The Ben Shapiro Show - Welcome To 2020! | Ep. 923

00:00:00.000 Iranian forces attack the American embassy in Iraq.

00:00:02.000 Anti-Semitic attacks become commonplace in New York City.

00:00:05.000 And Democrats continue to push impeachment.

00:00:07.000 Happy New Year!

00:00:08.000 I'm Ben Shapiro.

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

00:00:10.000 The Ben Shapiro Show is sponsored by ExpressVPN.

00:00:17.000 Protect your online privacy today at expressvpn.com.

00:00:21.000 Slash Ben, great thing to do in the new year.

00:00:23.000 Well, happy new year to y'all.

00:00:25.000 Hope that you had a wonderful vacation, if you were able to take a vacation.

00:00:28.000 I hope that you had a wonderful Christmas, great Hanukkah, happy new year, and we're back.

00:00:32.000 And you know what that means?

00:00:33.000 It's time for an international emergency!

00:00:36.000 So, over in Iraq, things have been degrading and degrading fairly quickly.

00:00:39.000 That is because the government of Iraq has always been torn between the sectarian divide, Sunni and Shia.

00:00:44.000 This has been true for a very long time.

00:00:46.000 In the aftermath of Saddam Hussein's fall and the disbanding of the Iraqi military, sectarian violence obviously started to take root in Iraq.

00:00:54.000 In recent years, there was an attempt by the United States to help bring together a government that would both fight off ISIS and that would resist Iran.

00:01:00.000 That has proved to be harder than expected, simply because Iran's influence in the region has tremendously, tremendously grown. 0.83

00:01:06.000 And that is in large part thanks to the fact that the Obama administration decided to basically make room for the Iranians.

00:01:11.000 And now you're seeing all these members of the media, all these members of the left, who are suggesting that it's President Trump's fault that Iranian terrorists attempted to storm the U.S.

00:01:21.000 embassy over the last three or four days.

00:01:24.000 They're trying to suggest that this is because of Trump's harsh policy on Iran.

00:01:27.000 No, this is because when you appease a power like Iran, their power grows and they are able to stage events like this one. 0.93

00:01:34.000 And this is two very different views of foreign policy and it's something that we ought to take note of because there is this tendency inside the right to be isolationist as well.

00:01:41.000 And these views of foreign policy, one suggests that the role of the United States in the world should be basically we stay within our own borders, we wait to be hit, if we are hit, then we lash out in sort of quick fashion, and then we retreat back inside our own borders, and that the outside world has nothing to do with us.

00:01:56.000 And this was America's foreign policy for large swaths of time, up until the beginning of the 20th century, essentially.

00:02:02.000 And then there's the other view, which is that the world has become a very, very small place.

00:02:05.000 And what that means is that when things happen abroad, eventually they are going to end up as being threats to the United States.

00:02:12.000 And so one of the goals of the U.S.

00:02:13.000 military, one of the goals of American foreign policy is to quash threats before they occur.

00:02:18.000 It's to make sure that we can minimize the possibility of risk growing.

00:02:21.000 And so to take an example, There were two views that were prevalent in the United States in the 1930s in the lead up to World War II, and none of this is meant to suggest that we're about to go to war with Iran, which we are not.

00:02:31.000 Okay, but there were two views in the 1930s in the lead up to World War II.

00:02:34.000 View number one was the old sort of isolationist view, and this was predominant in the United States.

00:02:39.000 It was the view of the Republican Party.

00:02:42.000 It was the view of populists like Father Coughlin.

00:02:44.000 It was the view of many people who suggested that the United States basically had no role in the world.

00:02:49.000 If there was chaos over in Europe, well, that was the Europe problem.

00:02:52.000 If there is chaos over between Japan and China, that was really a Japan and China problem. 0.84

00:02:56.000 It wasn't really a U.S. 0.85

00:02:57.000 problem.

00:02:58.000 And then that problem started to arrive on America's front doorstep and back doorstep, as it turns out.

00:03:04.000 And then Pearl Harbor happened.

00:03:06.000 Now, what's interesting about the reaction of the United States to Pearl Harbor is that we immediately got our back up and we recognized that our role in the world had to change.

00:03:14.000 Because the fact is this, the United States pretty easily could have come to some sort of accommodation with the Japanese that would have allowed them to maximize their regional power even after Pearl Harbor. 0.95

00:03:23.000 In fact, it's possible that's what the Japanese government thought was going to happen, is that the United States was not going to go to full-scale war with Japan, even after Pearl Harbor, because isolationist sentiment was so strong.

00:03:33.000 And so they felt like, okay, well, if we hit them, then maybe they'll back off.

00:03:37.000 Okay, that's not what happened.

00:03:38.000 The United States got its back up, and instead, the United States ends up defeating Japan and occupying Japan for the next 80 years. 0.76

00:03:43.000 The United States does the same thing with regard to Germany.

00:03:46.000 America's role in the world fundamentally changes because we recognize after World War II that there is no more of this We can retreat within our own borders and everybody will leave us alone.

00:03:56.000 Well, that has only become worse over time.

00:03:57.000 And every so often, we're reminded of this.

00:03:59.000 In 9-11, we were reminded that we can leave the Middle East alone.

00:04:02.000 We can basically have a light footprint in the Middle East.

00:04:05.000 We can say that that region of the world has not much to do with us.

00:04:08.000 And that will not stop terrorists from hating us and wanting to attack us and wanting to kill American citizens.

00:04:13.000 And again, there are two ways of viewing America's military response to events like this.

00:04:16.000 One is that in the aftermath of Pearl Harbor, which killed On the order of 2,000 Americans, that in the aftermath of Pearl Harbor, America then entered a war in which 200,000 Americans were killed, right, in World War II.

00:04:29.000 Was that a disproportionate response?

00:04:32.000 In some ways, I think there are some isolationists who would argue yes.

00:04:34.000 Pat Buchanan, for example, has sort of argued yes.

00:04:37.000 The same thing has happened in the aftermath of 9-11.

00:04:39.000 There's the argument that was made that, yes, they killed 3,000 of our citizens, but then we've been involved in wars that have killed more American troops than that.

00:04:47.000 More American troops have died in those wars.

00:04:49.000 But this fundamentally misstates the role of the American military and the role of America in the world.

00:04:53.000 And that is the American military people sign up.

00:04:55.000 Particularly now, it's a volunteer military.

00:04:57.000 These are heroes who are signing up to defend America's freedom.

00:04:59.000 They're not signing up.

00:05:01.000 in order to be paid to sit at a base in Georgia.

00:05:04.000 That is not why they sign up.

00:05:06.000 And to treat them as children, to treat our soldiers, as the left likes to do, as sort of pawns in political games, where anytime somebody says we need to use troops to defend our embassy in Baghdad, for example, then the left says, well, how many troops are you willing to put at risk?

00:05:20.000 Listen, that's a fine question, but it's not a fine question if you do it every single time we talk about using military force in defense of American assets abroad.

00:05:29.000 So we have to decide is what we want America's role in the world to be, and also we have to be realistic about the fact that if America retreats from certain areas of the world, other forces take over.

00:05:37.000 If Iran takes over Iraq, if Iran takes over Syria, if Iran takes over Lebanon, if Iran takes over Yemen, that has significant ramifications for America's foreign policy, not just in terms of the economy and shutting down the Straits of Hormuz, but in terms of actual Security policy.

00:05:52.000 The fact is the Iranian government is the chief sponsor of worldwide terror on planet Earth right now. 1.00

00:05:57.000 If the Iranians take over the region, that maximizes Russian aggression, Russian power, which has ramifications for Europe. 0.74

00:06:04.000 If the Chinese are working with the Russians and with the Iranians, then it maximizes Chinese power at the expense of American power in the world. 0.83

00:06:11.000 Economics is not a zero-sum game, but foreign policy, to a certain extent, is, in fact, a zero-sum game.

00:06:16.000 And when America pulls back, it is not that this becomes a vacuum, it's that that vacuum is very quickly filled.

00:06:21.000 So there are going to be people who today, tomorrow, as we come back into the new year, argue that all of this is happening in Iraq because the United States ought to take a more isolationist view toward the world, that all this is happening with regard to China and Russia.

00:06:33.000 If we just leave them alone, they'll leave us alone.

00:06:35.000 But that is not the reality.

00:06:37.000 The reality is that if we leave all this stuff alone, all we are doing is emboldening America's enemies to grow stronger.

00:06:43.000 And then when conflict does occur, we are facing down a much stronger enemy.

00:06:47.000 Right now, one of the things that is occurring from sort of the old Obama acolytes, they're saying, well, if we had just left Iran alone, if we just continued to pay off Iran, well, then Iran wouldn't be as violent right now with America.

00:06:59.000 Now, first of all, that's not true.

00:07:00.000 I mean, Iran is responsible for the deaths of literally thousands of American service people in Iraq.

00:07:04.000 So the Iranians have not been our friend for quite a while, going all the way back to the mullahs in 1979.

00:07:10.000 But there's this case that's being made by the Obama contention that if we had just paid them off, everything would have been fine, and it's Trump's harsh stand against the Iranians that is causing them to get violent.

00:07:18.000 Okay, go back to 1940 and the Munich Accords, and think to yourself, or 1939 and the Munich Accords, 38, the Munich Accords, and think to yourself, What would have happened if after the Munich Accords, but before Hitler violates the Munich Accords, Churchill is elected?

00:07:36.000 And then Churchill takes a very strong stand, and then Hitler starts attacking the countries surrounding him. 0.76

00:07:41.000 Isn't it true that people on the left would then have blamed Churchill and his strong stand against the Germans for provoking?

00:07:49.000 Appeasement looks good until the point at which the appeaser is stepped on.

00:07:53.000 The problem is if people foresee that and they elect somebody who's no longer going to appease, it's easy for people on the left and for isolationists too to suggest that it's the intransigence of strong-willed people standing up against evil that is the cause of the evil being evil.

00:08:08.000 And that's never true.

00:08:09.000 The Iranian government has been evil for 40 years. 0.89

00:08:12.000 The German government was evil before Churchill was elected and before Churchill took over and the Chamberlain government collapsed.

00:08:20.000 Evil doesn't need an excuse to be evil.

00:08:22.000 We'll get into what's actually occurring here and why President Trump is doing the right thing in Iran and what foreign policy ought to look like there.

00:08:27.000 Nobody is calling for overt war.

00:08:28.000 I will say this 1,000 times today.

00:08:30.000 No one wants war with Iran.

00:08:32.000 No one wants an open conflict with Iran.

00:08:34.000 There are things we can do short of that open conflict to stop them from Pursuing this aggressive policy in the region and putting more Americans at risk and creating a stronger Iran to be used against their own citizens and more importantly against America's other allies around the Middle East and America herself. 0.91

00:08:49.000 We'll get to that in just one second.

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00:10:03.000 Okay, so here is the actual latest from what is happening over in Baghdad.

00:10:07.000 This is according to the New York Times as of last night.

00:10:09.000 After a second day of tense protests at the American embassy in Baghdad, thousands of pro-Iranian demonstrators dispersed on Wednesday.

00:10:16.000 Demonstrators is code for many of these people are terrorists that literally a terrorist group called Hezbollah which has outlets.

00:10:23.000 This is sort of the Iraqi outlet.

00:10:24.000 There's the Iraqi outlet of Hezbollah.

00:10:25.000 It's sponsored by the Iranian Quds Force, which is a wing of their Revolutionary Guard.

00:10:30.000 Hezbollah Has thousands of rockets pointed at Israel and Lebanon.

00:10:34.000 Hezbollah has a significant role in the conflict in Syria. 0.94

00:10:37.000 Hezbollah is one of the worst terrorist groups on the planet.

00:10:39.000 It is labeled as such by the American State Department and by an increasing number of European countries.

00:10:44.000 And if the Europeans label somebody from the Middle East a terrorist, then it's a fairly good shot that they're an actual terrorist group. 0.90

00:10:53.000 After a second day of tense protests at the American embassy in Baghdad, thousands of pro-Iranian demonstrators dispersed on Wednesday, ending a siege that had trapped American diplomats in the embassy compound overnight, winding down a potentially explosive crisis for the Trump administration.

00:11:06.000 The demonstrators had swarmed outside the embassy, chanting "death to America." The New York Times, by the way, originally termed these people mourners, which shows you where their heads are at.

00:11:15.000 What exactly were they supposedly mourning?

00:11:17.000 They were mourning the fact that the United States had attacked Hezbollah encampments in Syria and Iraq, because these are places from which Hezbollah fighters have been going out and trying to kill Americans and American allies.

00:11:29.000 In contrast to Tuesday, when some demonstrators forced their way into the compound and set some of the outbuildings on fire.

00:11:34.000 They're not demonstrators.

00:11:35.000 Demonstrators don't break into embassies and set things on fire.

00:11:38.000 Those are called terrorists.

00:11:40.000 The crowd on Wednesday was smaller.

00:11:42.000 No protesters breached the compound's gates.

00:11:44.000 Women demonstrators, largely members of Iranian-backed militias, angered by deadly American airstrikes over the weekend.

00:11:50.000 I do love it when they suggest that they are angered by deadly American airstrikes.

00:11:54.000 Until then, they were nice guys.

00:11:56.000 But then it was that the United States attacked some terror bases, and then they were like, oh man, I'm so pissed off.

00:12:00.000 Until this, I was just like your nice normal terrorist. 0.99

00:12:03.000 I wasn't gonna like go burn an embassy or something, but now that you killed my terrorist friends, now I'm like a super, really giant angry terrorist, and I'm gonna go burn crap. 0.99

00:12:12.000 Alternatively, these were terrorists who were looking for an excuse to go and do something bad. 0.98

00:12:17.000 And so they stormed the embassy, the outer walls of the embassy, and this forced Americans inside the embassy, the American military, to fire tear gas into the crowd.

00:12:28.000 When the demonstrators reached the roof of the Bernd Reception building on Wednesday, American security forces, including Marine reinforcements sent by the Pentagon the day before, fired tear gas to drive them back.

00:12:38.000 And you can see from the video, I mean, these are people who are arriving with battering rams and weapons.

00:12:42.000 Where are all the females? 1.00

00:12:43.000 I mean, if these are demonstrators, have you seen a single female?

00:12:45.000 Why is it that these are all military-aged males who are carrying Hezbollah flags?

00:12:49.000 Could it be that they are actually terrorists?

00:12:51.000 I'm so sick of the media covering for terrorists and pretending they're just demonstrators. 0.53

00:12:54.000 It's insane.

00:12:55.000 The full withdrawal came after leaders of the Iranian-backed militias who had organized the demonstration called on the crowd to leave and most gradually drifted away on foot or drove off in trucks.

00:13:05.000 The leaders later announced that their agreement to withdraw was conditioned on a commitment from Iraq's Prime Minister, Adel Abdul Mahdi, to move ahead with legislation to force American troops to withdraw from Iraq.

00:13:13.000 So Mahdi had been protested by thousands of Iraqi citizens who said that he's in thrall to the Iranians.

00:13:18.000 Now Mahdi's caught between Iraq and a hard place, basically.

00:13:22.000 A large part of his country is Shia.

00:13:24.000 A huge percentage of the parliament is Shia.

00:13:26.000 Many members of the government are Shia.

00:13:28.000 Many of them are enthralled to Iran.

00:13:29.000 Meanwhile, he has a vast Sunni population as well.

00:13:33.000 The Shia want the Americans to leave so that Iran can help overrun Iraq. 1.00

00:13:36.000 The Sunnis want the Americans to stay so that America can help protect them against the Iranians. 1.00

00:13:41.000 Now, if you're American, you're going, what role do we have in all of this?

00:13:45.000 Well, the role is to basically keep the peace, and the reason you need to keep the peace is because if the Iranians overrun Iraq, then they now run all territory between Afghanistan and the coast of the Mediterranean Sea. 0.90

00:13:56.000 They now run everything, basically, ranging all the way as far east as parts of Afghanistan, and then all the way as far west as Lebanon, and as far south as Yemen.

00:14:06.000 And by the way, working in coordination with the Russians and the Chinese.

00:14:09.000 So if you worry about America's place in the world, about our foreign policy, about the possibility of a major war breaking out, here's the thing.

00:14:15.000 War breaks out for a variety of reasons, but one of those reasons is when your enemies think they are stronger than you, and they take advantage of that strength.

00:14:22.000 Right now, America's enemies recognize that America does not want to go to war with anybody, and so they are pushing at the borders.

00:14:28.000 They're pushing.

00:14:29.000 This is what Putin has been doing.

00:14:30.000 He did it in Crimea.

00:14:31.000 He did it in Georgia.

00:14:32.000 He's been pushing consistently.

00:14:34.000 The Iranians are pushing consistently. 1.00

00:14:36.000 The Chinese are pushing consistently. 1.00

00:14:39.000 They're basically using the old Stalin-esque tactic of push where it's mush.

00:14:45.000 You push until the mush stops, basically.

00:14:48.000 Well, the question is, when is America's back going to get up with all this?

00:14:51.000 President Trump is saying right now.

00:14:53.000 This bleep ends right now.

00:14:56.000 Iran's ability to deploy militias to blockade American diplomats inside the embassy for most of two days made clear how much power they wield within the Iraqi government.

00:15:03.000 According to the American government, the Iraqi government didn't do enough at the very beginning to defend America's embassy in Iraq, that sovereign American territory.

00:15:10.000 According to the New York Times, despite a 16-year American effort to establish a government friendlier to Western interests, at a cost of more than $1 trillion and 5,000 American lives, Iraq's leaders lined up in opposition to the American airstrikes, and its security forces allowed the militias to reach the American diplomatic compound.

00:15:25.000 Okay, that is not because the government is anti-American.

00:15:28.000 It's because the government is in thrall to the Iranians, and that is because America has lessened its footprint in Iraq.

00:15:33.000 And so if you're in Iraq, and you're betting on the future of the country, who do you think has more staying power, the Iranians or the Americans?

00:15:39.000 If America really showed, listen, we're not going anywhere, we're going to stay here until this thing is locked down, we're at least going to provide you the help you need until this thing is locked down against Iran, then the Iraqi government would probably be a lot more forthcoming in terms of the resources they provide to the American government.

00:15:53.000 That's what the American government is saying, by the way.

00:15:57.000 It is also true that consistent American unwillingness to confront the Iranian aggression over the past year and a half The Iranians firing on ships in the Straits of Hormuz.

00:16:07.000 The Iranians shooting down an American drone.

00:16:09.000 America basically doing very little except passing a few sanctions.

00:16:12.000 The Iranians are pushing where they think that it's mush. 1.00

00:16:15.000 Well, the mush has now ended.

00:16:17.000 We'll get to President Trump's response to all of this, which is the correct response.

00:16:19.000 The media know it's the correct response, which is why they are frustrated by it.

00:16:22.000 We'll get to all of that in just one second.

00:16:24.000 First, let us talk about making your employment better.

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00:17:55.000 Okay, so we'll get to more of that in just one second.

00:17:57.000 Well, probably less of that in just one second.

00:17:59.000 But first, President Trump has now responded to the situation over in Iraq.

00:18:04.000 He says, listen, this ain't Benghazi.

00:18:06.000 So the media immediately starts saying, well, this is Trump's Benghazi.

00:18:10.000 What's ironic about this is that the same media declared that Benghazi was not a problem in the first place.

00:18:13.000 And they kept saying the Obama administration handled it brilliantly while Barack Obama was off partying and people were dying at the Benghazi embassy in Libya in 2012.

00:18:21.000 And Hillary Clinton was lying that this was completely unexpected and was a protest that went awry in response to a YouTube video when it was in fact a terror assault and that her state department had turned down security requests.

00:18:34.000 Right, then the media kept saying there was no scandal in Benghazi, like none at all.

00:18:36.000 There was no cover-up, there was no scandal.

00:18:38.000 It wasn't Susan Rice and the Obama administration repeatedly lying to the American people, which they did.

00:18:42.000 Well, now you got MSNBC's Joy Reid, who says, this is Trump's Benghazi!

00:18:46.000 Well, but I thought that Obama's Benghazi wasn't really a big deal.

00:18:48.000 I mean, we had journalists literally making fun of quote-unquote, Benghazi conspiracy theories.

00:18:52.000 Anyway, Joy Reid tweeted out, as Trump's Benghazi unfolds in Iraq, Okay, well, I'm glad to see that you guys came around on Benghazi was a bad thing, so that's exciting. 0.77

00:19:02.000 President Trump came out, he said, uh, guys, this ain't gonna be a Benghazi, because guess what?

00:19:05.000 I'm not Obama.

00:19:06.000 I think it's been handled very well.

00:19:08.000 The Marines came in.

00:19:09.000 We had some great warriors come in and do a fantastic job, and they were there instantaneously, as soon as we heard.

00:19:17.000 I used the word immediately. 0.61

00:19:18.000 They came immediately, and it's in great shape.

00:19:21.000 As you know, this will not be a Benghazi.

00:19:24.000 Benghazi should never have happened.

00:19:26.000 This will never, ever be a Benghazi, but we have some of our greatest warriors there.

00:19:31.000 They got in there very quickly.

00:19:32.000 Okay, peace through strength, and President Trump embodying it here.

00:19:36.000 He's apparently thinking about deploying 4,000 troops to the Middle East in order to protect America's assets abroad.

00:19:41.000 This is, in fact, the right move.

00:19:43.000 A precipitous withdrawal would drive terrorism.

00:19:45.000 It would drive the rise of our enemies.

00:19:46.000 Again, you will hear calls on the isolationist right for exactly that sort of withdrawal, suggesting that now would be a great time to get out.

00:19:53.000 Well, again, that is a short-term view.

00:19:55.000 See, the nice thing about being an isolationist is the counterfactual is always very useful to you.

00:19:59.000 Because the fact is, most presidents are not willing to let America's assets wither on the vine.

00:20:04.000 They're not willing to let America's enemies run roughshod over swaths of the globe and then strengthen themselves.

00:20:11.000 So it's easy to point to costs that have already occurred and say, those costs didn't have to occur.

00:20:15.000 But the counterfactual, which is, okay, what if America just withdrew?

00:20:19.000 And all of these countries got stronger and then started launching terror attacks?

00:20:22.000 And started launching economic attacks?

00:20:24.000 Because that doesn't occur, because of actions like President Trump's.

00:20:27.000 Well, then that leaves the isolationist with the argument that the costs that actually were incurred were bad.

00:20:33.000 The counterfactual is always a lot easier than the actual real-time costs of things that are being done right now.

00:20:38.000 According to Fox News, the U.S.

00:20:39.000 Army's 82nd Airborne Division's Alert Brigade has been issued orders to deploy rapidly to Kuwait amid the unrest in Baghdad, three U.S.

00:20:46.000 defense officials told Fox News on Tuesday.

00:20:48.000 At least 750 paratroopers are set to deploy to the region immediately, according to Defense Secretary Mark Esper.

00:20:55.000 The alert brigade of roughly 4,000 paratroopers known as the Division Ready Brigade has been told to prepare for a possible deployment in the days ahead after hundreds of Iranian-backed militiamen tried to storm the U.S.

00:21:04.000 Embassy in Baghdad on Tuesday.

00:21:08.000 We actually have video of the U.S.

00:21:09.000 helicopters arriving, the attack helicopters arriving in Baghdad.

00:21:14.000 Suffice it to say, it was shortly thereafter that the Iranian militia said, guys, I think maybe we should pull back.

00:21:20.000 Yeah, no kidding.

00:21:20.000 You should pull back.

00:21:21.000 Because it turns out that America, our firepower, is pretty extraordinary.

00:21:27.000 That is an American helicopter arriving and saying, hey guys, we're here.

00:21:31.000 Just want to let you know.

00:21:33.000 Mike Pompeo, the Secretary of State, he says, we're not backing down.

00:21:35.000 We're not going to give in to terrorist demands.

00:21:38.000 Any plans to evacuate the embassy in Baghdad, sir?

00:21:41.000 None.

00:21:41.000 Okay.

00:21:44.000 Any plans to pull some of the 5,000 U.S.

00:21:45.000 troops in Iraq out?

00:21:48.000 None.

00:21:49.000 We put real pressure on the Islamic Republic of Iran.

00:21:51.000 We will continue to do so.

00:21:52.000 And as you saw the president say today, we will continue to hold the Islamic Republic of Iran accountable wherever we find their malign activity, and we'll make sure we have the resources to do so. 1.00

00:22:02.000 Okay, now if you're the Iranians, all you want to do is maintain the pressure. 1.00

00:22:05.000 Long enough that a Democrat is elected, at which point the United States presumably would go back to trying to bribe the Iranians into, what, peace? 0.69

00:22:13.000 Into decency?

00:22:14.000 That is a thing that's not going to happen.

00:22:16.000 By the way, there are protests against the Iranian influence on the Iraqi government.

00:22:19.000 They're just not being covered by the media.

00:22:20.000 That's another point that Mike Pompeo was making.

00:22:23.000 Meanwhile, Mark Esper, the Secretary of Defense, says that Iran or its proxy forces may be planning further strikes on American interests in the Middle East, and the U.S.

00:22:29.000 is prepared to take preemptive military action if it gets sufficient warning.

00:22:33.000 According to Esper, He said the game has changed.

00:22:36.000 We're prepared to do what is necessary to defend our personnel and our interests and our partners in the region.

00:22:40.000 Now listen, no one wants a full-scale war with the Iranians.

00:22:43.000 But you know who doesn't want a full-scale war the most?

00:22:45.000 The Iranians. 0.96

00:22:46.000 Because if there's a full-scale war, the first people to die are the mullahs. 0.99

00:22:49.000 If this thing goes to full-scale war, the first people who have their heads come right off their bodies are the mullahs in Iran, and they know it.

00:22:54.000 So what they're doing right now is they're pushing, and they're pushing, and they're pushing, and they're oppressing their own population, and they're launching low-level terror assaults, and they're doing all of this in the hopes that they will drive America out of the Middle East in the same way that the North Vietnamese, that the Viet Cong drove the United States out of Vietnam, and that allowed for a spread of communist tyranny in that region. 0.94

00:23:13.000 They're looking for the same thing to happen here.

00:23:15.000 The difference is that President Trump is president right now, and the chances that he's going to pull out precipitously are extremely, extremely low, as well they should be.

00:23:24.000 There are things the United States can do beyond economic sanctions, by the way, and striking terror bases is one of those things. 0.54

00:23:29.000 Hitting at Hezbollah is one of those things, and that can be done with pretty much zero cost from the air, which is one of the reasons you saw these demonstrators, quote unquote, from the New York Times.

00:23:38.000 These demonstrators descending on the embassy is because America did strike a series of terrorist encampments and it was very successful. 0.66

00:23:45.000 The United States does have an interest in ensuring safety and security for America and her allies and her interests in the region.

00:23:54.000 It'll be interesting to see how these arguments play out because Trump does have this sort of isolationist streak, but he is also not somebody who's going to run away from all of this.

00:24:02.000 Meanwhile, watching the, watching the Obama administration sycophants like Ben Rhodes come out and talk about how terrible Trump is is just a reminder how awful Obama was.

00:24:13.000 The fact is Iran has been emboldened in the region because of the Obama administration.

00:24:17.000 Trump tweeted out, this is not a warning, it is a threat.

00:24:19.000 Happy New Year.

00:24:21.000 Well, the bottom line is that what he's doing is going to mean a lot more than what he is saying, right?

00:24:27.000 Deploying those troops, making sure that our assets are safe and secure over there.

00:24:31.000 All of that makes a lot of sense.

00:24:32.000 It is worth noting that Barack Obama welcomed the leader of the U.S.

00:24:35.000 embassy attack to the White House back in 2000.

00:24:38.000 11, and he was criticized for it at the time because the person was seen as an Iranian proxy even then.

00:24:43.000 Okay, so that is foreign policy crisis number one that is facing the Trump administration.

00:24:48.000 But it is not the only foreign policy crisis facing the Trump administration as we start a new year.

00:24:52.000 Meanwhile, North Korea says that it has a new strategic weapon.

00:24:55.000 We'll get to that in just one moment.

00:24:57.000 First, let's talk about your sleep quality.

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00:26:07.000 Okay, meanwhile, North Korea is upping the ante as well.

00:26:11.000 No president goes through their first term without being tested a little bit.

00:26:16.000 President Trump's strategy on North Korea has been almost precisely the opposite of his strategy on Iran.

00:26:22.000 His strategy on Iran has been to push the mullahs, to box them in, to cut off their economic lifelines, to weaken them from within. 0.51

00:26:30.000 That's largely been successful, which is why you are seeing the Iranian government lash out in every direction as they desperately attempt to fend off the protests that have been rolling throughout their country for the last, what, six to nine months?

00:26:43.000 In North Korea, the United States has taken the opposite, the sort of opposite tack, and that has been to try and woo Kim Jong-un personally.

00:26:51.000 I've been very critical of that tack.

00:26:52.000 I've thought that it's been a waste of time.

00:26:54.000 North Korea is showing each and every day that they're not a trustworthy partner. 0.84

00:26:59.000 According to Emily Zanotti writing over at Daily Wire, North Korea now says it has a new strategic weapon and Kim Jong-un plans to deploy it soon.

00:27:07.000 According to the Associated Press, North Korea says it has a new strategic weapon that will stun the world with shocking action.

00:27:13.000 North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un plans to deploy the weapon soon as a way of challenging the U.S.' 's nuclear weapons superiority.

00:27:20.000 Kim Jong-un appears to be using this as a bargaining chip in stalled trade talks with the Trump administration.

00:27:26.000 This is always the tactic of the North Koreans, which is to threaten action, fire missiles, basically fuss until you get what you want, create a situation, and then suggest that it can be resolved only by America cutting a check. 0.97

00:27:37.000 It has not worked to the benefit of the United States or to the benefit of the people of North Korea for decades at this point.

00:27:42.000 Why it would work with Iran is beyond me. 0.68

00:27:44.000 The left wants to see the North Korean model applied to Iran.

00:27:46.000 It's funny to watch the media on all this.

00:27:48.000 Because Trump is taking this really bifurcated approach to Iran versus North Korea, They won't endorse either strategy.

00:27:55.000 So when Trump takes this very soft tack with North Korea...

00:27:59.000 Which at least is mildly more justified than it would be with Iran, simply because Iran doesn't have nuclear weapons yet, and North Korea already does, which means that you have to treat them with a little bit more care than you would with regard to Iran. 0.98

00:28:12.000 But when it comes to North Korea, the media's like, oh, look at this Trump, he's sycophantically kissing ass with North Korea. 0.98

00:28:17.000 And then when it comes to Iran, where President Trump is taking a very harsh line, they're like, why isn't he sycophantically kissing ass of the Mullahs, like Barack Obama did? 0.99

00:28:25.000 Guys, you gotta pick one. 0.94

00:28:27.000 Either you treat America's enemies with harshness, and it's peace through strength, and it's you set up barriers and rules, or it's none of the above.

00:28:35.000 You gotta pick.

00:28:36.000 You can't just randomly suggest that it's good when Barack Obama does it, but bad when Trump does it.

00:28:40.000 That's not the way any of this works.

00:28:42.000 The AP reports that that Unn says he will soon reveal a new strategic weapon to the world as it bolsters its nuclear deterrent in the face of quote-unquote gangster-like U.S.

00:28:51.000 pressure.

00:28:53.000 The Trump administration has been trying to negotiate with North Korea for years.

00:28:55.000 President Trump sees an inked deal with the rogue communist nation as a potential hallmark of his term.

00:29:00.000 Just a few short years ago, Trump did manage to secure an anti-proliferation treaty with North Korea, halting, at the time, North Korea's pursuit of nuclear weapons and development of ICBMs, but North Korea has not actually abided by any of those agreements.

00:29:13.000 President Trump dismissed the threat in North Korea.

00:29:14.000 He said, no, no, no, we're getting along great, which of course is not true.

00:29:17.000 Here's President Trump saying it.

00:29:18.000 I have a very good relationship with Kim Jong Un.

00:29:22.000 I know he's sending out certain messages about Christmas presents.

00:29:27.000 And I hope his Christmas present is a beautiful vase.

00:29:30.000 That's what I'd like.

00:29:31.000 A vase.

00:29:32.000 As opposed to something else.

00:29:35.000 I don't know.

00:29:35.000 Look.

00:29:37.000 He likes me.

00:29:38.000 I like him.

00:29:38.000 We get along.

00:29:40.000 He's representing his country.

00:29:42.000 I'm representing my country.

00:29:43.000 We have to do what we have to do.

00:29:45.000 By the way, I just want to know, okay, if Kim Jong-un sent Trump a vase, he'd be like, what's this vase?

00:29:50.000 Why is there a vase here? 1.00

00:29:51.000 You think I need another stupid vase? 1.00

00:29:53.000 I've got a thousand vases. 1.00

00:29:54.000 With that said, is the policy with regard to North Korea the smartest? 0.62

00:29:59.000 No.

00:29:59.000 But is there a really great policy available with North Korea?

00:30:01.000 The answer, of course, is no.

00:30:03.000 I mean, at the very least, North Korea doesn't have regional aspirations.

00:30:07.000 North Korea is at least somewhat contained.

00:30:10.000 The same is not true of Iran.

00:30:12.000 Okay, meanwhile, over in New York City, attacks on Jews continue apace.

00:30:17.000 We saw over the Christmas vacation, over the Hanukkah, the winter vacation, we saw an attack during Hanukkah at a house that was next to a shul in Brooklyn.

00:30:27.000 It was an attack on... a machete attack by a guy who'd been let out of jail early.

00:30:34.000 He had a criminal history.

00:30:36.000 And it injured five people, including the rabbi of this particular show.

00:30:40.000 This was only the latest in a spate of attacks.

00:30:43.000 There have been a bunch of attacks over the last month, over the last several weeks.

00:30:48.000 And, I mean, you can see that we have a mashup of a bunch of videos of the attacks from closed-circuit TV.

00:30:53.000 Pretty frightening stuff.

00:30:55.000 You can see that here's a Jew just being chased down in the middle of the street and beaten up, held to the ground and punched.

00:31:01.000 You can see that, I mean, this sort of stuff is happening pretty much every day.

00:31:04.000 And it's overtly religious Jews that are being targeted disproportionately by people who happen to be minority.

00:31:10.000 It doesn't mean that they're doing it because they're minority, but it is worthwhile noting this is one of the reasons the media is not covering it.

00:31:15.000 There's a Jewish boy walking down the street, a Jewish man walking down the street getting clocked from behind by a young person of color, it appears.

00:31:24.000 The only reason that race is relevant in this conversation is because the media specifically only talk about anti-Semitic attacks when they are white supremacists.

00:31:30.000 The reason they're not talking about these anti-Semitic attacks is because they're not against secularized Jews with left-wing values.

00:31:36.000 They're against religious Orthodox Jews in New York City and they are being perpetrated by members of the intersectional hierarchy.

00:31:41.000 That is the reason why the media refuses to cover all of this.

00:31:44.000 The New York Times admitted as much back in 2018 when they said that even though there was a massive spike in anti-Semitic attacks in the city, it's been ongoing for years at this point, they said that they had failed to cover it because it, quote, refuses to conform to an easy narrative with a single ideological enemy.

00:31:59.000 The fact is the media refused to take this stuff seriously, specifically because of the nature of the victims, religious Jews who do not hold left-wing values, and the nature of the victimizers, disproportionately young minority males.

00:32:10.000 Jake Tapper got this one right.

00:32:13.000 Jake Tapper was on CNN.

00:32:13.000 He was talking with Barry Weiss and Jane Koston.

00:32:16.000 And here's Jake explaining correctly that the media response definitely would have been different if white supremacists had committed this Hanukkah attack.

00:32:22.000 This is kind of a sensitive question, but do you think the reaction by politicians and the media would be any different if these recent anti-Semitic attacks had been committed by white supremacists instead of who they were committed by?

00:32:36.000 I do.

00:32:37.000 And the reason for that is because it took a man walking in with a machete the size of a broomstick for there to be any public outrage during the holiday of Hanukkah.

00:32:49.000 That, of course, is true. 0.83

00:32:50.000 It is also true that the Jersey City attack disappeared from mainstream newspapers.

00:32:53.000 And not only that, it was covered by mainstream newspapers as a response to gentrification, with Jews coming in and offering to buy apartments from black folks in Jersey City.

00:33:01.000 And the fact is, the media only cover anti-Semitism when it is convenient to their narrative.

00:33:05.000 But anti-Semitism comes from a wide variety of sources, including, disproportionately, in terms of opinion, Black Americans are disproportionately anti-Semitic compared to other racial subgroups of Americans according to the Anti-Defamation League.

00:33:18.000 Again, only relevant because what you are seeing in New York City is disproportionately the attacks taking place from members of minority communities.

00:33:28.000 If this were a white supremacist thing, the media would be covering it because it is uncomfortable to talk about the fact that there is disproportionate anti-Semitism among African Americans in the United States.

00:33:37.000 The media simply refused to cover it.

00:33:39.000 Armin Rosen wrote for Tablet Magazine back in July 2019 about the Jew hatred in New York, correctly noted, quote, that the victims are most outwardly identifiable, i.e.

00:33:47.000 religious rather than secularized Jews.

00:33:49.000 The perpetrators who have been recorded on CCTV cameras are overwhelmingly black and Hispanic.

00:33:54.000 The media, therefore, does not want to cover all of this because this cuts directly against the supposed alliance of intersectionality in which all minority groups are allied against the white superstructure.

00:34:04.000 The left just ignores the wrong type of anti-Semitism.

00:34:07.000 And so the same media that will derive great joy from suggesting that President Trump, the most pro-Israel president in the history of the United States, is actually an anti-Semite.

00:34:17.000 The same media that will pretend that President Trump's executive order for campus, designed to protect Jews in the same way that it protects blacks on American campuses, are actually anti-Semitic.

00:34:26.000 Well, we'll suggest that it is perfectly wrong to cover the fact that Barack Obama sat in Jeremiah Wright's church for 20 years while Jeremiah Wright spewed anti-Semitism.

00:34:34.000 He did for two decades.

00:34:35.000 We know this.

00:34:37.000 A Democratic candidate who suggests that Trump has emboldened anti-Semites will now make pilgrimage.

00:34:41.000 They have been doing this, right?

00:34:42.000 You've seen this from Pete Buttigieg.

00:34:43.000 He made pilgrimage to Al Sharpton, an actual anti-Semite.

00:34:47.000 Who's involved in the incitement, allegedly involved in the incitement, of two separate anti-Semitic riots in New York City, and who now has a show on MSNBC.

00:34:56.000 So yes, the identity of the victims matters, and so does the identity of the victimizers.

00:35:01.000 The same commentators who will police Republicans for mentioning George Soros.

00:35:04.000 So if you say George Soros is a nefarious force in American politics, which by the way, he is.

00:35:09.000 He does some very bad things in American politics.

00:35:11.000 Then they'll say, oh, that's anti-semitism if you mention George Soros.

00:35:15.000 If, by the way, you mention anything about right-wing Jewish donors, if you mention something about Sheldon Adelson, then obviously that's not anti-semitic.

00:35:23.000 That's just you critiquing money in politics.

00:35:24.000 But if you do it about George Soros, it's anti-semitic.

00:35:27.000 And then they'll just excuse open anti-semitism from Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan Omar.

00:35:32.000 By the way, the statement that I made about disproportionate anti-semitism inside the black community that's supported by a consistent polling done by the Anti-Defamation League every single year.

00:35:41.000 If you're not going to call out anti-semitism whenever you see it, you're doing it wrong.

00:35:45.000 But the media are not interested in doing it because for them it's just a tool.

00:35:49.000 And this latest spate of anti-semitic attacks in New York is a perfect example of this.

00:35:52.000 I'll get to more of that in just a second.

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00:36:59.000 Okay, we can get to more of the anti-Semitism in New York City.

00:37:02.000 We'll also get to impeachment and the 2020 race where Bernie Sanders is showing some life despite the fact That he basically been declared dead just a couple of months ago.

00:37:11.000 We'll get to all of that in just one second.

00:37:13.000 First, you need to go over to dailywire.com and subscribe right now.

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00:38:19.000 Okay, so the issue of anti-Semitism, again, being treated as a political football by the left because this is what the political left enjoys doing, apparently.

00:38:34.000 CNN's Sam Vinegrad blamed President Trump for the situation in New York.

00:38:39.000 She tried to excuse Andrew Cuomo, the governor of New York, and Bill de Blasio, the mayor of New York.

00:38:43.000 And she blamed President Trump in the process for the fact that Bill de Blasio, who claimed that there was no anti-Semitic problem, like five weeks ago, after that Jersey City attack, he suggested, well, now anti-Semitism has reached the doorstep of New York City.

00:38:56.000 No, it's been there for a very long time.

00:38:58.000 You just don't care about it because it's coming in a form that you wish not to recognize.

00:39:02.000 Andrew Cuomo, who came out and said, well, this is just, it has to do with the general tone and tenor of politics in our country, trying to blame Trump for something happening in his own state.

00:39:10.000 Here's CNN's Sam Vinograd doing the same thing.

00:39:12.000 We have not seen the U.S.

00:39:14.000 government address the lessons of countering extremism in really a strategic way, and I do not understand why.

00:39:21.000 President Trump has the authority and the ability to call together a whole-of-government approach on this issue, and he has failed to do so while concurrently, unfortunately, really propagating some anti-Semitic narratives.

00:39:36.000 Oh, so you see, somehow, I guess the people who are beating up Jews in Williamsburg are actually Trump supporters.

00:39:40.000 Shocker! 0.98

00:39:41.000 Didn't see that one coming.

00:39:42.000 I'll be honest with you, really did not see that coming. 0.67

00:39:45.000 Probably the pair of goons who flashed a knife, according to the New York Post, as they yelled, hey, Jew boy, at a Brooklyn teen over the weekend, spewing that hate at a 17-year-old victim walking on Avenue O near 8th Street. 0.96

00:39:55.000 Apparently, that was probably a bunch of white supremacists. 0.88

00:39:59.000 By the way, not a single incident in New York City has been linked to white supremacy, but obviously this has to do with President Trump.

00:40:06.000 Demonstrating, once again, that the left doesn't care about antisemitism, depending on the source.

00:40:09.000 Jay Michelson wrote a piece over at the Daily Beast, where he tried to explain that left-wing antisemitism is basically fine, because the reality is that left-wing antisemitism is rooted in reality, where right-wing white supremacist antisemitism is rooted in mere conspiracy theorizing. 1.00

00:40:22.000 Really, this is what this idiot wrote. 1.00

00:40:24.000 It's unbelievable. 1.00

00:40:26.000 He says, this combination of baseless hatred, he's talking about the conspiracy theorizing in the Jersey City community among some people about Jews selling organs and gentrification.

00:40:37.000 He says, this combination of baseless hatred and socioeconomic grievance stands in stark contrast to the wordy theoretical manifestos of white supremacist anti-semitism.

00:40:46.000 And while some attackers cite conspiracy theories similar to the ones on the nationalist right, such as the Black Hebrew Israelite doctrines noted above, the social context and relationships to power are utterly different.

00:40:55.000 While conspiracy mongering exists on the left and the right, there is no left-wing or African-American equivalent of President Trump, who is freely traded in anti-Semitic stereotypes, sometimes in a joking way.

00:41:07.000 After all, the notorious anti-Semite Louis Farrakhan may be the leader of the Nation of Islam, but Trump is the leader of the free world.

00:41:12.000 And then he just blames Trump for all of this.

00:41:14.000 Literally, the Democratic Party, this year, or last year rather, excused the anti-Semitism of Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan Omar and made them part of the squad and elevated them.

00:41:23.000 Literally, last year, Pete Buttigieg made pilgrimage to Al Sharpton.

00:41:26.000 But don't worry, guys.

00:41:27.000 There's no anti-Semitic problem inside the Democratic Party. 1.00

00:41:30.000 By the way, speaking of things that New York City could do to stop all this, how about you get rid of your idiotic bail policy? 0.99

00:41:36.000 They've now pushed bail reform in New York City. 0.98

00:41:39.000 And it turns out that when you don't hold criminals on bail, they go commit crimes.

00:41:43.000 Who could have predicted such a thing?

00:41:45.000 Who?

00:41:45.000 Except for every functional, sentient human being with a prefrontal cortex.

00:41:49.000 According to the New York Post, suspects arrested in last week's spree of eight anti-Semitic attacks are quickly being released right back into the neighborhoods they terrorized thanks to bail reform legislation, which doesn't even take effect until January 1st.

00:42:01.000 The most recent case of revolving-door justice came Saturday morning with the release, with no bail, of a woman charged with punching and cursing at three Orthodox women ages 22, 26, and 31 in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, at dawn the day before.

00:42:14.000 The accused assailant, Tiffany Harris, was hauled in handcuffs before a Brooklyn judge on 21 menacing harassment and attempted assault charges.

00:42:21.000 F.U.

00:42:22.000 Jews, Harris allegedly shouted during the attack.

00:42:25.000 Yes, I was there, Harris later admitted to the cops. 0.97

00:42:27.000 Yes, I slapped them. 0.96

00:42:28.000 I cursed them out. 0.99

00:42:28.000 I said F.U. 0.99

00:42:29.000 Jews.

00:42:30.000 As she stood before a judge in Brooklyn criminal court with a hood to a navy blue jacket over her head, Harris was in familiar territory.

00:42:36.000 She still has an open harassment and assault case on the Brooklyn docket from November. 0.93

00:42:40.000 Last month, she was sentenced to no jail time for felony criminal mischief in Manhattan.

00:42:45.000 She has completely failed to show up for court appearances.

00:42:47.000 But Brooklyn prosecutors didn't even bother requesting bail on Saturday, given that the reform law approved in April technically doesn't take effect until January 1st.

00:42:55.000 The de Blasio administration has made it clear we all need to get in compliance with bail reform now.

00:43:00.000 So you can't even hold these people on bail who are committing crimes.

00:43:05.000 Harris broke into a grin when approached by a reporter.

00:43:07.000 Why do you wanna know?

00:43:09.000 Goodbye, she said.

00:43:11.000 Absolute insanity, absolute insanity.

00:43:14.000 But welcome to left-wing governance, which is ruining major American cities across the country.

00:43:18.000 Meanwhile, there was another act of violence that took the headlines for five seconds, because once again, it did not fit the media's narrative, and that was this attack At a Texas church that happened over the holidays.

00:43:31.000 Apparently, according to the Wall Street Journal, a streaming video of the Sunday church service in Texas at which a parishioner gunned down a shooter is rallying those who support making it easier for private citizens to bear arms.

00:43:40.000 Gun rights advocates have long argued that if more citizens have guns, they can defend themselves and others in the event of a shooting.

00:43:45.000 On Sunday morning, this is that last Sunday, a gunman opened fire at West Freeway Church of Christ in White Settlement near Fort Worth.

00:43:51.000 He killed two people before a parishioner who was part of a volunteer security force fatally shot him.

00:43:56.000 And you can actually see this happen in the video.

00:43:58.000 You can see the shooter who arrives on scene, starts shooting at people, and a bunch of people in the crowd pull out guns, and a security officer puts down the shooter and shoots the shooter.

00:44:10.000 It was amazing.

00:44:11.000 There are people on the left who are tweeting, yeah, but the real threat was that there were people in the audience who didn't really know what to do with their guns and were unlicensed with their guns.

00:44:18.000 That was the real threat, obviously.

00:44:20.000 Let's just say this.

00:44:24.000 If that Hanukkah party that was attacked by a guy with a machete, if there'd been anyone there with a gun.

00:44:28.000 It wouldn't be five people injured.

00:44:30.000 It would be one terrorist dead.

00:44:31.000 That's what would have been happening there.

00:44:35.000 Everyone who wishes to protect themselves and their community should become a responsible gun owner.

00:44:39.000 They should know how to use, they should coordinate with the authorities, they should do all appropriate things to defend themselves. 0.98

00:44:44.000 By the way, speaking of idiocy, again, the U.S. 0.93

00:44:47.000 criminal justice system is broken, but not in terms of keeping people in jail too long all the time. 0.98

00:44:53.000 Sometimes it's broken in terms of this revolving door that we have with crime.

00:44:56.000 It turns out that the man who fatally shot two people at the White Settlement Church before being killed by church security, ...had a long criminal history and was described by his ex-wife as battling a demon and not nice to anyone.

00:45:07.000 The shooter was identified on Monday morning by two law enforcement sources familiar with the investigation.

00:45:11.000 NBC5 has learned that his criminal past included charges of assault, theft, arson, and possession of an illegal weapon in Texas, Oklahoma, and New Jersey.

00:45:20.000 What a delight.

00:45:21.000 I mean, it's just... It's unbelievable.

00:45:26.000 You set up a revolving door for criminals and then you're shocked when it turns out that the criminals go and do terrible things.

00:45:31.000 Meanwhile, with all of this happening, with all this turmoil internationally and domestically, the Democrats are focused laser-like on impeachment.

00:45:38.000 They continue to move forward with impeachment, although Nancy Pelosi still has not set forth a timeline as to when she will convey the impeachment charges to the Senate.

00:45:45.000 Remember that impeachment was passed in the House, but she has not actually passed that on to the Senate.

00:45:49.000 There's an interesting legal debate going on right now over whether Mitch McConnell actually needs that.

00:45:52.000 There's nothing in the Constitution that suggests that Nancy Pelosi Number one is compelled to hand over the impeachment charges to McConnell, but there's nothing also that says that McConnell can't hold a separate trial on the basis of those impeachment charges.

00:46:06.000 They're public, after all, and then just acquit.

00:46:09.000 So there's a debate over whether McConnell should do that right now or whether he should just point at Pelosi and say the reason she's holding this back is because she knows what's going to happen next.

00:46:18.000 Meanwhile, Rudy Giuliani continues to militate in favor of his own testimony, which is presumably the worst idea that ever happened.

00:46:23.000 He was at Mar-a-Lago over the weekend, suggesting that he would love to testify, which would be the worst possible idea because Rudy Giuliani is not his own best witness.

00:46:32.000 Here's Rudy.

00:46:32.000 I would testify, I would give demonstrations, I'd give lectures, I'd give summations.

00:46:41.000 Or, I'd do what I do best, I'd try to get... 0.98

00:46:44.000 So there he is explaining that he would love to testify, love to testify that Republicans would be fools to do that. 0.97

00:46:48.000 Meanwhile, everybody in the country has already broken down into lines on this one. 0.98

00:46:52.000 Everybody knows where they stand.

00:46:53.000 And the reason they know where they stand is because this is not about what Trump did or did not do with Ukraine.

00:46:57.000 It is a generalized referendum on Trump.

00:46:58.000 Guess what?

00:46:59.000 We get to have a generalized referendum on Trump in just about 11 months here.

00:47:03.000 Okay, it is fast approaching the election.

00:47:05.000 Most Americans, in the end, want this to be decided by the American people.

00:47:08.000 They do not want this to be decided by Nancy Pelosi and crew.

00:47:11.000 They do not think that whatever are the allegations rise to the level of getting rid of a sitting president.

00:47:16.000 The only people who are in favor of all of this are people like Linda Ronstadt, who came out on CNN and explained to Anderson Cooper, who is busy getting brutally drunk on New Year's Eve.

00:47:26.000 I mean, just going wild on New Year's Eve with Anderson.

00:47:30.000 It confuses me as to why CNN thinks that this is good broadcasting or a good idea.

00:47:33.000 You're a news network and you have your anchors making absolute mockeries of themselves on national TV.

00:47:38.000 Do they think that it makes them seem fun?

00:47:40.000 Or does it make it seem like they might be out of touch with their actual jobs?

00:47:45.000 You call yourself the most trusted name in news, you get James Earl Jones to do the voiceover, and then you got Anderson Cooper and Don Lemon getting blackout drunk on national TV.

00:47:53.000 Anyway, here's Linda Ronstadt over the weekend explaining that President Trump is the new Hitler.

00:47:57.000 There were a lot of chances that Hitler rose to power. 0.92

00:47:59.000 There were a lot of chances to stop him, and they didn't speak out.

00:48:02.000 And the industrial complex thought that they could control him once they got him in office, and of course he was not controllable.

00:48:08.000 By the time he got established, he put his own people in place and, you know, stacked the courts and did what he had to do to consolidate his power.

00:48:15.000 If you read the history, you won't be surprised.

00:48:17.000 It's exactly the same.

00:48:19.000 The Mexicans are the new Jews? 1.00

00:48:20.000 an enemy for everybody to hate when I was sure that Trump was going to get elected the day he announced. 0.99

00:48:25.000 And I said, he's going to, it's going to be like Hitler and the Mexicans are the new Jews. 1.00

00:48:30.000 And sure enough, that's what he delivered. 0.97

00:48:32.000 You know, the Mexicans are the new Jews. 1.00

00:48:34.000 Really?

00:48:35.000 Like a huge percentage of the American population is Hispanic.

00:48:38.000 Nobody's being rounded up and put in boxcars. 0.99

00:48:40.000 This is so insulting and so stupid, but if you feel like this is who Trump is, of course you're pushing for impeachment, despite the fact that you don't actually have the evidence for this. 0.96

00:48:47.000 Meanwhile, the Democrats are basically hoping that they can peel off a couple of Republican senators to cut against McConnell and drive for a quote-unquote more even-handed impeachment effort, impeachment trial in the Senate. 0.99

00:48:58.000 It's not really going to happen.

00:48:59.000 Susan Collins did say that she was open to having witnesses at trial.

00:49:02.000 Here was Susan Collins from Maine.

00:49:04.000 I am open to witnesses.

00:49:07.000 I think it's premature to decide who should be called until we see the evidence that is presented and get the answers to the questions that we senators can submit through the Chief Justice to both sides.

00:49:23.000 What I don't understand is why the House, having issued subpoenas to Secretary Pompeo, for example, Did not seek to enforce those subpoenas in court and instead rushed to get the articles of impeachment passed before Christmas and yet have not transmitted them to us in the Senate.

00:49:47.000 Okay, so people are reading this as Susan Collins somehow cutting against McConnell. 0.66

00:49:51.000 You listen to that whole quote?

00:49:53.000 She's basically saying, yeah, sure, I'd like to see a trial, but the House didn't do its job.

00:49:53.000 Not really.

00:49:57.000 So this is going nowhere.

00:49:58.000 Everybody knows it's going nowhere.

00:49:59.000 It's all a sham.

00:50:00.000 We can move on with our lives.

00:50:01.000 By early February, this thing will be over and we'll be in primary season full swing.

00:50:05.000 By the way, Bernie Sanders raised a boatload of money.

00:50:07.000 That dude is on the move.

00:50:08.000 Watch out, Democrats, you may nominate an actual open octogenarian socialist.

00:50:12.000 Okay, time for a quick thing I like, and then a thing that I hate.

00:50:15.000 So, things that I like today.

00:50:17.000 Okay, this isn't gonna be so quick, because as you all know, I'm a large-scale Star Wars fan.

00:50:22.000 I'm a big Star Wars geek.

00:50:23.000 My kids are now super into Star Wars.

00:50:25.000 Like, we got them nothing but Star Wars gifts for Hanukkah, and they could not be happier.

00:50:29.000 Honestly, I wish that the world were not such a terrible place, particularly in social media, so I could post videos of my kids, because it is adorable.

00:50:35.000 I have the best video of my three-year-old son, who's very into Empire Strikes Back.

00:50:40.000 I know, maybe a little old for him, but he gets it, he likes it.

00:50:42.000 And there are many videos of me turning to him now and saying, no, I am your father.

00:50:49.000 And him saying, that's not true, that's impossible.

00:50:52.000 And me saying, search your feelings, you know it to be true.

00:50:55.000 And him going, no!

00:50:58.000 My kids are very into it.

00:50:59.000 Okay, so I finally got a chance a couple nights ago to see Rise of Skywalker.

00:51:02.000 We were out of the country for a bit of a vacation.

00:51:05.000 And when we got back, like first move, my wife and I go to see Rise of Skywalker.

00:51:09.000 Now, if you've been familiar with the show at all, you know I've been incredibly critical of the new trilogy.

00:51:14.000 I don't like the new trilogy.

00:51:15.000 I think it was unnecessary. 0.99

00:51:16.000 I think they were fools. 0.99

00:51:16.000 I think they tried to split the baby. 0.99

00:51:18.000 So there were two things they could have done originally.

00:51:20.000 I have to preface my take on Rise of Skywalker with the other two movies because it doesn't work as a standalone film, nor is it really meant to.

00:51:27.000 This film, Rise of Skywalker, was designed specifically to retcon, meaning to go back in time and change the fact that Force Awakens and Last Jedi ever happened.

00:51:37.000 It basically revises the entire story in a much more satisfying way.

00:51:41.000 So here was my original take on this new trilogy.

00:51:45.000 There are two ways that Disney could have gone.

00:51:46.000 Disney, number one, could have recast the entire Original Return of the Jedi, they could have recast somebody as Luke, recast somebody as Leia, recast somebody as Han.

00:51:54.000 Which, by the way, they did.

00:51:55.000 They recast somebody as Han, right? 1.00

00:51:56.000 They did Solo.

00:51:58.000 They could have recast the entire cast, and then they could have just picked up where Return of the Jedi left off with the Admiral Thrawn series, which if you've read any of the Star Wars books, yes I have, then that's actually a really good storyline.

00:52:08.000 And they could have just picked up where they left off and moved on into the future that way.

00:52:11.000 And you would have gotten all of their new adventures.

00:52:14.000 Alternatively, they could have landed the Star Wars universe in like a different place.

00:52:17.000 And they're actually doing this on Disney Plus with The Mandalorian, which is kind of great, right?

00:52:21.000 The Mandalorian is really fun.

00:52:22.000 Jon Favreau directed it.

00:52:24.000 They could have gone back and they could have used some of these characters and put them somewhere else in the Star Wars universe.

00:52:29.000 So Disney actually has done this with a couple of their other series, right?

00:52:33.000 Star Wars Clone Wars they did this with and also Star Wars Rebels.

00:52:35.000 And some of that stuff is really pretty fantastic.

00:52:38.000 They could have done any of those things.

00:52:39.000 Instead, what they chose to do was split the baby.

00:52:41.000 We'll introduce new characters, but we will live off the nostalgia for the first films.

00:52:46.000 And the reason you can't do that is because if you're nostalgic for the first films, you don't want to see bad things happen to your favorite childhood characters.

00:52:54.000 No one wa- Spoiler alert.

00:52:56.000 No one wants to see Han Solo die at the hands of his son like a loser divorced dad after leaving Leia alone for 20 years and flying around the galaxy smoking pot with Chewie and the Millennium Falcon.

00:53:06.000 No one wants to see that.

00:53:07.000 And that's what happens in Force Awakens.

00:53:09.000 No one wants to see Luke, who is this hero who goes from being a whiny teenager to being this mature Jedi, who is able to control himself to save his father.

00:53:17.000 Nobody wants to see Luke become a misanthrope who milks aliens on a foreign planet while whining about his life and disparaging the Jedi tradition.

00:53:24.000 No one wants to see that.

00:53:26.000 So the new series basically took all of your favorite characters, your favorite old characters, and proceeded to ruin them except for Leia because Kathleen Kennedy has this feminist streak where the only characters who are allowed to be competent or good are apparently the female characters. 0.99

00:53:38.000 Okay, so that was the critique of this trilogy. 0.54

00:53:42.000 They basically took all of my favorite characters from my childhood and they wrecked them so that they could promote a bunch of characters who sucked.

00:53:48.000 Okay, Rey was a terrible character because you didn't know, not only you didn't know where she came from, but she was amazing at everything right off the bat, right?

00:53:54.000 This was the biggest critique of the first part of this trilogy.

00:53:57.000 The biggest critique was that Rey, who had not trained in the Force for half a second, was suddenly unbelievably good at it.

00:54:03.000 And Ben Solo, right, Kylo Ren, who is Leia's kid with Han, Who's been training with the force since childhood can be overtaken in a lightsaber battle by somebody who picked up a lightsaber half a second ago.

00:54:15.000 Okay, that's not a thing. 1.00

00:54:16.000 It's stupid. 1.00

00:54:17.000 And everybody who watched the series knew it was stupid. 1.00

00:54:19.000 Meanwhile, you had Poe, who was utterly incompetent. 0.99

00:54:22.000 They tried to create kind of a new Han Solo character.

00:54:24.000 The difference is that Han Solo in Empire Strikes Back, the entire story of Empire Strikes Back, is Han Solo demonstrating that he is wildly competent at a lot of things.

00:54:32.000 The entire Poe Dameron story is the dude is wildly incompetent until he's suddenly promoted to the head of the Rebel Alliance.

00:54:37.000 Right?

00:54:38.000 Finn has no story arc at all.

00:54:40.000 His entire story arc is that he was a stormtrooper.

00:54:42.000 End of story arc.

00:54:43.000 Nothing happens to him for the next three movies.

00:54:45.000 So all of the new characters are completely boring, random.

00:54:49.000 They should have killed Finn in Last Jedi. 0.94

00:54:52.000 When he makes that heroic run, they should have killed him off. 0.99

00:54:54.000 They probably should have killed Poe in Last Jedi. 0.98

00:54:57.000 They should have had him pull the Admiral Holdo maneuver.

00:55:00.000 Instead, they bring in Laura Dern to wear weird hair and do a lightspeed trick. 1.00

00:55:04.000 That, by the way, if anybody could have figured that one out, they could have blown up the Death Star that way, like in Star Wars New Hope as well as Return of the Jedi.

00:55:12.000 Okay, so.

00:55:14.000 All of this is preface to say I hated Force Awakens and I hated Last Jedi.

00:55:18.000 Rise of Skywalker is an attempt to buy all of that back.

00:55:22.000 And understanding that this trilogy never should have happened, and understanding all the flaws of Force Awakens and Last Jedi, now you understand why I liked Rise of Skywalker.

00:55:31.000 Because they attempt to correct as many of these problems as they can while apologizing for the series ever existing.

00:55:36.000 Which is basically what this was.

00:55:38.000 So all of the stuff with Finn and Poe, no one cares about. 0.99

00:55:40.000 All that stuff was dumb. 0.97

00:55:41.000 No one cares about it. 0.99

00:55:42.000 It's a waste of time.

00:55:43.000 You have to do it.

00:55:43.000 It's like the worst of J.J.

00:55:45.000 Abrams.

00:55:45.000 Like the film, it's not a spoiler to say, the film opens with the Millennium Falcon lightspeed jumping, which just turns it into like a silly prop.

00:55:53.000 It's ridiculous. 0.96

00:55:54.000 The entire Empire Strikes Back, which is the best Star Wars film. 0.85

00:55:57.000 Unquestionably, this is fact.

00:55:58.000 This is known.

00:56:00.000 Empire Strikes Back is all about basically Maybe four topics.

00:56:05.000 One is the Millennium Falcon.

00:56:06.000 It's the entire thing in Empire Strikes Back is that the Millennium Falcon's hyperdrive is broken.

00:56:12.000 Okay, that is the central plot device.

00:56:14.000 In this movie, in the new movie, in Rise of Skywalker, the Millennium Falcon is fully on fire and they fix it inside of five seconds flat.

00:56:22.000 All of it.

00:56:24.000 Also, Empire Strikes Back is about Luke growing and realizing that he is insufficient.

00:56:30.000 Okay, so that's the other topic.

00:56:32.000 And also it's about Han Solo being wildly competent. 0.78

00:56:35.000 Poe and Finn, they're wildly incompetent.

00:56:37.000 The Millennium Falcon is made into a prop.

00:56:39.000 Like, all that stuff is sort of the worst of J.J.

00:56:41.000 Abrams.

00:56:41.000 The stuff that's really good, okay, the stuff that's really good is actually quite good.

00:56:45.000 The stuff that's good is that they buy back Han Solo's death.

00:56:48.000 They give him sort of a new exit scene where he's not being killed by his son, where they cheat.

00:56:52.000 He can't be a force ghost because he didn't have the force, but he basically is a force ghost.

00:56:57.000 He comes back.

00:56:58.000 All these are spoilers, okay?

00:56:59.000 Spoilers.

00:56:59.000 You've been warned 1,000 times.

00:57:01.000 You don't want to hear about it.

00:57:02.000 You haven't seen the movie yet.

00:57:02.000 Don't listen.

00:57:03.000 So Han Solo comes back and he talks with Kylo and he basically woos Kylo back to the light side of the force.

00:57:10.000 You find out that Leia, who uses the force in new and bizarre ways in Last Jedi that Like, she literally pulls herself back into a ship after being blasted out into space.

00:57:19.000 And you're like, where the hell did that come from?

00:57:20.000 Luke hasn't even done that.

00:57:22.000 You're told, in this movie, that Leia was trained as a Jedi by Luke.

00:57:28.000 Which makes sense, right?

00:57:28.000 In the books, she actually is.

00:57:30.000 In the books, she actually is trained as a Jedi by Luke.

00:57:31.000 And that she decided not to become a Jedi at the last minute because she foresaw, using the Force, that if she became a Jedi, then her lightsaber would be used to kill Ben.

00:57:39.000 Okay, so that all makes sense.

00:57:40.000 So they retconned that.

00:57:41.000 And then the biggest retcon of all, the one that actually matters, and that answers why Rey is cool.

00:57:46.000 Right, it answers the biggest question, why is Rey even a thing?

00:57:48.000 And the answer is, because she's Palpatine's granddaughter.

00:57:51.000 Which is fantastic, okay, that's a great reveal.

00:57:53.000 That's great, because the most underrated force ability person in the Star Wars series, because everyone's focused on Anakin Skywalker, on Vader, on Luke, on Leia, on Yoda, on Obi-Wan, Nobody's focused on the fact that Palpatine's an unbelievable badass with the Force, right?

00:58:07.000 Palpatine is so strong in the Force that he basically defeats Yoda.

00:58:11.000 He is able to conceal his identity as the emperor for three movies.

00:58:16.000 He's able to turn Anakin to the dark side.

00:58:18.000 Like, Palpatine's an utter badass.

00:58:19.000 And so they bring Palpatine back from the dead, which they sort of had to do.

00:58:23.000 Palpatine's a great character.

00:58:25.000 They bring in all the old musical cues.

00:58:27.000 They bring in all of the old stuff, which is the stuff that I like.

00:58:30.000 So if you're a nostalgia person, right, if you're pissed at this series because you feel like it ruined your childhood, then this movie was an attempt to restore that.

00:58:37.000 It was an attempt to make Han cool again.

00:58:38.000 Fairly successful.

00:58:41.000 It was an attempt to make Leia cool.

00:58:42.000 Again, successful.

00:58:43.000 It was an attempt to make Luke cool.

00:58:45.000 There's a great scene where Luke does, even though he's dead, right?

00:58:48.000 Luke does this thing that Yoda does while he's alive in Empire.

00:58:51.000 Remember in Empire, there's this scene where Yoda raises the X-Wing from the swamp because Luke fails to do so.

00:58:57.000 Here, Luke is able to do that as a force ghost to hand over the X-Wing to Rey.

00:59:01.000 That's great.

00:59:02.000 The callback scene where they find the old Death Star from Return of the Jedi, and Rey has to confront herself, which is another callback to Empire.

00:59:09.000 And then when they're playing the old musical cues, all that stuff is great.

00:59:12.000 What they do with Kylo Ren, bringing him back to the light side is pretty great.

00:59:16.000 J.J. Abrams does a great job in setting up a good reveal.

00:59:19.000 So for several movies, you've been seeing basically Kylo and Rey force Skyping one another.

00:59:25.000 They can talk over long distances.

00:59:27.000 In this movie, they can actually sword fight sort of telepathically, but it has real world ramifications.

00:59:32.000 One is in one place, one is in the other place, and they're having these lightsaber battles, but it actually has physical ramifications in the places where they're having the lightsaber battles.

00:59:40.000 And so that ends with a really fantastic reveal.

00:59:43.000 All that stuff is great.

00:59:44.000 So everything with Kylo, everything with Rey, everything with Palpatine is great, everything with Leia and Han is really good.

00:59:50.000 Like, all that stuff is good.

00:59:51.000 Finn and Poe continue to be disposable.

00:59:53.000 All the other fringe characters end up being disposable.

00:59:56.000 There is this lesbian moment that's been much talked about, because at the very end of the movie, they show a lesbian couple kissing, and it's obviously Disney trying to shoehorn in the, okay, glad we know you're there.

01:00:04.000 It's very silly, and it's very- it's sort of like that moment at the end of- of The Avengers, Infinity War, where all the females land in one part of the battlefield, and you're like, okay, really? 0.83

01:00:13.000 Was that- like, come on. 0.80

01:00:14.000 Okay, that's- that's sort of the same thing here.

01:00:15.000 None of the couples are kissing except this one lesbian couple.

01:00:18.000 Like, alright, I get it, Disney.

01:00:19.000 I get your- I- Fine, you fulfilled your PC quota for the day.

01:00:23.000 Whatever, man.

01:00:24.000 But it's pretty shoehorned in.

01:00:26.000 It's not a big deal. 0.97

01:00:27.000 It's just silly.

01:00:28.000 But overall, the critics are savaging this film.

01:00:32.000 All it tells you about critics, all you need to know is they gave The Last Jedi like 92% on Rotten Tomatoes and they gave this one like 53%.

01:00:37.000 They didn't understand Star Wars.

01:00:40.000 They didn't understand it.

01:00:40.000 This movie understands better how the Force works.

01:00:42.000 This movie understands better how the weapons work.

01:00:44.000 This movie understands better the dynamics between the light and the dark side.

01:00:47.000 It understands Palpatine.

01:00:49.000 I've heard a lot of objections that this film basically makes the Skywalker-Vader interaction completely irrelevant.

01:00:55.000 But that's true the minute that Palpatine lives, right? 0.84

01:00:57.000 I mean, and by the way, that's true the minute that the Rebel Alliance fails.

01:01:00.000 Once the Republic falls again to the First Order, then that whole thing became irrelevant.

01:01:04.000 The new trilogy made that irrelevant, which is why they should have fast-forwarded and taken it to some other part of the universe.

01:01:08.000 But, once you're in the trilogy, this was the best way to end it.

01:01:11.000 Here's a little bit of the trailer if you haven't already seen it.

01:01:13.000 What are you doing there, 3PO?

01:01:16.000 Taking one last look, sir.

01:01:20.000 At my friends.

01:01:22.000 Confronting fear.

01:01:30.000 It's the destiny of a Jedi.

01:01:32.000 Your destiny. - Okay, so this is, it's sort of like Return of the Jedi, this one.

01:01:46.000 Specifically because the part that you care about is all the stuff with the Emperor and all the stuff on Endor.

01:01:51.000 Doesn't matter as much.

01:01:52.000 That's pretty much this movie.

01:01:53.000 Everything between Rey and Kylo and the Emperor and all the old characters is great.

01:01:57.000 And everything else is disposable.

01:01:59.000 But, good for J.J.

01:02:00.000 Abrams for at least trying to go back and un-ruin everything that he ruined in Force Awakens that Rian Johnson then proceeded to wreck in Last Jedi.

01:02:08.000 Okay, I know I went on a long time about Star Wars, but guess what, Toph?

01:02:10.000 It's a new year.

01:02:11.000 It's my show.

01:02:12.000 I get to say what I want.

01:02:13.000 So you know what?

01:02:14.000 We're going to start the new year on an upbeat note.

01:02:16.000 We're not going to do things I hate because I just took forever talking about Star Wars.

01:02:19.000 But suffice to say, if you like the old Star Wars, you should totally, you should totally see this one.

01:02:24.000 It is definitely better than the last two in the series and everybody who's ripping on it didn't understand why the last two sucked.

01:02:29.000 Alrighty, we'll be back here a little bit later today with two additional hours of content, including all of your election updates, Bernie Sanders raising tons of money, where we are in the polls, Joe Biden stepping in it again.

01:02:38.000 We'll get to all that two hours later today.

01:02:40.000 That's why you should subscribe.

01:02:41.000 You get 20% off today when you go to dailywire.com slash subscribe.

01:02:44.000 So go make that happen.

01:02:45.000 Otherwise, we'll see you here tomorrow.

01:02:46.000 I'm Ben Shapiro.

01:02:46.000 Shapiro, this is The Ben Shapiro Show.

01:02:48.000 The Ben Shapiro Show is produced by Rebecca Dabkowitz.

01:02:55.000 Directed by Mike Joyner.

01:02:56.000 Executive Producer Jeremy Boring.

01:02:58.000 Senior Producer Jonathan Hay.

01:02:59.000 Supervising Producers Mathis Glover and Robert Sterling.

01:03:02.000 Technical Producer Austin Stevens.

01:03:04.000 Associate Producer Colton Haas.

01:03:05.000 Assistant Director Pavel Wydowski.

01:03:07.000 Edited by Adam Sijewicz.

01:03:09.000 Audio is Mixed by Mike Koromina.

01:03:10.000 Hair and Makeup is by Jesua Olvera.

01:03:12.000 Production Assistant Nick Sheehan.

01:03:14.000 The Ben Shapiro Show is a Daily Wire production.

01:03:16.000 Copyright Daily Wire 2019.

01:03:17.000 Iran-backed terrorists attacked the U.S.

01:03:21.000 Embassy in Baghdad on New Year's Eve, but decisive leadership dispelled the violence.

01:03:25.000 We will examine why Baghdad didn't turn into Benghazi, and what it means as we look forward to the coming decade.

The Ben Shapiro Show - January 02, 2020

Welcome To 2020! | Ep. 923

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