The Ben Shapiro Show - Trump Lays Out His Impeachment Defense | Ep. 1187

00:00:00.000 Trump's lawyers lay out his impeachment defense.

00:00:02.000 The media encouraged the Biden team to crack down on misinformation.

00:00:06.000 And Democrats aren't looking to compromise on COVID relief.

00:00:08.000 This is the Ben Shapiro Show.

00:00:08.000 I'm Ben Shapiro.

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00:00:22.000 We get to all the news of the day.

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00:01:31.000 Alrighty, so.

00:01:32.000 We begin with President Trump's legal team laying out his defense for the Senate conviction trial that is going to take place over the impeachment charge that was passed in the House with all Democrats and 10 Republicans voting in favor.

00:01:44.000 According to Joe Kroll writing for Daily Wire, former President Donald Trump, through his lawyers Bruce Castor and David Shane, on Monday responded to the article of impeachment lodged against him by the U.S.

00:01:53.000 House of Representatives.

00:01:55.000 Here is their full response.

00:01:57.000 They say the 45th President of the United States, through his counsel, hereby responds to the article of impeachment lodged against him by the U.S.

00:02:03.000 House of Representatives by breaking down the allegations out into eight averments and respectfully represents.

00:02:08.000 One, the Constitution provides that the House of Representatives shall have the sole power of impeachment and the President shall be removed from office on impeachment for and conviction of treason, bribery, or other high crimes and misdemeanors.

00:02:18.000 So answer one is admitted in part, denied in part, it is admitted.

00:02:21.000 The constitutional provision at Averment 1 is accurately reproduced.

00:02:24.000 It is denied that the quoted provision currently applies to the 45th president of the United States, since he is no longer president.

00:02:29.000 The constitutional provision requires a person to actually hold office to be impeached.

00:02:33.000 So this is the case that you're hearing a lot of congressional Republicans make.

00:02:36.000 A lot of Senate Republicans are making this case today.

00:02:38.000 And that case is that the Constitution is designed to remove somebody from office.

00:02:42.000 It is not designed to go after somebody after they have left office.

00:02:44.000 Well, the thing is, the Senate conviction is different than the House impeachment.

00:02:48.000 It would be very weird if the House started to impeach somebody after they had left office, but since the impeachment took place while Trump was in office, and the Senate can convict after the person leaves office, that is the countervailing case, but this is the case that Trump's lawyers are going to make.

00:03:03.000 The impeachment charge suggests that Section 3 of the 14th Amendment to the Constitution prohibits any person who has engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the United States from holding any office under the United States.

00:03:14.000 They say that this is, in fact, what the Constitution says, but the President didn't engage in insurrection or rebellion against the United States.

00:03:20.000 The 45th President believes, and therefore averse, that as a private citizen, the Senate has no jurisdiction over his ability to hold office, and for the Senate to take action on this avertment would constitute a bill of attainder in violation of the Constitution.

00:03:30.000 In other words, you're now passing a law after the fact in order to go after me for a thing that I didn't do in the first place.

00:03:37.000 Okay, third, the allegation in the impeachment suggests, in his conduct while president of the United States, in violation of his constitutional oath faithfully to execute the office of president of the United States and to the best of his ability, preserve, protect, defend the constitution in violation of his constitutional duty to take care that the laws be faithfully executed.

00:03:54.000 They say, no, that doesn't apply.

00:03:56.000 They say to the contrary, at all times, Trump fully and faithfully executed his duties as president of the United States.

00:04:01.000 And at times acted to the best of his ability, at all times acted to the best of his ability to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.

00:04:07.000 He never engaged in any high crimes or misdemeanors, and since, again, he is no longer President, none of this applies.

00:04:13.000 Okay, fourth, they look at the impeachment charge, and they say, That the impeachment charge with regard to his actual speech on January 6th is overbroad.

00:04:23.000 According to that impeachment charge, in the months preceding the joint session, Trump repeatedly issued false statements asserting that the presidential election results were the product of widespread fraud and should not be accepted by the American people or certified by state or federal officials.

00:04:34.000 And the impeachment charge also suggests that on January 6th, the Senate met in order to Brecht in order to certify the election, and he interfered with this.

00:04:42.000 Here's what they say.

00:04:43.000 They say, it is admitted that on January 6, 2021, a joint session of Congress met with the Vice President, the House, and the Senate to count the votes of the Electoral College.

00:04:51.000 It is admitted that after the November election, the 45th President exercised his First Amendment right under the Constitution to express his belief that the election results were suspect, since with very few exceptions, under the convenient guise of the COVID-19 pandemic safeguard states, Election laws and procedures were changed by local politicians or judges without the necessary approvals from state legislatures.

00:05:08.000 Insufficient evidence exists upon which a reasonable jurist could conclude that the 45th president's statements were accurate or not, and he therefore denies they were false.

00:05:16.000 Okay, now this is going to be weak tea, okay?

00:05:19.000 But here's where they actually have a defense.

00:05:21.000 Even if it was false, the president can say false things.

00:05:24.000 Presidents say false things all the time.

00:05:25.000 Barack Obama was quite fond of doing this.

00:05:27.000 I know, contrary to public opinion, Barack Obama, the greatest lightbringer who ever was, never lied at all, except when he said that if you liked your doctor, you could keep your doctor.

00:05:34.000 But it turns out that presidents all the time say things that are factually untrue.

00:05:38.000 And here is where Trump's lawyers have some room to move.

00:05:41.000 They say, like all Americans, the 45th president is protected by the First Amendment.

00:05:45.000 Indeed, he believes, and therefore averse, that the United States is unique on Earth in that its governing documents, the Constitution and Bill of Rights, specifically and intentionally protect unpopular speech from government retaliation.

00:05:54.000 If the First Amendment protected only speech the government deemed popular in current American culture, it would no longer protect at all.

00:06:00.000 Since the 45th president is no longer president, he can't be removed anyway.

00:06:04.000 They keep coming back to this point over and over and over.

00:06:06.000 OK, then they move on to the next part of the impeachment charge.

00:06:09.000 That impeachment charge suggests shortly before the joint session commenced, President Trump addressed a crowd at the Capitol Ellipse in Washington, D.C.

00:06:15.000 There, he reiterated false claims that, quote, we won this election and we won it in a landslide.

00:06:20.000 Trump's lawyers respond.

00:06:21.000 They say it is admitted that Trump addressed a crowd at the Capitol Ellipse on January 6th, as is his right, under the First Amendment to the Constitution, and expressed his opinion that the election results were suspect, as is contained in the full recording of the speech.

00:06:31.000 To the extent that a Vermin 5 alleges his opinion is factually in error, the president denies this allegation.

00:06:37.000 Trump is going to continue saying that the election was illegitimate.

00:06:40.000 He's never going to stop saying that the election was illegitimate.

00:06:42.000 The question is, is that in and of itself impeachable, given, again, the last four years?

00:06:46.000 And by the way, long before that, I mean, George W. Bush's entire presidency, members of the press, members of the Democratic Party suggested that he was not a legitimate president because, of course, he had lost the popular vote to Al Gore in 2000.

00:06:59.000 It is not enough to impeach somebody from public office because they believe, wrongly, that they won an election that they actually lost.

00:07:06.000 Furthermore, the impeachment allegations suggest that Trump willfully made statements that in context encouraged and foreseeably resulted in lawless action at the Capitol, such as, quote, if you don't fight like hell, you're not going to have a country anymore.

00:07:17.000 Thus, incited by President Trump, members of the crowd he had addressed in an attempt to, among other objectives, interfere with the joint session's solemn constitutional duty to certify the results of the 2020 election.

00:07:27.000 Unlawfully breached and vandalized the Capitol, etc, etc, etc.

00:07:30.000 Trump's lawyers say, It is admitted that persons unlawfully breached and vandalized the Capitol, that people were injured and killed, that law enforcement is currently investigating and prosecuting those who were responsible.

00:07:39.000 Seditious act is a term of art with a legal meaning, and the use of that phrase in the article of impeachment is thus denied in the context in which it was used.

00:07:45.000 It is denied that Trump incited the crowd to engage in destructive behavior.

00:07:49.000 It is denied that the phrase, if you don't fight like hell, you're not going to have a country anymore, had anything to do with the action at the Capitol, as it was clearly about the need to fight for election security in general, as evidenced by the recording of the speech.

00:07:58.000 It is denied that Trump intended to interfere with the counting of electoral votes.

00:08:02.000 As is customary, members of Congress challenged electoral vote submissions by state under a process written into the congressional rules allowing for the respective houses of Congress to debate whether a state's submitted electoral votes should be counted.

00:08:12.000 In 2017, Democrats repeatedly challenged the electoral votes submitted from states where Trump prevailed.

00:08:17.000 In 2021, Republican members of Congress challenged the electoral votes submitted from states where Biden prevailed.

00:08:22.000 The purpose of the joint sessions in 2017 and in 2021 was for members of Congress to fulfill their duty to be certain the Electoral College votes were properly submitted.

00:08:30.000 Its duty was to first determine whether certification of the presidential election vote was warranted and permissible under its rules.

00:08:36.000 Okay, so the actual strong case they have here, and I'm kind of surprised that they didn't actually cite it, is that Trump actively said in that speech he wanted people to peacefully protest.

00:08:44.000 And by the way, holding some sort of protest on the day that an action is to be taken is not unusual at all, right?

00:08:50.000 That sort of stuff happens all the time.

00:08:51.000 There were protests on the day of Trump's inauguration in 2017.

00:08:54.000 There were protests at the Supreme Court nearly every term, as the court decisions are being read inside, right?

00:08:59.000 Trump has a pretty strong defense on the idea that just because he held a rally the day of the electoral vote certification, this means that he was actively directing people to storm the Capitol building, especially when he did, in fact, say that he wanted people to peacefully protest.

00:09:12.000 And I think, frankly, that that's actually what he wanted.

00:09:14.000 He just, he didn't, what he wanted was not people to storm the Capitol.

00:09:17.000 What he wanted was the images of thousands of people protesting the results of the election.

00:09:22.000 Okay, then we'll get to the rest of the Trump defense team brief in just one second.

00:09:28.000 And then we'll get to the way that Democrats are playing this thing, because it really is not about punishing Trump for anything at this point.

00:09:35.000 What they actually just want is the continuation of this entire line of narrative for as long as possible.

00:09:40.000 So of course they can lump everybody they don't like in with it.

00:09:43.000 And so they can claim that all Republicans were in favor of what happened on January 6th.

00:09:45.000 This has been the move since January 6th.

00:09:48.000 I called it that day.

00:09:49.000 Nothing has changed.

00:09:50.000 Okay, we're going to get to more of this in just one second first.

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00:11:25.000 Okay, so.

00:11:26.000 Continuing with the Trump legal team's response to the impeachment charges.

00:11:30.000 So the impeachment charges suggest that President Trump's conduct on January 6th followed his prior efforts to subvert the certification of the results of the 2020 presidential election.

00:11:38.000 These prior efforts included a phone call on January 2nd, 2021, during which Trump urged the Secretary of State of Georgia, Brad Raffensperger, to quote-unquote, find enough votes to overturn the Georgia presidential election results and threatened Secretary Raffensperger if he failed to do so.

00:11:52.000 Here is what the Trump team responds.

00:11:54.000 They say it is admitted, Trump spoke on the telephone with Secretary Raffensperger and multiple other parties, including several attorneys for both parties on January 2nd.

00:12:01.000 Secretary Raffensperger or someone at his direction surreptitiously recorded the call and subsequently made it public.

00:12:06.000 The recording accurately reflects the contents of the conversation.

00:12:09.000 It is denied that President Trump made any effort to subvert the certification of the results of the 2020 presidential election.

00:12:14.000 It is denied that the word find was inappropriate in context as Trump was expressing his opinion that if the evidence was carefully examined, one would quote find that you have many that aren't signed and you have many that are forgeries.

00:12:24.000 It is denied that Trump threatened Secretary Raffensperger.

00:12:26.000 It is denied that Trump acted improperly in that telephone call in any way.

00:12:29.000 That sentence was inserted by President Trump, I think pretty clearly on a personal level.

00:12:33.000 Okay, so.

00:12:35.000 I said at the time that the call was inappropriate, it was wrong, Trump shouldn't have done it.

00:12:39.000 Also, I was struggling to find what exactly the threat was.

00:12:42.000 He was saying that it's going to be unpopular in Georgia if I don't win the election.

00:12:47.000 That happens to be true.

00:12:48.000 He was also saying that he thinks, because he believes every rumor that reaches his ears about voter fraud or voter irregularity, even if they have been disproved 1,000 times, that those votes were actually out there.

00:12:58.000 Trump believing it does have something to do with whether he was lying or not.

00:13:01.000 He could be mistaken.

00:13:02.000 He could be doing something wrong.

00:13:03.000 But the idea that he was prying votes, that he was encouraging Raffensperger to manufacture votes out of thin air is, I think, a little bit of a stretch.

00:13:11.000 Although that, again, is the strongest part of the impeachment charge against Trump, for sure.

00:13:16.000 Okay, finally, the impeachment charge says Trump gravely endangered the security of the United States and its institutions of government, etc., etc.

00:13:22.000 Trump's lawyers respond.

00:13:23.000 Rather, he performed admirably in his role as president.

00:13:25.000 The democratic system interfered with the peaceful transition of power and imperiled the co-equal branch of government.

00:13:29.000 It is denied he betrayed his trust as president to the manifest injury of the people of the United States.

00:13:35.000 Rather, he performed admirably in his role as president.

00:13:37.000 Right, this is the part where Trump is sitting over his lawyer's shoulder and being like, No, no.

00:13:44.000 I was the best president who ever.

00:13:45.000 In any case, the fact is that that Trump's legal defense team has a fairly strong legal response to the impeachment charges, because again, those are overbroad.

00:13:45.000 Okay.

00:13:54.000 They establish principles that are not neutral and cannot be neutrally applied.

00:13:57.000 That's the case that I've been making for a while.

00:13:57.000 Right.

00:13:58.000 Plus, he keeps going back to this case that you really can't impeach me because I'm not in office anymore.

00:14:03.000 Now, here's the reality.

00:14:05.000 The proper response to Trump's activity, particularly now that he is out of office, would be a censure from Congress.

00:14:10.000 So, wouldn't you get bipartisan support for that censure?

00:14:13.000 The answer is yes.

00:14:14.000 Our politics is very often about deliberately avoiding the consensus position in favor of the non-consensus position so you can cast your opponents as terrible people.

00:14:22.000 That is what our politics generally is about.

00:14:25.000 It is not about finding common ground.

00:14:26.000 It is about refusing to find the common ground so you can pretend that the other guy is actually crazy or radical or a problem.

00:14:34.000 So censure would be a well-supported thing on both sides of the aisle, I think.

00:14:38.000 It would be very difficult for Republicans not to vote to censure Trump.

00:14:41.000 I think it would be very difficult for them not to do that.

00:14:43.000 Okay, but Chuck Schumer was asked about this, the Senate Majority Leader, and he said, nope, we're not even going to consider censure.

00:14:49.000 Not, we should bring up censure and we should bring up impeachment and people can vote for either.

00:14:52.000 Now, he doesn't want Republicans to have the off-ramp of censure.

00:14:55.000 He wants to make it a binary choice between the impeachment charges passed in the House and nothing.

00:15:00.000 And then he can claim that if you don't vote for impeachment, that is not because you have problems with the impeachment charges.

00:15:04.000 It's because you were totally fine with all of Trump's behavior and you were fine with what happened on January 6th.

00:15:09.000 So here is Schumer saying, no, no, we're not going to do censure.

00:15:11.000 Censure should not even be introduced.

00:15:14.000 I think the president should be tried.

00:15:15.000 I hope he will vote to be convicted.

00:15:17.000 Anything past that is something we can discuss.

00:15:19.000 But he deserves conviction.

00:15:19.000 the votes that maybe if he's not convicted, do a censure for the president.

00:15:24.000 Are you open to that as an alternative if he's not convicted?

00:15:27.000 I think the president should be tried.

00:15:29.000 I hope he will vote to be convicted.

00:15:31.000 Anything past that is something we can discuss.

00:15:35.000 But he deserves conviction.

00:15:38.000 Nothing less.

00:15:39.000 Nothing less.

00:15:40.000 That's what he deserves.

00:15:41.000 OK, well, in reality, after the impeachment happens, if Democrats then introduce censure, then it's going to be difficult for them to make that case because they tried impeachment.

00:15:50.000 It failed.

00:15:50.000 Now it just looks like you're going back to the well a second time.

00:15:53.000 In one second, we're going to get to the continued push to suggest that everybody who disagrees with Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi and Joe Biden on any measure is actually in league with the people of January 6th, the criminals on January 6th.

00:16:06.000 We'll get to that in one second.

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00:17:15.000 Okay, so the Democratic Party has decided that they are going to eschew all possibility of unity or agreement on nearly any issue.

00:17:26.000 And they're going to do so by ignoring their overall positions on a wide variety of things in the past.

00:17:30.000 Right, so they are very much against political violence, except when members of their side are doing it.

00:17:34.000 They're very much against inflammatory language, except when Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez is accusing Ted Cruz of attempting to murder her and comparing him to her sexual assaulter, her alleged sexual assaulter.

00:17:44.000 They're all in favor of good things, except when the good things apply to the other side, then they are in favor of the bad things.

00:17:49.000 So, yesterday, the members of the media were very, very upset because the Brian Sicknick memorial happened at the Capitol, and first of all, I think it's great that they had Brian Sicknick lie in state at the Capitol building.

00:18:03.000 The guy's a hero.

00:18:04.000 He's an officer who died in the line of duty protecting members of Congress, elected members of Congress, from a violent mob.

00:18:10.000 I think it's perfectly appropriate that he should lie in state at the Capitol building.

00:18:14.000 And Joe Biden went and he visited.

00:18:15.000 Fox News didn't cover this very much.

00:18:17.000 CNN and MSNBC had it on complete streaming coverage.

00:18:17.000 They covered it a little bit.

00:18:21.000 Now, let me just point out, it's not because CNN and MSNBC are so deeply concerned with the honor of police officers generally that they did this.

00:18:29.000 CNN and MSNBC have a political axe to grind.

00:18:31.000 Now, I think that all three networks should have covered this at length.

00:18:34.000 I think that they should have all streamed the live coverage because I think that officers who die in the line of duty protecting members of Congress from a violent mob deserve that sort of tribute from everyone.

00:18:34.000 I do.

00:18:43.000 From everyone.

00:18:45.000 I also think that members of CNN and MSNBC, if Officer Sicknick had been killed in the line of duty during a BLM riot, I do not think that if Donald Trump had said that person should lie in state, they would have covered it nearly the same way, right?

00:19:01.000 Then it would have been, well, you know, the police are systemically racist, and it's kind of a tragedy that that happened, but let's be frank about this.

00:19:07.000 The police, they have a real bad relationship with so many members of the public.

00:19:12.000 I'm having a tough time swallowing the line from members of the media that they are deeply concerned with the honor of police officers after they have spent years ripping on police officers.

00:19:19.000 I just have a real problem with that basic idea.

00:19:22.000 I think that folks like me who have been, I've consistently defended the cops in the face of malign attacks against them by members of the media, in the face of lies told about them by politicians.

00:19:33.000 I've defended police officers.

00:19:35.000 The police are the people who stand between us and chaos.

00:19:37.000 And that's why I'm very happy that they actually did this for Brian Sicknick.

00:19:40.000 I think it's a good thing.

00:19:41.000 But when the members of the media suddenly start suggesting that Republicans are not in favor of the police because they won't vote for impeachment, or when it suddenly strikes them that the police are good, but only under certain circumstances, I find it just a little bit hypocritical. 0.89

00:19:56.000 Just a little hypocritical.

00:19:57.000 In any case, here was a little bit of the footage from the Sicknick Memorial. 0.91

00:20:03.000 Yes, that is Joe Biden, and he's approaching the Brian Sicknick Memorial.

00:20:08.000 There is a folded flag, obviously, for the officer.

00:20:12.000 I mean, it's a tragedy, obviously.

00:20:15.000 This is a man who died in the line of duty, stopping an act of evil, and he deserves every plaudit that he received as Officer Brian Sicknick.

00:20:23.000 I just wish to God that Democrats were consistent in their respect for police.

00:20:29.000 They obviously, obviously, obviously are not.

00:20:32.000 Everybody should be.

00:20:34.000 Okay, meanwhile, members of the press continue along the lines of, if you disagree with me, then you are responsible for the riot.

00:20:42.000 Brianna Keillor from CNN, who used to be a lot better as an anchor and she has morphed into a sort of Don Lemon type, very wild-eyed leftist at this point on CNN. 0.88

00:20:52.000 She is now suggesting that Senator Cruz incited the riot.

00:20:56.000 As Donald Trump's second impeachment trial nears, there is one senator who led the charge to challenge the Electoral College count and enthusiastically threw his weight behind multiple efforts to undermine the Democratic presidential election and is now trying to cleanse himself of the stain of those actions.

00:21:14.000 Cruz didn't seem to mind the, quote, reckless and irresponsible rhetoric from the president.

00:21:18.000 In fact, Cruz joined in speaking to voters in Georgia in early January, just days before the Senate runoffs there.

00:21:26.000 Okay, so again, the idea is that anybody who backed Trump's suggestion that the election results ought to be challenged, they are responsible for the riots.

00:21:34.000 Now, I think that that was wrong what Cruz did.

00:21:36.000 I think that it was wrong what Hawley did.

00:21:37.000 I don't think that any of that is responsible for the riots.

00:21:40.000 I believe that adults have agency.

00:21:42.000 There are plenty of adults who came and rallied with Trump and who left in the middle of the riots or before the riots even occurred.

00:21:48.000 Nonetheless, again, the goal of the press here, I keep saying it over and over and over because people need to see through the veil.

00:21:53.000 The press are not honest brokers.

00:21:54.000 They are not even attempting to be honest brokers here.

00:21:56.000 We all know this.

00:21:57.000 It is perfectly obvious to everyone who has brain what exactly the press are doing.

00:22:01.000 These are not folks who are standing up for the institutions of our democracy.

00:22:04.000 These are folks who are perfectly fine with undermining institutions of our democracy on a fairly regular basis, depending on who is doing the undermining.

00:22:10.000 These are folks who cheered on violence throughout the summer.

00:22:13.000 And no, that is not an apples-to-oranges comparison.

00:22:16.000 That is an apples-to-apples comparison.

00:22:17.000 It's not whataboutism, because some of us condemned violence all the way through.

00:22:21.000 And yet here you have Michael Beschloss, the historian, suggesting that America should treat January 6th historically like 9-11.

00:22:28.000 We should memorialize the date of the Capitol insurrection just like 9-11.

00:22:31.000 He says it's like the day we almost lost our democracy.

00:22:33.000 No, actually it was not.

00:22:35.000 I'm sorry, it didn't even come close to us losing our democracy.

00:22:37.000 It came close to being an awful, evil, tragic incident like the congressional baseball shooting.

00:22:41.000 It was a breach of our values for sure.

00:22:44.000 It was ugly.

00:22:45.000 I said I think it was the ugliest public spectacle since 9-11 in the United States.

00:22:48.000 But should we memorialize it the same way that we memorialize the death of 3,000 Americans because a bunch of nuts and violent mob, and a violent mob was stopped by the cops before they could do serious damage?

00:23:00.000 And let's not, let's be frank about this.

00:23:02.000 There was no threat to the overall democracy of the United States.

00:23:04.000 You want to see an overall threat to democracy, take a look at Myanmar. 1.00

00:23:07.000 But right now a military coup is in place. 1.00

00:23:09.000 Okay, that is not the same thing as a bunch of mob idiots storming a Capitol building. 1.00

00:23:15.000 Okay, so never mind the actual history, never mind the actual comparisons. 0.99

00:23:19.000 Here's Michael Beschloss, the historian, suggesting that we should treat January 6th like 9-11.

00:23:24.000 It's the day we almost lost our democracy.

00:23:25.000 Again, this is such hyperbolic nonsense.

00:23:29.000 Conceivably, this could have taken away our democracy.

00:23:32.000 And this is one reason why I think we have to observe The 6th of January, every single year, is a time that we had a very close call to remind us that we have to be eternally vigilant because democracy is fragile.

00:23:47.000 You know, Rachel, we observed 9-11.

00:23:50.000 We remember the fact that there were attacks that landed.

00:23:54.000 One that almost landed, which was an effort to fly an airplane into the Capitol, kill a lot of members of Congress.

00:24:01.000 That almost happened.

00:24:03.000 Here is a terrorist attack that did happen.

00:24:05.000 Okay.

00:24:07.000 Wait, is he just calling 9-11 a terrorist attack that didn't happen?

00:24:11.000 The fact that they didn't hit the Capitol building on 9-11 is one of the things we remember least about 9-11.

00:24:17.000 The thing we remember most about 9-11 is the images of planes flying into the World Trade Center and taking down both towers, plus another plane flying into the Pentagon and another plane being crashed into a field in Pennsylvania.

00:24:26.000 Those are the things that I remember about 9-11. 0.58

00:24:29.000 The desire to turn January 6th into a referendum On the fragility of our democracy generally is, I think, quite silly.

00:24:37.000 And again, it really is more tied to what people want to happen next.

00:24:42.000 It's not about what happened on January 6th.

00:24:43.000 It's what people want to happen next.

00:24:45.000 And the media want this more than anything.

00:24:47.000 The media, more than anything, want a crackdown on people they dislike.

00:24:52.000 They want to justify any attack of any kind on people they dislike.

00:24:56.000 The media are just over the moon about Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez's comparison between her alleged sexual assaulter and Ted Cruz and Josh Hawley, which is, I'm sorry, a morally absurd comparison. 0.82

00:25:06.000 People who disagree with you politically, even if they do stuff that is cynical and that you don't like, are not like people who tried to rape you or who did rape you.

00:25:12.000 That is not the same thing.

00:25:14.000 That is not the same thing in any way.

00:25:15.000 And yet we're told by Monica Hess, the columnist at the Washington Post, Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez says she was told that trauma victims should tell their stories as part of their healing, and that is what she did Monday night in the most compelling, heartbreaking, and infuriating 60 minutes available on any screen at any time this week.

00:25:32.000 She talked about how she found herself questioning the motives of a law enforcement officer who had given her hazy instructions on how to reach an evacuation point.

00:25:39.000 By the way, I will note that people are ignoring the fact that during that live stream, Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez suggested that a police officer who came to help her might have in fact, she was suspicious that he was in fact a white supremacist in disguise because he was white.

00:25:51.000 Respect for police officers going right out the window on that one.

00:25:55.000 According to Monica Hess, AOC compared it to a sexual harasser telling his victim the quickest path to normalcy would be her forgiving him, or to parents telling the child they once abused that the mistreatment had happened in the past.

00:26:06.000 Ocasio-Cortez's whole livestream was brave, but this was the bravest part, when she cried foul on a warped view of reconciliation in which those who stoked the fires of anger and false belief that fueled the attack demand that the victims simply forgive and forget.

00:26:17.000 Well, that's not all she did, right?

00:26:18.000 She compared them to rapists and sexual assaulters, but she's gonna receive the plaudits of the media, in the lifestyle section, by the way, of the Washington Post.

00:26:26.000 Meanwhile, what is this going to lead to?

00:26:28.000 Well, what this is really going to lead to is the media calling for more crackdowns on people with whom they disagree.

00:26:33.000 I mean, we can all see which way this is going.

00:26:35.000 What they would like is a media monopoly.

00:26:37.000 They also need a new narrative.

00:26:38.000 I mean, this is the other point here.

00:26:40.000 In order to Push forward the narrative that January 6th was not an outlier, that the people who stormed the Capitol are actually a mainstream part of the Republican Party.

00:26:49.000 The media have started to push forward, in very strong fashion, Marjorie Taylor Greene, who again, was a no-name backbencher that no one cared about until five minutes ago, and the media started pushing her extremely hard.

00:26:59.000 They did some oppo, they found a bunch of bad stuff that she had said in the past, and now it's every Republican is responsible.

00:27:05.000 The Republican Party is Marjorie Taylor Greene.

00:27:07.000 We read some of those headlines yesterday.

00:27:08.000 Headline after headline.

00:27:09.000 The Republican Party is Marjorie Taylor Greene.

00:27:12.000 That's what they are.

00:27:13.000 The new headline, front page of the New York Times, under pressure to rebuke their own GOP leaders face a critical test.

00:27:18.000 The fates of Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene and Liz Cheney have become a proxy battle for the soul of the party, prompting a clash among top Republicans.

00:27:26.000 Trump loyalists want to strip Representative Liz Cheney of Wyoming, the number three Republican of her leadership post, as payback for her vote to impeach.

00:27:32.000 Trump critics want to strip Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia of her committee assignment for endorsing false claims, bigoted language and violent behavior, including calling for the execution of top Democrats.

00:27:41.000 I'm just wondering.

00:27:42.000 There are a lot of people who are not.

00:27:45.000 Who really probably could not be categorized as Trump critics who are in favor of stripping Marjorie Taylor Greene of her committee assignments.

00:27:51.000 But again, the goal here is that the media have to find a new way to push the narrative that they were able to push so successfully during the Trump administration, which was, here is a villain.

00:27:51.000 Just going to point that out.

00:28:01.000 This villain represents all of Republicandom. 0.93

00:28:04.000 And so they have settled on Marjorie Taylor Greene.

00:28:05.000 By the way, they need that narrative in terms of the ratings.

00:28:07.000 You're seeing a lot of headlines today.

00:28:09.000 About how CNN was the number one cable network in January.

00:28:14.000 That's not really a surprise.

00:28:14.000 They have a lot of reporters on the ground and the news cycle...

00:28:17.000 was not a pleasant one for conservatives and Republicans, right?

00:28:21.000 Trump leaves office, the January 6th riots, Trump's behavior, the impeachment.

00:28:27.000 These were not news cycles that generally are going to make Republicans happy as a general rule, right?

00:28:33.000 And particularly not when the media have declared that you are in league with all of the bad things that happen.

00:28:37.000 And so a lot of Republicans tuned out after the election and tuned out after January 6th.

00:28:41.000 And a lot of Democrats were watching TV with eagerness and anticipation.

00:28:45.000 I mean, this was like, It was the greatest time ever to be a Democrat, basically between January 15th and January 20th, essentially between the impeachment and when Biden took office.

00:28:55.000 This was like the best time to be a Democratic TV watcher because you were watching as what you saw as the collapse of the Republican Party was unfolding, the repudiation of everything Trump was happening.

00:29:05.000 It was just it was great.

00:29:06.000 Right.

00:29:06.000 So the ratings spiked for CNN and MSNBC and they declined for Fox News.

00:29:11.000 So what you're seeing right now is all these headlines saying, well, look at Fox.

00:29:14.000 Fox is really in trouble.

00:29:15.000 CNN and MSNBC, they're really on the rise.

00:29:18.000 Yeah, there's only one problem.

00:29:19.000 The minute that Joe Biden took office, CNN's ratings tanked.

00:29:22.000 The minute it happened.

00:29:24.000 Hey, literally three days after that happened, CNN's ratings plummeted.

00:29:28.000 They went directly in the toilet.

00:29:29.000 Fox's, which had declined after the election, stayed pretty much steady.

00:29:34.000 So here is the headline you're seeing is CNN wins month of January.

00:29:37.000 Here's the real headline.

00:29:38.000 Okay, the real headline that matters, because this is going to drive what the media coverage says for the next several years.

00:29:43.000 Tim Pears of Daily Wire, CNN's ratings tanked 44% the week after Trump left the White House.

00:29:49.000 44%.

00:29:50.000 In the first week of the Biden administration, CNN saw the audiences that had been flooding into primetime recently drop precipitously on January 25th to 29th, compared with the highs of previous weeks.

00:30:00.000 Meanwhile, rival Fox News Channel saw its own ratings only tip slightly after weeks of registering its own sharp declines.

00:30:06.000 MSNBC has also seen significant declines.

00:30:08.000 Nowhere as steep as what has hit CNN.

00:30:10.000 That makes sense because the most rabid Democrat partisans are still tuning over to MSNBC, particularly that nine o'clock hour.

00:30:16.000 But CNN, which draws sort of the casual Democrat, those people are like, yeah, you know what?

00:30:19.000 Biden's president now.

00:30:20.000 I don't care.

00:30:20.000 I'm ready to move on with my life.

00:30:22.000 CNN ended the final week of January with ratings dropping roughly 44% for total audience versus the prior week across all three hours of prime time.

00:30:31.000 So that's what's driving some of this media coverage.

00:30:34.000 To pretend that the media coverage is completely disconnected from the ratings is obviously untrue.

00:30:39.000 And so the new plan for the media is sort of the same as the old plan.

00:30:43.000 They gotta find a villain.

00:30:44.000 They have to polarize the country around that villain.

00:30:47.000 They have to suggest that everybody they don't like is in league with that villain.

00:30:50.000 And then they have to suggest that the solution to that is the all-powerful, all-good, sword-wielding king on high, Joe Biden.

00:30:58.000 And that is the way they are doing this.

00:30:59.000 That's the way this is gonna be.

00:31:00.000 So we're gonna get nothing but wall-to-wall, non-stop coverage of Marjorie Taylor Greene, who, yes, should be stripped of her committee assignments. 0.98

00:31:05.000 That is okay.

00:31:06.000 She shouldn't be in a position of power on committees. 0.81

00:31:08.000 The Republican Party does not have to give her committee assignments.

00:31:11.000 But also, Mitch McConnell calls her a cancer within the party.

00:31:13.000 So the media's narrative, just to point this out, just to point out the hypocrisy and ridiculousness here, among Democrats and the media, their narrative is Marjorie Taylor Greene, who is probably going to be stripped of her committee assignments when all this is said and done, is the face of the Republican Party. 1.00

00:31:27.000 However, it is very, very good that the faces of the Democratic Party are people like Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan Omar.

00:31:34.000 And let me just point out, right now, Rashida Tlaib, an open anti-Semite, serves on the House Committee on Financial Services, the House Committee on Oversight and Reform, and she's joined a bunch of powerful caucuses inside the Democratic Party. 1.00

00:31:45.000 Ilhan Omar, who's an open anti-Semite, she serves on the House Budget Committee and the House Foreign Affairs Committee.

00:31:52.000 How in the hell is she on the House Foreign Affairs Committee? 1.00

00:31:55.000 She's a blatant anti-Semite who once wrote in defense of a person trying to join ISIS. 0.96

00:32:02.000 She wrote a judge asking that person get a lower sentence because systemic American racism had created the conditions by which this person felt dispossessed.

00:32:08.000 That person is sitting on the House Foreign Affairs Committee.

00:32:11.000 When are the Democrats going to strip her of her assignments? 1.00

00:32:13.000 The answer, of course, is never.

00:32:15.000 But this is the media agenda, and the media agenda, Uber Alice.

00:32:18.000 It matters more than anything, anything, anything else.

00:32:21.000 I have a couple other examples of this in just one second.

00:32:25.000 Some of them are fairly egregious, and some are kind of just hilarious.

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

00:32:29.000 First, let us talk about the fact you don't want to be going to the auto parts store right now.

00:32:32.000 You just don't.

00:32:33.000 I mean, like, when would you ever want to?

00:32:35.000 You're gonna overpay, you're gonna get to the front of the line, they're finally gonna find you the part that you need, and then they're going to order it online, and you're just going to have to come back later.

00:32:41.000 So why not just go to the interwebs, find the part that you need, get it delivered straight to you, and not pay that giant markup that you're gonna get at an auto parts store?

00:32:48.000 This is where rockauto.com comes in.

00:32:50.000 They're always going to offer you the lowest prices possible, rather than changing prices based on what the market will bear, like airlines do.

00:32:55.000 Why would you spend up to twice as much for the same parts?

00:32:58.000 Rockauto.com, it's a family business, serving auto parts customers online for 20 years.

00:33:02.000 Head on over to rockauto.com to shop for auto and body parts from hundreds of manufacturers.

00:33:06.000 Best of all, prices at rockauto.com are always reliably low and the same for professionals and do-it-yourselfers.

00:33:11.000 Why would you spend up to twice as much for the same parts?

00:33:14.000 The rockauto.com catalog is unique.

00:33:16.000 It's remarkably easy to navigate.

00:33:17.000 Quickly, see all the parts available for your vehicle.

00:33:19.000 Choose the brands, specifications, and prices you prefer.

00:33:21.000 They've got amazing selection, reliably low prices, all the parts your car is ever going to need.

00:33:25.000 Head on over to rockauto.com.

00:33:27.000 Go to rockauto.com right now.

00:33:28.000 See all the parts available for your car or truck.

00:33:30.000 Rate Shapiro.

00:33:31.000 In there, how did you hear about us, Fox?

00:33:32.000 So they know that we sent you.

00:33:34.000 All right, we're gonna get to more content in just one second.

00:33:37.000 First, Daily Wire, we've entered the cultural fight.

00:33:40.000 Okay, right now, the culture wars are pretty much everything.

00:33:42.000 Conservatives have spent decades complaining that there is no conservative culture and that conservatives are thrown out of the culture.

00:33:47.000 So, we here are getting active and we are creating our own.

00:33:49.000 Earlier this month, We released our first film, Run, Hide, Fight, exclusively for DailyWire members.

00:33:54.000 You can catch it over at dailywire.com, on our mobile app, on our streaming apps, at Apple TV and Roku.

00:33:59.000 If you're not a DailyWire member yet, use promo code RHF to get 25% off.

00:34:03.000 That is RHF for 25% off.

00:34:06.000 There's a reason audiences are loving it.

00:34:08.000 If you head on over to Rotten Tomatoes right now, and you check out Run, Hide, Fight on Rotten Tomatoes, what you will see is one of these enormous critical gaps, right?

00:34:15.000 25% positive from the critics, 93% positive from our audience.

00:34:20.000 That's the kind of stuff that we intend on making.

00:34:21.000 Stuff the critics will hate, but you will love.

00:34:23.000 You can catch it over at dailywire.com, on our mobile app, or on our streaming apps at Apple TV and Roku.

00:34:27.000 If you're not a Daily Wire member yet, use promo code RHF to get 25% off.

00:34:31.000 That is R-H-F. 1.00

00:34:33.000 Ron Heidfeit for 25% off your listening to the largest, fastest growing conservative podcast and radio show in the nation.

00:34:38.000 Now, one of the beautiful things, if you're a member of the media about this narrative that you've been pushing, one of the most wonderful things about the opportunity that has presented itself in the wake of the Trump presidency is that you can call for a top-down control on information.

00:34:55.000 And that's exactly what folks over at the New York Times are doing.

00:34:57.000 So Kevin Roos, who spends his entire life basically just tracking Facebook traffic, and then if conservatives get too much of it, he tweets out every single day that conservative Facebook pages are getting traffic.

00:35:06.000 Now, this ignores a bunch of data.

00:35:08.000 Like, for example, the fact that half of the top publishers on the Facebook platform are of the left.

00:35:13.000 Many more than that, actually.

00:35:14.000 If you look at the top Facebook publishers of the top 25, 16 are of the left.

00:35:19.000 A vast majority are from the left.

00:35:22.000 But, of course, the idea is that conservatives should not be able to get any Facebook traffic.

00:35:26.000 And then you have the media pushing out studies that suggest, you know, it's all mythical when conservatives worry about a crackdown on tech freedom.

00:35:33.000 When conservatives worry about being deplatformed, that's all a myth.

00:35:36.000 It's all a lie.

00:35:36.000 They put out a study that was commissioned by a member of, I believe, the Biden transition team, or somebody who was involved with Biden's campaign.

00:35:44.000 It was commissioned by a business person who supported Biden and quoted media matters in the study.

00:35:48.000 And then they were like, oh, look at this great study.

00:35:49.000 Okay, if you're quoting media matters, by definition, it's a crappy study.

00:35:52.000 Okay, we're done here.

00:35:53.000 It is that simple.

00:35:54.000 Okay, but it doesn't just go that far.

00:35:56.000 It's not just trying to pressure the social tech guys.

00:35:58.000 It is also how we constitute government.

00:36:00.000 So Kevin Ruse, who, as I say, at the New York Times, is, along with Kara Swisher, the leader of the activist force big tech to stop the means of dissemination for conservatives movement.

00:36:10.000 Ruse says, last month, millions of Americans watched as President Biden took the oath of office, and in a high-minded inaugural address, called for a new era of American unity.

00:36:18.000 But plenty, of other Americans weren't paying attention to Mr. Biden's speech.

00:36:22.000 They were too busy watching YouTube videos that alleged the inauguration was a pre-recorded hoax that had been filmed on a Hollywood soundstage. 0.84

00:36:27.000 Or they were melting down in QAnon group chats trying to figure out why former President Trump wasn't interrupting Biden's speech to declare martial law and announce the mass arrest of satanic pedophiles.

00:36:36.000 Or maybe their TVs were tuned to OAN, where an anchor was floating the baseless theory that Biden wasn't actually elected by the people.

00:36:42.000 Hey, you'll notice something at the very top of this column from Kevin Ruess.

00:36:45.000 He doesn't give you any numbers.

00:36:47.000 I thought he's Captain Data over here.

00:36:49.000 How many people were watching the inauguration versus how many people were participating in those particular activities?

00:36:54.000 I would suggest it was probably somewhat disproportionate, as in wildly disproportionate, which is a good thing, but he's not gonna tell you that.

00:37:01.000 The idea is that these people are an existential threat to democracy, and we must stop them.

00:37:05.000 Okay, so, again, I think that their ideas are bad.

00:37:09.000 I think their ideas are, in some cases, evil.

00:37:12.000 I think they're being fed a pack of lies.

00:37:13.000 But I do not think they're an existential threat to the democracy of the United States sufficient to call for the things that Kevin Roose then calls for, okay?

00:37:20.000 Hoaxes, lies, and collective delusions aren't news, says Kevin Roose, but the extent to which millions of Americans have embraced them may be.

00:37:26.000 30% of Republicans have a favorable view of QAnon, according to a recent YouGov poll.

00:37:31.000 According to other polls, more than 70% of Republicans believe Trump legitimately won the election.

00:37:36.000 40% of Americans, including plenty of Democrats, believe the baseless theory that COVID-19 was manufactured in a Chinese lab.

00:37:42.000 Okay, a few things about this.

00:37:43.000 One, in the aftermath of the 2016 election, a majority of Democrats believe Trump wasn't rightly elected.

00:37:48.000 Okay, as far as the QAnon conspiracy theorizing, in the aftermath of 9-11, there were a bunch of, if you'd taken a poll of Democrats, On conspiracy theories about 9-11, a significant percentage of Democrats believe some conspiracy theories about 9-11.

00:38:03.000 Probably a majority of Democrats believe the Bush lied, people died, war for oil in Iraq conspiracy theorizing.

00:38:09.000 And as far as the baseless theory COVID-19 was manufactured in a Chinese lab, Okay, I'm wondering what is incredibly baseless about that.

00:38:19.000 I mean, if you mean that it was, like, weaponized by the military and then unleashed on an unsuspecting population, that's baseless.

00:38:25.000 But there's fairly solid evidence that the COVID-19 virus itself was manipulated in a Chinese lab and then was accidentally released.

00:38:34.000 I mean, The Atlantic reported on that, like, this month.

00:38:37.000 In any case, Kevin Roos, who is not up on the best information, he says, And it raises an important question for the Biden administration.

00:38:42.000 that produces these misguided beliefs doesn't just jeopardize some lofty ideal of national unity.

00:38:46.000 It actively exacerbates our biggest national problems and creates more work in trying to solve them.

00:38:51.000 And it raises an important question for the Biden administration.

00:38:54.000 How do you unite a country in which millions of people have chosen to create their own version of reality?

00:39:01.000 Okay, so this is where it comes down to what he wants.

00:39:04.000 Right now is the opportunity for the New York Times and Kevin Ruiz and Kara Swisher to redefine reality for you along the lines of their interpretation of reality.

00:39:11.000 Now, there are certain things that are said that are just blatantly untrue.

00:39:14.000 Ain't no Jewish space laser. 0.57

00:39:15.000 Okay, as a charter member of the Jews, I can tell you ain't no Jewish space laser.

00:39:18.000 That's absolutely false.

00:39:20.000 However, There are also a bunch of claims that I think are false that are open to contention, such as America is systemically racist and its police are systemically racist, and therefore the disproportionate number of black men going to prison is a reflection of American racism and racist police forces.

00:39:33.000 I don't think there's data to back that up.

00:39:35.000 Democrats push it every single day.

00:39:36.000 There is certainly no data to back the idea that the police are randomly killing black men in the street.

00:39:40.000 That is not true.

00:39:41.000 That is not true on its face.

00:39:42.000 Democrats continue to push that.

00:39:44.000 Would Kevin Roos silence those views?

00:39:45.000 No.

00:39:46.000 He would actually propagate those views, presumably.

00:39:48.000 But, says Kevin Roose, it's time to crack down on free speech.

00:39:51.000 This is the direction we are moving.

00:39:52.000 Quote, I've spent the past several years reporting on our national reality crisis.

00:39:56.000 And I worry that unless the Biden administration treats conspiracy theories and disinformation as the urgent threats they are, our parallel universes will only drift further apart and the potential for violent unrest and civic dysfunction will only grow.

00:40:08.000 So I called experts.

00:40:11.000 Yay.

00:40:13.000 Yay! 0.99

00:40:13.000 Let's talk to some experts on free speech. 0.99

00:40:15.000 See, I think that we're all experts on free speech because it turns out it's just a value.

00:40:19.000 And free speech as a value means that you're going to have to rebut bad ideas and that people have a right to speak those bad ideas.

00:40:24.000 But, says Kevin Roos, no, he's going to call some experts.

00:40:27.000 So, let's talk about what Kevin Roos says the experts have to say.

00:40:31.000 He says, assess the damage and avoid the quote-unquote terrorist trap.

00:40:34.000 The experts agreed that before the Biden administration can tackle disinformation and extremism, it needs to understand the scope of the problem.

00:40:40.000 William Braniff, a counterterrorism expert and professor at the University of Maryland says, quote, it's really important that we have a holistic understanding of what the spectrum of violent extremism looks in the United States and then allocate resources accordingly.

00:40:51.000 Joan Donovan, the research director of Harvard University's Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy, suggested that the Biden administration could set up a truth commission.

00:41:02.000 That's not Orwellian in any sense.

00:41:04.000 A government-run truth commission.

00:41:06.000 Oh, goody, goody, gumdrops.

00:41:07.000 The government can determine for you what the truth is via a truth commission.

00:41:12.000 A truth is not self-evident to people, and so we must have a commission that determines truth.

00:41:19.000 Mm, this is gonna go well.

00:41:20.000 She says it'll be similar to the 9-11 commission to investigate the planning and execution of the Capitol siege on January 6th.

00:41:27.000 Okay, now, I don't know why you would call that a truth commission.

00:41:29.000 Why would you not just call that the January 6th commission?

00:41:33.000 The reason you're calling it the truth commission is, of course, because you don't want it to be about the January 6th riot at all.

00:41:38.000 You want it to be about a broader perception of reality.

00:41:41.000 How broad?

00:41:41.000 Well, broad enough that it will encompass all the bad views of your political opponents.

00:41:45.000 Dr. Donovan says, Dr. Donovan.

00:41:48.000 Professor Donovan said, quote, there must be accountability for these actions.

00:41:51.000 My fear is that we will get distracted as a society and focus too much on giving voice to the fringe groups that came out in droves for Trump.

00:41:58.000 These experts were heartened to see that the Biden administration had already announced a comprehensive threat assessment of domestic extremism, but they cautioned that while categorizing these extremists as domestic terrorists could backfire because counter-terrorism efforts had historically been used to justify expanding state powers in ways that ended up harming religious and ethnic minorities, and that today's domestic extremism crisis doesn't map neatly onto older, more conventional types of terror threats.

00:42:22.000 Okay, here's where it gets really fun.

00:42:24.000 Several experts Kevin Ruth spoke to recommended the Biden administration put together a cross-agency task force to tackle disinformation and domestic extremism, which would be led by something like a realities are.

00:42:36.000 Oh, good.

00:42:37.000 So we've got truth commissions and realities are things are going real hot over the New York Times.

00:42:42.000 The free speech advocates over at the New York Times are calling for truth commissions and realities R's.

00:42:47.000 Hmm.

00:42:48.000 Can't see this being misused in any way.

00:42:50.000 Kevin Roos even is like, now that it comes out of my mouth, it sounds weird.

00:42:53.000 He says, it sounds a little dystopian, I'll grant, but let's hear them out.

00:42:57.000 Or we could not.

00:42:59.000 I mean, just an idea.

00:43:00.000 I'm just going to throw this out there.

00:43:01.000 The government shouldn't have a realities R. 0.92

00:43:04.000 Because that's ridiculous.

00:43:05.000 And a violation of the First Amendment. 1.00

00:43:07.000 And stupid on its face. 1.00

00:43:08.000 But no, let's hear them out. 1.00

00:43:10.000 Right now, say experts, the federal government's response to disinformation and domestic extremism is haphazard and spread across multiple agencies.

00:43:17.000 There's a lot of unnecessary overlap.

00:43:19.000 Rene Dresta, a disinformation researcher at Stanford's Internet Observatory, gave the example of two seemingly unrelated problems, misinformation about COVID-19 and misinformation about election fraud.

00:43:29.000 Often, she said, the same people and groups are responsible for spreading both types.

00:43:32.000 So instead of two parallel processes, one at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, aimed at tamping down COVID-related conspiracy theories, and another at the Federal Election Commission, trying to correct voting misinformation, a centralized task force could coordinate a single strategic response.

00:43:46.000 This task force could meet regularly with tech platforms and push for structural changes that could help these companies tackle their own extremism and misinformation problems.

00:43:55.000 For example, it could formulate safe harbor exemptions that would allow platforms to share data about QAnon and other conspiracy theories with researchers and government agencies without running afoul of privacy laws.

00:44:05.000 Oh, that's a great idea!

00:44:07.000 So the government is going to create backdoors for the tech agencies to pass on information they normally wouldn't be allowed to pass on if you believe kooky things about the world.

00:44:16.000 Good, this won't be misused in any way.

00:44:19.000 No way, no way you're gonna ever have a government that sets up back doors that say, does this person believe in smaller government and individual freedom?

00:44:26.000 Or by the way, if you're on the left, does this person believe the police should be defunded?

00:44:30.000 Maybe we should have a back door and then the government can have all their personal information and keep tabs on them. 0.96

00:44:34.000 Can't see how this is gonna go wrong in any way, like a mass surveillance state pushed by the government on the basis of their own determination of reality and truth.

00:44:42.000 A member of the New York Times is saying this in the technology section.

00:44:48.000 Yeah, you can see what the agenda here is.

00:44:49.000 Also, they want to audit the algorithms, and they don't just want to stop there.

00:44:52.000 This is what Kara Swisher and Kevin Roos and Juggla Gumbalgum and all the rest of the activists slash journalists have been saying for a while.

00:44:59.000 Basically, they want to take control of the algorithms and use the algorithms on the tech platforms in order to downgrade any content they don't like.

00:45:06.000 So great!

00:45:06.000 So Kevin Ruth says, several experts recommended the Biden administration push for much more transparency into the inner workings of the black box algorithms, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, and other major platforms used to rank feeds, recommend content, and usher users into private groups, many of which have been responsible for amplifying conspiracy theories and extremist views.

00:45:24.000 So great, they should just give their algorithms over to the government, and then the government can control the algorithms.

00:45:31.000 The fact that these people are so confident in their control of the institutions, never occurs then that maybe when you establish this sort of government power can be used against you It's just demonstration of, again, their own perception of their ascendancy and the fact they're never going to give out power.

00:45:46.000 So they're just going to cement themselves into power using this sort of stuff.

00:45:48.000 And the media are complicit in this.

00:45:50.000 The media Democrat complex is so powerful at this point.

00:45:53.000 It's truly amazing.

00:45:54.000 It's truly amazing.

00:45:56.000 Speaking of which, it's amazing to watch as the Democrats continue to blame Republicans for the school closures.

00:46:01.000 Lori Lightfoot, who again, cut a video in the immediate aftermath of Joe Biden's election saying that now the science had arrived back on the scene.

00:46:08.000 She's still blaming Trump for her own schools being closed in her own city because she's caving to the teachers unions who spend money on her election. 1.00

00:46:14.000 Here she is blaming Trump, a person who's been out of office for a while and was pushing for school reopenings for the schools being closed in Chicago.

00:46:22.000 This is a very difficult situation.

00:46:25.000 And we're in it still because of the incompetence of the previous administration.

00:46:30.000 So I think it's important for both sides to come to the table in good faith, recognize that we're both trying to work through a very challenging situation, but we must get a deal done.

00:46:43.000 Okay, so pretty amazing.

00:46:44.000 It's still Trump.

00:46:45.000 It's just going to remain Trump's fault forever, I think, is sort of the idea.

00:46:48.000 Because when you have Trump in the rearview mirror, then you can just blame everything on him.

00:46:52.000 And you can move forward with your most world-breaking agenda.

00:46:54.000 Paul Krugman, who's wrong on nearly everything, he said yesterday, you know what?

00:46:58.000 Republicans keep talking about the stuff like the national debt.

00:47:00.000 The national debt just doesn't matter now.

00:47:02.000 I will admit that Paul Krugman at least has been consistent on this.

00:47:05.000 He always says the national debt doesn't matter because he's wild when it comes to monetary policy.

00:47:09.000 He's actually a new devil.

00:47:10.000 He used to believe that modern monetary theory, which was the idea you can just spend money forever and no one will ever call it in. 1.00

00:47:16.000 He used to believe that was idiotic. 0.98

00:47:18.000 Now he has shifted his opinion because, of course, he is very much in favor of just spending endless amounts of money. 1.00

00:47:23.000 He says the national debt doesn't matter.

00:47:24.000 Just blow it out, man.

00:47:26.000 There's been a real sea change in mainstream economic views that says the debt is just not that big of a problem.

00:47:32.000 Now, if you want to disagree with that, OK, but the Republican Party has no standing to do that because they have been so obviously they didn't care about debt when the Republican, when Bush was president, they suddenly cared about when Obama was president.

00:47:45.000 They stopped caring when when when Trump came in and now they care about it again with Biden.

00:47:50.000 So they they just have no credibility.

00:47:52.000 If someone wants to make a serious argument that isn't so obviously partisan, Fine, but the mainstream economic view now is that the debt that's being incurred is not a problem, whereas failure to provide enough economic relief during this pandemic is a problem.

00:48:06.000 Okay, so a couple of things.

00:48:07.000 One, he's actually not wrong that Republicans blew their credibility by not standing up to big spending under Trump.

00:48:11.000 That actually is true.

00:48:12.000 But some of us were pretty consistent on this, so we do get to complain about all this.

00:48:15.000 Meanwhile, Yamiche Alcindor, remember that Yamiche Alcindor is supposed to be a reporter.

00:48:18.000 Not an opinion journalist, a reporter.

00:48:20.000 I mean, Shelson's from PBS.

00:48:22.000 She says Democrats just run right over the Republicans, just boom, run them over.

00:48:25.000 This is real bipartisan language happening here.

00:48:28.000 We cannot wait six months to have negotiations.

00:48:31.000 We can't have the nine month back and forth where Republicans give a little and Democrats give a lot.

00:48:37.000 That can't be what happens because if that is, then there are going to be millions of Americans who aren't going to get the vaccine, who aren't going to get the booster shots that are needed.

00:48:45.000 So even if we have enough vaccines for the summer, you're going to have to continuously vaccinate Americans.

00:48:51.000 I think that's something that maybe is lost on people.

00:48:53.000 And as a result, what you get is A real sense that there needs to be this push with Democratic power.

00:49:01.000 Oh yeah, you know, now it's urgent.

00:49:03.000 Urgent.

00:49:04.000 Weird how the urgency didn't exist before.

00:49:05.000 Now it's super urgent.

00:49:06.000 Speaking of urgency, Joe Biden is now pushing for more executive orders.

00:49:09.000 We're just going to govern by executive orders.

00:49:11.000 America's former government has turned into a vestigial legislature that spends extraordinary amounts of your money.

00:49:17.000 Amounts of your money that do not exist.

00:49:20.000 I mean, we're going to have to borrow from future generations.

00:49:22.000 That's all they do.

00:49:23.000 And meanwhile, we elect, effectively, a dictator every four years to reverse the other guy's executive orders and put in place some new ones.

00:49:29.000 Here is Joe Biden doing some of that yesterday.

00:49:32.000 Today I'm going to sign a few executive orders to strengthen the immigration system, building on the executive actions I took on day one to protect DREAMers and to end the Muslim ban and to better manage our borders.

00:49:48.000 And that's what these three different executive orders are about.

00:49:52.000 And I want to make it clear.

00:49:54.000 There's a lot of talk, with good reason, about the number of executive orders that I've signed.

00:49:59.000 I'm not making new law.

00:50:01.000 I'm eliminating bad policy.

00:50:02.000 Oh, so if you're eliminating bad policy, it's not making new law, is I guess the math here.

00:50:07.000 Okay, but what if you're making new law?

00:50:10.000 What if that's what you're actually doing?

00:50:11.000 So here's what's actually in some of the executive orders that he's signing.

00:50:14.000 So he's overthrowing the Trump administration policy negotiated that allowed people to apply for citizenship from outside the country.

00:50:24.000 Basically, if you came to the border and you applied for asylum, you had to wait in Mexico while we adjudicated your asylum case.

00:50:28.000 He is trying to overthrow that, which of course is going to lead to a vast rush up to the border.

00:50:34.000 Also, another thing that he is going to be doing is he is going to be setting up a review of Trump-era policies on legal immigration.

00:50:41.000 And we'll streamline the naturalization process and instruct agencies to review the public charge rule, which limited green cards to immigrants who are deemed likely to be reliant on welfare.

00:50:51.000 Oh, goody, so we can have immigrants who are deemed likely to be on welfare coming to the country in massive numbers. 1.00

00:50:56.000 Great, great stuff here.

00:50:58.000 That's gonna be all good.

00:51:01.000 Also, by the way, Joe Biden is unleashing the regulators.

00:51:03.000 So when he says he's not making law, apparently he's also going to be unleashing the... Wait, quick note on the immigration thing.

00:51:08.000 Quick note here.

00:51:09.000 I gotta love this headline from CNN.

00:51:10.000 You ready for this?

00:51:11.000 Biden administration prepares to open overflow facility for migrant children.

00:51:15.000 Overflow facility for migrant children.

00:51:17.000 Wait, wait, do you mean kids in cages?

00:51:19.000 Overflow facility for migrant children.

00:51:22.000 Is that just a euphemism there, gang, over at CNN?

00:51:25.000 An apple is an apple and not a banana?

00:51:27.000 According to CNN, the Biden administration is opening an overflow facility for unaccompanied migrant children apprehended at the U.S.-Mexico border, the federal agency tasked with the children's care told CNN in a statement.

00:51:40.000 The Health and Human Services Department will reopen a facility in Carrizo Springs that can accommodate about 700 kids and can be expanded if necessary.

00:51:48.000 Oh, look, look at that.

00:51:49.000 They're not being placed in care.

00:51:52.000 They're being put in an overflow facility for children.

00:51:55.000 Weird how the language changed from the media that way.

00:51:57.000 It was kids in cages when it was Trump.

00:51:59.000 Before that, it was just a bad thing that was happening under Obama, but it was really about Trump.

00:52:03.000 Now they're doing exactly what Trump was doing, but I guess it's good now.

00:52:06.000 So that's exciting.

00:52:07.000 Also, Joe Biden is going to be unleashing the regulators.

00:52:11.000 Mick Mulvaney and Joe Grogan have a piece in the Wall Street Journal all about this, talking about how a presidential memo was released on January 20th, titled, Modernizing Regulatory Review.

00:52:21.000 They say regulatory law is arcane and generally boring, but its effects can be monumental.

00:52:25.000 The new presidential memo tells the Office of Management and Budget how to do the cost-benefit analysis that so much policy is based on.

00:52:33.000 So, what does the presidential memo do?

00:52:35.000 It's intended to quote, ensure that the review process promotes policies that reflect new developments in scientific and economic understanding, fully accounts for regulatory benefits that are difficult or impossible to quantify, and does not have harmful anti-regulatory or deregulatory effects.

00:52:51.000 So what does that mean?

00:52:52.000 It means that you're supposed to throw out traditional measures of cost-benefit analysis, and you're supposed to take into account feelings.

00:52:58.000 Oh yay! 0.99

00:52:59.000 We're supposed to take into account things that they legitimately are arguing you cannot measure.

00:53:04.000 The recommendations should provide concrete suggestions on how the regulatory review process can promote public health and safety, economic growth, social welfare, racial justice, economic stewardship, human dignity, equity, and the interests of future generations.

00:53:18.000 So says Mick Mulvaney, the applications are almost limitless.

00:53:20.000 You want to regulate agricultural drainage ditches as navigable water subject to federal rules and restrictions?

00:53:25.000 Don't worry about whether food costs might rise or farmers might go bankrupt.

00:53:28.000 You can offset those costs with the societal quote-unquote benefit, an unmeasurable societal benefit of promoting the interests of future generations.

00:53:35.000 It doesn't matter if it can't be measured.

00:53:37.000 It serves the desired end.

00:53:39.000 There's a housing policy.

00:53:42.000 It turns out it's going to really hurt the economy and it's going to cost a fortune.

00:53:44.000 It doesn't matter.

00:53:45.000 You're affording quote-unquote racial justice and equity.

00:53:49.000 So all this does is it basically removes all limits on the cost-benefit analysis provided to OMB, turning it into a policy-making body rather than what it was supposed to be originally, which was some sort of objective standard by which we measure whether a policy is going to cost money or whether it's going to create prosperity.

00:54:05.000 So when people say that Joe Biden is a moderate, he's pushing forward moderate bipartisan policies.

00:54:09.000 No, not for one second is Joe Biden pushing forward moderate bipartisan policies.

00:54:14.000 Not for one single second of one single day.

00:54:17.000 So far as we can see, thus far, I'm waiting for bipartisanship.

00:54:20.000 I've praised Joe Biden on some of the things that he's done so far.

00:54:22.000 When he sent aircraft carriers into the South China Sea to try and defend against Chinese predations, I said that was a good thing. 1.00

00:54:29.000 I hope that there'll be more good things from the Biden administration.

00:54:31.000 We're not seeing a lot of them right now.

00:54:34.000 Alrighty, we're gonna be doing another hour of content coming up.

00:54:37.000 In the meantime, go check out the Michael Moll's show.

00:54:40.000 He's discussing BLM being nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize.

00:54:43.000 And frankly, it's not a shock.

00:54:44.000 Yasser Arafat once won the Nobel Peace Prize.

00:54:46.000 You can hear more details about this story over on Michael's show.

00:54:48.000 It is available everywhere right now.

00:54:50.000 I'm Ben Shapiro.

00:54:50.000 This is The Ben Shapiro Show.

00:54:56.000 The Ben Shapiro Show is produced by Colton Haas.

00:54:59.000 Executive Producer, Jeremy Boring.

00:55:01.000 Our Supervising Producers are Mathis Glover and Robert Sterling.

00:55:04.000 Production Manager, Paweł Łajdowski.

00:55:06.000 Our Associate Producers are Rebecca Doyle and Savannah Dominguez.

00:55:09.000 The show is edited by Adam Ciejewicz.

00:55:11.000 Audio is mixed by Mike Koromina.

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00:55:21.000 The Senate prepares for the pseudo-impeachment trial of former President Trump, AOC compares Ted Cruz and Josh Hawley to rapists, and BLM gets nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize.

The Ben Shapiro Show - February 03, 2021

Trump Lays Out His Impeachment Defense | Ep. 1187

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