Ben Shapiro is back with a brand new episode of The Ben Shapiro Show! This week, he's talking about a disturbing story about a conservative judge who was denied a seat on the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, and why it happened. Plus, Robert Mueller offers a very special deal, President Trump prepares for a second Putin meeting, and we check in on the mailbag. Thanks to our sponsor, Skillshare, for sponsoring this week's show. Skillshare is an online learning platform with over 20,000 classes in business, design, technology, and more. You can take classes in everything from social media marketing and illustration to data science and mobile photography. And all their classes are like 45 minutes long, taught by experts. Whether you're trying to deepen your professional skill set or start a side hustle, or just explore that new passion, you'll want to start your two months of Skillshare right now. Go to Skillshare.co/BenShapiroShow and start your 2-month membership for just $0.99! To sign up, go to skillshare.com/benjaminshapiro and use the promo code "Ben Shapiro Show" to get 20% off your first month for two months! You'll get unlimited access to all new courses and up to $99.99 in total of 20, plus two months for the rest of the course! If you're looking for a FREE trial, you can sign up for 2 months of the show! Learn more about the show on Skillshare here: bit.ly/ben ShapiroShow and learn more about how to become a supporter and get 10% off for the entire course, plus a discount on the first month of the second month of your membership, plus an additional 2 months for an additional month for the third month! Want to sponsor the show? Sign up for the full course? Click here to get 15% off of the entire show starting next month, only $99, plus free shipping and shipping starts starting in September! FREE shipping throughout the summer, plus all kinds of perks and perks, including 3 months of VIP access to the show, including the ability to access all of the best deals, including early signups, and a free shipping, shipping, and early on the next month and early-bird pricing, and an ad-only pricing, plus early sign-up access, and much more! Thanks again, and thanks for supporting the show starts next week!
00:00:14.000Gotta tell you, a lot went on this week, and there's a lot more to come on today's show.
00:00:18.000But first, I want to remind you that the job that you currently hold, in ten years you're not going to be holding it.
00:00:22.000In five years, if the studies show what they show, then you probably won't be holding it either, which means that you need to be constantly revising and updating your resume.
00:00:29.000Skillshare is the place that allows you to do this by adding new skills every single day to your skill set.
00:00:35.000Skillshare is an online learning platform with over 20,000 classes in business, design, technology, and more.
00:00:39.000You can take classes in everything from social media marketing and illustration to data science and mobile photography.
00:00:45.000And all their classes are like 45 minutes long, taught by experts.
00:00:47.000Whether you're trying to deepen your professional skill set or start a side hustle, or just explore that new passion, Skillshare is there to keep you learning and thriving.
00:00:54.000I've taken classes from them in both social media marketing and watercolors.
00:01:00.000Join the millions of students already learning on Skillshare today with a special offer just for my listeners.
00:01:04.000Get two months of Skillshare for just $0.99.
00:01:06.000Right now, Skillshare is offering Ben Shapiro show listeners two months of unlimited access to over 20,000 classes for just $0.99 to sign up.
00:01:36.000I'm talking about there are folks on the right who will run from any controversy because they are deeply afraid of being miscast as a racist, sexist, bigot, homophobe.
00:01:43.000As someone who's frequently miscast this way, I gotta tell you, the only way to stand up to the social justice mob is to simply stand up to them and say, I'm not those things, and you're full of crap.
00:02:00.000The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals is the most liberal circuit court of appeals in the country, and this replacement was for a pretty conservative judge on the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals.
00:02:20.000The move came about 45 minutes after a Senate vote had been scheduled to confirm bounds.
00:02:24.000McConnell offered no explanation, but Oregon senators later said it became apparent the Republicans didn't have the vote.
00:02:29.000So what did this judge do that prevented his nomination to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals?
00:02:35.000And he had an opportunity to be sitting on this court for a very, very long time.
00:02:39.000So what did he do that was just so terrible that Republicans could not support him?
00:02:42.000Well, according to Oregon Live, he hadn't disclosed inflammatory college writings about sexual assault, the rights of workers, people of color, and the LGBTQ community to the Oregon committee when questioned about his thoughts on diversity or if there was anything embarrassing from his past.
00:02:56.000Perhaps because he's 44 and he wrote this crap when he was 18 or 19.
00:02:59.000In a second, we're going to go through those writings and we'll try to determine what, if anything, that he said is so offensive that literally 25 years later, he should not be allowed to sit on one of the nation's courts.
00:03:10.000Both Ron Wyden and Jeff Merkley of Oregon repeatedly warned their Republican colleagues that a confirmation of bounds would signal an end to bipartisan cooperation in judicial nominations
00:03:18.000Okay, first of all, there is no bipartisan cooperation in judicial nominations.
00:03:23.000Republicans have simply been voting by straight majority to confirm all of these nominees.
00:03:27.000It was Harry Reid who ended the policy of judicial confirmations as a bipartisan exercise during the Bush years.
00:03:33.000And then it was Harry Reid who, again, decided it would be a wise and brilliant idea to end the filibuster for judicial nominees.
00:03:40.000So this idea that there's been judicial nomination, confirmation, bipartisanship is just nonsense.
00:03:46.000It hasn't been true for a very long time.
00:04:00.000Biden said, I think this is going to affect other nominees and strengthen the whole advice and consent rule for members of the U.S.
00:04:05.000It's going to be good for the nominees being truthful.
00:04:06.000I think it's a win for the Oregon way.
00:04:08.000He says it wasn't a complete surprise because several Republicans were looking carefully at this.
00:04:12.000But on the other hand, we knew a lot of pressure we brought to bear.
00:04:14.000This was a nominee from the Fed Society, the Federalist Society, which has extraordinarily huge leverage in driving through nominees.
00:04:19.000So according to my sources in the Judiciary Committee, as well as Senator Tim, as well as this this open report from Oregon Live, Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina, who's
00:04:49.000So according to the reports, Merkley said he had heard that Bounds would be defeated by about 70 votes, including the 49 Democratic senators if his nomination had been put to a vote.
00:04:59.000Now let's look at the text of what he said all the way back when he was at Stanford University in 1995 when he was 19 years old.
00:05:07.000So here are some of the excerpts that were cited by the Alliance for Justice, which is a far-left group attempting to get this guy to prevent him from sitting on a court.
00:05:13.000Again, this was written 25 years ago, and this is the stuff that prevented a guy from sitting on a federal court because Republicans were too pansy to actually just confirm the guy.
00:05:22.000During my years in our multicultural Garden of Eden, again this is 1995 at Stanford, I've often marveled at the odd strategies that some of the more strident racial factions of the student body employ in their attempts to heighten consciousness, build tolerance, promote diversity, and otherwise convince us to partake of that fruit which promises to open our eyes to a PC version of the knowledge of good and evil.
00:05:41.000I am mystified because these tactics seem always to contribute more to restricting consciousness, aggravating intolerance, and pigeonholing cultural identities than many a Nazi bookmurning.
00:06:06.000I submit that the multiculturalistas, when they divide up by race for their feel-good ethnic codons, engage in nearly all of the fundamental behaviors of groupthink.
00:06:48.000Okay, he's making the case against an Aryan student union.
00:06:50.000That's not a case in favor of an Aryan student union.
00:06:52.000He's saying that when you divide people up by ethnicity, what you are actually doing on college campuses is preventing everybody from seeing each other as equals and as Americans.
00:07:05.000Well, he said there's nothing really inherently wrong with the university failing to punish an alleged rapist regardless his guilt in the absence of adequate certainty.
00:07:12.000There's nothing the university can do to objectively ensure that the rapist does not strike again.
00:07:16.000So the case that he was making in this particular argument is not in favor of rapists.
00:07:20.000He was saying that the university is not responsible for jailing people.
00:07:24.000The police are responsible for jailing people.
00:07:26.000And that if somebody alleges rape on a college campus, we shouldn't have these sort of campus witch hunts where people are immediately deemed guilty and then tossed out of school.
00:07:34.000This has become a serious problem on America's college campuses.
00:07:36.000So again, he's not completely wrong here.
00:07:39.000He says, expelling students is probably not going to contribute a great deal to a rape victim's recovery.
00:07:44.000There's no more imperative to risk egregious error in doing so.
00:07:46.000Again, the case that he's making here is the same.
00:07:48.000He is essentially saying that throwing people off of campus in the absence of an actual court trial that would land them in jail is going to be a serious problem.
00:07:56.000You're going to have kangaroo courts determining whether people are guilty or not based on lack of evidence.
00:09:09.000Please know that my commitment to our shared mission will only be redoubled by this unpleasant reminder of my errors of nearly a quarter century ago.
00:09:19.000Like the stuff that you wrote in college, well, not bad.
00:09:21.000Even if you think it was that bad, it was back in college.
00:09:23.000And unless you have anything to show me from the last 25 years demonstrating the guy's a secret member of the KKK, I'm gonna go, this is idiotic.
00:10:47.000The left is never shy about this stuff.
00:10:49.000And I promise you, all the people who are writing extreme stuff today in their student newspapers about how Donald Trump is the worst person in the world, all those people will be sitting on federal courts in 30 years.
00:11:01.000It is only the right that is so shy about its own viewpoint with regard to multiculturalism that they run away when something as mild as these writings from a prospective judge come up.
00:11:11.000I'll talk a little bit more about that in just a second.
00:11:13.000First, let's talk about that weak coffee you've been drinking.
00:11:15.000You ever found yourself wincing at the weak taste of the coffee from one of these left-leaning corporate brands?
00:11:19.000You probably thought, listen, I wish they spent less time on meaningless bias training and bathroom policy reform and letting homeless people pee in their toilets.
00:11:26.000Well, this is why you need Black Rifle Coffee.
00:11:28.000Founded by former special operations vets, Black Rifle delivers the best roast-to-order coffee right to your door.
00:11:33.000This guarantees you are getting fresh, premium coffee with every order.
00:11:36.000In addition to great coffee and gear, Black Rifle Coffee Company has a coffee club that makes things easy.
00:11:41.000No lines, no running out, just great coffee shipped right to your door every month, hassle-free.
00:11:44.000Plus, when you join their coffee club, you'll receive discounts and offers not available to other customers.
00:11:49.000Not only does Black Rifle Coffee Company make one hell of a cup of coffee, they also give a portion of their sales to vets and first responder causes.
00:11:55.000When you choose Black Rifle, you're choosing a company that supports our veterans and serves coffee and culture to those who love America.
00:12:00.000Visit BlackRifleCoffee.com slash Ben and receive 15% off your order.
00:12:05.000That's BlackRifleCoffee.com slash Ben for 15% off.
00:12:39.000But if you're just uncomfortable with the way somebody phrased something back in college, even though you agree with the underlying message, maybe you ought to think about the stuff that you wrote back in college and thought back in college and think, wow, do I agree with the way I phrased everything way back when?
00:12:52.000OK, Bounds apologized before the Judiciary Committee for his often high-handed and overheated tone of his Stanford commentary about campus politics.
00:12:59.000He says the intentions behind those articles were always to see greater tolerance and mutual understanding on campus.
00:13:06.000The Judiciary Committee voted 11 to 10 in June along party lines to forward Bounds' nomination to the Senate floor.
00:13:11.000Democrats blasted their Republican colleagues and President Trump's administration for trying to pack courts with extremist judges.
00:13:17.000Ron Wyden, who's a socialist idiot, accused Bounds of misrepresenting and covering up disturbing, intolerant writings from his past.
00:13:24.000It's not a cover-up, and they're not disturbing, and they're not intolerant.
00:13:27.000He says what really outraged and shocked me was his comparison of organizations that promote multiculturalism and tolerance here in America to Nazi rallies.
00:13:34.000So that was that quote that I read you a little bit earlier, where he said that a lot of these ethnic groups do more to shut off thought than a Nazi book burning would.
00:13:41.000Honestly, that's not completely wrong.
00:13:43.000Having been on campus, having spent an enormous amount of time on campus, I've been protested by exactly these groups who have stood outside theaters where I'm speaking, shouting, speech is violence, and attempting to shut down the speech and prevent people from entering.
00:13:54.000Hey, I was at Cal State Los Angeles when many of these student groups were calling out their friends to block people from entering the room.
00:14:03.000Hey, that is a shutdown of free speech by these exact campus groups.
00:14:06.000And we're supposed to believe it's just terrible?
00:14:08.000This guy wrote this at Stanford in 1995?
00:14:27.000I'm embarrassed by senators in the Republican Party who will not stand by a prospective judicial nominee because they are, quote unquote, embarrassed by some of the things that that person said back when they were 19 years old at Stanford University.
00:14:38.000Things that are objectively non-embarrassing.
00:14:41.000It demonstrates the level to which all of these Republicans have been bullied and cowed.
00:14:46.000It demonstrates how fast they run for the hills.
00:14:55.000John McCain was treated really nicely by the left up until the point where he ran for president.
00:14:58.000In 2008, he became a racist, sexist, bigot, homophobe.
00:15:00.000Mitt Romney was supposed to be a favorite of the left up until the point when he ran against Barack Obama, at which point he became a guy who wanted to put black people back in chains, strap dogs to the top of his car, and hated women.
00:15:12.000All you people in the Republican Party, including you, Senator Scott, if you think you're going to get off easy with the left by shutting down the nomination of people like this guy Bounds, you are out of your mind.
00:15:21.000They will come after you just as hard and twice as badly because they know that you can be cowed.
00:15:25.000This sort of stuff has got to stop on the part of Republicans.
00:15:33.000There's a lot of fallout now from the Trump-Putin meeting earlier this week.
00:15:38.000And there's some disturbing stuff coming out of the Mueller investigation.
00:15:40.000And I don't mean disturbing about President Trump.
00:15:42.000I mean disturbing in the way that the Mueller investigation is approaching President Trump and members of Trump's campaign.
00:15:48.000So this is a report from The Daily Caller.
00:15:50.000It was reported also on Tucker Carlson's show last night.
00:15:54.000Basically, the report is that Tony Podesta
00:15:57.000Well, tonight we can report exclusively, based on two separate sources we spoke to today, that Tony Podesta has been offered immunity by Robert Mueller to testify against Paul Manafort.
00:16:25.000In other words, for a near-identical crime, Bill and Hillary's friend could skate and emerge completely unscathed, while Paul Manafort may rot in jail.
00:16:34.000Only one of them made the mistake of chairing Donald Trump's presidential campaign.
00:16:38.000Okay, and it's hard not to read it the way that Tucker is reading it here.
00:16:40.000Now, the counterargument would be this, just to be fair.
00:16:43.000The counterargument is that Tony Podesta blew the Foreign Relations Act, the Foreign Actors Relations Act.
00:16:50.000I'm trying to remember what it actually stands for.
00:16:53.000The basic idea is that he didn't register as a foreign agent, and then he registered late as a foreign agent, which is another thing that Paul Manafort did.
00:17:01.000It is fair to say, however, that Paul Manafort is also being charged for tax evasion in a way that Tony Podesta is not.
00:17:07.000So maybe you say, OK, well, we flip the lesser crime for the greater crime.
00:17:10.000The reason that they are giving Podesta immunity is because if they don't give him immunity, he can plead the fifth.
00:17:15.000This is the way that it works legally, is that you cannot plead the fifth just because you feel like pleading the fifth.
00:17:19.000So let's say that you are called as a witness in a criminal trial, but there is no actual chance that you are going to be prosecuted, and you plead the fifth, the judge will force you to testify.
00:17:28.000There's no self-incrimination issue here because you're not prosecuted.
00:17:31.000If you offer Tony Podesta immunity, now he can't plead the fifth.
00:17:34.000Okay, so they're trying to get him to testify against Manafort.
00:17:36.000So one read is, this is Mueller attempting to roll up all the members of the Trump campaign by flipping a bunch of Democrats like Tony Podesta.
00:17:51.000The other way to read this is that Tony Podesta didn't commit the same crimes as Paul Manafort, and so him flipping Podesta against Manafort is really just normal criminal procedure.
00:18:02.000All I can tell you is that it doesn't look great.
00:18:05.000Podesta's lawyers have responded by hitting Carlson with a cease and desist order because Carlson had previously reported details of Podesta's involvement in the Mueller probe.
00:18:13.000He reported in October that Podesta was in the special counsel's crosshair.
00:18:17.000Podesta's lawyers had hit Carlson with a cease and desist and the Daily Caller co-founder ignored all of that.
00:18:24.000It's not good news for the Mueller probe that they had to do that.
00:18:28.000And again, it's sort of lending credence to the idea that Trump is putting out there that the Mueller probe is a get Trump probe as opposed to something that is objectively trying to go about the prosecution of criminals in the United States.
00:18:57.000On one side stand the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Central Intelligence Agency, the National Security Agency.
00:19:04.000On the other, the Commander-in-Chief of the United States.
00:19:07.000Donald Trump's appalling performance in Helsinki was a subversive act.
00:19:10.000He rejected the conclusion of American intelligence that his election was aided by a hydra-headed act of political warfare controlled by the Kremlin.
00:19:17.000He did so with a wink and a smile for the smirking autocrat who led the attack.
00:19:21.000And then this Reuters columnist continues by ripping into Trump.
00:19:25.000And then he says about the intelligence community, they have the power to strike back.
00:19:29.000For two years now, high-ranking veterans of American intelligence have sounded the alarm about Trump in the starkest language possible.
00:19:35.000And then he quotes a bunch of members of the intel community who have been warning about Trump.
00:19:38.000Intelligence officers already have provided reams of information to Mueller under the ambit of the law.
00:19:42.000In little more than a year, Mueller has brought to court overwhelming evidence that Russian military intelligence carried out the covert operation.
00:19:48.000While Trump emphatically denies collusion, signs suggest that Mueller can and will show that the Russians were aided and abetted by Americans.
00:19:55.000Mueller has won guilty pleas in cooperation.
00:19:56.000In the coming months, a noose around Trump, whose lawyers keep setting new conditions for an interview with the president, will likely tighten as the special counsel closes in on 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.
00:20:05.000These cases never could have been made without the FBI, the CIA, and the NSA.
00:20:09.000If the House of Representatives slips from Republican to Democrat in November, impeachment hearings may open in January.
00:20:14.000Again, American intelligence officials will provide the information fueling these investigations.
00:20:18.000Now, in just a second, I want to talk about why this sort of angle is really, really wrong-headed and really, really dangerous.
00:20:24.000And this columnist for Reuters isn't the only one who's taking this particular attack.
00:20:29.000But first, I'm going to talk about your air filters.
00:20:33.000You are probably breathing air that is not as clean as it should be right now.
00:20:37.000And you're probably spending too much on your electric bills.
00:20:39.000According to the Department of Energy, the most expensive utility for most Americans is that electric bill, making up roughly 9% of their annual housing expenditure.
00:20:46.000That number is aggravated depending on where you live.
00:20:48.000So in California, we get absolutely destroyed in energy.
00:20:52.000I mean, I just, I spend a fortune every month on my energy bills.
00:20:54.000But one of the ways that you can prevent this is by having air filters that actually work.
00:20:58.000Adding insult to injury, this allergy season is one of the worst.
00:21:01.000Well, you can help lower the bill and make sure that your air system is making your air clean by going over to my friends at Filter By and getting a new set of filters.
00:21:08.000America's leading provider of HVAC filters for homes and small businesses.
00:21:49.000It is not just this Reuters columnist who is praising the Deep State today, on the same day that Mueller apparently is using Tony Podesta to go after Paul Manafort in what looks like a non-decent arrangement.
00:22:01.000It's Eugene Robinson, who's a lefty columnist over at the Washington Post.
00:22:04.000He has a column today called God Bless the Deep State.
00:22:07.000And his main contention, his main objection, is he suggests that the administration is so dangerous that we need all of these bureaucrats in place to stop the administration from being dangerous.
00:22:26.000The term itself is propaganda intended to cast a sinister light upon men and women whom Trump and his minions find annoyingly knowledgeable and experienced.
00:22:33.000They are not participants in any kind of dark conspiracy.
00:22:36.000Rather, they are feared and loathed by the president and his wrecking crew of know-nothings because they have spent years, often decades,
00:22:42.000Mastering the details of foreign and domestic policy.
00:22:45.000With the supine Congress unwilling to play the role it is assigned by the Constitution, the deep state stands between us and the abyss.
00:22:51.000And then he talks all about how the deep state is basically leaking to the media all this information and talking to Robert Mueller and building a case against the President of the United States.
00:23:01.000He says, Democrats in Congress are powerless.
00:23:15.000Do you understand how dangerous this is?
00:23:17.000So basically, you have the president of the United States who accuses the intelligence services of being politicized.
00:23:22.000And the response of the left is, good!
00:23:24.000I'm glad they're politicized because the president is just that dangerous.
00:23:27.000Now, imagine if the situation reversed.
00:23:29.000Barack Obama were pursuing his awful, awful Iran deal and people inside the so-called deep state were leaking all sorts of information about the Iran deal and making a criminal case that the members of the Obama administration were lying to the American public, for example.
00:23:42.000Do you think the left would be quite so sanguine about the deep state?
00:23:44.000Or would they say, listen, Obama was elected to do a job.
00:23:46.000If Congress wants to check him, Congress can check him.
00:23:50.000Unelected bureaucrats do not get to play their own role out here.
00:23:54.000I think that would have been the better case and the stronger case and the more intelligent case.
00:23:59.000You cannot have an executive agency that is not subject to the purview of the president because then you do have a rogue agency that is subject to no one.
00:24:08.000Do you really want a state in which those with the greatest power over surveillance and intelligence also have the most power over our politics?
00:24:18.000Lefties, put aside how much you hate President Trump for just a second.
00:24:21.000Do you really want the most powerful agencies of the country, the NSA, the CIA, and the FBI, to have so much power that it's their job now to curb and topple the President of the United States?
00:24:31.000Those are the people who also have power over your emails and your call data.
00:24:34.000Those are the people who you suddenly trust.
00:24:36.000The same leftists who five seconds ago were ripping into the Patriot Act, suggesting it was unpatriotic.
00:24:41.000Those same leftists today are deeply excited about these members of the so-called Deep State checking President Trump's excesses.
00:24:48.000If you don't like President Trump, there's a very, very easy thing you can do about it.
00:24:53.000If you think that he's so dangerous, then get out there and give money to your local Democratic candidate.
00:24:58.000But if you think the solution to this is a bunch of bureaucrats appointed at the highest levels and left in power for years on end without any sort of serious oversight, I don't know what kind of country you want to build.
00:25:09.000It does suggest the anti-democratic tendencies of some folks on the left that they hate Trump so much they are willing to go along with the so-called deep state.
00:25:17.000The same people who should have learned their lesson after J. Edgar Hoover and Martin Luther King, suddenly they believe that the deep state are people who are worthy of our insane
00:25:26.000Now, do I really think the people in the FBI, CIA, NSA, these are all bad people?
00:25:30.000I've been very strongly defending all of these people from what I think is the unfair assault of President Trump on their capabilities with regard to the Russian investigation.
00:25:39.000I can like that the FBI, CIA, and NSA are doing their job investigating Russian election interference, and I can also be wary of unelected bureaucrats in any branch of the federal government
00:25:49.000Overriding their constitutional boundaries and impinging into normal, everyday electoral politics.
00:25:56.000I don't want the FBI interfering in the election any more than I want the Russians interfering in the election.
00:26:05.000They should not be interfering in the election outside of their normal processes of criminal adjudication.
00:26:11.000Once you start turning this into a political branch, why should I possibly trust that I can trust these people with additional power?
00:26:17.000Why would I possibly trust that these people are looking out for me and not looking out for their own political interests?
00:26:21.000Remember, these are government agencies.
00:26:23.000Government agencies have a couple of different interests, maximizing power and maximizing their own money.
00:26:28.000That means that these are folks who are going to manipulate the system, or at least they have an interest in manipulating the system, into giving us more surveillance power and funding us better.
00:26:38.000And that's why we have Democratic elected officials, small-D Democratic elected officials, who are going to provide a check against this sort of apparatus.
00:26:47.000But cheering on the apparatus is a mistake.
00:26:48.000And by the way, it lends all sorts of credibility to Trump when he rips into the apparatus.
00:26:52.000When he says there is a deep state, it's hard for you to claim there's not a deep state while you're cheering for the deep state.
00:26:57.000If Trump says, the deep state's out to get me, and you say, there is no deep state, but also, I'm glad that the deep state is out to get you, you gotta pick one of those things.
00:27:07.000The excitement to get President Trump has led people to lose their basic notion
00:27:12.000They lose their basic idea of how government ought to work.
00:27:16.000OK, meanwhile, in breaking news that is not great for President Trump, The New York Times is now reporting that Michael Cohen has secret tapes of President Trump.
00:27:24.000So perhaps this is the reason why the Mueller investigation was essentially trying to raid the Cohen offices.
00:27:31.000We still don't know why that happened, by the way.
00:27:32.000You remember that Michael Cohen, President Trump's personal lawyer, his office was raided by the FBI.
00:27:37.000And there are questions as to what exactly was the criminal activity at issue.
00:27:40.000And the suggestion was that he violated campaign finance law by paying off Stormy Daniels or some such.
00:27:45.000It's still very unclear to me that it's legitimate that the FBI raided Michael Cohen's office.
00:27:49.000We're going to have to see what the prosecution looks like, but...
00:27:51.000The New York Times is reporting today that President Trump's longtime lawyer, Michael Cohen, secretly recorded a conversation with Mr. Trump two months before the presidential election in which they discussed payments to a former Playboy model who said she had an affair with Mr. Trump, according to lawyers and others familiar with the recording.
00:28:06.000The FBI seized the recording this year during a raid on Mr. Cohen's office.
00:28:10.000The Justice Department is investigating Mr. Cohen's involvement in paying women to tamp down embarrassing news stories about Mr. Trump ahead of the 2016 election.
00:28:17.000Prosecutors want to know whether that violated federal campaign finance laws.
00:28:21.000Any conversation with Mr. Trump about those payments would be of keen interest to them.
00:28:24.000So I guess that they're going to now claim that because Trump actually had a clear conversation with Michael Cohen about the election and then about Stormy Daniels, that Cohen paying off Stormy Daniels and getting reimbursed by Trump was actually a form of campaign finance violation.
00:28:38.000Now again, this comes from the deep state.
00:28:41.000How does the New York Times find out about this?
00:28:44.000Well, according to lawyers and others familiar with the recordings, that's very deep background, right?
00:28:48.000There's the way that it works in journalism, by the way, just so folks know, is that when you talk with a reporter, you can use a couple of different designations.
00:28:54.000There's off the record, which means that the reporter cannot report it, but can use the information that you are giving them to go look for other leads.
00:29:01.000And then there is on background, which is to say you can quote me, but not by name.
00:29:04.000There's deep background, which is to say you can you can use the information that I'm giving you without attributing it to me.
00:29:10.000And then there is the and then there's on the record, which means that you can just quote me.
00:29:14.000So these are people who are speaking on deep background, which means they're probably pretty close to the investigation and probably is actual members of the Justice Department talking to the New York Times.
00:29:22.000And all these people are trying to get Trump.
00:29:24.000I mean, again, the fact that all this stuff leaks on a consistent basis is not good for either the intelligence apparatus or the Department of Justice or for President Trump.
00:29:33.000The recording's existence further draws Mr. Trump into questions about tactics he and his associates use to keep aspects of his personal and business life a secret.
00:29:39.000It highlights the potential legal and political danger Mr. Cohen represents to Mr. Trump.
00:29:43.000Once the keeper of many of Mr. Trump's secrets, Mr. Cohen is now seen increasingly as willing to cooperate with prosecutors.
00:29:50.000Giuliani, Rudy Giuliani, who's Trump's lawyer on this stuff now, he says the recording is less than two minutes and demonstrates the president did nothing wrong.
00:29:57.000Nothing in that conversation suggests he had any knowledge of the payment in advance.
00:30:01.000He says in the big scheme of things, it's powerful exculpatory evidence.
00:30:04.000We'll have to see what exactly is on the tape.
00:30:06.000Again, these leaks are devastatingly bad for the Department of Justice.
00:30:10.000It's really not good for trust in the system, for sure.
00:31:09.000I love those conversations because, unlike others, I'm not intolerant of people across the aisle when it comes to having political conversation.
00:31:17.000Also, we are the largest, fastest growing conservative podcast in the nation.
00:31:26.000So as I've been saying, I'm deeply skeptical of the intelligence community leaking about Trump or the Democrats who say that the intelligence community going after Trump is a good thing for the country.
00:31:34.000I think the Department of Justice leaking stuff to The New York Times is deeply troubling, obviously, and I suspect that that leak about Michael Cohen is coming from the Department of Justice.
00:31:43.000With that said, the President of the United States should treat his actual intelligence community well when they are doing their jobs.
00:31:48.000And one of the big problems here is that he leaves them out of the loop on a fairly regular basis.
00:31:52.000So the most obvious example of this is yesterday, Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats, who was basically thrown under the bus by President Trump this week.
00:31:59.000He was appearing at some event with Andrea Mitchell of NBC News, and he is told that Donald Trump plans a second meeting with Vladimir Putin.
00:32:06.000Now, I'm not sure why we would have a second meeting with Putin when the first meeting obviously was such a mess.
00:32:12.000But I guess Trump wants to do that as sort of a doubling down.
00:32:15.000Anyway, Dan Coats is told about this on stage.
00:32:17.000His reaction says something about Trump's relationship with his own intelligence community at this point.
00:32:22.000I do want to say we have some breaking news.
00:32:25.000The White House has announced on Twitter that Vladimir Putin is coming to the White House in the fall.
00:32:46.000So clearly, he's been blindsided by the fact the president wants now Putin to come to the White House.
00:32:52.000Yeah, the president, look, the president is a man of many passions.
00:32:55.000And he does things on the spur of the moment and at whim.
00:32:58.000And his comms office tends to repeat those things on the spur of the moment and at whim.
00:33:02.000All I can say is it would be better for the Trump administration if they would coordinate these things a little bit in advance so you don't have embarrassing moments quite like this.
00:33:53.000Okay, and then she gets crazier from there.
00:33:55.000Whoopi eventually goes so nuts that she essentially throws Jeanine Pirro off the set, because Jeanine Pirro says that Whoopi Goldberg has Trump derangement syndrome, which she clearly does.
00:34:03.000Here's Whoopi Goldberg losing her mind, saying, I'm done, and then bringing this nutty segment to a crashing halt.
00:34:09.000Okay, and so it ends like that, but then it gets even worse.
00:34:25.000So Jeanine Pirro was on Sean Hannity's radio show the other day, and Jeanine Pirro explains what happened directly after that little tiff.
00:34:37.000I was walking downstairs, and I said something like, Whoopi, I've fought for victims my whole life, and she came at me as I was leaving, and she said, F you, in my face, literally spitting at me, F you, get the F out of this building.
00:34:56.000Okay, so obviously she does not have Trump Derangement Syndrome, Whoopi Goldberg.
00:34:59.000Obviously she's a completely sane person, having normal political discourse.
00:35:03.000This is the level to which things have sunk.
00:35:05.000Okay, the level to which, I think Whoopi Goldberg is representative of a hardcore base of leftists.
00:36:26.000Because there are very few of these folks left in American discourse, and Whoopi Goldberg and Joy Behar on The View demonstrate it pretty much every day.
00:36:40.000The answer is, no, I want to go on it more than ever because I think I can have a good discussion with Whoopi if she will allow us to have such a good discussion.
00:36:55.000Especially because I think that so many folks on the left want to box everybody on the right into the, you're an evil, mangy, terrible, horrible human being.
00:37:03.000And people on the left have a surprisingly hard time doing that with people who are not terrible, horrible human beings.
00:37:08.000I don't consider myself in that category, so.
00:37:11.000I'm happy to have, anytime, a reasonable conversation about these issues.
00:37:15.000I think that's exactly the reason why some folks on The View don't want to have me on.
00:37:19.000That if your family members are espousing viewpoints that you think are bad for your kids, you have to have your family members around your kids.
00:37:41.000Now, I don't know, your sister, maybe she's a very nice person, maybe she's good for the kids overall, maybe you can talk to her and say, listen, you espouse viewpoints that I don't like in the house about politics, so we're just gonna stay away from politics when we're hanging out.
00:37:51.000Like, I love you, I want you to be here, but I can't have you inculcating values in my kids that I don't want my kids to learn.
00:37:56.000Maybe that's a conversation you can have, but I'm not a person who believes that your relationship with your sister trumps your relationship with your kids or your capacity to teach your kids.
00:38:04.000If it turns out that your sister is bad for your kids, keep your sister away from your kids.
00:38:08.000Your kids are more important than your sister.
00:38:25.000Jonathan Haidt talks a lot about this in The Happiness Hypothesis.
00:38:28.000He has a chapter on love, and he talks about why it is that cohabitation before marriage tends to lead to higher rates of divorce.
00:38:33.000There are a couple reasons in my view.
00:38:34.000Number one is that the longer you cohabit, the longer you start to realize the real reason you're cohabiting and not getting married is so you don't have skin in the game, so you're not locked down.
00:38:43.000The real reason that you're living together in sin, as they used to say, the reason that you are doing this is because both of you want a window ajar, just in case you feel like escaping.
00:38:52.000Without actually having to have any legal entanglements that get in your way.
00:39:42.000You are passionately in love with this person in the sense that you want to be physically intimate with them like every minute of every day.
00:39:47.000This happens a lot when the person is new to you and then over time you get used to the person.
00:39:51.000And as you get used to the person, you begin to love them in a different way, which is a companionate way.
00:39:55.000You're grateful to that person for the fact that that person stays with you despite all your flaws.
00:39:58.000You know all of the little chinks in their armor.
00:40:00.000You know all of the good things about them and all the bad things about them.
00:40:02.000Makes you that much more grateful to be in this battle with them together.
00:40:19.000And I think that the reason that bet is worth taking when you're in the middle of that passionate love stage, as opposed to when you're in the companionate stage, which is what happens if you cohabit for a very long period of time.
00:40:28.000It's because if you don't understand how marriage works, then what you tend to think is that marriage is what turns passionate love into companionate love.
00:40:36.000That it's marriage itself that got rid of the passion.
00:40:38.000And this is what you hear from all these guys who get it wrong.
00:40:40.000They say, oh, you know, when she was my girlfriend, man, we were at each other all the time.
00:40:44.000And then we got married and now we don't do any of that stuff.
00:40:52.000What actually happened is what happens in every relationship, whether you are married or not.
00:40:55.000The reason you should get married when you're passionate is because marriage should continue to have that element of passion.
00:41:00.000But you should move into companionate love when you are already committed to the person.
00:41:05.000Because if you move into companionate love when you are not already committed to the person, you're going to go searching for the passionate love again with somebody else.
00:41:11.000Because, and inevitably, whatever passionate love you pursue will turn into companionate love.
00:41:14.000This is not me speaking, this is social science speaking.
00:41:17.000Okay, Brandon says, Hey Ben, I'm a little down this week and in my thoughts over the loss of my sister.
00:41:20.000Well, I'm so sorry to hear that happened, Brandon.
00:41:38.000As soon as you hear that someone... I'll give you the whole spiel.
00:41:40.000So when you hear that a relative is dead, a close relative, like a sister or a brother or a parent or a child...
00:41:45.000Then the first thing you do is you tear your clothing as a sign of mourning.
00:41:50.000And you say, which means blessed is the true judge, meaning that God's justice is not ours and he gets to make the decisions about the world.
00:41:59.000And then you go into a period of mourning.
00:42:00.000That period of mourning is basically a period of comfort.
00:42:54.000Uh, and experience it so that by the time you finish those seven days, you're ready to get out in the world again because you're so cooped in and because you've been so kind of ensconced in this, in this basket of love, basically, that now you're ready to go out into the world again.
00:43:07.000So you say Kaddish is this prayer that we say repeatedly during the morning, afternoon, evening services that basically suggests that God is holy and knows what he's doing and also is very based around the idea that there are distinctions between life and death, good and evil, et cetera.
00:43:20.000So, Judaism says that you are supposed to really be in the morning.
00:43:25.000Now, a lot of people want to push off morning.
00:43:26.000A lot of people want to just, I'll deal with my morning by going out and working more.
00:43:30.000I'll go out and I'll deal with it by ignoring it.
00:43:32.000The problem is that it's going to hit you even harder.
00:43:34.000I think that the Jewish way of morning is one of the more beautiful parts of my religion, actually.
00:43:51.000The reason it's possible, Jordan, is because most liberals live conservative lives if they're successful, because the rules that make you successful in life tend toward conservatism, like get married, get a job, save your money, make good decisions with your life.
00:44:04.000These are all based on certain conservative values.
00:44:32.000And so people are very easily able to ignore the way they live in their own life in order to pursue political values they think are important.
00:44:49.000That's a pretty complicated question there.
00:44:53.000But the Fourth Amendment, I don't know why you'd have to have a generalized right to privacy in order to make an argument against the NSA.
00:44:59.000I mean, the Fourth Amendment is not, is withstanding.
00:45:01.000The Fourth Amendment says that there shall not be unreasonable search and seizure.
00:45:05.000That's a Fourth Amendment consideration.
00:45:07.000OK, that has nothing to do with abortion, but it does have to do with the government's ability to search and seize your records, as it always has had to.
00:45:13.000That's why there's a real balance that has to be drawn between the needs of the national security community and keeping the country safe and protecting our data.
00:45:19.000I think that balance has largely been drawn too much in favor of the NSA and not enough in favor of individual privacy.
00:46:29.000I think in that sense, it absolutely is.
00:46:32.000But it is also a disease that can be fought with willpower, which is different than a lot of other diseases.
00:46:37.000Addiction is something that not always, but sometimes can be fought with compassion.
00:46:41.000This is why the 12-step program has been so successful for Alcoholics Anonymous.
00:46:44.000I mean, that's an active act of self-control.
00:46:47.000So unlike other diseases that can't be fought, like you can't not have cancer just because you determined that you are not going to have cancer.
00:46:55.000Addiction is partially beyond your control and partially not.
00:46:57.000And one of the things about addiction is that one of the ways you control addiction is acknowledging that you have an addiction and then creating prophylactic rules to avoid getting into areas that put you in a problem.
00:47:05.000So if you're an alcoholic, you stay away from liquor stores.
00:47:08.000If you are a drug addict, you stay away from parties where you know people are going to be smoking pot, for example.
00:47:12.000If you're a porn addict, you put porn blockers on your computer specifically so that you're never tempted to click on things.
00:47:47.000Norwegian socialism, sort of the Nordic states, which, as I've explained before, is sort of a mix of capitalism and socialism.
00:47:55.000But his best essay, the best essay ever, is something that's not even about socialism or capitalism.
00:48:00.000It's a 1940 essay that he wrote specifically about the appeal of Nazism.
00:48:03.000It is just spectacular, I quote it all the time, because his basic argument is that the failure of both right and left in modern society is to acknowledge that people need meaning.
00:48:11.000And so the reason that the Nazis had succeeded in twisting so many people's minds is because while both right and left were focused on capitalism makes us rich or Marxism makes us more materially prosperous.
00:48:21.000The Nazis were focused on what gives people spiritual meaning, and they found an evil way of giving people spiritual meaning, and people resonated to that.
00:48:28.000His essay basically says, people do want flags, people want cannons, people want guns, people want marches, people want a feeling of solidarity.
00:50:36.000I'd want to check this out and get back to you, honestly.
00:50:38.000I don't want to give you the wrong historical answer on the history of the Star of David, but I know that, you know, it's been part of Jewish prayers for a long time.
00:52:05.000If people have recommendations on other series that they think I should watch, then send them to me because my wife and I are always looking for good series to watch.
00:52:12.000I've heard that there's this one on Netflix also that's about terrorism that's supposed to be pretty good.
00:52:16.000So I'll check that out and I'll see if it's worth a recommend.
00:52:18.000Okay, time for a quick thing that I hate.
00:52:23.000So the media has a grand interest in turning idiot parents into a trend.
00:52:28.000Their latest trend that they like is what they're calling theybes.
00:52:34.000Okay, this is that you are raising your children without gender, which is idiocy because you're supposed to teach your kids about things that make them healthy, not things that make them unhealthy.
00:52:42.000Okay, the fact is that if you are confusing your two-year-old about gender, then you are being an idiot.
00:52:47.000Like, this is my great question about this stuff.
00:52:50.000How do you think you're helping your kid?
00:52:51.000Like really, do you think it helps your kid not to give them any guidance at all?
00:52:53.000Would you let your kid not go to school because your kid doesn't know anything about reading?
00:52:56.000And maybe your kid is better off not reading.
00:52:58.000Maybe reading is a societal construct.
00:53:00.000And we know there are lots of bad things that come from reading, like being on Twitter.
00:53:04.000We know there are terrible things that come from education, like a certain sense of non-equality with others.
00:55:01.000But when he's 2, I get to make those decisions.
00:55:03.000And I want to inculcate in my son a feeling that he is a boy, a strong boy, who's going to grow up to have manly responsibilities for taking care of women and children.
00:55:11.000Manly responsibilities for defending a civilization that makes important distinctions between men and women.
00:55:16.000I think there is a good reason that the Bible says that boys should not dress as girls and girls should not dress as boys because every society in human history has made distinctions between how males dress and females dress.
00:55:25.000And don't give me the Scottish wear kilts.
00:55:28.000Men wear kilts and women wear dresses.
00:55:30.000Every society in history has had distinctions and those distinctions are deeply important because they inculcate different responsibilities that are indeed rooted in biology.
00:55:38.000The idea that all of gender is a construct is simply not backed by science, nor is it healthy for society or even for individuals.
00:55:46.000If there are people who are confused, then we have to figure out how to deal with that.
00:55:48.000But to inculcate the confusion as a point of politics is an evil thing to do to a child.