The military investigates cadets for flashing an "OK" symbol on national television, a Democrat switches parties over impeachment, and President Trump goes after Nancy Pelosi's teeth. Today's show is sponsored by ExpressVPN. It's how my listeners secure their internet connections. Join them at ExpressVpn.org/joinnow to secure your internet connections and join the free community of likeminded patriots. You can get a FREE stock like Apple, Ford, or Sprint to help you get started on your path to financial freedom. They don't have to pay commissions or fees, and they don't even have to provide stock! They can give you access to all sorts of great stocks and options, including options to buy, sell, and hold your stocks, bonds, and other precious metals. If you like what you hear, please HIT SUBSCRIBE and become a supporter of The Ben Shapiro Show on Apple Podcasts and other major news outlets wherever you get your news and information. Ben Shapiro is your host, and is always on the lookout for breaking news and commentary on all things financial and investing! Tweet me and let me know what you thought of the show! Timestamps: 1:00:00 - What's your favorite piece of news from the past 24 hours? 2:30 - What s going on in your life right now? 3:15 - What are you looking forward to in the future? 4:00 | What's going to happen next? 5: What s your biggest takeaway from the weekend? 6: What do you think about impeachment? 7:40 - Is impeachment a done deal? 8:00 9: Is it time to impeaching the President? 11:30 12:30 | What s the best thing? 13:00 Is it a foregone conclusion? 15:00 Are you ready for a good idea? 16:00 Do you agree or not? 17:00 Can we impeaching President Trump? 18:00 What do we have a chance to impeached? 19: What are we all agree on this? 21: Is impeachment done? or no? 22:40 | Is this a done? ? 23:40 25: Should we impeached the President or not?? 26:00 Should we be worried about it? 27:10
00:00:00.000The military investigates cadets for flashing an OK symbol on national television, a Democrat switches parties over impeachment, and President Trump goes after Nancy Pelosi's teeth.
00:00:25.000So over the weekend, I was reading this great book by Amity Shlaes called Great Society, all about the growth of government under Lyndon Baines Johnson.
00:00:32.000And one of the fascinating aspects of this particular book is the manipulation of the currency, the incredible amount of manipulation of the currency that went on Under LBJ, it had also gone under FDR.
00:00:42.000Basically, whenever the government wants to spend oodles of money and doesn't actually want to pay for it, they just inflate the currency and they screw around with the exchange rate on gold.
00:00:52.000LBJ actually set it up so that you could only exchange gold at the window, at the so-called federal window, if you were a foreign country.
00:00:59.000But at the same time, on the private market, gold was more expensive than if you were a foreign country trying to exchange for gold in the American markets.
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00:02:23.000Most independents in the country are not fond of this.
00:02:26.000There is a late breaking poll over the weekend showing that while 85 percent of Democrats support impeachment, first of all, it's a low number, right?
00:02:33.000You would expect it to be like 98% of Democrats support impeachment.
00:02:37.000Only 7% of Republicans support impeachment.
00:02:40.000And then in the middle, the independents, only 43% support impeachment.
00:02:44.000So this thing is not breaking in favor of the Democrats.
00:02:46.000So that means that for me, frankly, this is a sort of secondary issue.
00:02:50.000I know, it's weird to say the impeachment of the president in the House of Representatives for the third time in American history would actually represent a nothing burger.
00:02:58.000But in fact, it sort of does, because the fact is that the Senate is not going anywhere with all of this.
00:03:02.000So believe it or not, the bigger story over the weekend is the continuing degradation of our culture, the continuing stupidity of the media.
00:03:08.000I'm speaking, of course, of the attempt to Covington Catholic members of the military cadets at the Army-Navy So, according to the Huffington Post, military officials have launched an investigation after the OK hand symbol that has become known as a symbol for white power was flashed amid a crowd of cadets before the Army-Navy game in Philadelphia on Saturday.
00:03:30.000So, there is the Army-Navy game, President Trump shows up to this every year, and a bunch of the cadets are giving the OK symbol.
00:03:35.000Now, you may be saying to yourself, What the hell how is this in any way racist like how many times have you said your friend?
00:03:58.000And idiots on 4chan decided that what would be a great prank to play on the media, because the media are gullible, is to suggest that every time somebody flashed an OK symbol, what they were actually doing was flashing a white power symbol.
00:04:20.000Okay, now everybody has flashed the OK symbol at some point.
00:04:23.000In fact, in the NBA, many NBA players who are black are flashing the OK, not because they're actually saying OK, but because they give a three-pointer, right?
00:04:31.000Yeah, there's lots of graphics of Steph Curry doing the three-pointer sign after he hits a three-pointer.
00:04:35.000Okay, one of the other aspects of OK is that people have been using the OK symbol for decades to play something known as the circle game.
00:04:45.000The circle game is where you hold up the okay symbol below your waist, and if somebody looks at it, you punch them in the shoulder.
00:06:08.000Or is it that everybody is just playing the circle game?
00:06:10.000The media decide that it's that everybody, including apparently the kid who's obviously of color standing next to Rhys Davis, and has no prob- I assume he's not like fightin' fist fightin' the kids who are right behind him, that all of these kids who are flashing the circle game, that is why- First of all, it doesn't make any sense.
00:06:25.000Okay, if you're gonna do the okay symbol as a quote-unquote white power symbol, you can't hold it down Okay, then it's not a W anymore.
00:06:53.000So Huffington Post reports, military, this was their headline yesterday, big flashing headline, military investigating after cadets flashed apparent white power signs before Army-Navy game.
00:07:13.000The Anti-Defamation League even put out a statement about a year and a half ago about the so-called white power sign saying, this is not an actual white power sign, this is just There's just trolls over at 4chan trying to make it appear that white supremacists are hiding under your bed.
00:07:28.000Even the ADL was smart enough to recognize this, but not our media.
00:07:31.000Mary Papanfus writing for the Huffington Post.
00:07:34.000She says military officials have launched an investigation.
00:07:39.000This is kids playing the circle game, you idiots.
00:07:42.000Military officials have launched an investigation after the OK hand symbol that has become known as a symbol for white power hasn't become known as that.
00:07:48.000Like, if you weren't on Twitter, let's say you didn't spend your entire life being an idiot on Twitter, and you spent your entire life, I don't know, going to sports games.
00:09:07.000Obviously, the Groipers have taken over West Point!
00:09:11.000The story quickly blew up on social media because social media is a place for idiots.
00:09:14.000The Anti-Defamation League this year added the symbol to its list of hate signs.
00:09:17.000Yes, but that's only after they recognized it was not actually a hate sign and the whole thing was being promoted by all of these groups in order to make it appear as though there were vast scores of people all across the country who were routinely engaged in secret white supremacist hand symbols.
00:09:30.000The symbol began as a trolling hoax by members of the website 4chan saying the hand gesture formed a W and a P for white power, but the gesture is now being used in some circles as a sincere expression of white supremacy according to the ADL.
00:09:42.000I mean, they tried this with Stephen Miller very on in the administration when he gave an OK symbol to the camera.
00:09:46.000And it was like, oh, well, that's because he's signaling to his white supremacist friends, guys.
00:09:52.000And we had a story like this not that long ago.
00:09:57.000Coast Guard said it had removed a member from its Hurricane Florence response team on Friday after he made an okay hand gesture on live TV that the service branch deemed offensive.
00:10:05.000The unidentified team member was caught looking into the camera and then swiftly making the hand gesture, prompting a backlash on social media.
00:10:11.000The hand signal was seen in the background of MSNBC's live interview with Section Charleston Commanding Officer Captain John Reid, this is last year, who was providing an update on actions taken by the Coast Guard.
00:10:20.000Many social media users called for the firing of the individual, throw a guy out of the Coast Guard, because he made a so-called white power hate symbol.
00:10:26.000Alternatively, he was playing the circle game on national TV, and this has become a thing.
00:10:31.000It's not actually a bunch of secret white supremacists hiding in plain sight.
00:10:44.000Malcolm Nance on MSNBC, he said, this is now a national- it's a national scandal, guys, because they've taken over, they've taken over everywhere.
00:10:51.000People with their OK hand symbols, everywhere!
00:11:01.000There is a very large hammer coming down from the Commandant's office and the Commander's office at the Naval Academy, because again, this is now a national scandal, even though it might not be a scandal.
00:11:14.000We're going to find out, and all of their senior non-commissioned officers, senior ranking officers, are going to be coming down on top of them like a ton of bricks, because they have disgraced the armed forces, whether they were just As we say, lollygagging and playing around, or whether they actually had the intent to make that symbol in front of a national audience.
00:11:45.000The reason it's become a verb is because the media have an interest in taking situations out of context and then determining that these are secret symbols of white supremacy.
00:11:52.000So kids wearing MAGA hats standing there while they're abused by black Hebrew Israelites and a Native American guy who's getting all in their face and they're just standing there.
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00:14:01.000But the idea that you are going to pay slavery reparations from a university to people who are now, what, five generations removed from slavery?
00:14:23.000About eight, nine generations removed from slavery.
00:14:25.000Okay, so the Associated Press says, the promise of reparations to atone for historical ties to slavery has opened up new territory in a reckoning at U.S.
00:14:33.000colleges, which until now have responded with monuments, building name changes, and public apologies.
00:14:38.000Georgetown University and two theological seminaries have announced funding commitments to benefit descendants of the enslaved people who were sold or toiled to benefit the institutions.
00:15:44.000It's all social justice warrior signaling.
00:15:45.000While no other schools have gone so far, the advantages that institutions receive from slavery, from the slavery economy, are receiving new attention as Democratic presidential candidates talk about tax credits and other subsidies that nudge the idea of reparations toward the mainstream.
00:15:59.000University of Buffalo senior Jeffrey Clinton says he thinks campuses should acknowledge historical ties to slavery, that the federal government should take the lead on an issue that reaches well beyond higher education.
00:16:08.000He's a descendant of slaves, is this Jeffrey Clinton kid.
00:16:10.000He says, it doesn't have to be trillions of dollars, but at least address the inequities and attack the racial wealth gap between African-Americans and white Americans and really everybody else, because this is an American-made institution.
00:16:23.000It is also true that we are now 153 years removed from the end of the Civil War.
00:16:29.000So at some point here, we are going to have to recognize that the best thing that we can do is guarantee equal rights, not start signing people checks.
00:16:37.000But these universities obviously are enthralled to the same to the same SJW mindset that says that if you sign a check, that suddenly this is going to fix everything, which of course it is not.
00:16:47.000Reckoning with American history does not mean Idiotic programs that actually do not rectify the wrongs that they seek to rectify.
00:16:54.000It turns out it's very difficult to have a time machine where you can go back in time and rectify this stuff.
00:16:57.000By the way, if you want to talk about actual reparations, how about the victims of Jim Crow?
00:17:00.000Instead of talking about slavery reparations, you actually should be talking about Jim Crow reparations.
00:17:04.000They should have institutions that benefited from Jim Crow, if there were any.
00:17:08.000And when I say if there were any, there are certainly institutions that benefited from Jim Crow.
00:17:12.000What I mean is that Jim Crow in and of itself was not economically beneficial, it was economically backward, which is why after the end of Jim Crow, what you saw is economic Jumps in exactly the areas that ended Jim Crow.
00:17:23.000But these policies are not designed to actually help people.
00:17:27.000They're not designed to unite the country.
00:17:29.000They're designed to divide the country because they're impractical and impracticable.
00:17:33.000In just a second, we're going to get to everything impeachment related.
00:17:36.000Speaking of impractical, impracticable, and divisive.
00:17:37.000We'll get to all that in just one second first.
00:17:40.000Let us talk about the fact that the First Amendment is under assault in the United States.
00:17:44.000There's a whole group of people on the left who are interested in curbing the First Amendment because they don't want hate speech promulgated.
00:17:51.000They won't tell you what hate speech constitutes, but they would like to rewrite the First Amendment to make everybody feel better.
00:17:56.000Well, this is why the Founders instituted the Second Amendment, because they understood that assaults on fundamental rights are only prevented by an armed population.
00:18:03.000This is something that the Founders were very much into.
00:18:06.000It doesn't mean that we're on the verge of a civil war, God forbid.
00:18:08.000It does mean that the Founders understood That deterring the federal government from overstepping its boundaries was a key function of the Second Amendment.
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00:19:40.000And they charged him with obstruction of Congress, which isn't only not a crime, It isn't even a thing that is wrong.
00:19:46.000Very often that is called checks and balances.
00:19:48.000There's never been an obstruction of Congress charge in an impeachment that was not brought alongside an obstruction of justice charge, which would mean defying the judicial branch, not justifying Congress.
00:19:57.000The executive defying Congress is called checks and balances.
00:20:00.000In some political reports, President Trump committed criminal bribery and wire fraud.
00:20:04.000The House Judiciary Committee alleges in a report that will accompany articles of impeachment this week.
00:20:09.000Now, you may notice, those are not actually charged in the impeachment articles.
00:20:32.000That is why they charge something much broader.
00:20:33.000And they acknowledge this in the report.
00:20:36.000The report is a 169 page assessment of the case for Trump's removal from office.
00:20:41.000And it contends that Trump committed multiple federal crimes, ones that Democrats addressed under the broad umbrella of abuse of power.
00:20:48.000The first article of impeachment against the president.
00:20:50.000The panel's Democrats say, quote, Which again, begs a question.
00:20:53.000Why don't you charge him with these things?
00:20:54.000to the level of a criminal violation to justify impeachment, his conduct here was criminal.
00:20:57.000They labeled Trump's behavior both constitutional and criminal in character and contended that the president betrayed the people of this nation and should be removed from office.
00:21:18.000Why bring forth weak charges, like abuse of power?
00:21:21.000And once again, the answer is, you don't have the goods.
00:21:24.000And it really is not about the charges.
00:21:26.000It really is about getting Trump out of office because Democrats keep saying over and over that if Trump is allowed to stand for re-election, he might win.
00:21:32.000And if he wins, they're not going to respect the results of the elections.
00:21:35.000They are already setting up a counter-narrative, which is that Trump stole an election that has not yet taken place.
00:21:41.000The staff report according to Politico, which was filed to the House Rules Committee just after midnight on Monday, argues that President Trump directed a months-long scheme to solicit foreign interference in the 2020 election, the allegation that forms the core of the two articles of impeachment, abusive power, and obstruction of Congress approved by the Judiciary Committee last week.
00:22:00.000Democrats continued to maintain over and over and over again that they don't actually have to prove a criminal violation, which of course is true, they don't.
00:22:07.000But it would help that the report says the framers were not fools, which, by the way, is the first time that the Democrats have ever acknowledged the framers were not fools.
00:22:14.000Usually you get that the framers, they were operating in a different time and a different place.
00:22:18.000The Second Amendment is a load of bunk.
00:22:20.000The First Amendment needs to be curbed.
00:22:22.000Campaign finance reform, hate speech laws.
00:22:25.000It's Democrats who are usually characterizing the Founders as rich white slave owners, so it's fun to hear them come around to the idea the Framers were not fools.
00:22:33.000They authorized impeachment for a reason, and that reason would have been gutted if impeachment were limited to crimes.
00:22:39.000Well, again, it's not limited to crimes, but typically, if you want some sort of bipartisan support, you would want to prove a crime.
00:22:45.000The Judiciary Committee's report, according to Politico, presents the panel's most thorough analysis yet of why Democrats believe the accusations against Trump are worthy of immediate impeachment.
00:22:53.000It comes a day before the Rules Committee formally considers the articles of impeachment ahead of a likely Wednesday vote on the House floor.
00:22:59.000It is obvious they are going to vote to impeach him on Wednesday, and all of the rest of this is just window dressing.
00:23:05.000Democrats argue that Trump crossed the threshold into criminal behavior with his posture toward Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, writing in the report that his request for the announcement of politically motivated investigations constituted the solicitation of a bribe under federal law, except for the fact that you have to exchange a thing of value and you have to prove intent for bribery, neither of which the Democrats have actually proved.
00:23:25.000A thing of value typically is not information.
00:23:28.000And if you're going to say that a thing of value is the announcement of the investigation, the only testimony that suggests that he only wanted the announcement and not the investigation itself is that of Gordon Sondland.
00:23:37.000And even that is supposition by Sondland.
00:23:40.000The committee also alleges that Trump violated the Honest Services Wire Fraud statute during his July 25th phone call, which is a real stretch.
00:23:46.000They can't even show there was a quid pro quo on the call.
00:23:49.000The call itself does not demonstrate the quid pro quo.
00:23:52.000They're saying that it's a wire fraud request because he said in front of a bevy of witnesses that the United States would like a favor from the Ukrainians, namely investigate everything that went on in 2016, including Hunter and Joe Biden.
00:24:03.000In the accompanying 18-page dissent, Judiciary Committee Republicans led by Representative Doug Collins of Georgia assailed Democrats' evidence as paltry and an affront to the constitutional process of impeachment.
00:24:13.000Colin said, if President Nixon's impeachment proceedings are the gold standard for presidential impeachment inquiries, these proceedings, in stark contrast, will go down in history as the quintessential example of how such proceedings should not be conducted.
00:24:25.000He blasted the articles of impeachment as vague, hyperbolic, and misleading, particularly as they described fear of future presidential misconduct.
00:24:32.000And he says, guys, if you keep saying criminality, then why aren't you alleging criminality?
00:24:36.000He says no president has been impeached solely on non-criminal allegations.
00:24:42.000And again, the motivating factor here is to delegitimize the 2020 election, to say that if Trump is not impeached in the here and now, that he is going to seal the election with the help of foreign powers.
00:24:51.000This, again, underscores the Democrats' claims that Hillary Clinton in 2016 only lost because of the interference of foreign powers, not because she was the world's most garbage candidate.
00:26:10.000The only reason that Speaker Pelosi changed her position and supported moving ahead with an impeachment inquiry was because what Donald Trump is alleged to have done, and all evidence points to him having done it, which is to invite foreign interference in our next election.
00:26:25.000That undermines the very core of our democracy, which is free and fair elections where foreign parties aren't influencing the outcome.
00:26:33.000If he is ultimately exonerated in the Senate, if the Senate Republican majority refuses to discipline him through impeachment, he will be unbounded.
00:26:43.000And I am gravely concerned about what else he might do between now and the 2020 election when there are no restrictions on his behavior.
00:26:51.000Well, I mean, there are restrictions on his behavior.
00:26:53.000The criminal law does not cease to apply between you impeaching him in the House and him being acquitted in the Senate.
00:26:58.000If it turns out that tomorrow he goes over to the Ukrainians and says to them, in exchange for this particular military aid, I want you to arrest Joe Biden with no charges whatsoever, You can impeach him again tomorrow.
00:27:45.000He says, because Nancy's teeth—so Mark Meadows had tweeted out about a Nancy Pelosi statement that it wasn't true, and then Trump said, because Nancy's teeth were falling out of her mouth and she didn't have time to think.
00:28:12.000I remember I had a bit of a tiff online with Bill Kristol, formerly the Weekly Standard, now over at the Bulwark.
00:28:18.000I'm going to have a tiff with Bill Kristol over this sort of thing.
00:28:20.000Trump did something that was very Trumpy and pretty funny on his Twitter account and Bill Kristol was like, this disgraces the office of the presidency!
00:28:27.000And I tweeted back to him like, Bill lighten up.
00:28:29.000Are we going to act with fresh outrage every time Trump does what Trump does?
00:28:34.000Of all the things to be outraged about, are we really going to be outraged because he insulted Nancy Pelosi's dentures?
00:30:52.000Well, in a second, I want to get to the Democrats attempting to make it seem bipartisan.
00:30:57.000And a pretty good giveaway that Democrats were in purple districts and Trump districts who won in the last election cycle are very nervous about this impeachment process.
00:31:05.000Pretty solid piece of evidence on that coming up in one second.
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00:32:31.000We're gonna get to more on impeachment and a pretty good piece of evidence that Democrats, who actually are not in blue districts, are pretty worried about how this thing is going to go.
00:32:39.000But first, great news gang, we have a perfect gift for you to give this holiday season.
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00:33:30.000The Democrats are now attempting to pretend that this thing is a little bit bipartisan, So the reason they're doing this, they're going to try.
00:33:44.000Apparently, freshman Democrats are trying to push for Justin Amash as the impeachment manager in the House.
00:33:51.000Amash has been a rogue congressperson.
00:33:54.000Now he's registered as an independent.
00:33:56.000He's a very small government guy, sort of a Ron Paul Libertarian, in a lot of ways.
00:34:01.000A group of 30 freshman Democrats, led by Representative Dean Phillips of Minnesota, has asked House leaders to consider the Libertarian, who left the Republican Party earlier this year, for the small group tasked with arguing its case for removing Trump in the upper chamber, according to several Democratic officials.
00:34:14.000The thinking, is the Washington Post reporting, according to these people, is that Amash would reach conservative voters in a way Democrats can't, potentially bolstering their case to the public, which of course is untrue given the fact that Amash had to leave the Republican Party and may, in fact, lose his seat.
00:34:28.000He would also provide Democrats cover from GOP accusations they're pursuing a partisan impeachment.
00:34:32.000Amash is one of the most conservative members of the House and a vocal Trump critic.
00:34:36.000Phillips said, to the extent that this can be bipartisan, it should.
00:34:39.000I think including Representative Amash amongst the impeachment managers is a smart move for both the country, for the substance, and for the optics.
00:34:46.000I love the newfound respect that Amash is receiving.
00:34:49.000This is what we, in the conservative movement, call the strange new respect.
00:34:54.000Every so often, if you criticize the right, if something on the right goes wrong and you point it out, you get strange new respect.
00:35:01.000Well, Justin Amash has been receiving that ever since he decided that he'd come out in favor of impeachment.
00:35:06.000Is he actually going to be given that?
00:35:08.000The Democratic leadership does not trust Amash with that because they never know what he might say.
00:35:11.000Amash is enough of a rogue that he might start going off on the Democrats' spending habits and invasions of government.
00:35:17.000Meanwhile, Representative Jeff Van Drew, who's an anti-impeachment Democrat, is now going to switch parties.
00:35:22.000This demonstrates, again, that these Democrats are not quite as popular on this thing among independents as they say they are.
00:35:29.000According to the New York Times, Representative Jeff Vandrew of New Jersey, a moderate Democrat who is among the party's staunchest opponents of impeaching Trump, told aides on Saturday, He plans to switch parties and declare himself a Republican as soon as next week, just as the House is casting its historic votes on articles of impeachment.
00:35:45.000At a White House meeting on Friday, Van Drew sought Trump's blessing for the move, which could be critical to his ability to avoid a primary challenge next year.
00:35:51.000The president urged him to make the jump, according to two Democrats and one Republican, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the talks were intended to be private.
00:35:59.000Andrew has spoken with senior advisors to Trump about announcing his switch at an event at the White House either immediately before or just after the House votes on two articles of impeachment, which is expected to happen on Wednesday, according to Republicans and Democrats.
00:36:10.000Now, typically, when a member of a big political party has switched, that's been big news.
00:36:15.000We can go all the way back to Jim Jeffords switching parties and thus switching control of the Senate of the United States back in the early 2000s.
00:36:22.000But this is obviously big news in the middle of an impeachment hearing.
00:36:25.000You have a guy who is a blue vote in a in a red district in New Jersey switching parties because he believes that he's not going to be able to win reelection if he supports the impeachment.
00:36:37.000The move would provide a silver lining for Trump as he becomes the third president ever to be impeached, according to the New York Times.
00:36:42.000The decision by Van Drew reflects the heavy political consequences hanging over next week's impeachment vote, particularly for moderate Democrats in districts that supported Trump in 2016.
00:36:50.000There are about 30 Democrats who are sitting in districts that supported Trump.
00:36:53.000Republicans are targeting those districts heavily.
00:36:55.000The impeachment vote could come back to haunt all of those people.
00:36:59.000Jerry Nadler, for his part, leading the House Judiciary Committee, ripped into Van Drew, saying that the real reason he's not doing this, the real reason he's switching, is not out of principle, it's out of political fear.
00:37:10.000What he's reacting to is a public polling that shows he can't get re-nominated.
00:37:15.000His electorate in his district is 24% to re-nominate him and 60% to nominate somebody else.
00:37:21.000But more to the point, this is not political.
00:37:24.000We should not be looking at those things.
00:37:32.000And what is fascinating here is that members of Van Drew's own constituency, Michael Suleman, the Atlantic County Democratic chairman, actually wrote a letter to Van Drew.
00:37:41.000He said, I'm imploring you to vote in favor of impeachment.
00:37:43.000A no vote on impeachment will suppress Democratic turnout down ballot, which my organization cannot sustain.
00:37:48.000In other words, if they try this impeachment and it turns out to come to nothing, that could actually suppress the Democratic efforts to get out the vote.
00:37:54.000And it is interesting that Democrats Are this early playing the card that they almost expect Trump to win if he's not impeached?
00:38:02.000That's the only reason that you put out there the preventative message that if Trump is elected, it's illegitimate because you actually expect that he's going to win.
00:38:10.000Meanwhile, in the Senate, Chuck Schumer is attempting to military, but he has no power in the Senate, so it doesn't really matter.
00:38:15.000Just as this House thing has been run as a sham, the Senate thing will be run as a sham also.
00:38:20.000The Senate Republicans are going to rush this thing through.
00:38:23.000Mitch McConnell, Senate Majority Leader, he has no interest in dragging this thing out, and he does not think that the Democrats proved their case in the House.
00:38:29.000So, Chuck Schumer is now trying to force Mitch McConnell to call a bunch of witnesses from the White House.
00:38:35.000Those witnesses from the White House already said they are not testifying in front of Congress.
00:38:39.000And the Democrats could have called them in the House.
00:38:41.000All they had to do was wait this thing out, but they refused to wait this thing out because they know they're not going to get it.
00:38:44.000So instead, Schumer is going to pretend that McConnell is engaging in a cover-up by not calling the same witnesses Democrats refused to wait for over on the House side.
00:38:53.000According to Axios.com, Schumer has now sent a letter to McConnell in which he asks the Republican leader to call four witnesses who refused to testify before the House impeachment committees.
00:39:02.000The witnesses Schumer has asked for all have direct knowledge of Trump administration decisions, He wants the Senate to call Mick Mulvaney, the acting White House Chief of Staff, John Bolton, the former NSA, Michael Duffy, the Associate Director for National Security, Office of Management and Budget, and Robert Blair, Senior Advisor to Mulvaney.
00:39:21.000The Senate Democratic leader's request may appeal to some moderate Republicans, but that obviously is going nowhere.
00:39:27.000And the reason that it is going nowhere, obviously, is because why exactly would McConnell call people that, again, the Democrats could have called but would not wait for?
00:39:34.000Let's not pretend here that Democrats had no authority to call these people.
00:39:37.000Some of them, they didn't even issue legal subpoenas to.
00:39:39.000Some of them, they were just like, here's a request to show up at the House.
00:39:42.000And these people are like, no, don't think so.
00:39:44.000And he's like, obstruction of Congress!
00:39:47.000That's the way that this thing has gone so far.
00:39:57.000And people have already taken their stances.
00:40:00.000There are some varying poll statistics on how popular this is.
00:40:02.000There's a Fox News poll that said 54% of Americans support the impeachment at this point.
00:40:07.000But there are other polls suggesting that it's well under 50%.
00:40:10.000The Fox News poll is actually a little bit of an outlier.
00:40:13.000Suffice it to say that after it fails in the Senate, I do not think that it does any damage to President Trump long term.
00:40:18.000It didn't do any damage to Bill Clinton long term, obviously.
00:40:21.000He was impeached in the House and then acquitted in the Senate.
00:40:24.000Meanwhile, the fight over the FBI and the Intelligence Committee continues.
00:40:29.000Over the weekend, James Comey found himself on the hot seat, the former head of the FBI, who had declared himself the wisest and fairest person.
00:40:36.000The kind of guy who, in his off hours, just goes out into nature, and stares at trees, and takes upward-angled pictures of himself, hero shots, backlit.
00:40:47.000That guy who's appearing on national TV with Chris Wallace and he acknowledged, yeah, you know, that whole FISA process that I oversaw going after Carter Page.
00:40:55.000Maybe I was like a little overconfident on that whole thing.
00:40:58.000Also, he's wearing the world's ugliest jacket.
00:42:04.000Maybe is that there was a system of bias in which the people who are investigating this thing thought that they were going to come down on one side or the other.
00:42:10.000And by the way, if you notice the treatment of the Hillary Clinton case next to the treatment of the Donald Trump case, what you see is that top members of the FBI were firmly convinced that Hillary had done nothing wrong.
00:42:20.000James Comey rewrote the law in order to make it that Hillary Clinton had done nothing wrong.
00:42:24.000Meanwhile, his FBI was pursuing a FISA warrant against Carter Page that, according to the IG, was rife with 17 errors on four separate applications.
00:42:32.000There were people working on this thing over and over.
00:42:54.000Horowitz says there was no political bias in opening the investigation.
00:42:58.000He talks about problems with the five big problems with the FISA process.
00:43:03.000But isn't it harder to argue that there was no political bias overall when you see 17 mistakes made by three teams on four separate FISA applications?
00:43:27.000is overcome the presumption that there was bias, meaning all he has to do is say, OK, they give a plausible excuse that that bias is not the explanation.
00:43:37.000But the fact is that if you looked at this many errors, it's like the arguments about bias in the media.
00:43:42.000People on the right, they look at social medias, Twitter, how Twitter runs its business, how Google runs its business.
00:43:45.000They say, OK, why is that every single error committed by these businesses cuts against the right?
00:43:50.000They look at the media, they look at The New York Times and The Washington Post.
00:43:53.000When was the last time that the New York Times or the Washington Post had to correct a story because it was too biased in favor of the right or against somebody on the left?
00:44:01.000And so we say, right, when all the errors line up in one direction, this is no longer just people making mistakes.
00:44:06.000This is people making mistakes in a particular direction.
00:44:08.000And that's exactly what happened over at the FBI.
00:44:12.000Meanwhile, Adam Schiff, it turns out, was lying pretty much openly to the American people.
00:44:16.000There were these dueling memos that went out.
00:44:17.000We reviewed them at the time, one from Devin Nunes and one from Adam Schiff, about the nature of the FISA warrant.
00:44:23.000Devin Nunes had suggested that the FISA warrant was completely botched, that it was based on the Steele dossier, that the judge had not been properly informed of the bias inside the Steele dossier.
00:44:34.000And Schiff had said, no, no, no, the FISA warrant was perfectly fine.
00:44:36.000Here's Chris Wallace pointing out to Adam Schiff, dude, you seem to have lied to the American people.
00:44:40.000At that time, in 2018, you said the FBI and Department of Justice did not, quote, omit material information.
00:44:50.000Apparently, you did not know at the time that, in fact, Steele's main Russian sources had told the FBI that he had misrepresented what that Russian source had said, and that the FBI knew at the time that Carter Page, in fact, was acting as a contact, as an unofficial source for the CIA.
00:45:07.000Given what you know now, we talked earlier to Director Comey and he basically said I was wrong in what I represented back in 2018.
00:45:17.000Are you willing to admit that you were wrong in your defense of the FBI's FISA process?
00:45:23.000I'm certainly willing to admit that the Inspector General found serious abuses of FISA that I was unaware of.
00:45:41.000Or is that you're a congenital liar and that you spend a lot of your time lying, Adam Schiff, who led the impeachment process against Trump?
00:45:47.000It is impossible to separate out all these strands.
00:45:50.000And for the American people, I think it's very difficult to separate out all these strands.
00:45:53.000You got Comey and the FBI committing a series of, at best, errors that harmed the president, leading to a two-year investigation that ends up finding nothing in the way of actual Trump-Russia collusion.
00:46:02.000And then that's followed by a Ukraine process that's led by Adam Schiff, the same guy who was leading up the Trump-Mueller investigation in the House and apparently lying repeatedly to the American public.
00:46:14.000All that's going to come out from this is that the American people don't have time to watch all this.
00:46:49.000I remember saying it during the Obama years.
00:46:51.000Oh sure, you know, the economy is not as strong as Trump says, as Obama says it is.
00:46:56.000There are two separate articles in the New York Times today talking about why GDP numbers are false and also why Trump is not succeeding in the swing states.
00:48:36.000Apart from agriculture and manufacturing, everything is going okay, said Ernie Gross, an economist at Creighton University in Omaha, who publishes an economic index that tracks nine states from Minnesota to Arkansas.
00:48:45.000In this part of the country, that's not comforting.
00:48:47.000Those are two industries we depend on.
00:48:49.000Yes, but those industries were never going to be held up absent massive subsidies from the federal government.
00:48:54.000But I love that the New York Times is trying to claim that this is a problem for Trump.
00:48:59.000Again, economic growth across the board is not a problem for Trump.
00:49:02.000It is a very good thing for President Trump.
00:49:04.000There's another article in the New York Times today from David Leonhardt called, Why You Shouldn't Believe These GDP Numbers.
00:49:09.000Funny, you seem to believe them when Barack Obama was president.
00:49:11.000Now, all of a sudden, you don't believe the GDP numbers.
00:49:14.000Instead, it's that Americans are dissatisfied.
00:49:18.000Because GDP keeps on rising, but it no longer tracks the well-being of most Americans.
00:49:22.000Well, actually, it does track the well-being of most Americans in terms of the products and services available to them.
00:49:28.000In terms of living standards in the United States, it does track that fairly well.
00:49:31.000The GDP undervalues the growth of the American economy, because the GDP has always been about what is spent on products and services.
00:49:37.000So, services that are free, like for example, every time you use Google Maps, you just added value to your life.
00:49:42.000That did not add to the GDP in any way.
00:49:44.000But, so many of the things that we take advantage of on a daily basis are things that don't add to GDP.
00:49:49.000America's growth has been far more explosive than GDP numbers have shown over the past few decades because information technology is particularly hard to value inside GDP.
00:49:57.000But according to David Leonhardt, GDP is overestimating the amount of growth happening in the economy and that's why you should vote Trump.
00:50:04.000The desperation here, you can feel it, it's getting strong.
00:50:06.000Okay, time for some things I like and then things I hate.
00:50:09.000So, would you like to watch an incredibly stupid movie that is also fun?
00:50:13.000So, I'm into incredibly stupid movies that are fun.
00:50:25.000I'm not either, but at least I can take the blood and gore.
00:50:28.000What she is into is dumb action movies, which is one of the reasons I love my wife.
00:50:31.000Dr. Shapiro is very into dumb action movies, and this is a completely stupid action movie that has some great action sequences and is also very dumb, as I say.
00:52:11.000Okay, time for a quick thing that I hate.
00:52:14.000So the House Democrats and President Trump have been ushering in an era of goodwill, believe it or not, when it comes to passing legislation.
00:52:27.000So over the weekend, the House Democrats passed a National Defense Authorization Act budget by a 377 to 48 vote.
00:52:34.000Basically, everybody wants to clear the tables for 2020.
00:52:37.000We will be spending $738 billion on a defense bill.
00:52:54.000We're blowing out spending at insane, insane rates.
00:52:58.000Also, the Democrats are working on passing the USMCA, which is the replacement for NAFTA, which does have some enormous giveaways to the unions.
00:53:08.000It basically restricts the amount of a car that has to be manufactured in the United States in order to avoid tariffs.
00:53:13.000It restricts The the wages that can be paid in other countries in order to avoid tariffs.
00:53:18.000So that's good for American car manufacturing.
00:53:21.000It is not good at all for the for the American consumer.
00:53:27.000But again, as we saw in the 1940s, 50s and 60s in the United States car industry, what is good for American unions?
00:53:34.000When it comes to the car industry, it's not particularly good for the car industry in the long run because eventually those tariffs come down and everybody else is more competitive.
00:53:40.000Pat Toomey is very critical of the new NAFTA deal.
00:53:58.000And that's because trade deficits don't matter.
00:54:00.000That money gets reinvested back in the United States.
00:54:03.000So unfortunately, USMCA is an exercise through all kinds of new provisions to diminish trade and that's why I hope Republicans will reconsider this.
00:54:13.000We've historically recognized that we're all better off with more open markets.
00:54:18.000Why do you think the administration thought Pelosi had more leverage than they did?
00:54:22.000I don't have an explanation for that, Chuck, but in the end there's no question it's a complete capitulation to Pelosi.
00:54:28.000Now there's a lot of talk about how this is going to help auto companies in the United States.
00:54:31.000It may help domestically based auto companies, but a lot of auto companies that are based in foreign nations have built factories in the United States.
00:54:39.000The increase in labor costs in places like Mexico and the United States means that maybe those cars get built overseas instead and then shipped into the United States if they're not going to be able to meet those requirements of being manufactured in the United States anyway.
00:54:51.000According to the Wall Street Journal, what is actually in the USMCA is US labor unions and Democrats have tried to unionize Mexican workers to drive up wages in the Mexican auto industry, which of course means that cars are going to cost more for American consumers.
00:55:06.000All fun and games for many of the members of the unions, like the UAW.
00:55:09.000Not necessarily fun and games for the American consumer, who eventually is going to opt for the cheaper car anyway, because that is what has historically happened.
00:55:17.000USMCA, according to the Wall Street Journal, also significantly tightens the rules that the auto industry has to follow in order to trade vehicles duty-free in the United States, in North America.
00:55:25.000A certain proportion of a car will have to be produced by workers with higher wages.
00:55:28.000A greater proportion of components will have to originate in North America.
00:55:46.000Big drug makers are likely to be disappointed because the Democrats did push the Trump administration to remove language that would have protected expensive biologic drugs from generic imitators for 10 years.
00:55:55.000The existing NAFTA treaty has no such drug protections.
00:55:58.000So there are some upsides and some downsides here.
00:56:00.000Bottom line is we are blowing out spending.
00:56:02.000Nancy Pelosi got a lot of wins for the unions inside the new NAFTA.
00:56:06.000And a lot of this is happening in the run-up to the election, specifically because Trump wants the tables cleared.
00:56:11.000This is also why he has signed a partial trade deal with the Chinese in order to clear the decks for 2020.
00:56:18.000There should be bipartisan understanding that China is in fact a geopolitical enemy of the United States.
00:56:23.000But absent that understanding, Trump signing this thing, it makes political sense.
00:56:28.000He doesn't want the Chinese sinking the economy a month before the election.
00:56:32.000Meanwhile, Democrats are working on even more legislation.
00:56:35.000According to the Washington Examiner, the House will vote on legislation to fund the government for the fiscal year, which will dodge a government shutdown, and lawmakers will also likely vote on a long-awaited major trade deal between the U.S., Mexico, and Canada this week.
00:56:47.000Pelosi, a California Democrat, has won passage of several major bills in December, including prescription drug legislation, a defense spending authorization measure, and a bill that overhauls the immigrant guest worker program.
00:56:58.000In a clear signal that Pelosi wants to shift the focus away from impeachment, she designated Representative Kim Schreier, a Washington Democrat who represents a swing district, to deliver the party's swing address.
00:57:10.000She said, in my district, it's not impeachment.
00:57:11.000It's not what is on the front page of the newspapers in Washington, D.C.
00:57:14.000It's what are you going to do to bring down the cost of prescription drugs?
00:57:17.000Republicans who oppose the impeachment have repeatedly criticized House Democrats for focusing on impeachment.
00:57:23.000Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell announced the trade deal, the U.S.-Mexico-Canada trade agreement.
00:57:28.000He said it would not get a full vote until after the Senate takes up a trial to consider the articles of impeachment.
00:57:33.000So Democrats are trying to force this through, again, demonstrating they don't actually have a lot of faith in the impeachment effort.
00:57:38.000They believe that in the end, this is going to harm them, which is why they're trying to ram through a bunch of legislation.
00:57:43.000Trump also wants a bunch of legislation rammed through so he can add to his list of accomplishments, even if those accomplishments are not particularly conservative.
00:57:50.000And I am starting to hear kickback from certain conservative members of the Senate and the House of Representatives saying that these deals that he's cutting with Pelosi have been like every other deal he's cut with Pelosi, rife with enormous amounts of government spending and giveaways to Nancy Pelosi's key constituencies.
00:58:04.000Getting things done at the federal level was never the goal of the Founding Fathers, but since we now live in a world where it's considered a complete catastrophe if any sort of gridlock takes place, of course Trump is going to do this in the lead up to 2020.
00:58:17.000That's not a justification for signing bad bills.
00:58:19.000It is an explanation of what exactly Trump is doing.
00:58:24.000It's not going to accomplish anything.
00:58:26.000The only thing in the end that is going to continue to result is America blowing out the spending, and that's on Republicans and it's on Democrats.
00:58:32.000Okay, we'll be here a little bit later for two additional hours of content.
00:58:35.000Otherwise, we'll see you here tomorrow.
00:59:10.000Hey everybody, it's Andrew Klavan, host of The Andrew Klavan Show.
00:59:13.000You know, some people are depressed because the American Republic is collapsing, the end of days is approaching, and the moon has turned to blood.
00:59:19.000But on The Andrew Klavan Show, that's where the fun just gets started.