The Ben Shapiro Show - Trump’s Big Test Run | Ep. 857

00:00:00.000 President Trump tests out his 2020 message in a crucial North Carolina special election bellwether.

00:00:05.000 Democrats hone in on Trump, but trip over themselves.

00:00:07.000 And Google is in everybody's crosshairs.

00:00:09.000 I'm Ben Shapiro.

00:00:09.000 This is the Ben Shapiro Show.

00:00:11.000 Well, today is a big election in North Carolina's 9th congressional district.

00:00:20.000 Now, why do special elections like this matter?

00:00:23.000 Well, typically people say that they are a bellwether.

00:00:25.000 Ooh, a bellwether!

00:00:26.000 We're going to find out whether this is a microcosm of the American electorate at large.

00:00:31.000 And very often...

00:00:33.000 These cases don't end up actually being bellwethers.

00:00:36.000 We saw a few of them in the last election cycle.

00:00:38.000 People thought that what happened in Georgia, they had a congressional special election.

00:00:42.000 John Ossoff narrowly lost that seat.

00:00:44.000 We saw a couple of other very narrow congressional elections in special election districts, and people saw it on the right as a bellwether for Trump, and on the left as a bellwether anti-Trump.

00:00:53.000 We saw this in 2011 as well, in the lead up to 2020, in the lead up to 2012.

00:00:59.000 There were a couple of special elections.

00:01:00.000 One was in New York City.

00:01:01.000 Anthony Weiner lost his seat.

00:01:03.000 He was replaced by a Republican, Bob Turner.

00:01:05.000 In Nevada, there was a special election where a Republican replaced a Democrat, and Republicans sort of convinced themselves that that was indicative of a wave, a Republican wave in 2012.

00:01:14.000 Well, the Republican wave never arrived in 2012.

00:01:16.000 It sort of crashed several miles offshore.

00:01:19.000 Democrats are seeing the same possibility in North Carolina.

00:01:23.000 So it's easy to overread the effect of these sort of special elections a year and a half out.

00:01:27.000 We don't even have a Democratic nominee for president as of yet.

00:01:31.000 It is indicative of at least a warning sign for Republicans if Democrats were to win this North Carolina district tonight.

00:01:38.000 Well, because this particular district was won by President Trump, not by two points, not by four points, not by eight.

00:01:38.000 Why?

00:01:44.000 This was won by 12 points in the last election cycle, last presidential election cycle for President Trump.

00:01:49.000 And right now it is a neck and neck race between a conservative state senator named Dan Bishop It's a vacant seat, and a Democrat named Dan McCready, who's a former Marine who earned a Harvard master's degree in business and narrowly trailed in an election for the seat last year, that was later invalidated after evidence surfaced of election fraud.

00:02:07.000 You remember that there was this big controversy over this particular seat specifically because of allegations of election fraud.

00:02:12.000 So that obviously does have an impact on how the voting goes in this seat, because in all likelihood, if it had not been for the election fraud, Dan McCready might have filled the seat already.

00:02:23.000 This does have a little bit of baggage attached to it.

00:02:25.000 It's not a clean bellwether.

00:02:27.000 It's not a clean indicator of what's going to happen come 2020.

00:02:30.000 It's particularly not clean also because McCready...

00:02:33.000 Happens to be politically moderate for a Democrat.

00:02:36.000 He's more of a blue dog Democrat than he is an AOC type or a Bernie Sanders type or an Elizabeth Warren type.

00:02:41.000 So using a moderate Democrat in a red district that is plagued by allegations of election corruption as a stand in for 2020 is an easy override.

00:02:52.000 With that said, obviously people are watching this because if the Republican were to blow out the Democrat, Then that would suggest that maybe there are a bunch of secret Republican voters who aren't reporting themselves to pollsters.

00:03:02.000 If Democrats were to win the seat, that's obviously a serious siren for Republicans.

00:03:06.000 This is a heavily suburban North Carolina seat that went heavy red for Trump in 2016.

00:03:10.000 So, district stretches from Charlotte, according to the AP, one of the nation's financial nerve centers, through its flourishing eastern suburbs and into the less prosperous rural counties along the South Carolina line.

00:03:20.000 With next summer's RNC convention in Charlotte, Democrats would love to boast control of a congressional district in the city where Trump will be re-nominated.

00:03:28.000 Over half the district's votes will likely come from Charlotte's suburbs.

00:03:31.000 Those suburbs are, of course, the real trouble spot for President Trump come 2020.

00:03:36.000 In Texas, we've been seeing as the suburbs have been turning purple, scaring state leaders in that state as well.

00:03:42.000 Democrats captured 39 GOP-held seats last November, took control of the House.

00:03:46.000 Many of their pickups were in suburbs, even in states like Texas, Kansas, Utah, South Carolina, and Oklahoma.

00:03:53.000 So President Trump now had to descend into this district to push his message.

00:03:59.000 And so this will be one of the questions as well.

00:04:00.000 Is it actually a benefit or a drawback when Trump shows up in suburbia in order to stump for Republican candidates?

00:04:06.000 Now, Trump has sort of dictated in the past that he wants to show up in particular districts in particular areas.

00:04:12.000 And Republicans have been extremely torn on this.

00:04:15.000 I mean, I've spoken with many, many Republican Congress people who simply are not sure whether it is a benefit or a detriment if Trump shows up in their districts just prior to an election.

00:04:24.000 He's a deeply polarizing figure.

00:04:25.000 He does get out the base.

00:04:26.000 He also gets out the other guy's base.

00:04:28.000 Well, President Trump now has to descend into a district he won by 12.

00:04:31.000 Mike Pence is also showing up in that district that Trump won by 12.

00:04:36.000 And President Trump launched into his 2020 stump speech.

00:04:39.000 Now, this was the best of Trump.

00:04:41.000 OK, this was the greatest hit of Trump.

00:04:43.000 And this is really what his campaign should look like, because nearly his entire campaign speech was directed against Democrats.

00:04:49.000 He touted his own record, particularly on employment and on his wanting to build a wall.

00:04:54.000 But overall, it was a it was a brutal attack on Democrats.

00:04:58.000 And if he sticks to this for a year and a half, then he has a very solid shot at reelection.

00:05:02.000 If, however, he gets distracted by a myriad of sillinesses, then obviously his chances go down.

00:05:08.000 So President Trump leads off his rally last night with an optimistic message.

00:05:11.000 The best days are yet to come.

00:05:13.000 We are one movement, one people, one family and one glorious nation under God.

00:05:22.000 America is thriving like never before.

00:05:27.000 We may have right now the greatest economy in the history of our nation.

00:05:32.000 And ladies and gentlemen of North Carolina, the best is yet to come.

00:05:40.000 OK, so this is an upbeat message, obviously, and it's going to get out the base.

00:05:42.000 Is it going to reach out to independents?

00:05:44.000 Who knows?

00:05:45.000 OK, President Trump then follows that up by touting low unemployment, which, of course, is his chief pitch.

00:05:49.000 And the unemployment rate is extraordinarily low.

00:05:51.000 There's a report out today that suggests that not only is the unemployment rate low, according to The Washington Post, for the first time, most new working age hires in the United States are people of color.

00:06:04.000 The Washington Post is now reporting that women are predominantly driving the trend. 0.99

00:06:11.000 They say the surge of minority women getting jobs has helped push the United States workforce across a historic threshold.

00:06:16.000 For the first time, most new hires of prime working age 25 to 54 are people of color.

00:06:21.000 Minority hires overtook white hires last year, which suggests that there are a lot of people in minority communities who are now getting jobs who wouldn't have had jobs if it were not for President Trump's economy.

00:06:30.000 If you can attribute the economy to a presidential figure, a question of which I am somewhat doubtful, minority women began to pour into the labor market in 2015. 1.00

00:06:37.000 They've begun to reshape the demographics of the U.S. 0.94

00:06:40.000 workforce, especially because many white baby boomers have been retiring.

00:06:43.000 There are 5.2 million more people in the United States with jobs than at the end of 2016.

00:06:48.000 And 4.5 million of them are minorities, according to the post-analysis of Labor Department data.

00:06:54.000 So that should be good news for President Trump going forward to 2020.

00:06:56.000 Here he is touting low unemployment.

00:06:59.000 Nearly 600,000 Americans entered the labor force last month alone.

00:07:05.000 Think of that.

00:07:07.000 Well, now you have the best unemployment numbers, employment and unemployment numbers, that you've ever had as African-Americans, as Asian-Americans, as Hispanic-Americans.

00:07:21.000 The best numbers we've ever had.

00:07:24.000 And by the way, African American youth unemployment has also reached the lowest level ever recorded in history.

00:07:33.000 Hey, obviously that is going to have to be his pitch.

00:07:34.000 If the economy sinks at all, then he is in trouble.

00:07:37.000 Now, Trump himself is already saying that this particular district is, quote, not a bellwether.

00:07:42.000 He says, I don't see it as a bellwether.

00:07:44.000 That's never a great sign when you're already downplaying the effect of a particular district as the president.

00:07:49.000 With that said, he's correct.

00:07:51.000 It's not a complete bellwether, but it does say something.

00:07:53.000 Now, in a second, we're going to get to the other half of Trump's message.

00:07:56.000 Part of his message is, here's all the good stuff I've done.

00:07:58.000 And then the more damaging part of his message for Democrats is, here's what they want.

00:08:02.000 And again, if he focuses like a laser beam in on this message, then he's more likely to see success come 2020.

00:08:08.000 We'll get into that in just one second.

00:08:10.000 First, let's talk about the Second Amendment.

00:08:12.000 Democrats have basically said at this point, they're coming for your guns.

00:08:15.000 Beto O'Rourke says that he wants to come for all of your weapons.

00:08:18.000 He would like a gun buyback program for all quote-unquote assault weapons.

00:08:21.000 You know that that is only the first step for him going after semi-automatic weapons as well handguns.

00:08:26.000 Well, the founders knew that there were going to be a lot of people at the top of our government who are interested in removing our ability to protect ourselves.

00:08:34.000 And that's why when the founders crafted the Constitution, the first thing they did was to ensure freedom of speech.

00:08:38.000 And the second thing they did was ensure that that right remained free by preventing the government from encroaching on that right and other rights with the Second Amendment.

00:08:46.000 I'm a gun owner because I care about that.

00:08:48.000 I'm a gun owner because I care about my own personal safety.

00:08:51.000 Owning a rifle is an awesome responsibility.

00:08:53.000 Building rifles is no different.

00:08:54.000 Started in a garage by a Marine veteran more than two decades ago, Bravo Company Manufacturing, BCM for short, builds a professional-grade product built to combat standards.

00:09:03.000 Bravo Company Manufacturing is not a sporting arms company.

00:09:06.000 They design, they engineer, they manufacture life-saving equipment, which is the stuff I care about because I'm not a big hunter.

00:09:11.000 To learn more about Bravo Company Manufacturing, head on over to BravoCompanyMFG.com.

00:09:15.000 You can discover more about their products, special offers, upcoming news.

00:09:18.000 That's BravoCompanyMFG.com.

00:09:20.000 If you need more convincing, check them out over at YouTube as well.

00:09:23.000 YouTube.com slash BravoCompanyUSA.

00:09:26.000 That's YouTube.com.

00:09:29.000 Okay, so President Trump's other message on the campaign stump is that Democrats would like to sink the economy, right?

00:09:40.000 His economy is really good.

00:09:41.000 Democrats are pushing policies that will sink the economy.

00:09:43.000 Again, this happens to be true. 0.99

00:09:45.000 For all of these crazy people, but they're not so crazy. 0.96

00:09:49.000 They know what they're doing. 0.98

00:09:50.000 They talk about Russia, Russia, Russia.

00:09:52.000 Russia is not too happy about that.

00:09:55.000 Their primary source of income is oil and gas.

00:09:59.000 And now we're bigger than Russia, bigger than Saudi Arabia.

00:10:02.000 We're bigger than everybody.

00:10:03.000 Yet every leading Democrat running for president pledges to ban the energy that drives our economy and wage and under.

00:10:13.000 If you look at what's going on, Your way of life is under assault by these people.

00:10:19.000 Okay, this is all true.

00:10:20.000 It's all true.

00:10:21.000 And this is why the Democrats are doing a seven-hour town hall on climate change in which they pledge to ban everything up to and including the type of underwear you wear.

00:10:30.000 That turns out not to have been a great pitch.

00:10:32.000 The Democrats are giving Trump plenty of material to work with.

00:10:35.000 He has to not give them material to work with.

00:10:37.000 Trump says Democrats want to destroy the American dream.

00:10:39.000 Again, this is all part of his pitch.

00:10:40.000 Now, the way the media pitched this, it's amazing.

00:10:42.000 I love the media coverage.

00:10:43.000 The media pitched this.

00:10:44.000 The AP has a story about Trump delivering a dark speech.

00:10:48.000 They've been trying this routine since 2015.

00:10:50.000 He keeps talking about a dark vision of America.

00:10:52.000 No, that's called politics.

00:10:54.000 Barack Obama suggested that if Republicans were to win control of the White House in 2012, they would return America back to the 1950s.

00:11:01.000 So yes, the way you do politics is by pointing out what you think America will look like if your opponents win.

00:11:07.000 Here is Trump doing just that last night in Fayetteville, North Carolina.

00:11:10.000 For years you watched as your politicians apologized for America.

00:11:15.000 Now you have a president who is standing up for America and we are standing up for the people of North Carolina.

00:11:25.000 A vote for any Democrat in 2020.

00:11:28.000 And a vote for any Democrat tomorrow in North Carolina is a vote for the rise of radical socialism and the destruction of the American dream.

00:11:40.000 Okay, that pitch becomes easier, by the way, if Elizabeth Warren is the nominee, as opposed to somebody like Joe Biden.

00:11:45.000 Trump also is appealing to the forces of anti-globalism.

00:11:50.000 When I say globalism, I don't mean any sort of coded language.

00:11:53.000 I mean the idea of transnational governance.

00:11:56.000 President Trump is very much opposed to the idea that the Europeans and their public sentiment should decide the future of the United States.

00:12:03.000 He's pointing out that Democrats keep saying he's unpopular in Europe.

00:12:06.000 He's like, right, that's kind of my pitch.

00:12:09.000 We were defending many countries that treat us very badly on trade and very unfairly.

00:12:14.000 We were defending them.

00:12:16.000 And now it's changing around.

00:12:17.000 100 billion dollars.

00:12:20.000 They're not happy.

00:12:22.000 And then I read where Obama is more popular in Germany than Trump.

00:12:27.000 He's gotta be!

00:12:28.000 I'm making people pay their bills.

00:12:30.000 He's gotta be.

00:12:32.000 You know, the day that I'm more popular than him, I'm not doing my job.

00:12:39.000 OK, I think a lot of Americans agree with this.

00:12:41.000 A lot of Americans do agree with this.

00:12:43.000 President Trump also talking about immigration.

00:12:45.000 So this is his pitch, right?

00:12:46.000 His pitch is that Democrats have policies that are outside the mainstream, that he is much more inside the mainstream, that we're not going to have our policies decided by the Europeans. 0.78

00:12:54.000 Again, I think all of this is good stuff.

00:12:55.000 Trump was more disciplined last night than I have seen him in a very long time.

00:12:59.000 Here's President Trump talking about erecting a wall along the southern border, a wall Democrats have opposed.

00:13:04.000 You look at what's happening with human trafficking, and it's mostly women. 0.99

00:13:11.000 They traffic in women, and they pour through our borders. 1.00

00:13:14.000 Well, every inch of wall that we put up is vital, and we're putting up miles and miles, and we intend by next year, at the end of the year, To have anywhere between 400 and 500 miles of wall built.

00:13:32.000 And this is serious wall.

00:13:33.000 This is the real deal.

00:13:35.000 OK, and he does have the funding to make that happen.

00:13:38.000 So again, this is Trump's 2020 pitch.

00:13:40.000 Now, the question is going to be in the congressional district where he is doing this.

00:13:43.000 Does this benefit the candidate or does it not benefit the candidate, Bishop?

00:13:47.000 So the candidate himself got up and spoke.

00:13:49.000 The problem is that Trump is Trump and nobody else is Trump.

00:13:53.000 Having Trump come in and do basically a presidential rally in your hometown... The rally is going to be about Trump.

00:14:00.000 It is not going to be about you.

00:14:02.000 It's not going to be about transferring the power of the presidency over to Bishop.

00:14:06.000 Instead, it's going to be Bishop trying to imitate Trump and puff Trump up.

00:14:09.000 So it'll be... Really, I have no idea.

00:14:12.000 I don't think anybody has any idea.

00:14:13.000 The polls are too close right now.

00:14:15.000 What exactly is going to happen in this particular district?

00:14:18.000 But here, there is a problem for Republicans.

00:14:20.000 And the problem is that, again, Trump is very polarizing.

00:14:23.000 And the bigger problem is when you try to be Trump, you fail.

00:14:26.000 No one can be Trump.

00:14:27.000 Only Trump can be Trump.

00:14:28.000 There's this sort of let Manny be Manny.

00:14:30.000 You know, it's a baseball reference about Manny Ramirez, this baseball player for the Cleveland Indians and the Boston Red Sox and the Los Angeles Dodgers.

00:14:37.000 Manny Ramirez was an incredibly talented hitter.

00:14:39.000 He was also a kook.

00:14:41.000 And the rule about Manny Ramirez was if he hits 330, he gets to be a kook.

00:14:46.000 OK, but if he starts hitting 270, then the kookiness ain't quite so charming.

00:14:49.000 Well, the problem for Republicans is that let Trump be Trump only works when you're Trump.

00:14:54.000 When you go from nowhere presidency of the United States, you get to be as kooky as you want to be.

00:14:58.000 But when you are running for Congress, in a local district, and you try to be Trump, it isn't gonna work.

00:15:04.000 I mean, I don't know, like, if I were doing optics for the candidate, having the candidate get up there in the same tie-suit combo as the president, it's just not, it's not particularly smart.

00:15:14.000 I mean, again, that is like, you're in the movie with Brad Pitt, and you're an extra, and now you've got a line, and you're dressed exactly the same as Brad Pitt.

00:15:21.000 Like, how exactly is that particularly smart?

00:15:24.000 Here is Dan Bishop, the candidate in North Carolina, now basically stumping for Trump.

00:15:31.000 So this turned into a rally about Trump and Trump's ego, as opposed to a rally about Bishop and the necessity for Bishop to be elected to Congress.

00:15:39.000 We've all watched as the Democratic Party, the Socialist Democrat Party, seeks the president's destruction every day. 0.83

00:15:54.000 We've seen a dishonest media serve as their handmaidens and their allies in that mission. 0.96

00:16:12.000 OK, so going full Trump in the presence of Trump, it's a bold move, Cotton.

00:16:15.000 We'll see how it works out for him.

00:16:18.000 Again, with all the caveats, it's not a full bellwether, but it's at least a part bellwether.

00:16:22.000 You lose it.

00:16:23.000 You lose a district in an open seat where Trump won by 12 just a few years ago.

00:16:27.000 The sirens should be sounding and there should be a bit of alarm.

00:16:30.000 Now, the way that Democrats are attempting to run the 2020 election is they are directing, just as Trump is directing his fire at the Democrats and their radical agenda, they are directing their fire at supposed scandals.

00:16:41.000 But the problem is that Trump is a candidate who is vulnerable because of who he is.

00:16:47.000 Instead, Democrats seem to be directing their fire at some of the silliest aspects of the Trump administration and then missing. 0.92

00:16:54.000 They're the gang who can't shoot straight. 0.89

00:16:55.000 We'll get to that in just one second.

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00:18:01.000 The Democrats' case when it comes to President Trump is that he is scandal ridden.

00:18:05.000 Now, this is a very bizarre angle that they've been using on Trump.

00:18:10.000 Instead of focusing in on the fact that Trump is kooky and says kooky things and is alienating, instead of that, they're focusing in on minor scandals and attempting to blow them up. 0.87

00:18:20.000 Now, Trump can play into their hands by doubling down on the silliness.

00:18:26.000 But Democrats are focusing in on minor things in a way that is that is pretty astonishing.

00:18:32.000 I know this because Republicans tried to focus in on minor things in 2011 in the run up to 2012, and it didn't work out well.

00:18:38.000 See, Americans have a generalized perception of a candidate, and that generalized perception is what they carry into the voting booth.

00:18:43.000 The best way to undermine a candidate is to undermine the general perception of the candidate if that perception is positive.

00:18:50.000 If, however, the perception is negative, then you emphasize that.

00:18:53.000 You emphasize it each and every day.

00:18:55.000 The way you do that is not by focusing in on minutia where most Americans don't care.

00:19:00.000 Because then you seem petty.

00:19:02.000 And right now the Democrats are seeming pretty petty.

00:19:05.000 And, by the way, they're blowing some of their hits as well.

00:19:08.000 I have to point out.

00:19:09.000 So, in a second, we'll get to the discussion of Sharpiegate, which continues apace, but there was an attempted hit yesterday on President Trump that was just botched completely.

00:19:18.000 There's a report from CNN, and the report from CNN was basically that the CIA had to extract an asset in Russia, a high-ranking asset in Russia, who was passing intelligence on to the American government, and they had to do it because Trump was loose-lipped with the Russians.

00:19:31.000 That's what CNN was attempting to report.

00:19:33.000 But as it turns out, that's not the whole story.

00:19:36.000 The New York Times reports, quote, decades ago, the CIA recruited and carefully cultivated a mid-level Russian official who began rapidly advancing through the government ranks.

00:19:44.000 Eventually, American spies struck gold.

00:19:46.000 The longtime source landed an influential position that came with access to the highest level of the Kremlin.

00:19:51.000 As American officials began to realize that Russia was trying to sabotage the 2016 presidential election, the informant became one of the CIA's most important and highly protected assets.

00:20:00.000 But when intelligence officials revealed the severity of Russia's election interference with unusual detail later that year, the news media picked up on details about the CIA's Kremlin sources.

00:20:10.000 CIA officials, worried about safety, made the arduous decision in late 2016 to offer to extract the source from Russia.

00:20:19.000 So the original CNN story suggested that it was President Trump in a meeting with the Russians who spilled the presence of the CIA asset, requiring the asset to be withdrawn.

00:20:26.000 So it's all about Trump.

00:20:27.000 But then the New York Times has a follow on story.

00:20:29.000 It turns out it wasn't about Trump at all.

00:20:31.000 In 2016, the CIA was already attempting to remove this source from Russia.

00:20:35.000 Why?

00:20:36.000 Because of the news media.

00:20:37.000 Because the news media was already reporting on this guy.

00:20:40.000 The situation, according to the New York Times, grew more tense when the informant at first refused, citing family concerns, prompting consternation at CIA headquarters, and sowing doubts among some American counterintelligence officials about the informant's trustworthiness.

00:20:53.000 But the CIA pressed again months later after more media inquiries, this time the informant agreed.

00:20:59.000 The move brought to an end the career of one of the CIA's most important sources.

00:21:02.000 It also effectively blinded American intelligence officials to the view from inside Russia as they sought clues about Kremlin interference in the 2018 midterm elections and next year's presidential contest.

00:21:14.000 CNN first reported the 2017 extraction on Monday.

00:21:19.000 Other details, including the source's history with the agency, the initial 2016 exfiltration offer, the cascade of doubts set off by the informant's subsequent refusal, have not been previously reported.

00:21:28.000 Okay, so again, as I say, the original report was that the U.S.

00:21:33.000 extracted a top spy from inside Russia in 2017.

00:21:35.000 The report was from Jim Sciutto over at CNN, and it featured a picture of Donald Trump standing next to Vladimir Putin.

00:21:43.000 Can CNN originally reported, quote, a person directly involved in the discussions said that the removal of the Russian was driven in part by concerns that Donald Trump and his administration repeatedly mishandled classified intelligence and could contribute to exposing the covert source as a spy.

00:21:57.000 And the media jumped all over this yesterday.

00:21:59.000 The big media story on CNN and elsewhere yesterday was that Trump was indeed basically a Putin plant and that the United States and its intelligence resources had to remove a high ranking asset in Russia because Trump couldn't keep his mouth shut with the Russians.

00:22:13.000 But within hours, the New York Times had basically debunked all of that.

00:22:16.000 The New York Times had run a full story about the real reason this guy was withdrawn, and it was because of news coverage of the actual informant.

00:22:23.000 And then, just to prove the point, NBC News decided that they were going to demonstrate full-scale how the media take care of our national security secrets.

00:22:33.000 They ran a piece, NBC News did, called, Possible Russian Spy for CIA Now Living in Washington Area.

00:22:39.000 Which is always a great idea.

00:22:41.000 As a media outlet in the United States, what you really want to do is out spies against the Russians.

00:22:47.000 Because if we know one thing about Vladimir Putin, it's that he's a very forgiving and kind man who never goes after people who are his enemies and then has them poisoned with polonium or anything.

00:22:57.000 According to Ken Delaney and Tatyana Chistykova, a former senior Russian official is living in the Washington area under U.S.

00:23:04.000 government protection, current and former government officials tell NBC News.

00:23:08.000 NBC News is withholding the man's name and other key details at the request of U.S.

00:23:11.000 officials.

00:23:12.000 who say reporting the information could endanger his life.

00:23:15.000 Yet the former Russian official, who had a job with access to secrets, was living openly under his true name.

00:23:20.000 An NBC News correspondent went to the man's house in the Washington area and rang the doorbell.

00:23:25.000 Five minutes later, two young men in an SUV came racing up the street and parked immediately adjacent to the correspondent's car.

00:23:32.000 Yeah, I'm going to go with the New York Times story here, that maybe it was the media treatment of this particular spy that had the guy withdrawn from Russia, not Trump.

00:23:41.000 Didn't matter, the media ran with it yesterday.

00:23:43.000 And that was not the only overblown story yesterday.

00:23:48.000 In a second, we are going to get to the continuing saga of the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration inside the Trump administration. 0.98

00:23:56.000 Was idiocy pursued? 0.99

00:23:58.000 Yes. 0.99

00:23:59.000 Is the overblown nature of the response overblown?

00:24:02.000 Yeah, just a little bit.

00:24:03.000 We'll get to that in just one second.

00:24:05.000 Okay, there are lots of different types of cars on the road.

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00:25:31.000 Okay, so meanwhile, as I say, the Democrats, members of the media, They're going after, they're grasping at straws with regard to President Trump. 0.97

00:25:40.000 But one of the things that obviously harms President Trump is when he doubles down on foolishness and silliness. 0.88

00:25:46.000 And this has been the case apparently with the NOAA. 0.87

00:25:49.000 Now, is this going to break Trump?

00:25:51.000 Does anybody really care that President Trump took a sharpie and marked up a map?

00:25:56.000 Is that is that going to be a thing that they deeply care about?

00:25:58.000 Wow.

00:25:59.000 Like people going to the ballot box, you know, I was going to vote for that.

00:26:02.000 I was going to vote for Trump.

00:26:03.000 And then that dude, you know what he did?

00:26:05.000 He took a sharpie and he marked up a map.

00:26:06.000 And now I'm not voting for him anymore.

00:26:08.000 Look, Trump is Trump.

00:26:09.000 Everybody knows that he's Trump.

00:26:10.000 Does that mean it's helpful to Trump to emphasize the Trumpiness?

00:26:13.000 Now, there's something that I say to young people who are looking to date, and that is you should be yourself gradually, right?

00:26:21.000 When you're first dating, you don't want to let out all your crazy at once, right?

00:26:23.000 Everybody's crazy, and everybody's got their foibles, and everybody's got their weirdnesses.

00:26:27.000 On the first date is not when you explain to somebody about your Star Wars obsession. 0.98

00:26:31.000 Wait until like the third date for that, until the person realizes that you're not just some nutjob.

00:26:36.000 Then he can start talking about all the weird stuff about you.

00:26:38.000 Well, in politics, it's not that you're hiding who you are.

00:26:40.000 Everybody knows who President Trump is.

00:26:42.000 But bringing yourself front of mind with kooky behavior is not exactly what you are looking for.

00:26:47.000 That's why the NOAA story is not good for Trump.

00:26:49.000 Now, as we'll see, people are still overplaying it and turning it into the biggest deal in the world.

00:26:53.000 But is it a great story for Trump?

00:26:55.000 No, of course it is not.

00:26:57.000 So according to the Washington Post, the head of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said in an email to colleagues on Sunday he is investigating whether the agency's response to President Trump's Hurricane Dorian tweets constituted a violation of NOAA policies and ethics.

00:27:13.000 Also on Monday, the director of the National Weather Service broke with NOAA leadership over its handling of Trump's Dorian tweets and statements.

00:27:20.000 Late August, there were forecasts from the NOAA that Hurricane Dorian was going to strike parts of Alabama or that it could affect parts of Alabama.

00:27:29.000 A few days later, President Trump started talking about that.

00:27:31.000 And then on September 4th, like a full week after that report, when it had basically been debunked at that point, he then went out and did a full press conference where he drew With a sharpie on a map showing exactly where he thought the hurricane was going to hit.

00:27:46.000 And the NOAA, the National Weather Service first issued a tweet saying that that wasn't true.

00:27:51.000 That the hurricane was not going to actually hit Alabama, it was instead going to turn north.

00:27:55.000 And then the NOAA basically backed off that assessment.

00:27:58.000 And then the NOAA said, well, you know, it's true that originally it was going to hit Alabama and all of this.

00:28:04.000 Well, now there's an internal investigation going on at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

00:28:09.000 In an email to NOAA staff obtained by the Washington Post, NOAA's Craig McLean called the agency's response political and a danger to public health and safety.

00:28:18.000 Trump's incorrect assertion on September 1st that Alabama would, quote, most likely be hit much harder than anticipated, set off a chain of confusion and outrage among the public and within NOAA.

00:28:28.000 At the time, the NWS's forecast guidance showed only a very small risk, about 5%, of tropical storm force winds for a small portion of Alabama.

00:28:36.000 However, Alabama was not in the storm forecast track or cone of uncertainty from the National Hurricane Center.

00:28:41.000 That showed Hurricane Dorian skirting the East Coast far away from Alabama.

00:28:45.000 The NWS's Birmingham office set the record straight.

00:28:48.000 They said Alabama would not see any impacts from the storm.

00:28:50.000 NOAA officials then caused an internal uproar on September 6th when the agency issued an unsigned statement that defended Trump's false claim about Alabama and admonished the Weather Service's Birmingham division for speaking in absolute terms.

00:29:02.000 Acting NOAA Administrator Neil Jacobs and NOAA Communications Director Julie K. Roberts were involved in drafting Friday's statement.

00:29:10.000 NOAA and NWS had also appeared to try to correct the record without angering the president.

00:29:14.000 According to emails obtained by the Post before the statement on Friday, NOAA staff were instructed to, quote, only stick with official National Hurricane Center forecasts if questions arise from some national-level social media posts, which hit the news this afternoon, and not to provide any opinion in response to President Trump's initial Alabama tweet.

00:29:32.000 Then there was a report from the New York Times overnight that suggested that Wilbur Ross, the head of the Commerce Department, the Secretary of Commerce, that he threatened to fire top employees at the federal scientific agency responsible for weather forecasts last Friday after the agency's Birmingham office contradicted Trump.

00:29:47.000 So none of that is a particularly good look for Trump.

00:29:51.000 Now, does that mean that Democrats are responding to this relatively minor scandal with the appropriate amount of caution or with the appropriate amount of ire?

00:30:01.000 No, not so much.

00:30:03.000 Not so much.

00:30:04.000 Here's Representative Steve Cohen from Tennessee suggesting that President Trump is like OJ Simpson.

00:30:10.000 You know, the Sharpie thing is amazing, Steve.

00:30:12.000 When they asked him at his press conference about who did it, and he gave the same look that he had when he was on the airplane and said he didn't know anything about paying off Stormy Daniels or anything about checks, it was that same doe-in-the-headlights look of, I have no idea who did it.

00:30:28.000 He never did say, but I'm gonna find out who did it.

00:30:31.000 He's done about as much to find out who did that Sharpie thing as O.J.

00:30:35.000 Simpson's done to find out the murderers.

00:30:37.000 Yeah, it's just like, it's like, yeah, sure.

00:30:40.000 You're not overblowing this at all, guys.

00:30:42.000 It was a sharpie.

00:30:43.000 He took a sharpie and he drew on a map.

00:30:45.000 Like, I get it.

00:30:46.000 It's bad.

00:30:47.000 It is.

00:30:47.000 It's bad.

00:30:47.000 OK, the president of the United States should not be altering scientific forecasts to meet his weird perception of where a hurricane was going to travel.

00:30:55.000 And members of the administration should stop going out of their way to protect President Trump's apparently fragile ego. 0.98

00:31:00.000 It's stupid, it's a waste of time, and it undercuts Trump's pitch, which is that he is the strongest man in the room. 0.99

00:31:05.000 If Trump's really the strongest man in the room, then he can take the critique of, by the way, you're not correct about that hurricane. 1.00

00:31:11.000 We've seen this before.

00:31:12.000 And very often, members of the Trump administration seem to get out in front of his ire.

00:31:17.000 They don't wait for him to react.

00:31:19.000 We saw this when Trump visited South Korea, and there was talk about members of his administration trying to shield the USS John McCain from view.

00:31:26.000 And it turns out Trump knew nothing about it.

00:31:28.000 It was just members of his administration trying to avoid a bad photo op.

00:31:32.000 But with all of that said, is this like a presidential-ending Level ending scandal? 0.67

00:31:40.000 No, that's silly.

00:31:42.000 All the talk about impeachment over this sort of thing?

00:31:45.000 Sure, yeah, and Barack Obama's IRS targeted all of his political opponents, and he wasn't impeached over that, so there's that.

00:31:51.000 Okay, in just a second, we are going to get to the Democratic side of the aisle.

00:31:55.000 Where Democrats are increasingly saying extraordinarily radical things.

00:31:59.000 I feel like a broken record on this, but if the Democrats stop being radical, then I can stop commenting on their radicalism.

00:32:04.000 We'll get to that in just one second.

00:32:05.000 First, you're going to have to go over to dailywire.com.

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00:32:17.000 There are too many folks on the left who want to silence all dissent.

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00:32:36.000 You know, you do have to wonder at this point when you look at both parties, whether any of them are going to have a really strong affirmative agenda to push come 2020.

00:32:51.000 It is like President Trump's basic pitch is border and economy, and that's a pitch, and it's a pretty good pitch, as long as the economy doesn't downturn.

00:33:00.000 But what exactly are the Democrats going to pitch in terms of policy?

00:33:03.000 The answer is nothing.

00:33:03.000 You can see why they're focusing in on the most picayune scandals.

00:33:07.000 In the Trump administration and blowing them up to magnificent proportions, because if they're forced to talk about policy, it's really ugly.

00:33:13.000 And for the Republicans, you can see why they're focused in on the socialism of the Democrats, because honestly, except for a generic tax cut that any Republicans probably would have passed, and except for enshrining judges, which is good, but pretty much any Republican Congress would have done that, I would assume, neither party is, like, I see why so many Americans are disenchanted with politics.

00:33:34.000 It's become sort of this rooting war, but you look at both parties and you're like, what exactly is the vision they're presenting? 0.97

00:33:40.000 I understand why the other guy sucks.

00:33:41.000 I just don't understand why you're so wonderful, is I think the pitch at this point. 0.94

00:33:45.000 This is why more and more people, young people particularly, are identifying as independent.

00:33:50.000 You would imagine that if Democrats had an ounce of vision, that they should be cleaning up in this environment.

00:33:56.000 And if President Trump were able to contain himself, he should be cleaning up in this environment.

00:34:00.000 The man has 3.7% unemployment rate.

00:34:03.000 But it seems like neither side can clean up in this environment because Trump is too focused in on his own egotistical sillinesses about the NOAA or whatever is the latest tweet storm of the day.

00:34:15.000 And Democrats, meanwhile, are too focused in on their socialistic vision for the United States and running down the United States is a terrible, awful, no good, very bad place.

00:34:24.000 Example.

00:34:25.000 So Bernie Sanders and Kamala Harris both said incredibly radical things over the last 24 hours about the United States criminal justice system.

00:34:31.000 So here's Bernie Sanders at a rally talking about the American criminal justice system.

00:34:36.000 I hope that all of you know that the criminal justice system in this country is completely broken and is racist.

00:34:48.000 Really?

00:34:48.000 The entire system is racist?

00:34:50.000 Is that where we're going with this?

00:34:51.000 Okay, so it's broken and it's racist.

00:34:53.000 What is his evidence that it's broken and that it's racist?

00:34:55.000 Well, presumably a disproportionate number of people of minority descent are in prison.

00:35:00.000 But we don't arrest people based on their ethnicity.

00:35:02.000 We arrest them based on the crime they committed.

00:35:03.000 So if Bernie Sanders wants to identify the people he wants let out of jail, anytime now, Bernie, anytime you want to point to the people who are wrongly in prison and are innocent, then I'm waiting on it.

00:35:14.000 But if the idea is that the entire system is inherently corrupt and endemically corrupt, You're going to need to prove that to me by pointing out who are the innocent people who are being rounded up on the streets and then thrown in prison.

00:35:26.000 This has become, unfortunately, a talking point among Democrats.

00:35:29.000 This is why people are disenchanted with politics.

00:35:33.000 Politics Right now is not about solutions.

00:35:35.000 It's not about helping people.

00:35:37.000 It's about just yelling at the wind.

00:35:39.000 And Democrats right now are yelling at the wind louder than Trump.

00:35:41.000 I objected in 2016 when President Trump yelled at the wind and suggested that job loss in a lot of dying Rust Belt towns was the responsibility of free trade and government policy and all the rest of it.

00:35:52.000 I thought that that was economically foolhardy.

00:35:55.000 I didn't think that it was correct.

00:35:57.000 I don't like blaming vague forces in the universe for specific problems that are generally the result of free market forces.

00:36:06.000 So I didn't like when Trump did that.

00:36:08.000 But on the Democratic side, you know what I really hate?

00:36:10.000 The counterproductive nature of their treatment of law enforcement.

00:36:13.000 So Kamala Harris, who's desperately running for president. 1.00

00:36:15.000 She's the most desperate candidate.

00:36:16.000 There are three desperate candidates in this race right now.

00:36:19.000 Beto O'Rourke is desperate.

00:36:20.000 Kamala Harris is desperate. 0.84

00:36:22.000 And Cory Booker is desperate.

00:36:24.000 Cory Booker is always desperate for attention.

00:36:25.000 Beto O'Rourke is desperate because he thought he was going to be the frontrunner at this point.

00:36:29.000 And Kamala Harris is desperate because for a brief glimpse of time, she had popped up into that top rank and now she has receded. 1.00

00:36:35.000 She did an interview over the last 24 hours with the editor of Salon on police.

00:36:41.000 And listen to her greenlight this take on police, which is such a hot take.

00:36:46.000 I mean, this is a scorching white hot take.

00:36:48.000 It's insane.

00:36:50.000 We shouldn't have to acknowledge their trauma because, like, they're paid to be there.

00:36:53.000 We live in these places.

00:36:54.000 Like, police officers have historically not been held accountable because they protect and serve the rich, and then they just harass and take up space in poor communities.

00:37:08.000 I don't see any type of big shift happening within one term because it's like a cultural thing.

00:37:13.000 Right.

00:37:14.000 Okay, so why doesn't she push back there? 0.98

00:37:16.000 She's a former prosecutor.

00:37:18.000 She knows the police in California.

00:37:20.000 Why isn't she pushing back?

00:37:21.000 When that person says that the police just harass and take up space in poor communities, the reality is that if you actually wish to improve the lives of people in poor communities, black or white, you need more police presence, not less police presence.

00:37:33.000 Why?

00:37:34.000 Because who's going to invest in a community where the crime rates are high?

00:37:36.000 Where your property is not secure?

00:37:38.000 Who's going to invest in a community where there is no tax base?

00:37:42.000 Okay, and the tax base doesn't exist because if you can get your kids out of that community, then you move to the suburbs.

00:37:47.000 Who's going to do that?

00:37:48.000 The single greatest factor that indicates upper income mobility in an area is the safety in that area.

00:37:55.000 Protection of property rights, protection of human rights in a particular area.

00:38:00.000 That is what is going to provide the preconditions for growth in a particular area.

00:38:03.000 And you have Bernie Sanders and Kamala Harris railing against the very forces you need to ensure law and order in poor, low-income, and disproportionately minority areas.

00:38:14.000 The fact is that these high-crime areas require more police, but Democrats aren't interested in solving the problem.

00:38:21.000 They're interested in pandering.

00:38:23.000 We have a politics of pandering right now, and it is completely ugly, and it is completely terrible.

00:38:28.000 And I don't care whether we're talking about pandering to the president's ego, or whether we're talking about pandering to particular radicals in politics, by ripping on the very people who are putting their own bodies and lives in harm's way, for not wonderful pay, in order to protect communities.

00:38:42.000 Like, if you think the police officers are generally signing up because the benefits are fantastic, I would suggest you don't know many police officers.

00:38:49.000 This constant rip by Democrats on the solution to problems is supremely irritating.

00:38:56.000 Supremely irritating.

00:38:57.000 The Democrat radicalism is the reason why they haven't run away with this thing already.

00:39:01.000 And President Trump's ego problem is the reason why he hasn't run away with this thing already.

00:39:05.000 Speaking of Democratic radicalism, long piece in the New York Times today about Bernie Sanders.

00:39:09.000 It's called, Bernie Sanders went to Canada and a dream of Medicare for all flourished.

00:39:13.000 There's nothing I love better than a sophomoric Sick-o-phantic, ridiculous piece from the New York Times about how Bernie Sanders learned from the Canadians about universal health care.

00:39:25.000 Decades before Medicare for All would propel his presidential campaigns, Mr. Sanders' expedition to Ottawa helped forge his determination to transform the American health care system.

00:39:35.000 His views burst onto the national political scene during his 2016 presidential run when he championed a single-payer program alongside many other liberal policy ideas.

00:39:43.000 Now, as he seeks the Democratic presidential nomination a second time, he has made Medicare for All the most important issue of his campaign and set the agenda for the ideological discussion in the primary.

00:39:53.000 Apparently, the pull of Canada remains strong for Mr. Sanders.

00:39:58.000 Sanders described how seeing the Canadian system up close significantly shaped his own views on healthcare.

00:40:03.000 He says it was kind of mind-blowing to realize that the country 50 miles away from where I live, that people could go to a doctor whenever they wanted and not have to take out their wallet.

00:40:11.000 That was a profound lesson that I learned.

00:40:13.000 And then he called the American system barbaric.

00:40:16.000 Apparently, he learned all of this from Canada, but the truth is that his original beliefs in healthcare actually sound more Soviet than Canadian.

00:40:25.000 In October 1976, when he was the Liberty Union candidate for governor, he told the Burlington Free Press that the delivery of medical care was, quote, basically a national problem, and that he supported public ownership of the drug companies and placing doctors on government salaries.

00:40:40.000 He said, I believe in socialized medicine.

00:40:43.000 And this is being praised by the New York Times as, oh, look what he learned from Canada.

00:40:47.000 Isn't that nice what he learned from Canada?

00:40:48.000 By the way, you make drug companies owned by the federal government, and you can kiss innovation goodbye.

00:40:54.000 And that's the one area where America really does thrive.

00:40:57.000 We may lag behind other countries in terms of cost per capita, but we are way ahead of other countries when it comes to medical innovation and medical patents.

00:41:03.000 Over half of medical patents happen in the United States.

00:41:05.000 Innovation lives here.

00:41:07.000 And by the way, if you're in Canada and you need an immediate surgery, you know what you do?

00:41:10.000 You get on a plane, you come south of the border.

00:41:13.000 Again, the radicalism of the Democrats is continuous and terrible.

00:41:19.000 Now, in an environment where you feel like you can't trust anybody, really, where you feel like you can't trust the right because the right is busily defending whatever crazy is happening at the White House today, and in an environment where you feel like you can't trust the left because the left is insanely radical and wants to destroy the basic vision of the country, who can you trust?

00:41:38.000 Well, theoretically, you would say the media, but the answer is certainly not there.

00:41:41.000 The media continuing to shower themselves in glory day in and day out.

00:41:45.000 Yesterday, the New York Times tweeted out a link about Mao Zedong on the anniversary of his death.

00:41:52.000 The tweet said this, Mao Zedong died on this day in 1976.

00:41:56.000 The Times said he began as an obscure peasant and died one of history's great revolutionary figures.

00:42:02.000 I'm sure the Times did say that.

00:42:04.000 He also was responsible for the Great Leap Forward, ending in the deaths of 40 million people.

00:42:08.000 The New York Times then had to delete the tweet.

00:42:09.000 They said, we deleted a previous tweet about Mao Zedong that lacked critical historical context.

00:42:14.000 Oh, you mean you tweeted out that he was a great revolutionary figure?

00:42:17.000 You know who else is a great revolutionary figure, by your standard, The New York Times?

00:42:21.000 Hitler. 0.57

00:42:21.000 Stalin, great revolutionary figures, also murdered tens of millions of people. 0.57

00:42:26.000 So there's that.

00:42:27.000 But don't worry, guys.

00:42:28.000 I trust our media.

00:42:29.000 Our media are just doing incredible, incredible work on a daily basis.

00:42:33.000 And that our media, who really are out there defending your interests daily, I see that they are also doing this in the Hollywood media.

00:42:42.000 If you're ever worried that Hollywood may be biased, I have some evidence for you.

00:42:45.000 Variety, which is a trade newspaper here in Los Angeles.

00:42:50.000 The only people who subscribe to it are the agents who have it on their glossy glass tables for you to read while you wait for your agent ever to see you.

00:42:58.000 Variety has a cover today called Climate in Crisis.

00:43:02.000 The clock is ticking.

00:43:03.000 Can Hollywood muster its storytelling power and influence to sound the alarm on global warming?

00:43:09.000 Because this is Hollywood's job, guys.

00:43:11.000 Hollywood's job is to cram down their vision of what should happen on global warming on you.

00:43:17.000 Isn't that exciting?

00:43:17.000 So basically, bottom line, there's nobody, I would suggest in politics, that you can trust except you.

00:43:23.000 Which means that you're going to have to assess all of these issues on your own.

00:43:26.000 And that's tough.

00:43:27.000 That's tough, but it's good.

00:43:28.000 Because the more independent you are in assessing all of this, the better off you are going to be.

00:43:32.000 And the fact right now is that everybody is too invested in the partisan tribal warfare To be honest about where things stand as they stand right now.

00:43:42.000 And I think we'll get an indicator of that tonight in North Carolina, frankly.

00:43:46.000 I think there are a lot of people who are sort of tenuously engaged in politics who will show up to vote, and we'll see how they feel about things.

00:43:54.000 Because in the end, that's going to decide where we go in 2020.

00:43:57.000 Not the contrasting vision of the parties, not even the talking points, the general feel of the thing.

00:44:03.000 And people, I think, are generally frustrated.

00:44:05.000 I know this is all a little bit vague.

00:44:06.000 I feel like it's vague, too.

00:44:08.000 But it's hard not to feel frustration-setting, and even for me, and I watch this stuff on a daily basis when we're fighting over whether the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration should redraw maps on the one hand, and whether we should fully socialize the American healthcare system on the other.

00:44:22.000 It's deeply frustrating stuff.

00:44:23.000 Okay, meanwhile, The other big news of the day is that nearly every state is now investigating Google over antitrust.

00:44:30.000 And this to me is just another example, really another example of politicians who are looking for something to do and don't actually have the evidence to support it.

00:44:40.000 A group of 50 attorney generals from 48 states, the District of Columbia, and Puerto Rico unveiled a major antitrust investigation of Google on Monday, sharply escalating the regulatory scrutiny facing the tech giant, is according to CNN.

00:44:52.000 The probe will focus on whether Google has harmed competition and consumers, looking at least initially into the company's conduct in its search, advertising, and other businesses, although it may expand from there.

00:45:02.000 Now, what exactly are they investigating?

00:45:04.000 They're being extraordinarily Noncommittal about that.

00:45:08.000 Very, very opaque.

00:45:09.000 Speaking to reporters in front of the U.S.

00:45:11.000 Supreme Court on Monday, a group of 13 attorneys general struck a bipartisan tone.

00:45:15.000 Carl Racine is AG of the District of Columbia.

00:45:18.000 He said it was an unusual setting for a group that typically disagrees on issues ranging from gun control to reproductive rights.

00:45:23.000 He says, but we are acting as one today.

00:45:26.000 Texas AG Ken Paxton said the investigation will begin by looking at Google's advertising and search dominance, but hinted that the scope of the probe could widen significantly.

00:45:35.000 He said the facts will lead where the facts will lead.

00:45:38.000 Well, normally you have to sort of identify the prospective crime before you launch an investigation.

00:45:42.000 The police can't just go to your house and then be like, you know what?

00:45:44.000 We're investigating you today.

00:45:46.000 And like, what are you investigating?

00:45:47.000 You.

00:45:48.000 Based on what?

00:45:49.000 Well, you seem kind of suspicious.

00:45:51.000 If the police did that, you would rightly call them out for selective prosecution.

00:45:56.000 We have yet to hear from any of these AGs what exactly Google did wrong that leads them to suspect that they're in violation of antitrust law.

00:46:04.000 Normally, and frankly, I really don't think that AGs should be talking about who's under investigation at all.

00:46:09.000 If you're gonna conduct an investigation, shouldn't you have to come up with actual evidence of how the investigation turned out before you go public with this sort of stuff?

00:46:18.000 We're living in a dangerous time where big government actors have an interest in attacking big business or working with them alternatively, and it's all politically driven.

00:46:26.000 It's not consistent in any way.

00:46:28.000 It's not that government actors are opposed to big business.

00:46:30.000 It depends.

00:46:31.000 Is big business shoveling money in their pockets or not?

00:46:33.000 Case in point, Elizabeth Warren.

00:46:35.000 So it turns out that Elizabeth Warren, who's been spending a lot of time lately talking about how she will never take big money, it turns out she took a lot of big money and then just dumped it into her presidential campaign.

00:46:46.000 According to the New York Times, On the highest floor of the tallest building in Boston, Senator Elizabeth Warren was busy collecting big checks from some of the city's politically connected insiders. 1.00

00:46:55.000 It was April 2018.

00:46:57.000 Warren, up for re-election, was at a breakfast fundraiser hosted for her by John Connors, one of the old guard power brokers of Massachusetts.

00:46:57.000 Ms.

00:47:04.000 Soon after, Warren was in Manhattan doing the same.

00:47:06.000 There would be trips to Hollywood and Silicon Valley, Martha's Vineyard in Philadelphia, all with fundraisers on the agenda.

00:47:12.000 She collected campaign funds at the private home of at least one California megadonor and was hosted by another in Florida.

00:47:17.000 She held finance events until two weeks before her all-but-assured re-election last November. 0.68

00:47:22.000 Then, early this year, Warren made a bold bet that would delight the left.

00:47:25.000 She announced she was quitting the big money circuit in the 2020 presidential primary.

00:47:30.000 The open secret, however, is that it was the big money fundraising through 2018 that made her prominent.

00:47:34.000 She transferred 10.4 million bucks in leftover funds from that 2018 Senate campaign to underwrite her 2020 run. 0.91

00:47:41.000 In other words, she took a bunch of big donor money, put it in her Senate race, transferred it over to her presidential race, and then said, you know what? 0.89

00:47:47.000 I'm anti-big money now.

00:47:49.000 Man, is our political class broken in deep and abiding ways.

00:47:53.000 Holy moly.

00:47:54.000 Okay, time for some things I like and then some things that I hate.

00:47:57.000 So, things that I like today.

00:48:00.000 Mary Lane is a reporter on European issues with the Wall Street Journal.

00:48:04.000 She has an excellent book called Hitler's Last Hostages that is out today.

00:48:07.000 It is all about the treatment of art under the Nazi regime, all about how art dealers basically did Hitler's bidding, but made sure Hitler had this whole take on art, that modern art was truly terrible and deviant and degrading and he wanted it destroyed.

00:48:20.000 So the art dealers basically did his bidding, except they stocked up all the modern art in their back room and confiscated it from people at the behest of the Nazis, and then they hid it out until later.

00:48:28.000 And Mary traces the history of art in Hitler's Germany and beyond, and how art dealers never gave the art back.

00:48:36.000 It really is a fascinating story of how history plays into modern politics.

00:48:40.000 Well worth the read.

00:48:41.000 Hitler's Last Hostages. 0.57

00:48:42.000 Mary's a terrific reporter. 0.89

00:48:44.000 Hitler's Last Hostages. 0.57

00:48:45.000 Go check it out over at Amazon today.

00:48:47.000 Okay, time for a quick thing that I hate.

00:48:53.000 So I've noticed that the left is gleeful over the impending divorce of Todd Palin from Sarah Palin.

00:48:58.000 And this I find somewhat astonishing.

00:49:01.000 I'm looking up the articles on this divorce, this prospective divorce right now.

00:49:06.000 It's been reported by CBS News, by People.com, by CNN, by Salon, by the Boston Globe.

00:49:12.000 Basically every major outlet has now reported on the prospective divorce of Sarah Palin and Todd Palin.

00:49:18.000 According to CBS News, former Alaska governor's husband apparently files for divorce Sighting impossible to live together.

00:49:26.000 Documents filed in Anchorage Superior Court last week do not include the full names of Palin or her husband, Todd Mitchell Palin.

00:49:32.000 Instead, the filing only uses the initials for their full names, SLP and TMP.

00:49:36.000 According to the Anchorage Daily News, the filing reportedly includes the date that the couple got married and the birth of their 11-year-old son, Trig.

00:49:42.000 It asks for joint custody of the boy.

00:49:44.000 The other Palin children, there are four of them, are all adults by now, so they have five children together.

00:49:49.000 Anytime you see a couple with children divorce, that's a tragic situation.

00:49:55.000 I will just point out that the media's coverage of Sarah and Todd Palin, it is absolutely not comparable to Ilhan Omar's prospective divorce.

00:50:04.000 OK, so Ilhan Omar is a sitting congressperson who's extraordinarily, extraordinarily public right now.

00:50:11.000 And the amount of media coverage and the media reaction to Ilhan Omar, who, by the way, may have engaged in campaign malfeasance with regard to her funding of her alleged lover, And that media coverage is nowhere near the level of media coverage that you're seeing for Sarah and Todd Palin.

00:50:27.000 Sarah Palin has not been politically relevant since 2008-2009.

00:50:31.000 Just to show you once again the level of ire that the left has for the right, and particularly in the media. 0.99

00:50:36.000 By the way, if you never search Twitter, Twitter is a garbage site filled with garbage people. 0.96

00:50:41.000 And if you ever go to Twitter and check out things like Sarah Palin and divorce, you will see how vile the left is, how excited they are about something like this. 0.99

00:50:48.000 Now, I'm not excited that Ilhan Omar and her husband appear to be getting divorced.

00:50:51.000 They have three young children.

00:50:53.000 That is a very bad thing.

00:50:55.000 Nor should anybody on the left be excited when something bad happens to a couple just because they happen not to like the politics of the couple.

00:51:02.000 Alrighty, we'll be back here later today with two additional hours of content, or we'll see you here tomorrow.

00:51:05.000 I'm Ben Shapiro, this is The Ben Shapiro Show.

00:51:11.000 The Ben Shapiro Show is produced by Robert Sterling.

00:51:14.000 Directed by Mike Joyner.

00:51:16.000 Executive Producer, Jeremy Boring.

00:51:18.000 Senior Producer, Jonathan Hay.

00:51:20.000 Our Supervising Producer is Mathis Glover.

00:51:22.000 And our Technical Producer is Austin Stevens.

00:51:24.000 Assistant Director, Pavel Wydowski.

00:51:26.000 Edited by Adam Siavitz.

00:51:28.000 Audio is Mixed by Mike Koromina.

00:51:30.000 Hair and Makeup is by Jesua Olvera.

00:51:32.000 Production Assistant, Nick Sheehan.

00:51:33.000 The Ben Shapiro Show is a Daily Wire production.

00:51:35.000 Copyright Daily Wire 2019.

00:51:38.000 Joe Biden's lead in early primary states collapses overnight.

00:51:42.000 What will happen to the electability argument on the Democratic frontrunner?

00:51:45.000 Then speaking of Democratic presidential candidates, Tulsi Gabbard goes woke on a couple of issues. 0.97

00:51:51.000 And thanks to the New York Times, the dumbest article on the internet today. 0.98

The Ben Shapiro Show - September 10, 2019

Trump’s Big Test Run | Ep. 857

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