A vote is held to uphold the constitutionality of Impeachment of President Trump after he has left office, and the Senate votes on whether or not to continue with the impeachment process. Today's show is sponsored by ExpressVPN, a VPN service that encrypts your data and keeps it out of the hands of big tech companies like Amazon, Google, and other major tech companies that already have access to your data. To protect your data, go to ExpressVPN.com/ITrust and use the promo code "ITrust" to get 3 months free on a 1-Year Package. That's 3 months of 3-months free on one year, and you get 3 extra months for FREE when you upgrade to a 4-month plan. You can use ExpressVPN on up to 5 devices simultaneously, so multiple users on your network can stay safe with a single subscription. There has never been a more important time to protect your internet activity than right this moment. It takes just one click to use Express VPN to protect all of your devices from prying eyes and tracking. Head on over to Express VPN.com slash Ben Shapiro to learn more about ExpressVPN and all of the features you need to know about the VPN I trust for online privacy protection. And don't miss it! It's the number one VPN service in the world, and it's the best way to keep your data protected and secure. Ben Shapiro's favorite way to stay up to date with the latest in the latest technology and privacy advancements. Check out ExpressVPN today! Today s show on The Ben Shapiro Show on the best VPNs! Subscribe to the show on the App Store or Google Play Store or wherever else you get your most up-to-date news and information about the latest VPNs, including: The latest episode of the show? Subscribe on Apple Podcasts, the latest episode on the most reliable VPNs and social media platforms are available, and more! Watch on YouTube, wherever you re listening to the latest episodes of the latest podcast? Subscribe and subscribe on your favorite podcasting platform? You won't want to be notified when Ben Shapiro is on the show about what s going to be featured on the next episode? Check it out? . Thanks for listening to Ben Shapiro s newest episode of The Daily BONUS EPISODE? Subscribe to his latest podcast episode? Subscribe on iTunes? Learn more about Ben Shapiro?
00:00:28.000Slash, Ben, we'll get to all of the news in just a moment because we are at the beginning of the Senate conviction trial for President Trump over impeachment, day two.
00:00:35.000So we'll get to that in just one moment first.
00:00:37.000There has never been a more important time to protect your internet activity than right this moment.
00:00:41.000That is why I urge you to get ExpressVPN.
00:00:43.000The reality is there are a lot of folks out there who would love your internet data.
00:00:48.000I'm talking about folks in big tech who you don't trust with any of your information, but they have all your information anyway.
00:00:53.000Well, everything you search for, watch, or click online can be tracked by big tech companies.
00:00:57.000It can then match your activity to your true identity using your device's unique IP address.
00:01:01.000When I switch on ExpressVPN with my computer or phone, My IP address is masked by a secure VPN server, which makes it harder for websites to identify me.
00:01:08.000The ExpressVPN app also encrypts my network data to protect my sensitive information from being compromised.
00:01:13.000Plus, you can use ExpressVPN on up to five devices simultaneously, so multiple users on your network can stay safe with a single subscription.
00:01:20.000What I like most is how easy it is to use.
00:01:22.000It takes just one click to protect all of your devices.
00:01:24.000There's a reason they are rated the number one VPN by both CNET and Wired.
00:01:27.000It's always important to protect your important stuff.
00:01:30.000Well, your data is some of the most important stuff you have.
00:01:33.000Why would you not protect it from prying eyes?
00:01:35.000Stop handing over your data to big tech companies.
00:01:37.000Head on over to the VPN I trust for online protection.
00:01:39.000Visit expressvpn.com slash ben to get three months free on a one-year package.
00:01:43.000That's e-x-p-r-e-s-s-vpn.com slash ben to get three extra months for free.
00:01:48.000Go to ExpressVPN.com slash Ben right now to learn more.
00:01:52.000Yesterday, a vote was held in the day one of the Senate conviction trial for President Trump's impeachment.
00:01:58.000The Senate decided to proceed with the trial.
00:02:01.000Basically, there was a vote held last week.
00:02:03.000It showed that 55 to 45, the Senate believed it was constitutional to hold an impeachment trial, a conviction trial for Trump after he had left office.
00:02:10.000This was sort of an open constitutional question because certainly it's never been used against a president this way.
00:02:15.000The constitutional case in favor of the constitutionality of Trump being tried after leaving office is that the punishment is not merely being kicked from office.
00:02:23.000It is also being barred from future office.
00:02:25.000Not only that, but he was actually impeached while he was in office.
00:02:28.000He's now being tried for conviction after he leaves office.
00:02:31.000So that's the constitutional case in short.
00:03:10.000Senator Bill Cassidy from Louisiana switched his vote.
00:03:12.000So this was the content of the trial yesterday.
00:03:17.000The content was, can we even go forward with the trial?
00:03:21.000The 44 Republicans who agreed with Trump's claim a former president cannot be subjected to an impeachment trial seemed to all but guarantee he would have the 34 votes he needs on the final verdict to avoid conviction, according to the New York Times.
00:03:32.000To succeed, the House managers would need to persuade at least 11 Republican senators to find Trump guilty in a trial they have deemed unconstitutional.
00:03:43.000That puts to the side the question of whether he should be convicted.
00:03:47.000In my opinion, the answer is no, the reason being that the standard that is laid out in the impeachment article is not a neutral standard that can be applied across the aisle.
00:03:54.000If you're going to say that he is responsible for incitement, as we're going to get to in just a moment, you're also going to have to say that reckless rhetoric by a variety of politicians, which results in action that was unforeseeable, is going to be attributable to them, and therefore they also can be kicked out of the chamber.
00:04:08.000That's going to hit a lot of members of Congress, a lot of senators, and a lot of future and past presidents, by the way.
00:04:13.000So, in any case, the arguments were laid out yesterday.
00:04:16.000Trump's lawyers did not do a good job by virtually all accounts.
00:04:20.000There was a fellow named Caster, Bill Caster, who was one of Trump's lawyers, and he was not particularly good.
00:04:25.000Jamie Raskin was given wide plaudits for his presentation of the pro-trial argument.
00:04:33.000Jamie Raskin is, of course, a representative from Maryland.
00:04:37.000He said, if we don't impeach Trump, that would create a January exception to the Constitution.
00:04:41.000The case he's making, constitutionally, is that basically what you're saying is if you can't impeach him after he's left office, then let's say the president does something super duper duper duper corrupt on January 15th.
00:04:51.000Well, I mean, now you're basically making the case the president can do whatever he wants so long as it is close enough to him leaving office.
00:04:57.000Now, that does leave aside a couple of major issues.
00:05:00.000One is that That kind of is true already for second-term presidents, right?
00:05:06.000If you are a second-term president, then you being convicted after having been impeached, after leaving office, makes no difference.
00:05:13.000You are legally barred by law from running for president of the United States again.
00:05:16.000So if Barack Obama were to be impeached and convicted now, there would be no actual penalty that attaches because he's not actually legally allowed to run for president again.
00:05:24.000So for second-term presidents, it already exists, this sort of January exception that Raskin is talking about.
00:05:29.000But the broader argument is not a terrible one, which is that you don't actually want to create a feeling that the president of the United States can do whatever he wants in the final month without having to worry about any consequence whatsoever from Congress.
00:05:40.000What it does suggest is that the proper measure here would have been censure, which is something that I had suggested months ago.
00:05:44.000Kevin McCarthy had suggested it months ago.
00:05:46.000The Democrats turned it down flat because, of course, they wish to force Republicans to the mat.
00:05:51.000The idea here is they want Republicans to vote for Trump's impeachment and conviction and nothing else.
00:05:55.000They don't want the opportunity for Republicans to distance themselves from Trump's actions without also voting for impeachment.
00:06:01.000Here is Jamie Raskin making the case yesterday.
00:06:04.000This would create a brand new January exception to the Constitution of the United States of America.
00:06:18.000And everyone can see immediately why this is so dangerous.
00:06:23.000It's an invitation to the president to take his best shot at anything he may want to do on his way out the door, including using violent means to lock that door, to hang on to the Oval Office at all costs.
00:06:41.000Okay, so now he's making a case that he has not yet made, right?
00:06:44.000That's the case that they're gonna try and make today, which is that Trump tried to violently overthrow the United States government, which is not true.
00:07:02.000Barack Obama did a bunch of terrible political stuff on his way out of office, up to and including his administration, monitoring the incoming Trump administration and sticking law enforcement on them without any sort of cause.
00:07:12.000And so it turns out the presidents fairly often do this sort of thing.
00:07:16.000They do a bunch of stuff that they knew they couldn't get away with if there were still two years left in their terms.
00:07:20.000That's not a particularly strong argument.
00:07:22.000However, Bruce Castor is the name of Trump's attorney.
00:07:24.000He did not make a particularly compelling case yesterday.
00:07:26.000He was trying to make the case that the impeachment was unconstitutional.
00:07:31.000Even Trump himself was apparently very angry with Bruce Castor's performance yesterday.
00:07:34.000Virtually every Republican senator was like, I don't know where you picked this guy up.
00:07:37.000I don't know if he was like a personal injury attorney in Dubuque and you sort of grabbed him off the line and decided to throw him up there in impeachment trial.
00:09:54.000Just so folks know, I wear a yarmulke.
00:09:56.000Well, the reason that Jews wear a yarmulke, Orthodox Jews wear a yarmulke, is because you're supposed to cover your head when you make a blessing.
00:10:00.000You're supposed to make a blessing every time you have food or drink.
00:10:03.000He was not wearing a yarmulke, so this happens fairly frequently.
00:10:06.000If you're not wearing a yarmulke, you've forgotten to put one on, or you're not wearing one, and you want to make a blessing, you put your hand over your head.
00:10:14.000In any case, side point, but our culturally sensitive media, ever culturally sensitive, they went nuts over that and then later had to walk that back.
00:10:22.000In any case, Shane played tape of Democrats calling for impeachment since the very first days, and this of course is true.
00:10:29.000Donald Trump has already done a number of things which legitimately raise the question of impeachment.
00:10:35.000I don't respect this president and I will fight every day until he is impeached!
00:10:42.000That is grounds to start impeachment proceedings.
00:10:44.000Those are grounds to start impeachment.
00:10:46.000Those are grounds to start impeachment proceedings.
00:10:48.000Yes, I think that's grounds to start impeachment proceedings.
00:10:51.000I rise today, Mr. Speaker, To call for the impeachment of the President of the United States of America.
00:11:01.000So, yes, I mean, that happens to be right from Trump's attorney's team, which is, OK, you guys keep saying that he did something impeachable, but you've been saying he's been doing impeachable stuff since literally the day he arrived on the scene.
00:11:12.000So take everything that you say with a grain of salt.
00:11:14.000That said, was the case particularly compelling on a constitutional level?
00:11:22.000He said, listen, Trump's legal team did a really crappy job on this particular issue.
00:11:26.000Now, that doesn't mean Cassidy's voting for impeachment.
00:11:28.000That means that he's voting in favor of the idea that it is constitutional to impeach.
00:11:32.000Frankly, I tend to agree that it is constitutional to impeach a president after he has left office.
00:11:38.000That doesn't mean I think that it should be done in this case, but as far as the actual legal constitutionality of the thing, I think there's a fairly strong case, fairly strong argument that it is constitutional to do that sort of thing after somebody has left office.
00:11:48.000So if that is the standard that we are now going to apply, then I look forward to applying it into the future.
00:11:54.000Here's Bill Cassidy making the case yesterday.
00:11:57.000It was disorganized, random, had nothing.
00:12:01.000They talked about many things, but they didn't talk about the issue at hand.
00:12:04.000And so if I'm an impartial juror, and I'm trying to make a decision based upon the facts as presented on this issue, then the House managers did a much better job.
00:12:20.000The issue at hand is, is it constitutional to impeach a president who's left office?
00:12:26.000And the House managers made a compelling, cogent case, and the President's team did not.
00:12:35.000All righty, so bottom line though is that it passes, but it doesn't pass with like flying colors.
00:12:40.000The six senators who voted in favor of the constitutionality were the five from last week, plus Cassidy.
00:12:46.000That is not going to be nearly enough to get Democrats across the finish line on actually convicting Trump in the Senate.
00:12:50.000In just a second, we're going to get to what exactly is going to happen today in the impeachment trial, what is happening today in the impeachment trial in the Senate.
00:12:57.000Let us talk about the best clothing available.
00:14:08.000Kick off 2021 the right way, starting with your wardrobe.
00:14:11.000Get 15% off your first order by going to cutsclothing.com slash Shapiro.
00:14:15.000That is cutsclothing.com slash Shapiro for 15% off the only shirt worth wearing.
00:14:21.000Okay, so now we get beyond the sort of procedurals here and we get to the actual content of the impeachment trial.
00:14:26.000Now, let's be frank about what this is all about.
00:14:28.000What this is really all about for Democrats is political gamesmanship.
00:14:31.000The New York Times essentially admitted as much today when they acknowledge that basically Democrats have a win-win scenario.
00:14:39.000Either Trump is convicted, in which case they get a big victory, not going to happen, or Trump is not convicted, in which case they've had a chance for a couple of weeks to beat up on Republicans, and in the future they get to tie Republicans in PR fashion to what happened on January 6th, so they think.
00:14:54.000There is one possibility that backfires, and that is the longer that it goes on, the less the American people seem to love it.
00:15:00.000So here's what the polls show right now.
00:15:02.000According to the New York Times, a majority of Americans support convicting Trump on an impeachment charge over his role in the Capitol riot on January 6th, only by a very slender margin, according to a range of recent polls.
00:15:13.000While there's broad agreement Trump deserves at least some blame for the violence at the Capitol, the country remains more closely split over whether he deserves to be convicted by the Senate.
00:15:19.000In fact, the views around this impeachment trial aren't very different from how things looked a year ago, when public opinion was tilted slightly in favor of removing Trump from office during his first impeachment trial.
00:15:28.000Democrats have since gained control of the Senate, but they'd need a bunch of Republicans to vote with them.
00:15:32.000Basically, the split is 56-44 in a CBS News YouGov poll.
00:15:37.00056% of Americans saying that Trump should be convicted, 44% saying he should be acquitted.
00:15:41.000But there are other polls that are way narrower.
00:15:43.000There are 12% of Americans who said they have no opinion on this, and only 47% of Americans saying they're in favor of the impeachment, 40% opposed, according to the AP.
00:15:51.000A Q poll, Quinnipiac University, found last week that 50% of Americans said the Senate should convict Trump, 45% said that it should not.
00:15:58.000Okay, so bottom line is that Americans seem to be Pretty split on this particular issue.
00:16:05.000And as time goes on, and as it becomes apparent that Trump is no longer in office, and as Congress continues to basically just posture, I think more and more Americans are going to say this is kind of a waste of time.
00:16:16.000That's the reason why Chuck Schumer is rushing this thing forward.
00:16:18.000He had an interest in getting this thing done fast.
00:16:20.000He wants a quick strike, PR hit, gets to use this for the rest of time to smear the Republican Party with.
00:16:28.000Then, of course, he says he's doing this in the name of unity, which, of course, is very, very silly.
00:16:31.000Here is Chuck Schumer, the Democratic Senate Majority Leader, saying that, you know, we can't move on because that's not going to bring unity.
00:16:37.000Yes, apparently only unity can be achieved by trying to lump every Republican in with the January 6th rioters, which is really what, from a PR level, from a comms level, communications level, that's what this trial is really all about.
00:17:00.000But if your case is that in order for us to achieve unity, we have to push forward with an impeachment that half the country doesn't support, that's a weird way to achieve unity.
00:17:33.000Okay, so here is my favorite part of the constitutional argument being made by Democrats.
00:17:39.000So, one of the things they are now considering is blatantly unconstitutional.
00:17:43.000If the impeachment trial fails, one of the things that they are currently considering is the possibility of invoking the 14th Amendment.
00:17:50.000Which could be done by pure majority vote to bar Trump from running for office ever again.
00:17:53.000They included that in the impeachment charge itself, but Trump did not quote-unquote engage in insurrection.
00:17:57.000from holding office if they have quote unquote engaged in insurrection.
00:17:59.000They included that in the impeachment charge itself, but Trump did not quote unquote engage in insurrection.
00:18:05.000He left office as provided by law on January 20th with no sort of official support.
00:18:11.000To bar him from office at this point would be pretty obviously a constitutional bill of attainder as Ed Morrissey writes over at Hot Air.
00:18:17.000Nothing in the language of the 14th Amendment confers authority on Congress to do anything except waive a particular prohibition.
00:18:23.000It prohibits people who have committed certain crimes from holding federal office.
00:18:27.000Nothing in this denies these people from having due process in a court of law to make that determination of guilt in the first place, because the fact of the matter remains that you have to have due process of law in order to punish somebody this way.
00:18:38.000Congress is not a court in any mode other than impeachment.
00:20:34.000Alrighty, so the Democrats actually started laying out their impeachment case yesterday.
00:20:38.000Not just the constitutional case, the impeachment case.
00:20:40.000That's really what Trump's lawyer was referring to earlier.
00:20:43.000Castor was referring to the idea that, I thought this trial was supposed to be separated into the constitutional argument and then the content argument.
00:20:50.000Democrats know this is a PR ploy, basically.
00:20:54.000So they led off the bat with this 13-minute video.
00:20:58.000effectively edited that showed Trump speaking and juxtaposed it with footage from the Capitol riot.
00:21:03.000Here's a little bit of what that sounded like.
00:21:41.000What happened on January 6th was really, really ugly.
00:21:44.000But the Democrats have to make the argument that Trump foreseeably incited a riot at the Capitol building, an unprecedented event in American history.
00:21:51.000Right, so here's the thing with things being unprecedented.
00:21:53.000Usually, they're not super foreseeable.
00:21:55.000The part of this that made it foreseeable, in fact, was the fact that the FBI apparently was keeping tabs on people who were openly talking about storming the Capitol building in days prior, which means the January 6th events weren't the spurring event.
00:22:06.000You can make the argument that Trump's overall argument was ginning people up.
00:25:04.000That is why we are a highly profitable company, at least in part to decisions like using Stamps.com.
00:25:08.000Stamps.com brings the services of USPS and UPS directly to your computer, you can use your computer to print.
00:25:14.000Official US postage 24 seven for any letter, any package, any class of mail, anywhere you wanna send it.
00:25:18.000And you get discounts up to 40% off post office rates, up to 62% off UPS shipping rates.
00:25:23.000Stop wasting time going to the post office, go to stamps.com instead.
00:25:27.000With my promo code Shapiro, you get a special offer that includes a four week trial plus free postage and digital scale, no long-term commitments, no contracts.
00:25:44.000Okay, so the case that is being made by Democrats over and over and over again is that it is Trump's violent rhetoric that drove what happened on January 6th, that he is responsible for incitement.
00:25:54.000That is the argument that continually is made here.
00:25:57.000And the media, of course, are backing this one to the hills.
00:26:01.000So CNN's Anderson Cooper, from a network that routinely made excuses for violence during the actual Black Lives Matter riots of the summer.
00:26:09.000They had people like Chris Cuomo getting on air and talking about how it was just like the Boston Tea Party to burn down your local Walmart.
00:26:15.000Anderson Cooper, it's like, you know, Trump supporters can't claim they love law and order.
00:26:17.000Well, what if I hate what happened on January 6th?
00:26:25.000But apparently, according to Anderson Cooper, unless you are willing to say that Trump is responsible for incitement of the riot, and people are deprived of their agency, and him saying peacefully and patriotically march on the Capitol, and then a riot ensuing, that those two things are so directly linked that he must be impeached.
00:26:42.000If you're unwilling to vote how Anderson Cooper wants you to vote, in other words, this means you can't say you love Law & Order anymore.
00:26:47.000The former president of the United States cannot claim to be a law and order president.
00:26:51.000When you have the crowds chanting, kill the blue, you saw the hurling insults and fists and objects and the American flag and a hockey stick at officers, as you said, gouging out an eye.
00:27:20.000Is it like everybody who doesn't, the 44% of Americans, 40% of Americans, who think that Trump is not directly responsible for what happened during the January 6th Capitol riots, which again, were unprecedented in American history.
00:27:31.000When everybody watched with their jaw to the floor, it's because that hasn't happened before.
00:27:35.000So saying that this was completely foreseeable by Trump is a stretch.
00:27:39.000It is also true that you see from the Democrats over and over, they keep saying, new evidence is gonna drop and it's gonna show you just how involved the White House was.
00:28:18.000And him tweeting out that it's gonna get wild on January 6th.
00:28:22.000Okay, everybody tweets that it's gonna, like seriously, a lot of people tweet things like, it's going to get wild at my rally.
00:28:27.000They don't mean that we are going to go storm the Capitol building and attack police officers as a general rule.
00:28:34.000And when it comes to Trump's tweets and him tweeting wild things, we're supposed to believe that that is what is directly responsible for a bunch of nuts and evil people storming the Capitol building of the United States?
00:28:49.000And the standard that is being used here essentially is, if a bad thing happened, and it did, And the people who did the bad thing credit Trump, then we have to take them super duper seriously.
00:28:58.000This is what Philip Bump at the Washington Post is arguing, quote, Over and over and over, arrested rioters say what spurred them?
00:29:04.000And Philip Bump says, It's been a month since an armed mob stormed the U.S.
00:29:07.000Capitol to try to prevent Congress from counting the electoral votes cast after the 2020 presidential election.
00:29:12.000The riotous mob was largely made up of supporters of President Donald Trump, who called on his base to come to Washington on January 6th for a wild protest of election results he'd spent months trying to discredit.
00:29:21.000That morning, he encouraged those who had made the trip to fight for their country and to march for the Capitol.
00:29:26.000It's worth putting a fine point on two things.
00:29:28.000The first is that the effects of the day's violence are still tangible.
00:29:31.000Second, its proximate cause is no less murky.
00:29:33.000Hours before the impeachment trial began in the Senate on Tuesday, federal law enforcement officers in Georgia arrested Benjamin Torrey, one of those accused of breaching the Capitol that day.
00:29:41.000Like so many others who have already been arrested, Torrey left a wide trail on social media pointing to his participation in the day's events.
00:29:47.000Tory's only most recent person to be arrested, but he may not be by the time you read this.
00:29:51.000Nearly every day since January 6th, law enforcement officials have arrested someone allegedly involved in storming the Capitol.
00:29:57.000The entire media ran with the blatantly stupid line that law enforcement was biased against black people because they weren't arresting people for the Capitol riot.
00:30:05.000They've been arresting people every single day for the Capitol riot.
00:30:08.000They were understaffed at the time, which was the entire problem.
00:30:11.000But, says Philip Bump over at the Washington Post, from those who have already been arrested, we hear a consistent refrain, they were there to support Trump, or in their view, there at his behest.
00:30:29.000If he said I'm here because I believe this is what Bernie would have wanted me to do, does that mean that we would have to charge Bernie Sanders with incitement or see him as an accomplice to attempted murder?
00:30:40.000During the Black Lives Matter riots, if you had asked Black Lives Matter rioters why you were doing this, they would articulate the exact same arguments made by people like Nicole Hannah-Jones over at the New York Times.
00:30:48.000Who, by the way, tweeted that she was very excited that people were calling the riots the 1619 riots.
00:30:55.000Is she responsible for the... I don't think she's responsible for the riots.
00:30:57.000I think she's responsible for all the stupid crap that comes out of her mouth and pen, but I don't think that she's responsible for the riots.
00:31:02.000Using the argument that people who committed criminal acts cite this person as the inspiration for those criminal acts does not mean that a rational mind would say that the activity of politically Ramping up the rhetoric, politically being inflammatory the way that Trump often is, or even politically saying things that are not true, as I think Trump was doing during the post-election cycle.
00:31:25.000That that is responsible for people doing something unprecedented in American history.
00:31:33.000This is why they are very much afraid of the argument that is being made by people on the right, which is, you guys, you use rhetoric like this all the time.
00:31:40.000So to take an example, Jimmy Kimmel, obviously a supporter of conviction, impeachment, and loading Trump onto a trebuchet and launching him into space.
00:31:51.000Jimmy Kimmel, a great moral arbiter, Pope Kimmel over here.
00:31:55.000He says that when Trump was using this sort of language, then he should have known that there were people who would have gone and done this because you can't expect people to understand hyperbole.
00:32:37.000So when Bernie Sanders... I cite this case because this was a case where people were actually shot and somebody was nearly murdered.
00:32:43.000Okay, so that's a case where actual violence ensued.
00:32:46.000If that shooter was shouting, this is for healthcare, right after Bernie Sanders had suggested repeatedly and openly that Republicans' healthcare plan was for you to die, That is a hyperbolic statement, is it not?
00:33:00.000That Republicans' healthcare plan was for you to die?
00:33:05.000The vast majority of rational human beings understand that that is political hyperbole.
00:33:09.000But according to Jimmy Kimmel's argument, we can now say that Bernie Sanders should have known that it would impact nut cases in such a way that they would probably go and shoot other fellow members of Congress.
00:33:20.000We don't judge whether rhetoric is responsible for activity by taking people who are the nuttiest among us and then saying, well, we should have known that those nuts were going to go do something terrible.
00:33:30.000If we use the nuttiest and their behavior as the standard for what we can and cannot say, there's gonna be very little we can and cannot say because it turns out that people who do evil, crazy things very often do not need an excuse to do evil or crazy things and or misinterpret things on a regular basis because they are evil and crazy.
00:33:55.000She says, you know, when Republicans cite rhetoric from like Maxine Waters and Kamala Harris, you know, there wasn't a storming of the Capitol after Maxine Waters and Kamala Harris spoke.
00:34:05.000The Trump team, as you've reported, also is going to be bringing out this video, trying to say, here are what Democrats said.
00:34:11.000Here's why they're just like President Trump.
00:34:13.000But I think the thing that's going to be so obvious is going to be that there wasn't a storming of the Capitol after Maxine Waters or Senator Harris, then-Senator Harris, had fiery speeches.
00:34:25.000Senator Harris literally tweeted out support for rioters in the middle of the riot.
00:34:30.000Senator Harris tweeted out a link to a bail fund for people who'd been arresting for looting and rioting in Minneapolis.
00:34:37.000So, yeah, that does have something to do with the violence.
00:34:40.000In fact, it has more directly to do with the violence than what Trump said on January 6th.
00:34:45.000So Democrats know that this argument is not a winning argument.
00:34:48.000They just understand that if they show the video of January 6th over and over and over again, that people are justifiably upset about January 6th, and they hope to link all Republicans to it.
00:34:55.000That is the purpose of this entire exercise.
00:34:57.000That's the purpose of this entire exercise.
00:34:59.000They tried to do this yesterday with Mike Lee, and full disclosure, Senator Lee is a friend of mine.
00:35:04.000I think that he's maybe the most honest guy in Congress, and he was making the case that when it comes to Democrats, he's not even talking about Trump here, he says Democrats say inflammatory stuff all the time, and we don't, We don't pretend that the inflammatory rhetoric used by Democrats is responsible for incitement.
00:35:22.000The media immediately took this and suggested that what he meant is that Trump should get a mulligan for his rhetoric, which is not what he was saying in the first place.
00:35:30.000These are outgrowths of the same natural impulse that exist from time to time among anyone in this business and in many other businesses.
00:35:40.000Look, everyone makes mistakes, everyone's entitled to a mulligan once in a while and I would hope I would expect that each of those individuals would take a mulligan on each of those statements, because in each instance, they're making it deeply personal.
00:35:54.000They're ceasing to make it about policy.
00:35:56.000Instead, they're talking about getting up in people's faces and making individuals feel perfectly uncomfortable.
00:37:44.000There are some members of Congress who I think are honestly trying to determine whether Trump did something impeachable.
00:37:49.000And then there are Democrats who are really just attempting to make political hay out of one of the most vile events in American politics of my lifetime on January 6th.
00:37:59.000And I'm not talking about Trump's speech.
00:38:00.000I'm talking about the actual storming of the Capitol building.
00:38:02.000And by the way, the reaction to that has also been extraordinarily bad.
00:38:05.000I mean, the reaction, which is lockdown DC under essentially military occupation all the way until March and spend half a billion dollars doing it.
00:38:12.000The reaction, which is knock parlor off the internet and tell all the social media companies to clamp down on traffic to sites that you don't like.
00:38:19.000The reaction, which is free speech itself should be put under attack.
00:38:23.000That does no credit to Democrats at all.
00:38:27.000It's pretty astonishing stuff, in fact.
00:38:28.000Okay, in just a second, we're gonna get to the stuff that's actually happening in Politics That Matters.
00:38:32.000You know, like the policy that's happening while everybody is distracted over here with the impeachment trial?
00:38:36.000That makes no difference, because Trump's been out of office, and they're not going to convict him, nor are they gonna ban him from running in the future.
00:38:42.000Nor, by the way, have I seen him have any inclination to run in the future at this point.
00:38:47.000There's actual stuff going on with the other hand.
00:38:49.000Okay, we're gonna get to that in just one second.
00:38:51.000First, Let us talk about the fact that I have three children.
00:38:55.000They wake me up at all hours of the night.
00:38:57.000They woke me up before six o'clock a.m.
00:38:59.000this morning, as per our usual arrangement.
00:39:01.000That means when I climb into bed, I need to have the most comfortable sleeping experience possible.
00:39:06.000And this is why I have bowl and branch sheets.
00:39:11.000You're gonna forget, you're not actually sleeping on a cloud.
00:39:13.000They're sustainably made for uncompromising quality from field to factory.
00:39:17.000If you dream of comfortable sheets at a price that are not gonna keep you up all night, look no further than my friends over at Bull & Branch.
00:39:23.000Now, sometimes you buy sheets at like your local store.
00:39:42.000They use 100% sustainable raw materials.
00:39:44.000As the first Fairtrade certified manufacturer of linen, you can feel as good about your Boleyn Branch sheets as they feel against your skin.
00:39:50.000The Signature Hem Sheets from Boleyn Branch are a bestseller for a reason.
00:39:52.000They are buttery soft, lightweight, organic cotton in a classic sateen weave for sheets that get softer over time.
00:39:58.000They are the perfect year-round sheets for most sleepers.
00:40:02.000Experience the best cheats you have ever felt at bowlandbranch.com.
00:40:05.000Get 15% off your first set of sheets when you use promo code Shapiro at checkout.
00:40:09.000That is bowlandbranch, B-O-L-L, and branch.com.
00:40:13.000Promo code Shapiro, go check them out right now for the special deal.
00:40:16.000Okay, in just a second, we're gonna get to the stuff that's actually happening in American policy because it's being unrolled while the media are distracted with whatever they are distracted with.
00:40:24.000Namely, everything but covering the Biden administration.
00:40:27.000First, gang, gotta tell you, at Dailyware Membership, it's the only way you should be viewing our content.
00:40:31.000If you're not a member, you're missing all the best stuff.
00:40:33.000Right now, using promo code Shapiro, you'll get 10% off any member plan you choose.
00:40:39.000Members get our articles ad-free, access to all of our live broadcasts, show library, two full hours of The Ben Shapiro Show, and our always growing catalog of content.
00:40:47.000Plus, with our all-access, you'll also receive two of the greatest of all beverage vessels, the leftist tiers at Tumblr.
00:41:03.000Become a member today and get that special deal with that promo code Shapiro.
00:41:07.000You're listening to the largest, fastest growing conservative podcast and radio show in the nation.
00:41:10.000All righty, so meanwhile, as this impeachment trial continues and reaches its preordained end, because it's very obvious which way this is going, Joe Biden continues to do stuff that if Donald Trump did it and when he did it was considered the worst stuff that has ever happened.
00:41:51.000Here's the Washington Post reporting that Biden administration on Tuesday asked the remaining U.S.
00:41:55.000attorneys appointed by President Trump and confirmed by the Senate to submit their resignations, sparing only two federal prosecutors who are conducting politically sensitive probes, including of President Biden's son, according to a DOJ news release and officials.
00:42:07.000The resignations won't take effect immediately.
00:42:15.000The move generated some criticism from both sides of the political aisle.
00:42:19.000Illinois' two Democratic senators, Dick Durbin and Tammy Duckworth, said in a joint statement they were disappointed they were not consulted before the administration asked for the resignation of U.S.
00:42:27.000Attorney John Lausch, whose office has been pursuing a corruption case that has raised questions about a powerful state's Democratic lawmaker.
00:42:33.000The senators say, while the president has the right to remove U.S.
00:42:37.000attorneys in the Northern District of Illinois to remain in office to conclude sensitive investigations.
00:42:41.000Some conservatives question the move's timing, which came just as impeachment proceedings against Trump began.
00:42:46.000Ian Pryor, a former Justice Department spokesman in the Trump administration, who now tracks moves in the Biden Justice Department, noted that when Jeff Sessions did this, everybody went crazy.
00:42:54.000He said the Biden administration, like the Trump administration before it, has the absolute right to request resignations of incumbent U.S.
00:43:00.000What will be frustrating to conservatives is that Democrats, pearl-clutching columnists, and cable news pundits tried to spin it as a threat to democracy when Trump did it, but now will say all is well since it's Biden sending the pink slips.
00:43:12.000Joe Biden continues to use COVID as an excuse to do a bunch of stupid crap.
00:43:17.000COVID relief does not need to be $1.9 trillion, nor does it need to include things like a $15 minimum wage, hundreds of billions of dollars dedicated to bailing out blue states from their own crappy pension deals.
00:43:27.000It doesn't need to include any of that stuff.
00:43:29.000It doesn't need to include billions more in funding for schools that are not open, right?
00:43:46.000Americans can see that everyone above the age of 65 who wants to get the vaccine is going to have the vaccine, and that's going to happen in fairly short order.
00:43:53.000And people who are below the age of 65 are going to have access to the vaccine before the summer.
00:43:57.000And yet Democrats continue to trot out the idea that we are going to be in a mode of COVID crisis all the way until essentially Thanksgiving.
00:44:07.000Team Biden is now trying to drive this crisis to epic proportions, even though we are now really clearly on the downslope of COVID infections and of COVID deaths and vaccinations are taking place at record rates.
00:44:19.000According to the Daily Beast, top members of President Joe Biden's COVID response team are warning internally the U.S.
00:44:24.000may not reach herd immunity until Thanksgiving or the start of winter.
00:44:28.000In an interview with CBS News this week, Biden hinted at some of these concerns, saying it would be very difficult to reach herd immunity much before the end of the summer with the current daily rate of approximately 1.3 million vaccine doses.
00:44:38.000Other top officials working on the federal government's COVID-19 response say they are uneasy about vaccine supply long-term and the impact on herd immunity.
00:44:45.000Okay, so here's the thing about herd immunity when it comes to vaccines.
00:44:48.000Okay, for the people who have already had the vaccine, If you have, say, the Pfizer vaccine, you have well over 90% immunity to the virus, just by rates, okay?
00:44:55.000The second shot is providing you something like 95% immunity.
00:44:58.000What I mean by that is 95% shot that if you are exposed to the virus, you don't get infected with it, and if you are, the amount of damage that the virus does to you is extraordinarily minimal once you have these shots, right, by percentages.
00:45:13.000Then there's the question of people who can't get the shot.
00:45:16.000When it comes to people who can't get the shot, we're really talking essentially about a couple of groups of people.
00:45:20.000People who have a pre-existing condition, let's say that they have some sort of leukemia or something, that it would endanger their life to have the shot, although this is being given to people who have cancer right now, so I don't know the impact on people who have leukemia.
00:45:33.000The two groups of people I know it is not safe for at this point, or it has not been deemed safe for, are pregnant women and children.
00:45:38.000Children are not vulnerable to the disease.
00:45:40.000Kids are not experiencing serious damage from the disease, as a general rule.
00:45:44.000The number of children who have died from this disease is, I believe, still in double digits in the United States, out of literally tens of millions of people who have had it.
00:45:52.000When it comes to pregnant women, they're now doing trials on whether pregnant women will be able to have the vaccine.
00:45:58.000Beyond that, if the idea is we're supposed to lock down the entire society forever because there are a few vulnerable people who cannot have the vaccine, that's not going to happen.
00:46:07.000Realistically speaking, it's not going to happen.
00:46:08.000And you're not going to be able to encourage a bunch of young, healthy people to have the vaccine if that comes along with the idea that you still have to socially distance and wear a mask until every single person in the country has had the vaccine.
00:46:18.000And we're going to lock this thing down.
00:46:26.000And yet that is what Biden is pushing.
00:46:28.000And one of the reasons that Team Biden is pushing all of this instead of a transition back to regular life, which is what things are.
00:46:34.000I mean, frankly, that is what is already happening in places like Florida to Florida's credit.
00:46:39.000And it should get better and better as vaccines roll out.
00:46:42.000There is a there's another purpose here.
00:46:44.000OK, the other purpose here is to give an excuse for why you need to pour money into the system, why you need to restructure systems of power.
00:46:51.000Covid is an opportunity, according to people like Joe Biden.
00:46:54.000He's admitting that here is Joe Biden admitting that Covid is an opportunity.
00:46:57.000As you know, I've met for a long time with my Republican colleagues.
00:47:04.000I've been exchanging correspondence with them and telephone calls as well to see if there's any way we can follow up beyond where we are.
00:47:12.000I'm meeting with the members of the House and the Senate as well.
00:47:17.000And I think we're in a position to think big and move big and move in a direction that can be not only Get the economy back on its feet, but we have to get people well before we get people on their feet.
00:47:34.000Okay, so again, we're just going to continue to pour money into the system and the more we can drive up the feeling of crisis, the more we will be able to use that as an excuse to push forward horrible, horrible policy.
00:47:44.000And by the way, this is horrible policy.
00:47:46.000Okay, that $1.9 trillion package that Biden wants to sign into law would include things like a boost to the minimum wage, Of $15 an hour by 2025.
00:47:56.000According to the Congressional Budget Office, he's trying to do this right now via reconciliation.
00:48:00.000It would cut employment by 1.4 million jobs in 2025 and increase the budget deficit by $54 billion over the next 10 years.
00:48:08.000It would lift 900,000 Americans out of poverty.
00:48:10.000It would put 1.4 million Americans just that year out of a job.
00:48:14.000And this is considered good policy by the Democrats.
00:48:34.000Okay, meanwhile, the party of science continues to push forward with a bunch of other nonsense as well.
00:48:41.000So, Jen Psaki continues to make the case that we are going to push toward opening classrooms.
00:48:46.000But then, she was asked specifically, what do you mean by opening classrooms?
00:48:48.000You know, when you say that you want classrooms open in 100 days, what exactly would your standard for open be?
00:48:52.000Because is it open if you have the classrooms open one day a week?
00:48:55.000What percentage of classrooms would have to be open in order for you to deem the classrooms open?
00:48:59.000Here was Jen Psaki, White House Press Secretary, explaining.
00:49:02.000His goal that he set is to have the majority of schools, so more than 50%, open by day 100 of his presidency.
00:49:12.000And that means some teaching in classrooms.
00:49:14.000So at least one day a week, hopefully it's more.
00:49:17.000And obviously it is as much as is safe in each school and local district.
00:49:21.000When you say some teaching, you didn't use the same majority qualifier there.
00:49:25.000You just have to have some teaching in school, some teachers in school, not the majority of teachers in school and the majority of classrooms.
00:49:32.000Well, teaching at least one day a week in the majority of schools by day 100.
00:49:41.000In-person teaching one day a week in some schools, 50% of schools, by day 100?
00:49:45.000There are a couple of problems with this.
00:49:47.000One, the data suggests that for young kids, the transmissibility is not high, and there is no additional risk to teachers, vis-a-vis the general public, from being in school with young children.
00:50:11.000She says the DC Teachers Union and AFT President Randy Weingarten have now called on Washington DC to close entire schools for cleaning for at least 24 hours if one COVID case is detected.
00:50:22.000And kids who are grouped in cohorts must quarantine for 14 days if a case is detected.
00:51:21.000Right now, about 40% of schools in the United States are open, and then when it comes to the hybrid model, meaning some in classrooms, some out of classroom, that's another 25% of schools.
00:51:29.000So well over 60% of schools in the United States already meet the standard that she is saying 50% of schools should meet within 100 days.
00:51:40.000The current stats suggest we are already there.
00:51:43.000And yet there she is saying, look at the amazing progress we are going to make.
00:51:46.000So basically, I guess they're going to have to close more schools in order to achieve this particular purpose.
00:51:50.000They're actually going to have to close schools in order to get back to 50% because we are over 60% last time I checked from the currently available statistics.
00:52:00.000So this has nothing to do with science.
00:52:02.000This is all about alarmism and serving the purposes of the teachers' unions.
00:52:06.000Speaking of serving purposes that have nothing to do with the interests of students, so Jen Psaki was specifically asked about trans girls competing in high school sports.
00:52:13.000Again, the Biden administration is just getting more and more radical, and we're supposed to pretend they're moderate because Trump.
00:52:18.000Sure, Trump's been out of office for a while here.
00:52:21.000Sure, he's not the president, but Trump.
00:52:23.000But Trump is gonna be the rallying call of the media and the Democratic Party.
00:52:33.000So, it might be kind of a problem that the federal government of the United States is now essentially mandating that biological boys race against biological girls.
00:52:42.000And that biological boys be allowed to go into locker rooms with biological girls so long as they say they are female.
00:52:49.000I mean, that's kind of a problem, just on a logical level.
00:52:51.000It also happens to violate girls' rights.
00:52:53.000Girls do have a right not to have to compete with boys.
00:52:56.000Girls do have a right to be private from biological boys.
00:52:59.000That seems like the same people who declared it a right to privacy to kill a baby in her womb say that it is not a right to privacy for a 16-year-old girl not to want to be gazed upon by a biological male in the locker room.
00:53:09.000The right to privacy just doesn't apply there.
00:53:12.000In any case, Jen Psaki was asked this question and she reverts to type, which is, she is just going to say bumper stickers.
00:53:17.000Bumper stickers are the way that we avoid all problems in this country right now.
00:53:21.000Does the president have a message for local school officials on dealing with these kind of disputes that are already starting to arise?
00:53:32.000I would just say that the president's belief is that trans rights are human rights, and that's why he signed that executive order.
00:53:45.000And in terms of the determinations by universities and colleges, I would certainly defer to them.
00:53:51.000When she says trans rights are human rights, when you don't define that, I mean, it's just, this is the way that we avoid all political conversation in this country.
00:53:58.000You ask, should this person, does this person actually have the rights to go into, like, a girl's locker room?
00:54:04.000And you just say, trans rights are human rights.
00:54:05.000You can fill in that trans with literally anything.
00:54:17.000Not should the church marry them on a moral level.
00:54:19.000I think every church has the ability to make that decision for themselves.
00:54:22.000There's plenty of biblical, scriptural precedent for churches not participating in activities they believe to be sinful.
00:54:27.000And by the way, that is the precedent of American history.
00:54:30.000But if you're a Democrat, all you have to do is say something like, gay rights are human rights.
00:54:34.000Because once you say our human rights, then that ends the argument.
00:54:37.000There's no discussion to be had about balancing people's rights, the rights of freedom of religion, or the right to, a supposed right to respect, which doesn't actually exist.
00:54:46.000It is very easy to avoid all conversation about the complexities and trade-offs of particular policy when you just say something like, blank rights are human rights.
00:54:54.000Thank you for that bumper sticker slogan, Biden administration, as you pursue unprecedentedly radical policy.
00:54:59.000Speaking of unprecedentedly radical policy, Joe Biden has now signed 52 executive orders and actions in his first 20 days in office.
00:55:07.000According to Ian Hayworth over at the Daily Wire, By February 1st, Biden had signed an unprecedented 42 executive orders in just the first few days of his administration.
00:55:16.000Those included executive orders which look to expand socialized medicine, provide taxpayer funding for foreign abortions, destroy American energy jobs, rejoin meaningless and counterproductive international agreements and organizations, further the promotion of ahistorical mischaracterizations of the United States, and call for transgender rights in school sports, to name a few.
00:55:33.000Since the beginning of February, Biden has signed an additional nine executive orders and actions.
00:56:04.000Joe Biden can sign more executive orders than all prior presidents of the last 40 years combined in his first month.
00:56:11.000And that's okay, because after all, Joe Biden is a moderate.
00:56:14.000If you just keep chanting, Joe Biden is a moderate, it's like Beetlejuice.
00:56:16.000If you say it three times, he appears.
00:56:18.000If you say Joe Biden is a moderate, Joe Biden appears, stumbles around a little while, says an incomprehensible sentence, and then falls over while signing an executive order.
00:56:28.000Because this is all moderate policy, right?
00:56:30.000Like, for example, it's super moderate policy that the Biden administration has just dropped a Trump proposal to track Chinese influence in American schools.
00:56:37.000According to Chuck Ross reporting over at the Daily Caller, The Biden administration quietly withdrew a rule proposed by the Trump administration that would have required American schools and universities to disclose their partnerships with Confucius Institutes, which some U.S.
00:56:49.000officials allege are front groups for Chinese Communist Party propaganda.
00:56:53.000The Trump administration submitted a proposed rule to the Department of Homeland Security on December 31, 2020.
00:56:57.000It was entitled, Establishing Requirements for Student and Exchange Visitor Program Certified Schools.
00:57:02.000to disclose agreements with Confucius Institutes and Classrooms.
00:57:05.000In other words, we didn't want the Chinese government basically putting propaganda agents inside U.S.
00:57:11.000Around 500 K-12 schools and 65 colleges in the U.S.
00:57:14.000have partnerships with the Confucius Institute U.S.
00:57:16.000Center, which is a U.S.-based affiliate of the Beijing-based Confucius Institute headquarters.
00:57:22.000That institute is affiliated with the Chinese Ministry of Education.
00:57:26.000The Daily Caller has previously reported that many of the directors are members of the CCP.
00:57:31.000The Trump-era proposal was withdrawn from consideration January 26th.
00:57:36.000There's no information as to why this happened.
00:57:38.000The website does say that at any point in the review process for a proposed rule, an agency can withdraw the rule from review and choose not to move forward with it or to resubmit it after further consideration.
00:57:48.000First of all, Republicans in Congress should immediately, immediately take this up as a piece of legislation and try to push Democrats to vote up or down on it.
00:57:55.000Because the amount of kowtowing that's about to happen to the Chinese government is astonishing.
00:58:02.000Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said on August 13th, the Confucius Institute was quote, an entity controlled by the PRC that advances Beijing's global propaganda and malign influence campaign on US campuses and K through 12 classrooms.
00:58:14.000But Biden is now walking back that rule, which is really excellent policy.
00:58:48.000And people at the company were like, what are you doing right now?
00:58:52.000So Neurotan and not particularly well liked on either side of the aisle, that's who he's decided to put forward for OMB.
00:58:56.000Senator James Lankford of Oklahoma goes after OMB nominee yesterday in her hearing.
00:59:01.000One statement that you made about people that have the personal religious convictions about contraception, like Little Sisters of the Poor and others, called them a successful political cudgel, helping isolate extreme advocates from the mainstream.
00:59:19.000That one seems to cross a different line for me.
00:59:21.000The context didn't seem to be about people that use religion as a cudgel.
00:59:25.000It seemed to be that the personal beliefs of those individuals became the cudgel.
00:59:30.000That's the part that threw me in that.
00:59:32.000Okay, well, that's the sort of stuff that Neera Tanden routinely put out there.
00:59:35.000Now, again, people are entitled to tweet whatever they want, but can we stop pretending that this is an administration staffed by moderates?
00:59:44.000By personal sort of temperament, he may be more moderate because he is a bloviating blowhard who likes to talk a lot, but that doesn't mean that he is actually somebody who crosses the aisle on a regular basis.
01:01:04.000If you want to cut through the madness of our politics and culture and know what's really going on and what it really means, head on over to The Michael Knowles Show, where we can all bask in the simple joys of being right.