big changes that we need to make to address it.

00:49:12.000 Now, we built this remarkable society with this remarkable infrastructure because of our use of fossil fuels.

00:49:19.000 And so to the fossil fuel industry, I say, thank you for your service.

00:49:24.000 But it's time to make big changes.

00:49:26.000 And the students are reminding us of that today.

00:49:29.000 We can do this, everybody!

00:49:31.000 We can change the world!

00:49:33.000 Okay, what is do this and change the world?

00:49:35.000 We can do it, yeah!

00:49:37.000 Yeah!

00:49:38.000 My favorite part is we built this entire beautiful, wonderful society where I get to wear bow ties on TV for money.

00:49:42.000 We built that on fossil fuels, so thanks for that.

00:49:44.000 Also, we're gonna just totally destroy that, and I have no program.

00:49:48.000 Well done, everyone.

00:49:49.000 You've changed the world today by saying nothing and just making people angrier for no apparent reason, when there should be at least an attempt, it seems to me, to come up with some sort of workable solution.

00:49:59.000 It is such a point of irritation when people do this sort of stuff.

00:50:01.000 Screaming at the moon doesn't get things done. 1.00

00:50:03.000 It just does not.

00:50:04.000 Okay, time for some things that I like and then some things that I hate.

00:50:07.000 So things that I like.

00:50:09.000 Carl Marlantes is a terrific novelist.

00:50:11.000 He wrote a book called Matterhorn about the Vietnam War and about what it was like to fight in the Vietnam War a few years back, and it is one of the finest books on the Vietnam War ever written.

00:50:19.000 It really is terrific.

00:50:20.000 He has a great new book called Deep River that hasn't gotten the sort of attention that it should have received about a Finnish family that moves over It's really a well-written book.

00:50:39.000 I really love Marlant's writing.

00:50:40.000 I think that he is a terrific, evocative writer.

00:50:44.000 He doesn't try to hide the ball in his writing.

00:50:46.000 His word choice is beautiful.

00:50:47.000 If you're into good novels, then Deep River is one that I would recommend.

00:50:51.000 Even though I disagree with some of the politics in it, it is well worth the read.

00:50:54.000 Go check it out.

00:50:55.000 Deep River by Karl Marlantis.

00:50:56.000 Okay, other things that I like.

00:50:58.000 I like that the comedic community is beginning to come around to the fact that cancel culture is going to clock them directly in the face. 0.94

00:51:02.000 So Sarah Silverman, who is as woke as it is possible to be, while still being a very, very white-slash-Jewish person, she says that the hostless shows that shows like the Emmys are really terrible because cancel culture is dumb. 0.98

00:51:17.000 Cut us off at the knees. 0.98

00:51:18.000 There isn't even a host anymore in these shows.

00:51:21.000 They don't want comedians to talk.

00:51:24.000 Did you offer to step in?

00:51:25.000 No, nobody wants to do it either.

00:51:27.000 I mean, it's thankless.

00:51:29.000 Absolutely correct.

00:51:30.000 And then, Stephen Colbert and Jimmy Kimmel.

00:51:33.000 Get up on stage and, I mean, I can't believe, this is like the Pope and the Anti-Pope of leftism.

00:51:38.000 I guess there's like a papal schism in comedy right here.

00:51:41.000 Take your side.

00:51:42.000 Which one of these woke comedians would you prefer?

00:51:44.000 Both of them start mocking the hostless shows.

00:51:46.000 It's like, guys, you're part of the problem.

00:51:48.000 If you don't like the hostless shows, then maybe you shouldn't participate in the cancel culture that is involved in destroying people.

00:51:54.000 But I do like the fact that they're criticizing it at least.

00:51:57.000 Well, well, well.

00:51:59.000 How's the old no host thing going? 1.00

00:52:05.000 What a dumb idea. 0.99

00:52:06.000 What a joke. 1.00

00:52:07.000 So stupid. 1.00

00:52:09.000 You know what has a host? 1.00

00:52:10.000 Applebee's has a host.

00:52:13.000 Yeah.

00:52:13.000 They have food too.

00:52:16.000 We would have brought food.

00:52:17.000 Yeah. 0.79

00:52:18.000 And now you guys are gonna starve to death.

00:52:20.000 You know who the real victims are here?

00:52:23.000 It's us.

00:52:26.000 Hosting is the only thing we know how to do. 0.99

00:52:29.000 I'm sorry, but this show sucks. 1.00

00:52:32.000 Okay, and not only does it suck, I mean, they're trying to make a joke out of it and sort of play both sides of this joke, but the show did suck, the Emmys, and the ratings were down dramatically, because as it turns out, woke culture is garbage. 1.00

00:52:43.000 Woke-skulled culture is just the worst. 1.00

00:52:46.000 It's the worst. 1.00

00:52:46.000 Cancel culture is garbage. 1.00

00:52:48.000 And even the left in comedy is starting to look around going, okay, when are they coming for me? 0.99

00:52:53.000 First they came for everybody else, and I laughed, and I went along with it, and now they're coming for me.

00:52:56.000 Feeding the alligator only means that they get eaten last.

00:52:58.000 Okay, time for a quick thing that I hate.

00:53:04.000 Okay, so Michelle Williams was on at the Emmys, where she was wearing a very, very expensive dress and winning an Emmy, as it turns out, and complaining about how she doesn't get paid enough.

00:53:13.000 She gets paid millions of dollars to be in pictures. 1.00

00:53:15.000 She's particularly complaining because when they reshot All the Money in the World, because they had to write Kevin Spacey out of history, and then they replaced him with Christopher Plummer and did a lot of the reshoot, She got paid like $1,000 for the reshoot, and Mark Wahlberg got paid like $1.5 million for the reshoot. 0.97

00:53:31.000 That's because he has a good agent and her agent is crap. 0.86

00:53:33.000 But instead of firing her agent, she decided to rail against the industry. 0.96

00:53:36.000 I want to say thank you so much to FX and to Fox 21 Studios for supporting me completely and for paying me equally.

00:53:44.000 Because they understood that when you put value into a person, it empowers that person to get in touch with their own inherent value.

00:53:53.000 And then where do they put that value?

00:53:54.000 They put it into their work.

00:53:56.000 And so the next time a woman, and especially a woman of color, because she stands to make 52 cents on the dollar compared to her white male counterpart, tells you what she needs in order to do her job, listen to her. - Okay, well, you know what Michelle Williams could do? 0.97

00:54:12.000 She could just give up her jobs to women of color. 1.00

00:54:14.000 Because it turns out that women of color can play like three quarters of the parts that she plays. 1.00

00:54:18.000 I don't see her giving that up.

00:54:19.000 Also, she should talk to her agent if she doesn't like what she got paid. 1.00

00:54:22.000 And I'm sorry, making Michelle Williams the face of pay inequality? 1.00

00:54:26.000 The woman's worth probably 20 million dollars. 1.00

00:54:29.000 No.

00:54:30.000 No. 0.99

00:54:30.000 And that statistic that she is citing, 52 cents on the dollar, is a crap statistic. 0.99

00:54:34.000 It has always been a crap statistic. 0.98

00:54:35.000 It doesn't adjust for number of hours worked, for job type, for educational level, for years in the workforce, for job level. 0.99

00:54:41.000 It doesn't adjust for any of that.

00:54:44.000 The fact that we are supposed to listen to lectures from Michelle Williams about equal pay Yeah. 1.00

00:54:49.000 Take it up.

00:54:49.000 Take it up with CAA.

00:54:51.000 Take it up with CAA.

00:54:51.000 Alrighty.

00:54:52.000 We'll be back here later today with two additional hours of content and all the updates you will ever need.

00:54:56.000 I'm Ben Shapiro from our brand new studios, and this is The Ben Shapiro Show.

00:55:00.000 The Ben Shapiro Show is produced by Robert Sterling.

00:55:07.000 Directed by Mike Joyner.

00:55:09.000 Executive producer, Jeremy Boring.

00:55:11.000 Senior producer, Jonathan Hay.

00:55:13.000 Our supervising producer is Mathis Glover.

00:55:15.000 And our technical producer is Austin Stevens.

00:55:18.000 Assistant director, Pavel Wydowski.

00:55:20.000 Edited by Adam Siavitz.

00:55:21.000 Audio is mixed by Mike Koromina.

00:55:23.000 Hair and makeup is by Jesua Olvera.

00:55:25.000 Production assistant, Nick Sheehan.

00:55:26.000 The Ben Shapiro Show is a Daily Wire production.

00:55:28.000 Copyright Daily Wire 2019.

The Ben Shapiro Show - September 23, 2019

The Ukraine Problem | Ep. 866

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