The Ben Shapiro Show - Trump Is Charged -- And Then Fights Back

00:00:00.000 Well, folks, the circus was in town yesterday in Manhattan when Alvin Bragg decided that now was finally the time to get Donald Trump.

00:00:08.000 Now, we had been told that we weren't supposed to prejudge the situation.

00:00:11.000 We just weren't supposed to prejudge it.

00:00:13.000 Because, after all, the indictment might come down and it might be something completely different.

00:00:17.000 From what we had led to believe.

00:00:19.000 We had been led to believe that obviously this was a bunch of misdemeanors that had been spun into felonies, that these were state misdemeanors spun into state felonies that were then being linked to a federal felony charge that was never actually filed.

00:00:29.000 It looked really weak, in other words.

00:00:31.000 But we were told, you know, wait for the indictment to come out.

00:00:33.000 Just wait, just wait for the indictment. 0.99

00:00:34.000 Some of us were like, well, you know, I'm willing to go on the record and say that unless something shocking comes out in the indictment, this is a bunch of crap. 0.98

00:00:42.000 You know, fair enough. 0.98

00:00:43.000 Well, we waited. 1.00

00:00:44.000 And now it turns out that the indictment is just a bunch of crap. 0.99

00:00:47.000 The indictment is out. 1.00

00:00:48.000 It is terrible.

00:00:49.000 It's a 34-count indictment.

00:00:51.000 And it essentially is one count over and over and over and over again.

00:00:55.000 It's not 34 separate counts. 0.62

00:00:58.000 It is Donald Trump lied about paying off various people, three specific people, a doorman, a porn star, and another quasi-porn star.

00:01:09.000 And the idea is that in doing so, he did not declare these as campaign finance donations.

00:01:17.000 These should have been categorized as campaign finance expenses as opposed to being paid under the table to Stormy Daniels or Karen McDougal or doorman number seven.

00:01:26.000 That's the entirety of the case.

00:01:28.000 It's a really, really weak case.

00:01:30.000 And I'm going to go through the statement of fact here, which is supposed to be the predicate for the call for prosecution.

00:01:37.000 Again, Alvin Bragg, the DA, is filing 34 separate counts in order to jack up the number of years of jail time Trump could theoretically do.

00:01:44.000 He could theoretically face four years for each count, so 136 years in jail.

00:01:49.000 In reality, even were Trump convicted, he's a first-time offender, so legally speaking, he would probably do zero jail time.

00:01:55.000 But it makes everybody on the left feel all warm and fuzzy on their insides.

00:01:58.000 They get that special tingle up their leg.

00:02:00.000 And so Alvin Bragg putting it on the table that there may in fact eventually be a picture of Donald Trump wearing the bracelets makes everybody very hot and bothered on the left.

00:02:08.000 But let's go through the statement of facts so that none can accuse you of not having actually gone through the facts.

00:02:13.000 So here is what Alvin Bragg is claiming.

00:02:16.000 He says the defendant Donald Trump repeatedly and fraudulently falsified New York business records to conceal criminal conduct that hid damaging information from the voting public during the 2016 presidential election.

00:02:26.000 And this is, of course, the entire predicate for this investigation.

00:02:29.000 No one on the left will ever accept the fact that Trump won the 2016 election.

00:02:33.000 They didn't accept it because of Russia, Russia, Russia.

00:02:35.000 And now they don't accept it because of Stormy, Stormy, Stormy or something.

00:02:39.000 The same people, the exact same people will tell you that the hiding of the Hunter Biden laptop right before the 2020 election had no impact on the final vote.

00:02:46.000 But supposedly, if we had all found out that Donald Trump in 2006 schtooped a porn star while his wife was pregnant, that that would have shaped the outcome of the 2016 election.

00:02:55.000 And that's why Trump paid off Stormy Daniels. 0.95

00:02:57.000 Now, I have a bit of a rebuttal to that, which is Trump was literally caught on tape three weeks before the election saying that he liked to grab women by the bleep and screw married women.

00:03:07.000 Literally said that on tape to Billy Bush won the election anyway.

00:03:10.000 So it's an absurd contention that this would have shifted the election.

00:03:13.000 But again, the left cannot deal with the fact that Hillary Clinton didn't win in 2016, and they've been trying to reverse history ever since.

00:03:19.000 So they're going to get into the dock.

00:03:22.000 Brown, DeLorean and go back in time and try to prosecute cases from 2015-2016.

00:03:26.000 So here's what Alvin Bragg says.

00:03:27.000 From August 2015 to December 2017, the defendant orchestrated a scheme with others to influence the 2016 presidential election by identifying and purchasing negative information about him to suppress its publication and benefit the defendant's electoral prospects.

00:03:40.000 In order to execute the unlawful scheme, the participants violated election laws and made and caused false entries in the business records of various entities in New York.

00:03:47.000 The participants also took steps that mischaracterized, for tax purposes, the true nature of the payments made in furtherance of the scheme.

00:03:54.000 So again, the complaint here is that it was actually a campaign expense.

00:03:57.000 That Trump wasn't paying a variety of people off just because Donald Trump likes to quash rumors sometimes.

00:04:03.000 No, he was doing it specifically for election purposes and that would have been okay if he had said in his campaign finance documents, for election purposes, I'm paying off Stormy Daniels.

00:04:10.000 The big problem is, he didn't say, for election purposes, I'm paying off Stormy Daniels.

00:04:13.000 Instead, he chalked it up to some other expense item in his New York business records.

00:04:18.000 This is the entirety of the case.

00:04:20.000 Alvin Bragg continues, one component of this scheme was that, at defendant's request, a lawyer who then worked for the Trump Organization as special counsel to defendant, this would be Michael Cohen, covertly paid $130,000 to an adult film actress shortly before the election to prevent her from publicizing a sexual encounter with defendant.

00:04:34.000 Cohen made the $130,000 payment through a shell corporation he set up and funded at a bank in Manhattan.

00:04:39.000 This payment was illegal, and Michael Cohen has since pled guilty to making an illegal campaign contribution and served time in prison.

00:04:44.000 Further, false entries were made in New York business records to effectuate this payment, separate and apart from the New York business records used to conceal the payment.

00:04:51.000 After the election, the defendant reimbursed Michael Cohen for the illegal payment through a series of monthly checks, first from the Donald J. Trump Revocable Trust, a trust created under the laws of New York which held the Trump Organization entity assets after the defendant was elected president, and then from the defendant's bank account.

00:05:05.000 Each check was processed by the Trump Organization.

00:05:07.000 Each check was disguised as a payment for legal services rendered in a given month of 2017 pursuant to a retainer agreement.

00:05:13.000 The payment records were false New York business records.

00:05:15.000 In truth, there was no retainer agreement, and Michael Cohen was not being paid for legal services.

00:05:19.000 So in other words, if Michael Cohen had actually been a half-decent lawyer, and he had set up a retainer agreement, they would literally have no evidence that any of this ever happened.

00:05:27.000 And that's the whole thing.

00:05:28.000 That's literally the whole thing.

00:05:29.000 The rest of it is just filling in the details as to what that means, talking about stuff that we already know, talking about the fact that Donald Trump was working with AMI, which of course is the parent company, American Media Inc., of the National Enquirer.

00:05:42.000 They were working to catch and kill stories and all the rest of this sort of stuff.

00:05:45.000 But that's the whole thing.

00:05:47.000 And because of this, we now have all this hoopla, including the possibility of the former president of the United States doing jail time.

00:05:54.000 This, of course, is an absurdity.

00:05:56.000 And everybody basically recognizes that this is an absurdity.

00:05:59.000 Even the people who want Trump to go to jail recognize, mainly, that this is an absurdity.

00:06:03.000 Which means that Trump, you know, whether he goes to jail or not, is going to get a big boost from this because people who are unjustly persecuted, as he appears to be in Manhattan at the very least, He's going to get a boost from that.

00:06:15.000 We'll get to more on this in just one second.

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00:06:58.000 Stop handing over your personal data to the big tech monopoly that Okay, so, all of this was wrapped in a bunch of drama yesterday.

00:07:03.000 vpnitrust at expressvpn.com slash ben is my exclusive link expressvpn.com slash ben get an extra three months for free expressvpn.com slash ben you never know who is watching your internet activity so protect it today expressvpn.com slash ben get an extra three months for free okay so all of this was wrapped in a bunch of drama yesterday so the drama began when just before donald trump pulled away from trump tower

00:07:30.000 There are a couple of different groups that mobilized themselves to locate in front of Trump Tower a pro-Trump group, an anti-Trump group.

00:07:36.000 And they basically had kind of these small clashes.

00:07:40.000 One of the anti-Trump people put out a giant banner that said, Trump lies.

00:07:43.000 And then a MAGA-hatted lady went over and started grabbing the banner. 1.00

00:07:46.000 This is the circus, man.

00:07:47.000 And we are all just spectators.

00:07:52.000 Look at the number of media versus the number of protesters, by the way.

00:07:54.000 I mean, this is all the media's creation, in terms of why this is happening, because the media incentives for people like Alan Bragg are just too rich.

00:08:02.000 In terms of why people are protesting and going out in the streets, because there are cameras on them.

00:08:06.000 Look, there's a hundred cameras and, like, two people. 0.95

00:08:08.000 It's ridiculous.

00:08:09.000 Meanwhile, it is true that the amount of media coverage on the right-wing protesters was significantly higher than the amount of coverage on the left-wing protesters. 0.96

00:08:17.000 Not a lot of traditional media coverage of, for example, this crazy lady who is out there screaming about race. 1.00

00:08:22.000 This is pretty wild. 0.97

00:08:24.000 Why are you going in here and calling all the white people in here racist? 1.00

00:08:27.000 No, I'm calling them dumb Republicans. 1.00

00:08:29.000 No, you're calling them racist. 1.00

00:08:30.000 You call the white men racist. 1.00

00:08:31.000 All white people are racist. 1.00

00:08:32.000 All white people are racist. 1.00

00:08:33.000 Why are you trying to instigate violence right now? 1.00

00:08:35.000 Because I'm black and I like violence. 0.95

00:08:37.000 Yeah? 1.00

00:08:37.000 I'm an animal. 1.00

00:08:38.000 I'm an animal! 0.98

00:08:39.000 I'm a black animal! 1.00

00:08:43.000 I'm a black animal! 1.00

00:08:45.000 Let's kill all white people! 1.00

00:08:47.000 Yeah, baby! 1.00

00:08:48.000 So Biden 2024?

00:08:49.000 Biden 2024?

00:08:52.000 So she seems like an excellent prospective voter and somebody whose opinion we should take incredibly seriously.

00:08:57.000 Well, all of this was the lead up to Donald Trump being brought in and then fingerprinted and booked.

00:09:03.000 And there were some pictures of him going into the building, some video of him walking into the courtroom, and he looks like Trump.

00:09:09.000 I mean, he doesn't look particularly upset.

00:09:12.000 He doesn't look particularly happy.

00:09:14.000 He just looks kind of somber and determined, as he should.

00:09:20.000 There are pictures of Trump that have now emerged from the court.

00:09:22.000 You can look at some of the pictures so we can look at some of the visuals.

00:09:26.000 Here's Donald Trump sitting in the courtroom.

00:09:27.000 You can see that he's surrounded by his lawyers.

00:09:30.000 This is the big takeaway picture, and it's not a bad picture for Trump.

00:09:32.000 I mean, if the optics matter here, then Trump obviously doesn't look wildly uncomfortable.

00:09:36.000 He's not Richard Nixon in the 1960 presidential debate.

00:09:36.000 He's not, like, sweating.

00:09:39.000 He doesn't look like he's grief-ridden.

00:09:41.000 He doesn't look like he's sad.

00:09:42.000 He looks determined, as he should.

00:09:44.000 Trump then went ahead and pled not guilty, as, of course, he was going to do.

00:09:48.000 And then he sat quietly as the lawyers kind of talked with the judge and all the rest of it.

00:09:52.000 The prosecutor who began to explain the charges, Chris Conroy, brought up threatening posts that Trump had made online, saying the former president had threatened New York City, the courts, and the Manhattan District Attorney's Office, which brought the charges against him.

00:10:01.000 He handed paper copies of Trump's social media posts to the judge and to the defense lawyers.

00:10:05.000 A lawyer for Trump, a guy named Todd Blanche, according to the New York Times, quickly objected, saying, The district attorney Alvin Bragg was watching from the first row of the audience, so Blanch immediately laid into the prosecutors for the publicity around the case, which is correct.

00:10:19.000 They've been leaking all sorts of material.

00:10:20.000 He also criticized Michael Cohen, Trump's former fixer and a key witness, and Mark Pomerantz, a prosecutor who worked on the investigation under Bragg's predecessor and published a book about his experience.

00:10:29.000 Trump basically just sat there.

00:10:31.000 The judge, a guy named Juan Merchan, went out of his way to say he did not plan to place a gag order on Trump.

00:10:36.000 But he said, quote, I don't share your view with Mr. Blanche, that would that would be Trump's lawyer, about the justification for Trump's harsher rhetoric.

00:10:42.000 So Trump's lawyer said he's using harsh rhetoric because he has a right to speak as he wishes to speak on a matter of public concern.

00:10:49.000 And he's in the middle of a presidential race and he's being unfairly targeted.

00:10:52.000 And the judge said, I don't share your view.

00:10:54.000 And then he urged witnesses the case, as well as the defendant, to refrain from making statements, quote, with, quote, the potential to incite violence and civil unrest.

00:11:01.000 So he rejected the idea of a gag order telling Trump he can't talk about the case, but he said that he might revisit that at some point in the future.

00:11:09.000 Now put that in the back of your mind because that is going to come up very shortly because Trump then gave a speech in Mar-a-Lago last night in which he said a bunch of things that the judge will undoubtedly find somewhat inflammatory.

00:11:21.000 So as far as what comes next, well, the next step, presumably, is that there are pretrial hearings.

00:11:28.000 There will be defense motions to dismiss.

00:11:30.000 If the judge is smart, he dismisses the case because it's unbelievably weak.

00:11:33.000 And then that could take months.

00:11:36.000 In fact, the next time that Donald Trump is supposed to show up for an in-person hearing would be December 4th.

00:11:43.000 December 4th of this year, according to Lauren Duval, who is of CNN, That is nuts and obviously designed by people on the left in order to push this all the way into the presidential cycle because every time Trump is in the news being persecuted by left-wing DAs, it boosts him in the primaries.

00:12:03.000 So take this all the way into December and this is just going to lurk over the entire 2024 presidential race.

00:12:08.000 The left knows this.

00:12:09.000 This is why they're in fact doing this.

00:12:10.000 They've been pretty open about the fact that they want Trump to be the nominee and they're certainly doing their best to ensure that that is precisely what happens.

00:12:17.000 So.

00:12:19.000 All of that was lead up to Alvin Bragg himself doing a press conference.

00:12:24.000 Finally, it was his moment in the sun.

00:12:26.000 And again, this is the reason this is happening.

00:12:28.000 And so Alvin Bragg can have his moment in the sun.

00:12:30.000 He can get his name in the news.

00:12:31.000 He can be Eliot Spitzer.

00:12:32.000 But you know, before client number nine and all that.

00:12:35.000 He can be a famous prosecutor.

00:12:37.000 He can be in that show.

00:12:38.000 He can be in billions.

00:12:39.000 He can be Well, Paul Giamatti in billions.

00:12:46.000 This is the goal here for Alvin Bragg.

00:12:48.000 He made that pretty clear in his press conference. 0.96

00:12:50.000 We'll get to that pathetic display in just one moment.

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00:13:45.000 Switch over to PeerTalk in as little Okay, so all of this led up to Alvin Bragg finally releasing the indictment.

00:14:00.000 We've read through the key part of the indictment, which again, comes down to Donald Trump stole the election!

00:14:06.000 And he stole the election by having Michael Cohen pay off Stormy Daniels, and then he didn't report it as a campaign finance report.

00:14:13.000 And then he wasn't prosecuted for years because nobody thought that any of this was criminal.

00:14:17.000 Because Trump has an easy and obvious defense, which is, I paid off Stormy Daniels. 0.98

00:14:22.000 First of all, I think she's lying, which is what Trump says.

00:14:23.000 But I paid her off, mainly because I didn't want Melania upset, right?

00:14:26.000 That's a fairly good excuse.

00:14:28.000 And remember, in a case that was very, very similar, with regard to John Edwards and Riel Hunter, right?

00:14:34.000 She was his camerawoman.

00:14:35.000 He was married at that time to Elizabeth Edwards, his wife, who was cancer-ridden.

00:14:39.000 And meanwhile, he was stripping the camerawoman, and he got her pregnant.

00:14:42.000 And he had his donors basically pony up a million dollars to pay for child support and all the rest of this stuff to Riel Hunter. And then he was prosecuted federally for this and ended up with a hung jury. So the chances that this was going to end up with some sort of conviction, pretty low, at least in the real world. But this isn't the real world, this is Manhattan.

00:14:58.000 All this about Alvin Bragg and Alvin Bragg alone. So Alvin Bragg, we should recall, it's a flashback to when Alvin Bragg was running for DA, said that he was going to go after Donald Trump. Whoever has this job, are they going to convict Donald Trump?

00:15:16.000 Look, that, that, that is, uh, the number one issue we know he's investigating.

00:15:23.000 And what I'll say is I'm the only, I was the first to announce against Cy Vance.

00:15:26.000 I too have a lot of issues, which is why I decided to run.

00:15:30.000 I also led the team that did the Trump foundation case.

00:15:33.000 So I'm ready to go wherever the facts take me and to inherit that case.

00:15:38.000 And I think, you know, I'd be hard to argue with the fact that that'd be the most important, most high-profile case, and I've seen him up front and seen the lawlessness that he can do.

00:15:46.000 And you believe it should happen?

00:15:50.000 I believe we have to hold him accountable.

00:15:52.000 I haven't seen all the facts beyond the public, but I've litigated with him, and so I'm prepared to go where the facts take me once I see them.

00:16:00.000 So I mean, he was very early on saying that he wanted to go after Donald Trump.

00:16:03.000 And yesterday he finally got his chance.

00:16:05.000 So here was Alvin Bragg.

00:16:06.000 He said everyone stands equal before the law, especially people who have not lived in the state of New York for quite a while and who happen to be on the Democrats hit list at the top of the list, actually.

00:16:17.000 At its core, this case today is one with allegations like so many of our white collar cases.

00:16:26.000 Allegations that someone lied again and again to protect their interests and evade the laws to which we are all held accountable.

00:16:36.000 As this office has done time and time again, we today uphold our solemn responsibility to ensure that everyone stands equal before the law.

00:16:47.000 No amount of money and no amount of power changes that enduring American principle.

00:16:54.000 No one believes that this guy is about equal protection of the laws in the city of New York.

00:16:58.000 No one believes that.

00:16:59.000 There are murderers who are getting away with it in the city of New York, but Alvin Bragg is going after Donald Trump for a supposed crime that is not even articulated correctly in the law.

00:17:06.000 Remember, the law itself is going to be a question.

00:17:09.000 In the motion to dismiss, the question is going to be whether the state even has the capacity to charge Donald Trump with a misdemeanor that is being linked to a supposed federal felony when the federal government has not charged Donald Trump with that felony.

00:17:24.000 It's called Article 175.

00:17:25.000 Okay, so Article 175 is the question here.

00:17:29.000 And Alvin, that article, which is the falsification of business records article, says you can link it to another crime.

00:17:35.000 But it doesn't say that the crime can be a federal crime.

00:17:37.000 It'd be very weird, in fact, to link a state crime with a federal crime so that you can avoid the statute of limitations.

00:17:42.000 Remember, falsification of business records has like a two-year statute of limitations if it's a misdemeanor and a five-year statute of limitations if it's a felony.

00:17:48.000 And you may have noticed that all of this was alleged to have happened in 2015-2016.

00:17:53.000 And it is currently 2023, so we're well outside the statute of limitations for all of this, unless he ladles it into a federal crime that was never prosecuted.

00:18:01.000 This is super weak tea.

00:18:03.000 And then Brad continued along these lines again.

00:18:05.000 He's going to be the crusading prosecutor, supposedly, says we're not going to normalize serious criminal conduct.

00:18:09.000 Well, I mean, you certainly have in the city of New York.

00:18:12.000 The rule in the city of New York is push somebody in front of a subway train.

00:18:14.000 You're probably OK.

00:18:16.000 No matter who you are, we cannot and will not normalize serious criminal conduct.

00:18:20.000 in 2023 may find yourself dragged into court by Alvin Bragg.

00:18:22.000 No matter who you are, we cannot and will not normalize serious criminal conduct.

00:18:31.000 The defendant repeatedly made false statements on New York business records.

00:18:38.000 Oh, my God. Really?

00:18:41.000 This is it? 1.00

00:18:43.000 It's so pathetic. 1.00

00:18:44.000 It's just pathetic. 0.99

00:18:45.000 Also worthwhile noting here that I noticed that Hillary Clinton has been a longtime resident of the state of New York. 0.97

00:18:52.000 And Hillary's foundation was engaged in some rather questionable practices.

00:18:56.000 You have expended zero time and effort going into that.

00:18:58.000 Just a few things that I have noticed about the way that law is done in the state of New York.

00:19:04.000 Bragg says that Trump made payments to hide damaging information from the public.

00:19:07.000 Which, again, I mean, Hillary Clinton, literally when she was running for president in 2016, paid a cut-out law firm in order to launder the Steele dossier through to the FBI.

00:19:19.000 And nobody seems to bat an eye about that one.

00:19:20.000 Here we go.

00:19:22.000 As part of this scheme, Donald Trump and others made three payments to people who claimed to have negative information about Mr. Trump.

00:19:32.000 To make these payments, they set up shell companies, And they made yet more false statements, including, for example, in AMI, American Media Incorporated's business records.

00:19:45.000 One of the three people that they paid to keep quiet was a woman named Stormy Daniels. 1.00

00:19:51.000 Less than two weeks before the presidential election, Michael Cohen wired $130,000 to Stormy Daniels' lawyer.

00:20:00.000 That payment was to hide damaging information from the voting public.

00:20:06.000 This is all just, it's so sketchy.

00:20:08.000 It's all so sketchy.

00:20:10.000 And then Bragg of course tries to make the claim that Trump has made 34 false claims.

00:20:13.000 It's all the same claim.

00:20:15.000 He's just, he's just doing the same charge over and over and over and over in the hopes that one of them sticks. 0.99

00:20:19.000 This is the definition of throwing crap against the wall here. 0.58

00:20:23.000 Earlier this afternoon, Donald Trump was arraigned on a New York Supreme Court indictment, returned by a Manhattan grand jury, on 34 felony counts of falsifying business records in the first degree. 0.96

00:20:37.000 Under New York State law, it is a felony to falsify business records with intent to defraud and intent to conceal another crime.

00:20:48.000 That is exactly what this case is about.

00:20:52.000 34 false statements made to cover up other crimes.

00:20:58.000 This is obviously a malicious prosecution.

00:21:00.000 Everyone knows it's a malicious prosecution.

00:21:01.000 We'll get to Trump's response in just one moment.

00:21:03.000 First, simple fact of the matter is, if you have a family, if you have dependents, you have to have life insurance.

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00:22:05.000 Okay, so Trump obviously is not sitting on his hands while all this is happening.

00:22:09.000 He put out a statement on his way back to Mar-a-Lago in which he lamented the state of the country, pointing out that this is unique in American history.

00:22:18.000 And his campaign immediately launched into campaign mode.

00:22:23.000 They were actually hoping for a mugshot.

00:22:23.000 There was no mugshot.

00:22:25.000 Because they didn't get one, they actually sort of just made one up and then they put it on shirts and sold the shirts.

00:22:30.000 It's a fake mugshot underneath the text reads, not guilty and their campaign is offering the shirts in exchange for a $47 contribution.

00:22:38.000 So Trump is making hay while the sun shines, politically speaking.

00:22:41.000 He went back to Mar-a-Lago last night and he launched into what was a unique speech.

00:22:46.000 I will say that it was unique mainly because this has never happened before in American history, in which a former president and presidential contender is hauled into court on flimsy charges.

00:22:57.000 And so what you would have expected is Trump to be outraged.

00:23:00.000 What I would have expected is a little bit more of a methodical attack on the left.

00:23:06.000 That's what you would want here is for Trump to say, they're coming after me because they're coming after you, right?

00:23:10.000 This is literally his truth social profile is they're coming after you.

00:23:13.000 I'm just standing in the way.

00:23:15.000 Instead, his speech turned into sort of a litany of grievances about the legal system.

00:23:18.000 Now again, takes nothing away from the fact that Trump does have a huge Thank you very much everybody and we have to save our country.

00:23:25.000 God bless you all.

00:23:26.000 The left has come after him for the great sin of winning the 2016 election.

00:23:29.000 It's just saying that it turned into sort of a rambling, non-methodical speech.

00:23:32.000 But again, as far as Trump firing back, this is only his first iteration.

00:23:36.000 Obviously, you would assume there's a lot more to come.

00:23:38.000 So Trump kicked off his speech.

00:23:40.000 By saying we have to save the country and lamenting the state of the country.

00:23:44.000 Thank you very much, everybody.

00:23:46.000 And we have to save our country.

00:23:48.000 God bless you all. God bless you all.

00:23:54.000 And I never thought anything like this could happen in America.

00:23:59.000 Never thought it could happen.

00:24:02.000 The only crime that I have committed is to fearlessly defend our nation from those who seek to destroy it.

00:24:13.000 Now, when Trump says something like the only crime I've committed is to fearlessly defend the nation from those who seek to destroy it, it's a good campaign line, right?

00:24:20.000 I mean, let's be real about this, which is that Trump, you know, did shtup a porn star and pay her off, but that's not the reason that he's being prosecuted.

00:24:28.000 The reason he's being prosecuted is because he is a Republican, and because he was a Republican president, and because he may be a Republican president again.

00:24:34.000 So he's certainly right about that on a general level.

00:24:38.000 And then he launched into, quite correctly, a litany of all the times Democrats have come after him, and he's right about this.

00:24:43.000 The fact of the matter is that certainly no president in my lifetime has been put under the gun quite like President Trump has been put under the gun by the left.

00:24:51.000 They literally mobilized the entire law enforcement apparatus of the federal government to go after him for four long years with the Russia investigation.

00:24:59.000 And now they're mobilizing Manhattan DAs to go after him for years-old crimes that probably aren't crimes in the first place.

00:25:06.000 Here was Donald Trump on that last night.

00:25:08.000 From the beginning, the Democrats Spied on my campaign, remember that?

00:25:15.000 They attacked me with an onslaught of fraudulent investigations.

00:25:20.000 Russia, Russia, Russia.

00:25:22.000 Ukraine, Ukraine, Ukraine.

00:25:24.000 Impeachment hoax number one.

00:25:26.000 Impeachment hoax number two.

00:25:29.000 The illegal and unconstitutional raid on Mar-a-Lago, right here.

00:25:37.000 They're lying to the FISA courts.

00:25:40.000 The FBI and DOJ relentlessly pursuing Republicans.

00:25:45.000 The unconstitutional changes to election laws by not getting approvals from state legislators.

00:25:54.000 The millions of votes illegally stuffed into ballot boxes and all caught on government cameras.

00:26:00.000 And just recently, the FBI and DOJ, in collusion with Twitter and Facebook, In order not to say anything bad about the Hunter Biden laptop from hell?

00:26:12.000 And when he points out there at the very end that the FBI and the DOJ were working in collusion with Twitter and Facebook not to say anything bad about Hunter Biden, again, that double standard is the thing that's going to ring in the ears of many Americans, particularly in primary.

00:26:24.000 Now, I have a lot of doubts that this is going to carry him forward through a general election, that there are a lot of independents out there who are going to swivel into the Trump camp based on all this.

00:26:32.000 I've yet to meet an American who doesn't have a very strong opinion one way or another about Donald Trump.

00:26:36.000 With that said, is this going to help in a primary?

00:26:38.000 Yeah, because again, His whole case is that there's a double standard that has been applied to him, and that same double standard is applied to you, and he is a stand-in for you.

00:26:47.000 He continued along these lines.

00:26:48.000 Again, this is a list of grievances, essentially.

00:26:50.000 And he talks about how this is, in fact, massive election interference.

00:26:54.000 And he's right.

00:26:54.000 I mean, if the left is constantly complaining that democracy is under threat, that Donald Trump is threatening democracy because he is doubting election results and all the rest of that, Well, is it fair to say that it is a massive election interference when you launch spurious charges against the leading opposition candidate?

00:27:10.000 That seems like a massive piece of election interference.

00:27:13.000 Even if you're somebody like me and believes that the left is trying to pick Trump, it's massive election interference.

00:27:16.000 No matter how you slice it, it clearly is.

00:27:19.000 Here's Trump going after Alvin Bragg.

00:27:21.000 And now this massive election interference at a scale never seen before in our country.

00:27:27.000 Beginning with the radical left, George Soros-backed prosecutor Alvin Bragg of New York.

00:27:36.000 Who campaigned on the fact that he would get President Trump.

00:27:42.000 I'm going to get him.

00:27:43.000 I'm going to get him.

00:27:44.000 This is a guy campaigning.

00:27:46.000 You want to get President Trump at any cost and this before he knew anything about me.

00:27:52.000 Didn't know a thing about me.

00:27:53.000 He was campaigning.

00:27:55.000 As it turns out, virtually everybody that has looked at this case, including rhinos and even hardcore Democrats, say there is no crime.

00:28:05.000 And that it should never have been brought.

00:28:09.000 Now, it appeared in the speech as though Trump was now going to redirect about halfway through the speech into an attack on Biden more generally, saying the reason that they want to stop me from being president is because they're doing a crappy job and they need to protect the guy who's currently in office.

00:28:19.000 And so he sort of swiveled about halfway through the speech and he started talking about the rest of the world laughing at us and gave a litany of Joe Biden's failures.

00:28:26.000 Again, all this is perfectly appropriate.

00:28:28.000 It's an insult to our country as the world is already laughing at us for so many other reasons, like our open borders,

00:28:36.000 Our incompetent withdrawal from Afghanistan, where we left behind American citizens $85 billion worth of the best military equipment in the world, lost 13 magnificent young lives and far too many to mention that are so badly hurt with the loss of arms and legs and facial obliteration.

00:29:00.000 The most embarrassing time in our country's history, in my opinion, Then our give up on energy independence and even energy dominant.

00:29:12.000 We're going to be dominant within six months, more than any other nation times two.

00:29:18.000 We had this all just three years ago.

00:29:20.000 Our raging crime statistics.

00:29:24.000 If you look in Democrat run cities, numbers the likes of which we have never seen before.

00:29:30.000 The open threats by various countries of the use of nuclear weapons.

00:29:36.000 Something never mentioned or discussed by outside nations during the Trump administration and which could very well lead, under the Biden administration's leadership, to an all-out nuclear World War III can happen.

00:29:54.000 And then things started to get a little bit strange.

00:29:56.000 Okay, and the reason they started to get a little bit strange is because he started to swivel into all of his other grievances.

00:30:00.000 So instead of focusing it in on Alvin Bragg and just Alvin Bragg alone, and he's got a winning case there, he started to kind of go off on everybody who's been bothering him.

00:30:08.000 And it turned into a giant sort of almost randomized list of the people who've been going after him. Now listen, I don't blame him on a personal level. I don't blame him whatsoever. As a candidate, you want to see some discipline.

00:30:19.000 And as a candidate, just somebody who is trying to battle back against a machine that is victimizing him, going out there and sort of just naming a bunch of people you don't like, doesn't seem like the most methodical way of approaching it.

00:30:29.000 But Trump has his own ways, obviously. So here is Donald Trump, for example, going after the Georgia election case that has yet to been filed. And in the wings, they've got a local racist Democrat district attorney in Atlanta who is doing everything in her power to indict me over an absolutely perfect phone call.

00:30:46.000 Even more perfect than the one I made with the President of Ukraine.

00:30:50.000 Remember?

00:30:51.000 I kept saying, that's a perfect call.

00:30:53.000 This one was more perfect.

00:30:56.000 Nobody said, sir, you shouldn't say that.

00:30:58.000 Many people on the phone were hung up and disgusted because of something I inappropriately said.

00:31:05.000 Because nothing was said wrong.

00:31:07.000 In fact, at the end of the call, we agreed to continue our conversation about election fraud, and election fraud specifically in Georgia, at a later time.

00:31:18.000 Many people on the phone, including lots of lawyers, nobody found anything wrong with that perfect call until a book promotion tour many months later.

00:31:27.000 All of a sudden, they say, you know, I remember Trump making a call.

00:31:31.000 Let's look at that.

00:31:33.000 This fake case was brought only to interfere with the upcoming 2024 election.

00:31:39.000 And it should be dropped immediately.

00:31:41.000 He didn't stop there.

00:31:42.000 He then went after the the federal prosecutors who are looking into him over the classified documents cases.

00:31:49.000 And he's deliberately going after the prosecutors themselves.

00:31:52.000 Again, all of this is fair game.

00:31:53.000 These are all public figures attacking a prosecutor.

00:31:55.000 It may not be the smartest thing.

00:31:56.000 His lawyer may be ripping out his hair right now by the handful.

00:31:58.000 But it is very Trumpian and Trump is not somebody who takes this stuff sitting down, which of course is what a lot of people love about him is the fact that Donald Trump has never taken any insult sitting down, right?

00:32:07.000 This is a person who always punches back.

00:32:09.000 So here he was going after what he called the boxes hoax.

00:32:13.000 Then you have a radical left lunatic known as a bomb thrower who is harassing hundreds of my people day after day over the boxes hoax.

00:32:23.000 You know, the boxes hoax, as we call it.

00:32:27.000 Just so everyone knows, I come under what's known as the Presidential Records Act, which was designed and approved by Congress long ago just for this reason.

00:32:39.000 Under the Act, I'm supposed to negotiate with NARA, the National Archives and Records Administration, Which as of this date is a radical left troublemaking organization that red flags the Constitution of the United States and the Bill of Rights as dangerous and triggering.

00:32:58.000 Can you imagine?

00:33:00.000 This is what we have to deal with.

00:33:03.000 But there is no criminality under the Presidential Records Act.

00:33:07.000 That is not what it's all about.

00:33:10.000 He also went on to, of course, call out Joe Biden for similarly holding classified documents.

00:33:15.000 The next thing I know, we were raided by many gun-toting FBI agents who took whatever they wanted, including my passports and medical records.

00:33:27.000 Everybody was in shock.

00:33:28.000 Nobody had ever heard of such a raid before.

00:33:30.000 We can't even believe it.

00:33:31.000 Who would think that that could happen today?

00:33:35.000 I immediately thought of the Fourth Amendment that protects against unreasonable search and seizure.

00:33:41.000 But they did it anyway because our justice system Has become lawless.

00:33:48.000 They're using it now, in addition to everything else, to win elections.

00:33:54.000 Apparently, they're not looking at me through the view of the Non-Criminal Presidential Records Act.

00:34:00.000 They came up with a new one.

00:34:02.000 This is a new one.

00:34:04.000 And they're looking at me through the Espionage Act.

00:34:07.000 How does that sound?

00:34:07.000 Think of that.

00:34:08.000 Of 1917, where the penalty is death.

00:34:15.000 Even though that has absolutely nothing to do with openly taking boxes of documents and mostly clothing and other things to my home.

00:34:24.000 And then near the end, he sort of swiveled and he turned once again.

00:34:27.000 And this time he went back after the Manhattan DA.

00:34:30.000 And he called for Alvin Bragg to be prosecuted.

00:34:32.000 He said, you guys, you know, you're talking about how I violated all of the norms of the rules and the procedures.

00:34:36.000 I've noticed that there's a lot of material out there that was not supposed to be leaked.

00:34:39.000 And somehow it got leaked.

00:34:41.000 Who leaked it?

00:34:42.000 Now, I mean, one possibility is that Trump's team leaked it because, again, his team presumably had access to the indictment so they could defend against the indictment.

00:34:48.000 But it's certainly quite possible that Alvin Bragg leaked it.

00:34:51.000 Here was Donald Trump pointing that out.

00:34:53.000 The criminal is the district attorney because he illegally leaked massive amounts of grand jury information for which he should be prosecuted or, at a minimum, he should resign.

00:35:08.000 So you'll recall a little bit earlier on in the program, I pointed out that the judge had said that he was not going to issue a gag order on Trump, right?

00:35:14.000 Everybody should be able to talk about the case, whatever.

00:35:16.000 But, he said, if Donald Trump seems to be inciting, if he seems to be generating ire or violence or whatever, then he might think about a gag order.

00:35:24.000 And Trump's lawyers are like, okay, fine.

00:35:27.000 Well, Trump dropped this doozy last night.

00:35:29.000 He went after the judge and then he went after the judge's wife and the judge's family.

00:35:33.000 Now, the reason that he's pointing out the judge's wife and family is because the judge's daughter actually worked with the local Biden campaign.

00:35:40.000 I mean, that is a fact.

00:35:41.000 He did, in fact, do that.

00:35:43.000 That'd be Lauren Merchan, the daughter of the judge presiding over the case.

00:35:45.000 She's the president and partner at a digital campaign strategy agency that's done work for a lot of prominent Democrats, including Biden and Kamala Harris.

00:35:52.000 Earlier on Tuesday, Trump had actually argued that the judge should recuse himself because of her work With that said, is it a smart political or legal strategy to talk about the Trump-hating judge and the Trump-hating wife and the Trump-hating family?

00:36:05.000 Probably not the smartest legal strategy.

00:36:07.000 It's definitely, again, not easy to be Donald Trump's lawyer.

00:36:10.000 First rule of lawyering is tell your client to shut up so you do the talking. 0.76

00:36:14.000 Donald Trump is not somebody who's going to sit down for that sort of thing.

00:36:17.000 So we'll see if that has any impact.

00:36:18.000 Trump finished his speech pretty abruptly.

00:36:21.000 I think he, by the end, he kind of looked tired and like he wanted to get off the stage.

00:36:25.000 He finished this way.

00:36:26.000 With all of this being said, and with a very dark cloud over our beloved country, I have no doubt, nevertheless, that we will make America great again.

00:36:43.000 Thank you very much.

00:36:45.000 God bless you, and God bless America.

00:36:47.000 Thank you very much, everybody.

00:36:49.000 Thank you.

00:36:51.000 Now, again, this is just the beginning of the fight.

00:36:52.000 So whatever I think of that particular speech, and again, I don't think it was a barn burner.

00:36:56.000 I think he started off well, and I think it sort of went downhill after that.

00:36:59.000 But he's not going to be graded according to that.

00:37:01.000 This is just iteration number one.

00:37:04.000 And Trump's attorneys are pointing out that, yeah, again, this is just the beginning.

00:37:08.000 So here was one of Donald Trump's attorneys to be Joe Tacopina, suggesting that the rule of law is dead here.

00:37:14.000 And this is going to be Donald Trump's pitch going forward.

00:37:16.000 The rule of law is dead unless I'm elected, in which case, as he has said, I am your vengeance.

00:37:22.000 Today's unsealing of this indictment shows that the rule of law died in this country.

00:37:26.000 Because while everyone is not above the law, no one's below it either.

00:37:30.000 And if this man's name was not Donald J. Trump, there is no scenario we'd all be here today.

00:37:35.000 Please understand that based on these charges.

00:37:40.000 That is gonna pitch for Donald Trump. 0.99

00:37:42.000 I think it's a very successful pitch in the Republican primaries.

00:37:45.000 Because I think the Republicans are not thinking long-term here.

00:37:48.000 I think that it's going to be a far less successful pitch in the general election.

00:37:52.000 Again, no one's ever seen anything like this.

00:37:53.000 I mean, this sort of bomb thrown into the middle of an electoral cycle is absolutely insane.

00:37:58.000 But the Democrats knew precisely what they were doing in doing all of this.

00:38:01.000 We'll get to more on all of this in just a second.

00:38:03.000 The Democratic reaction.

00:38:04.000 We'll get to the media reaction to this insanity, this circus, in just one moment.

00:38:09.000 First, while kids in American towns are playing hide-and-seek with their friends, thousands of children in Judea and Samaria, the so-called West Bank, are suffering every day from the trauma of Islamic terror.

00:38:17.000 The Shiloh Israel Fund was born out of one such moment.

00:38:20.000 David Rubin, the founder of the organization, and his son were wounded in a horrific terror attack while driving home from Jerusalem.

00:38:25.000 They narrowly escaped with their lives.

00:38:27.000 David later realized his son was only one of thousands of kids in Israel who are suffering physically and psychologically from such attacks.

00:38:33.000 David founded the Shiloh Israel Children's Fund to provide victimized kids with the life-saving therapies they urgently need to heal from their trauma.

00:38:40.000 Shiloh Israel Children's Fund provides unique programs to help kids work through their trauma in ways that work for them.

00:38:45.000 Art, drama, animal therapy, and more.

00:38:47.000 Every kid responds differently to trauma.

00:38:49.000 They tailor these life-changing therapies to each and every kid's individual needs.

00:38:53.000 Treatment like this is not cheap.

00:38:54.000 A lot of Israeli families can't afford this life-saving treatment that their kids need to heal.

00:38:58.000 We can help improve that situation.

00:38:59.000 It is a wonderful, wonderful cause.

00:39:00.000 We're talking about the victims of actual terrorism.

00:39:02.000 Go to Israelchildren.org slash Ben to see what it takes to save the life of a terror-stricken child in Israel's biblical heartland.

00:39:09.000 You won't believe how easy it is to give these kids a brighter future.

00:39:11.000 That's Israelchildren.org slash Ben to help out.

00:39:15.000 Also, one of the most powerful things about the Bible is that it contains a fundamental set of unchanging laws.

00:39:19.000 It also leaves a lot of room for us to grow and change in the process of investigating those laws.

00:39:24.000 That should be an incredibly encouraging thought.

00:39:26.000 Dennis Prager discovered it firsthand while we were having a discussion in episode 13 of Jordan Peterson's series on the book of Exodus.

00:39:32.000 The hardest law of the 613 in the Torah for me to fulfill is love God with all your heart.

00:39:40.000 And I've, literally till an hour ago, I still felt that.

00:39:46.000 I don't know how you could be sensitive to all the suffering in the world and still love God.

00:39:51.000 I believe in God.

00:39:52.000 I follow God.

00:39:53.000 I respect God.

00:39:54.000 I honor God.

00:39:55.000 But love God was a toughie.

00:39:57.000 And I believe God knows it's tough.

00:39:59.000 That's why we're commanded to do it.

00:40:01.000 It doesn't come naturally.

00:40:04.000 But now, because of this discussion, I think I can.

00:40:10.000 Because I now think that God can experience pain.

00:40:14.000 I got to participate in this series.

00:40:15.000 It is really, truly wonderful and enlightening.

00:40:18.000 In addition to Dennis, I joined Jordan alongside a group of esteemed scholars, theologians, and artists to discuss one of the most seminal books in the Bible.

00:40:23.000 New episodes are coming online every week exclusively for Daily Wire Plus members.

00:40:27.000 Join now at dailywire.com slash subscribe to watch Exodus.

00:40:30.000 While Democrats are reacting to the arrest of Donald Trump, Joe Biden was asked about it and he does what he did best.

00:40:35.000 He laughed maniacally because he doesn't know what's going on around him 75% of the time.

00:40:41.000 It's like someone just told him that there's a seven-year-old who just used herbal essences.

00:40:57.000 In a 30-foot radius.

00:40:59.000 He's very, very happy.

00:41:00.000 No one knows why he's smiling that way.

00:41:02.000 It's weird.

00:41:03.000 Chuck Schumer, the Senate Majority Leader, he tweeted out, I believe Donald Trump will have a fair trial that follows the facts and the law.

00:41:09.000 There's no place in our justice system for any outside influence or intimidation in the legal process. As the trial proceeds, protest is an American right, but all protests must be peaceful.

00:41:16.000 You and your party literally protested Derek Chauvin into a murder conviction.

00:41:21.000 I mean, can we be real about this? 0.64

00:41:24.000 You sent 20 million people into the streets based on the lie that American law enforcement are specifically targeting for death of black people.

00:41:31.000 And then a jury convicted Derek Chauvin on the flimsiest of evidence of murder.

00:41:36.000 So can we stop pretending that you don't believe in protests to affect the outcome of a criminal justice trial?

00:41:41.000 That is a lie.

00:41:42.000 It is not even remotely true.

00:41:44.000 But you know, we're going to pretend along with the Democrats.

00:41:46.000 They're all in favor of the system when the system benefits them.

00:41:48.000 They're very much against the system when the system does not.

00:41:51.000 Corinne Jean-Pierre, World's Worst Press Secretary, she was asked about this yesterday. 0.90

00:41:54.000 She said, I'm not going to comment on any of this.

00:41:57.000 Does the White House believe that a former president, Coulter, should be indicted?

00:42:02.000 I'm just not going to comment from here.

00:42:04.000 Okay, well, she was called on the carpet by the New York Times' Michael Scheer, who says, well, it's weird, because you're not commenting on this, but you wouldn't shut the hell up about the 500 pending cases in terms of January 6th detainees.

00:42:17.000 January 6th was just a different moment.

00:42:20.000 It just was.

00:42:21.000 It was something that was incredibly devastating.

00:42:28.000 People died on that day and were harmed.

00:42:32.000 And it was just something that we saw visually, that we reacted to, and many people were scared in that moment.

00:42:42.000 And also, you know, we know that Americans still very much care about this.

00:42:47.000 When it comes to a criminal investigation like this, that is ongoing, we are just not going to comment.

00:42:55.000 So, we're not gonna comment on this, because it's not a matter of public concern, like January 6th was a massive matter of public concern, but not Donald Trump going to jail, maybe.

00:43:04.000 She's so bad at this job. 1.00

00:43:05.000 She's truly bad at it. 0.99

00:43:06.000 Almost as bad as the members of the media, who had to pretend yesterday that they were very sad and sobered about all of this, when inside they were jumping up and down like screaming little girls at their first Miley Cyrus concert, back when Miley Cyrus wasn't doing pornography.

00:43:19.000 Here is the media pretending to be sad.

00:43:22.000 It's a sad day for America.

00:43:24.000 Hard stop.

00:43:25.000 This is no time for celebration.

00:43:27.000 He's smiling!

00:43:29.000 I think it's sad.

00:43:30.000 I've fought Trump for a long time, but I'm sad that this has happened.

00:43:30.000 He's literally smiling!

00:43:33.000 How are you feeling about a historic day?

00:43:36.000 You know, it's sad.

00:43:38.000 And this is a day of profound sadness.

00:43:40.000 They're all smiling.

00:43:41.000 The next president is indicted, but it's also a time to celebrate.

00:43:45.000 Because it's a sad moment to see a former president have to do this, even though we feel it could lead to justice.

00:43:52.000 How's Al Sharpton?

00:43:53.000 I don't see that.

00:43:54.000 It's a sad day for America.

00:43:55.000 It's a sad day for America.

00:43:57.000 Well, I don't think anybody can consider it a good day.

00:43:57.000 It's a sad day.

00:44:00.000 Regardless of anything, it's just really sad.

00:44:03.000 It's a sadness, I think, that we got to this point.

00:44:07.000 Oh, the fake tears.

00:44:08.000 Oh, the truly fake tears from our members of the media.

00:44:12.000 But here's the thing, even the members of the media are like, we're not sure that this is actually a very good case.

00:44:17.000 There are a bunch of legal analysts, CNN, MSNBC, they're like, yeah, this is a pretty, pretty weak case.

00:44:22.000 Even some of the people on the right, who you would not expect to say that this is a weak case, are now saying that this is a pretty weak case.

00:44:29.000 Mitt Romney, for example, who voted in favor of Trump's impeachment said, I believe President Trump's character and conduct make him unfit for office.

00:44:35.000 Even so, I believe the New York prosecutor has stretched to reach felony criminal charges in order to fit a political agenda.

00:44:40.000 No one is above the law, not even former presidents, but everyone is entitled to equal treatment under the law.

00:44:44.000 The prosecutor's overreach sets a dangerous precedent for criminalizing political opponents and damages the public's faith in our justice system.

00:44:50.000 The charges and evidence will be duly considered, the outcome decided by a jury with an obligation to fulfill its responsibility with the utmost care and impartiality.

00:44:56.000 The American voter will ultimately render their own judgment on the former president's political future.

00:45:00.000 Finally, it's incumbent on all elected officials to discourage violence and anger in response to the situation.

00:45:05.000 But even Mitt Romney's like, yeah, man, there is nothing here.

00:45:08.000 Because guess what?

00:45:09.000 There really is nothing here.

00:45:10.000 Meanwhile, the Republican reaction has been, it has ranged from sort of the troubled, the upset, the deeply angry over the perversion of our justice system, to the relatively unhinged.

00:45:24.000 So Marjorie Taylor Greene, there are certain things that you can liken Donald Trump's arrest to in foreign countries.

00:45:31.000 Like, foreign leaders get arrested, and opposition leaders get arrested in foreign countries, and it truly is an awful thing.

00:45:36.000 I would hesitate to put Donald Trump in the league of Jesus Christ.

00:45:41.000 I mean, granted, I'm a Jew and I don't have the same belief system as many of my listeners about Jesus, but I'm pretty sure just having taken like a look at the New Testament that this is not a good comparison.

00:45:54.000 President Trump is joining some of the most incredible people in history being arrested today.

00:46:00.000 Nelson Mandela was arrested, served time in prison.

00:46:03.000 Jesus, Jesus was arrested and murdered by the Roman government.

00:46:08.000 There have been many people throughout history that have been arrested and persecuted by radical corrupt governments.

00:46:15.000 And it's beginning today in New York City.

00:46:18.000 And I just can't believe it's happening, but I'll always support him.

00:46:21.000 He's done nothing wrong.

00:46:23.000 He's done everything right.

00:46:24.000 Everything right.

00:46:25.000 Like Jesus.

00:46:27.000 Just like Jesus.

00:46:32.000 Yeah, man.

00:46:33.000 So, things are going well.

00:46:35.000 Everybody is acting in purely hinged fashion.

00:46:38.000 Now, here's the thing.

00:46:39.000 There are very serious things that are happening in the country.

00:46:41.000 Like, truly serious things.

00:46:42.000 There were two elections last night, and neither of them went in a conservative direction.

00:46:47.000 One in Wisconsin, in particular, went directly against conservative beliefs and is going to have serious ramifications for the presidential race in 2024.

00:46:54.000 So, I would urge conservatives not to take their eye off the ball.

00:46:57.000 We can walk and chew gum at the same time.

00:46:58.000 We can be incredibly pissed off and disturbed about what's going on in New York.

00:47:02.000 We can decry a justice system that is now being weaponized against the political opposition.

00:47:06.000 All of that is deserving of absolute attention and absolute outrage at the same exact time.

00:47:11.000 There is no substitute for victory.

00:47:13.000 Winning elections actually matters.

00:47:15.000 So walk and chew gum at the same time.

00:47:17.000 Outrage is not a substitute for victory.

00:47:19.000 Outrage should motivate you toward doing a smart thing and attempting to win victories.

00:47:22.000 We'll get to that in just one moment.

00:47:23.000 First, let's talk about how you can make your home look better.

00:47:26.000 So look around your house right now.

00:47:27.000 Yeah, it's in fairly good shape.

00:47:28.000 You did a repainting job recently.

00:47:30.000 The floor is newly waxed.

00:47:31.000 The whole deal.

00:47:32.000 Something is wrong.

00:47:33.000 Yes, the light is coming into your room incorrectly and this is because you have not replaced those window coverings in at least 15 years.

00:47:39.000 Go to blinds.com right now.

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00:48:19.000 Well, here's the thing, folks.

00:48:27.000 Outrage.

00:48:28.000 Outrage is perfectly appropriate.

00:48:29.000 But outrage is just gasoline.

00:48:30.000 You can either use it to fuel forward motion, or you can use it to set yourself on fire.

00:48:34.000 What conservatives choose to do next is up to them.

00:48:37.000 You should be outraged at what's happening around you.

00:48:39.000 But!

00:48:40.000 Are you going to set yourself on fire to make yourself feel better because it's cathartic or something?

00:48:43.000 Or are you going to vote for victory?

00:48:44.000 Because what we are watching right now is losing in process.

00:48:48.000 Last night, Wisconsin voters decided that they would like to shift control of the Wisconsin Supreme Court over to the left.

00:48:55.000 This matters an awful lot because right now there is a law on the books in Wisconsin that, for example, bans abortion.

00:49:01.000 That law has been on the books since 1849.

00:49:02.000 It snapped back into place after the aftermath of Roe versus Wade and the left ran on that.

00:49:07.000 And now they have shifted the balance of the Supreme Court.

00:49:09.000 That doesn't just mean that there is likely to be a revision to abortion law in Wisconsin that will now legalize, again, the killing of babies.

00:49:15.000 It also means that the redistricting that was greenlit by the Wisconsin Supreme Court and that has ended with six out of eight congressional districts in Wisconsin going Republican, And has led to a near super majority in the legislature for the Republicans.

00:49:28.000 That redistricting is now likely to be overturned because of the partisan shift in the Supreme Court in Wisconsin.

00:49:35.000 Because not enough Republicans showed up to vote.

00:49:37.000 And because all of the focus was on other issues.

00:49:38.000 And because Democrats were, in fact, very, very motivated to vote.

00:49:41.000 See, here is the thing, folks.

00:49:42.000 When you are running in the game of electoral politics, the whole game is, make it very hard to vote for your opponent, make it very easy to vote for you.

00:49:49.000 Democrats?

00:49:50.000 Well, they've been playing this game.

00:49:52.000 This is what they did in 2020.

00:49:53.000 They ran a dead person against Donald Trump.

00:49:55.000 They realized it was hard for people to vote for Donald Trump, and they tried to make it easy for them to vote for Joe Biden, because after all, he's just a corpse.

00:50:01.000 The same thing sort of happened in Wisconsin, because again, Democrats ran on the idea that conservatives in Wisconsin were going to ban abortion outright, and also were going to cheat and steal the elections away from people.

00:50:13.000 And meanwhile, they ran kind of a semi-non-entity in a left-wing candidate.

00:50:19.000 Who's, uh, who, again, is now going to win, it seems, by a fairly large margin.

00:50:24.000 A woman named Pratajewicz.

00:50:28.000 So, Pratajewicz is now going to presumably redraw the maps over in Wisconsin.

00:50:34.000 She is also going to overrule, presumably, all of the current abortion law that is in place, preventing the killing of the unborn.

00:50:41.000 Victory?

00:50:42.000 There's no substitute for victory.

00:50:43.000 Bleeping and moaning is not a substitute for victory.

00:50:46.000 Meanwhile, over in Chicago, it appears, listen, Chicago is on its own road now.

00:50:49.000 They're on their own road because, believe it or not, despite the je suis smilier insistence that this was in fact MAGA country, Chicago is not MAGA country.

00:50:58.000 You'd be hard pressed to find five Republican voters in the city of Chicago.

00:51:01.000 Well, now it appears that Brandon Johnson, who is a soft defund the police candidate, is likely to win the mayoralty in the city of Chicago over Paul Vallis.

00:51:11.000 Valis was considered the sort of moderate Rick Caruso type in Los Angeles or like Eric Adams in New York and Brandon Johnson is much more radical.

00:51:20.000 He has pulled into a lead and again basically that's kind of replacing Lori Lightfoot with Lori Lightfoot.

00:51:29.000 So it looks as though Chicago is about to turn itself into full-scale Detroit.

00:51:34.000 Which will be an entertaining thing to watch from the outside and horrifying for the people who are currently living in Chicago.

00:51:39.000 Presumably this will also accelerate the journey of people who are not totally crazy away from Chicago.

00:51:46.000 Okay, time for some things I like and then some things I hate.

00:51:48.000 So, speaking of victory, I feel like I'm beating a dead horse here, but actually down here in the state of Florida, our current governor is doing things to actually win victories.

00:51:56.000 One of those things, for example, is he is now moving toward banning, quote-unquote, gender-affirming care in Florida.

00:52:02.000 He says physicians who now attempt to mutilate children on the basis of sexual and gender confusion will lose their medical licenses.

00:52:08.000 This is what you actually call victory.

00:52:10.000 You can either complain about the transing of the kids or you can do something about it. 1.00

00:52:14.000 Or you can complain and use that to fuel do something about it.

00:52:16.000 Here's Governor DeSantis yesterday.

00:52:18.000 And it's sad that we even have to discuss this, but you've now seen kind of an explosion in doctors with these young kids, minors, giving them puberty blockers, hormone treatment, and doing surgery, sex change surgeries, of kids that are 15, 16 years old.

00:52:36.000 And we've got, it's sad, we've got people in their 20s who went through this when they were minors.

00:52:42.000 And they regret it, because these things were irreversible.

00:52:45.000 So, in Florida, we have had our Board of Medicine institute rules so that in Florida, if a physician is doing this to minors, they are going to lose their medical license in our state.

00:52:56.000 We're not putting up with it.

00:52:59.000 Vote to win.

00:53:00.000 Vote to win.

00:53:01.000 There is no substitute for victory.

00:53:03.000 Or you can keep losing.

00:53:04.000 And if the complaining is really entertaining to people, and the outrage is really entertaining, I guess we can just keep doing it.

00:53:11.000 Or you can actually think about who is most likely to win a victory.

00:53:15.000 Alright, time for a couple of things that I hate.

00:53:20.000 Alrighty, so.

00:53:22.000 You know, when they say that they're not coming after the kids, that's a lie.

00:53:24.000 They're coming after the kids.

00:53:25.000 Apparently, Build-A-Bear, which is a store that I've taken my kids to a lot, right?

00:53:29.000 This is where you actually go to the store and they have sort of these kind of teddy bear skins and you get the filling and you fill the bear and you take it home and the kids love it.

00:53:37.000 It's really fun.

00:53:38.000 They've decided that they need to drag queen the kids. 0.75

00:53:41.000 So Build-A-Bear's workshop is now offering a new RuPaul drag queen bear. 0.97

00:53:46.000 Which makes perfect sense because you definitely need to teach your kids about boys who dress up as girls.

00:53:52.000 The stuffed animal immediately caused outrage online, according to the Daily Mail, with many calling out the business for selling the bear amid growing controversy regarding drag performances.

00:54:01.000 The controversy first erupted online with my friend Matt Walsh's tweet, which included a screengrab of the Build-A-Bear website with the RuPaul bear advertised.

00:54:08.000 The drag queen bear is stated as being included in the bear cave, but still shown on the general website, which is accessible to all.

00:54:13.000 Apparently, it's for 18 plus shoppers, but it's right there at the top of the front page.

00:54:19.000 Oh, isn't that nice?

00:54:20.000 Well, you know, the good news is that the blowback caused Build-A-Bear to at least remove this from the main website's carousel of revolving bears and pages.

00:54:27.000 of a kind collector's item made in tribute to the world's most famous drag queen.

00:54:30.000 Oh, isn't that nice?

00:54:32.000 Well, you know, the good news is that the blowback caused Build-A-Bear to at least remove this from the main website's carousel of revolving bears and pages.

00:54:39.000 It is still apparently on the website, however.

00:54:44.000 So you know why Build-A-Bear feels the necessity to do this?

00:54:47.000 Again, this is a product designed for children.

00:54:49.000 It's beyond me, except that all of our cultural arbiters have decided that all of this is the most important thing that you can possibly do.

00:54:55.000 Speaking of which, in the most absurd Orwellian story of the day, according to the UK Daily Mail, angry parents fed up with a trans woman's domination of a female soccer league will now be offered sensitivity training to help them better understand trans issues.

00:55:08.000 Yes, you're upset that your little girl is getting pummeled by a dude.

00:55:11.000 Good news for you!

00:55:12.000 Sensitivity training is available.

00:55:14.000 Football Australia announced its high performance inclusion policy after Daily Mail Australia revealed that parents were campaigning for the New South Wales competition to ban trans women from female soccer teams.

00:55:23.000 A trans woman has led Football NSW League's one women's first grade goal kickers table with seven goals.

00:55:31.000 Allegations that a trans-ass leech injured females from an opposing side in a match two weekends ago has caused ire from parents.

00:55:36.000 But again, good news, because now the parents will be forced to get sensitivity training. 0.94

00:55:40.000 You will all be forced to go through the re-education program!

00:55:45.000 So that you believe all the things that are very important!

00:55:48.000 Yes, your daughter's being run over by a very large gentleman wearing a skirt, but have you understood that large gentleman's life experience and how he is in fact a woman? 0.98

00:55:57.000 If you do not, then shut your piehole! 0.99

00:56:01.000 According to the Daily Mail, Football Australia put out a media release announcing its plans to make soccer the most multicultural, diverse and inclusive sport in Australia.

00:56:07.000 The policy will see Football Australia deliver LGBTQI plus minus divided by assigned training and support resources to the football community through its partnership with Pride in Sport.

00:56:17.000 Isn't that fun?

00:56:18.000 That they're now offering that parents should get re-educated.

00:56:22.000 Solid, solid stuff right there.

00:56:25.000 And even better news, apparently Colorado school districts are now doing similar sort of stuff.

00:56:29.000 According to Fox News, a Colorado school district has a methodical system in place to keep parents in the dark on their child's gender transition in school, according to documents reviewed by Fox News Digital.

00:56:38.000 Leslie Mecca, counselor at Bear Creek, a K-8 school in the district, sent an email to the Jeffco Public School District's Equity Office on August 29, 2022, asking for clarification on its recommendations regarding flagging an in-school social transition of a child's gender.

00:56:51.000 Jeffco defines transition as quote, the steps a transgender person takes in order to align aspects of their life to be consistent with their gender identity.

00:56:57.000 Apparently, Mecca says that the teachers in the school wanted to tell parents about kids at social transitioning, but they were told not to by the school district.

00:57:04.000 So solid stuff.

00:57:08.000 Remember that time where it was, don't bother us, we just want to be left alone in our private lives, and how quickly that morphed into, we would like to choose your child's gender with your child at school and then not tell you? 0.51

00:57:18.000 Solid stuff right there.

00:57:19.000 Really, really, really good stuff.

00:57:21.000 Again, the only way to fight that is with victory.

00:57:24.000 Not outrage, victory.

00:57:25.000 Find candidates who can win and then elect them to office and stop all this garbage as soon as humanly possible.

00:57:31.000 Already, coming up is the rest of the show.

00:57:33.000 You're not going to want to miss it.

00:57:33.000 We get into the mailbag, answer some of your questions.

00:57:35.000 Only members have their questions answered.

00:57:38.000 If you're not a member, become one.

00:57:39.000 Use code SHAPIRO.

00:57:40.000 Check out for two months free on all annual plans.

The Ben Shapiro Show - April 05, 2023

Trump Is Charged -- And Then Fights Back

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