On the first full day of President Trump's impeachment defense, the Trump Team flips the script on House Democrats and turns the trial of Donald Trump into a national broadcast of Democrat corruption. We will examine the wonderful strategy. Then we will work back and see how that strategy fits in overall because seen in light of the really good stuff that the Trump team gave at the end of the day, the earlier part of their impeachment defense reads like a threat.
00:04:56.500She goes on to say Burisma was so corrupt that George Kent, one of the people who testified during the House impeachment investigation, said he intervened to prevent USAID from co-sponsoring an event with Burisma.
00:05:12.060So the reason this is important here is because you don't just have the Trump team on their heels.
00:05:21.740You don't just have the Trump team so far back that they can't advance their own arguments.
00:05:27.540They're actually going for the Democrats and putting them on the defensive.
00:05:31.520And then Senator Ted Cruz, who I've been hosting this podcast verdict with Ted Cruz with all week long, he comes and hits it home in a press gaggle in one of these breaks.
00:05:44.800Senator Cruz went straight for Hunter Biden and put it in plain terms that everybody, including those who haven't been paying attention 24 hours a day, can understand.
00:05:54.440In the entire proceeding, we have heard just at the beginning of the serious evidence of corruption involving Burisma, the Ukrainian natural gas company that paid Hunter Biden, Joe Biden's son, a million dollars a year.
00:06:12.800So while Joe Biden, let me answer, I'll answer the question.
00:06:15.500Could you answer the question? I appreciate it.
00:06:17.180Let me answer the question without interrupting me, please.
00:06:19.960Burisma paid Hunter Biden, Joe Biden's son, a million dollars a year, while Hunter Biden threatened Ukraine to withhold a billion dollars in aid, unless and until they fired the prosecutor investigating his son.
00:06:39.700When did Joe Biden threaten anyone, sir?
00:06:40.720Joe Biden threatened Joe Biden is vice president of the United States.
00:06:45.060And we just saw a video, which I would encourage every news outlet here to actually show the video of Joe Biden bragging how he told the president of Ukraine that he was going to cut off a billion dollars.
00:06:56.860He was going to block a billion dollars in foreign aid to Ukraine unless they fired the prosecutor.
00:07:01.840And in Joe Biden's own words, son of a bitch, they fired the guy.
00:07:06.680This was a strategy that Senator Cruz had previewed on our podcast earlier this week.
00:07:13.100He said, you've got to make Burisma, you've got to make the Bidens the center of this whole thing.
00:07:21.660You know, I think Pam Bondi did a good job, but I think Senator Cruz did a better job.
00:07:24.960Cruz drove these reporters so crazy that at one point he actually made one of them suggest throwing his nine and 11 year old children in prison.
00:07:38.380Over those two hours, none of the president's attorneys mentioned one single possible crime that Hunter or Joe Biden are accused of.
00:07:47.320Basically, what they said was Hunter Biden got a job.
00:08:17.300These mainstream media hacks, these absolute liberal propagandists.
00:08:26.020They get so angry that that Senator Cruz has identified the real key in the impeachment trial, which is not answering all this B.S. from the Democrats, but actually going after their whole corruption, which was at the center of the phone call to get the investigation that got us the impeachment in the first place.
00:08:42.500Right. Go right back to the heart of it all.
00:08:45.200The the mainstream media liberal hacks were so upset about this, they decide they're going to threaten Ted Cruz's daughters and say they should be thrown in prison.
00:09:00.000The Trump legal team also went after the so-called whistleblower.
00:09:05.020So you had in this case, Patrick Philbin, the deputy counsel to the president, when he was making his presentation in the impeachment trial, he decided to focus in on the so-called whistleblower because I know it's it's so convoluted.
00:09:18.520It's been so insane how this impeachment farce began.
00:09:22.220But let's remember it began when President Trump had a phone call with the president of Ukraine.
00:09:29.860And in that phone call, he suggested some investigations into corruption.
00:09:36.060The allegation then the Democrats made was that President Trump was withholding military aid until Ukraine agreed to investigate corruption that involved Joe Biden.
00:09:47.340And this was a big deal because Joe Biden is running against President Trump in 2020, although increasingly it's looking like he's not going to get the nomination of his party anyway.
00:10:19.960Whistleblower who we haven't heard that much about, who started all of this.
00:10:26.200The whistleblower, we know from a letter that the inspector general of the intelligence community sent, that he thought that the whistleblower had political bias.
00:10:40.420We don't know exactly what the political bias was because the inspector general testified in the House committees in an executive session.
00:12:09.540Recent reports, public reports, suggest that potentially the whistleblower was an intelligence community staffer who worked with then-Vice President Biden on Ukraine matters.
00:12:25.500Which, if true, would suggest an even greater reason for wanting to know about potential bias or motive for the whistleblower.
00:13:10.980I have to admit, I was terrified when these defenses started out today.
00:13:18.040You know, Ken Starr, the famous investigator from the Clinton impeachment, he was the first person on Trump's legal team to make a presentation.
00:13:29.100I thought, if this is all we're going to get from the Trump legal defense, he's actually in a lot of trouble.
00:13:35.400But when you look at Ken Starr's opening arguments in the light of the later arguments, which go right after Hunter Biden, go right after the whistleblower, then you see there is actually a brilliant strategy here in Starr's opening arguments.
00:13:50.860Because his arguments, they played almost like a law school lecture.
00:13:54.960They played almost sort of philosophical, taken out of context.
00:13:59.400But when you look at them in context, they were a threat to Democrats.
00:17:46.120It's not being used in the way that the founders and framers of our constitution wanted it to.
00:17:50.960So, what's happening here is it's reopening some of the impeachment of Bill Clinton.
00:17:58.380It's reminding people of the impeachment of Bill Clinton.
00:18:01.940If that was all they were doing, it would be a very stupid strategy because it would be just restoking those resentments, getting Democrats to remember how much they hated the Clinton impeachment, getting them more ready to go after Trump in this impeachment.
00:18:17.360What this opening did was get all of that out of the way and set the stage of these constant impeachments as a real danger to the republic because we're now just going to be living in a system where the Congress throws out whatever president it doesn't like.
00:18:33.260That's not the system that our founders wanted, but that's the system we're getting into now.
00:18:38.920Ken Starr says that would be a very bad thing.
00:18:41.200In fact, he goes so far as to say that impeachment is hell.
00:18:52.540Or at least presidential impeachment is hell.
00:18:57.520Those of us who live through the Clinton impeachment, including members of this body, full well understand that a presidential impeachment is tantamount to domestic war,
00:19:09.900albeit thankfully protected by our beloved First Amendment, a war of words and a war of ideas.
00:19:18.240But it's filled with acrimony and it divides the country like nothing else.
00:19:26.420Those of us who live through the Clinton impeachment understand that in a deep and personal way.
00:19:32.980It's hell, it's like war, it divides the country and we are in the age of impeachment.
00:21:04.600Are we divided as a country because Trump got impeached?
00:21:08.260No, Trump got impeached because we're divided as a country.
00:21:11.440But it does further divide the country.
00:21:13.740I think that's why you're seeing it speed up.
00:21:16.720Now, this was a great way for the Trump legal team to stave off some criticism.
00:21:24.400Stave off criticism that they didn't want to hear witnesses, that they were just trying to dodge impeachment, that they were using Ken Starr as a lawyer in the first place.
00:21:32.460They addressed all of the criticisms that could be thrown at them.
00:21:39.440They sent a message here, which was, if you want this fight, Democrats, if you're going to try to remove a duly elected president for total BS, then we're going to do it to you.
00:21:59.460And we're not going to give it up without a fight.
00:22:01.880If you want this hell, we will engage in that hell with you.
00:22:04.880You see it on the micro scale when it comes to the witnesses, right?
00:22:09.040The Democrats have all they want is to call former national security advisor John Bolton to testify because they think John Bolton's got dirt on Trump.
00:22:16.540And the threat here, I think, was you call John Bolton, we call Hunter Biden.
00:22:29.300We'll drag Joe Biden's degenerate corrupt son in front of national television on the Senate and have him spout off all the corrupt things he's done with other corrupt people from the Obama administration.
00:22:44.320On the macro level, the threat implied here was you remove our guy from office over BS, guess what we're going to do the first chance we get?
00:22:54.080The first chance there's a Democrat in office and a Republican Congress and hopefully a Republican Senate, that guy's gone.
00:23:01.240Not because it's right, but because that's the political situation that you Democrats have forced us into.
00:23:08.380Because you have shredded the Constitution and we have to live in the new political reality because we can't unilaterally disarm.
00:23:17.120That's the threat that's being implied here.
00:23:20.060And it did a whole lot to turn around the perception of President Trump's defense.
00:23:26.900This is the first day that Trump gets to defend himself, right?
00:23:29.960You had a whole week of Democrat accusations from the House impeachment managers.
00:23:35.080I think they did a very good job and I think the strengths of these lawyers balanced each other out very, very well because they were coming into this today with a big leak.
00:23:43.260There was this big leak to the New York Times from former National Security Advisor John Bolton's forthcoming memoir that said that Trump tied military aid in Ukraine to the investigation of Joe Biden, which, by the way, would be perfectly fine if it did.
00:24:01.820But it created a whole lot of headlines here, right?
00:24:03.760So that's what they were going into and as a result of that leak to the New York Times, obviously highly coordinated to maximize damage to President Trump's impeachment trial, to try to extend this thing so that Democrats can go on a fishing expedition because Democrats have come up empty so far.
00:24:22.680And it had its intended effect because the squishy Republican senators like Mitt Romney came out and said, yeah, we want to hear more witnesses.
00:24:30.940To be fair, in John Bolton's defense, this is not John Bolton's fault.
00:27:50.020We'll get to why Pete Buttigieg is just absolutely blowing it and he's not ready for prime time.
00:27:55.120And we will get to Hunter Biden somehow getting into even more trouble.
00:28:01.160And if this impeachment defense from President Trump keeps going the way it's going, he's going to be in even more trouble soon.
00:28:07.160Before we get to that, I want to talk about the pro-life cause.
00:28:09.360While the pro-abortion activists shout their abortions on national television and refer to pre-born babies as parasites, pro-lifers have fought back.
00:28:18.160All of us at The Daily Wire have spoken out in defense of life.
00:28:21.520Last year, Ben Shapiro addressed a crowd of 100,000 at the March for Life in Washington, D.C.
00:28:26.720And you know what happened as a result of that?
00:28:29.000Our advertisers were targeted by left-wing media operatives.
00:28:35.200They were trying to shut us down and shut us up.
00:28:36.940This is a constant battle to protect pro-life advocacy from the forces pushing abortion.
00:28:42.560Live action has experienced the same thing.
00:28:44.880Live action is one of the most important voices in the pro-life movement.
00:28:48.640I personally support live action and you should too.
00:28:52.140You know, they have helped to expose Planned Parenthood and other abortion clinics for the horrific crimes that they commit.
00:28:59.080Pro-abortion activists have targeted live action and censored them on social media platforms when they don't succeed in kicking them off altogether.
00:29:06.620And that's why our DailyWire.com members are so important.
00:29:10.240Your membership helps keep our cameras on and our microphones turned up, even when the left is pressuring our sponsors.
00:29:16.340You keep our pro-life message from being canceled.
00:29:18.800And from now until January 1st, a portion of any DailyWire.com membership will be donated to live action with promo code LIVEACTION.
00:29:52.300Always be pushing the stories that you want to see.
00:29:54.920President Trump knows this implicitly, right?
00:29:56.940That's how he's been a tabloid star, a media manipulator for 40 years now.
00:30:02.560I mean, since the 80s, really since the late 70s.
00:30:05.480You're seeing this in a particular news story right now, which involves Minnesota Representative Ilhan Omar, one of AOC's squad.
00:30:14.580There have been stories going around since 2016, 2017, that Ilhan Omar married her brother.
00:30:21.520Now, it's not quite as gross as it seems, I guess.
00:30:27.540The allegation is not that she married her brother because she fell in love with him, but that she married her brother to commit immigration fraud, to get some kind of immigration advantage.
00:30:45.580And the question is, why is nobody investigating this?
00:30:48.200Well, it seems someone now is investigating it.
00:30:51.060Two FBI agents held an hours-long meeting in Minnesota back in October with a concerned party, whoever that is, handing over a bunch of documents regarding Ilhan Omar's 2009 marriage to Ahmed Nur Saeed Elmi regarding whether or not she married her brother.
00:31:11.360So, people are investigating this now.
00:31:14.140This is according to multiple sources.
00:31:15.460Because President Trump was asked about it, and instead of playing defense and playing it safe and playing it cautious, he decided to blare that headline all over the world.
00:32:01.140I mean, it is one of the most often used rhetorical strategies he has, but it's very effective.
00:32:08.620Because all you hear from this, because he repeats it multiple times, is Ilhan Omar married her brother.
00:32:13.660The fact that Ilhan Omar married her brother.
00:32:16.180By the way, we don't know that it's a fact yet.
00:32:17.940There's just a lot of evidence for it, and it's pretty weird that no one's investigated it.
00:32:21.180Just to give you a little sense of whether or not it's true, here's just a glimpse at the timeline of her marital life.
00:32:30.020So, 1982, Ilhan Omar is born in Somalia.
00:32:32.880She comes to Minneapolis with her family in 1997.
00:32:36.920Then, five years later, when Ilhan Omar is 19 years old, she marries a guy named Ahmed Hirsi, who is 22, in her faith tradition, but not legally.
00:32:49.0002008, so six years after they get married in the faith tradition, Omar and Hirsi have two kids, and they divorce in their faith tradition.
00:32:59.580One year later, Ilhan Omar, 26 years old at this point, marries Ahmed Noor Saeed Elmi, who's only 23 years old, three years younger.
00:33:09.500Then, two years after that, Ilhan Omar and Elmi end their relationship, divorce in their faith tradition, and do not legally get divorced until 2017.
00:33:28.900Then, six years later, all of a sudden, they separate.
00:33:33.040But they were never legally married, so they don't get legally divorced.
00:33:35.620Then, a year later, she marries this random guy, and then, two years later, they divorce in their faith tradition, but for some reason, they stay legally married for another six years.
00:33:49.500But then, in 2012, so one year after Omar and Elmi separate, but they still don't get divorced for a lot of years, Omar and Hirsi get back together, and they have a third child together.
00:34:01.720For the next few years, Ilhan Omar is filing joint tax returns with this guy, Hirsi, but she's still legally married to this other guy, Elmi.
00:34:12.140Then, Omar becomes a big public figure, and things start to get a little dicey.
00:34:16.480In 2016, she's elected to the Minnesota House.
00:34:19.480In 2017, she legally divorces Elmi, who is possibly her brother.
00:34:26.440Then, in 2018, she legally marries Hirsi, the father of her three children, who she's been with for a very, very long time, and then she's elected to Congress.
00:34:35.480Nothing about this timeline makes sense, and it does seem to be very possible that it's a case of immigration fraud.
00:34:47.280This needs to be investigated, in particular because she's a rising star in the Democratic Party, and she has absolutely odious political views, and she referred to the September 11th attacks as some people did something, and she giggled while talking about Al-Qaeda and Hezbollah.
00:35:03.200And she just, her views are just simply disgusting and repugnant.
00:35:07.520So, on a political angle, we should really go after this lady.
00:36:01.980That momentum has kind of cratered at this point.
00:36:04.480Bernie Sanders is at the top of the polls in Iowa and New Hampshire, multiple polls.
00:36:09.260Pete Buttigieg appears to be deflating, just like Elizabeth Warren.
00:36:13.200It just seems like he's not ready for prime time.
00:36:15.440A great example of this, he was asked in a town hall the other night by a pro-life Democrat.
00:36:21.620If he would welcome her into the party.
00:36:24.740And he danced around the question and he wouldn't give a straight answer.
00:36:28.260And he basically said, yeah, no, of course we can agree to disagree as long as you agree with me.
00:36:33.420And this woman who asked the question wouldn't let him get away with it.
00:36:36.580She said, this Democratic Party platform specifically excludes pro-life Democrats like me.
00:36:44.900Would you represent a Democratic Party that makes room and includes pro-lifers like me?
00:36:51.820Or are you going to just absolutely exclude my views on abortion, my views as a woman, my views as somebody who thinks we should protect life?
00:37:01.220And Pete Buttigieg says, absolutely, you're out of the party.
00:37:04.100The Democratic platform contains language that basically says that we don't belong, we have no part in the party.
00:37:11.360Because it says abortion should be legal up to nine months, the government should pay for it.
00:37:15.200And there's nothing that says that people have a diversity of views on this issue should be included in the party.
00:37:21.380In 1996 and several years after that, there was a language in the Democratic platform that said that we understand that people have very differing views on this issue.
00:37:31.160But we are a big tent party that includes everybody.
00:37:34.280And so therefore, we welcome you, people like me, into the party so we can work on issues that we agree on.
00:37:39.740So my question was, would you be open to language like that in the Democratic platform that really did say that our party is diverse and inclusive and we want everybody?
00:37:51.560Well, I support the position of my party that this kind of medical care needs to be available to everyone.
00:37:59.380And I support the Roe versus Wade framework that holds that early in pregnancy, there are very few restrictions and late in pregnancy, there are very few exceptions.
00:38:09.620And again, the best I can offer is that we may disagree on that very important issue.
00:38:14.540And hopefully we will be able to partner on other issues.
00:38:19.720Terrible answer, regardless of your views of abortion.
00:38:22.580Absolutely terrible answer and a terrible look.
00:38:24.860Look, you know, the Democratic Party is always projecting.
00:38:30.420So they always, because they're so obsessed with race, they call everyone else racists.
00:38:35.000And because they're so obsessed with sex, they call everybody else sexists.
00:38:39.620They have a problem in this election cycle, which is that they've already kicked out all of the racial minority candidates.
00:38:45.740So now it's just a bunch of white people.
00:38:48.800Makes them look pretty hypocritical on racial issues.
00:38:50.920They've got another issue here, which just from a visual perspective is not a great look for Democrats.
00:38:59.000You've got this guy, Pete Buttigieg, telling this woman, who's a Democrat, that she's no longer welcome in the party because she opposes abortion.
00:39:12.040But the Democrats' whole argument on abortion is that in order to support women, you have to be pro-abortion, that all women love abortion, that women's rights are now actually just a synonym for abortion, according to the modern left.
00:39:27.540And yet, here's this woman, right, who says, actually, actually, Mayor Pete, I know that you think you're going to speak for all the women, but I'm a woman and I oppose abortion.
00:40:06.500So very few politicians actually watch sports, but a lot of them try to talk about sports disingenuously because they think that that's a good way to relate to the common man.
00:40:15.980And so Pete Buttigieg was asked about the death of Kobe Bryant, that tragic helicopter crash.
00:40:21.300And Pete Buttigieg said, oh, well, you know, it was just so well.
00:40:25.500He'll be remembered for what he did on the field as well as what he did off the field.
00:40:30.760Because apparently Pete Buttigieg doesn't realize Kobe Bryant plays basketball, which is not played on a field.
00:40:36.320There are millions of people, not just in Los Angeles, but around the world right now, mourning because they were inspired by what he did on the field, what he meant off the field.
00:40:47.340So either Pete Buttigieg doesn't know that Kobe Bryant played basketball, and I got to at least hope that that Buttigieg knows that Kobe played basketball, or he just doesn't know anything about basketball because he thinks it's played on a field rather than a court.
00:41:03.440But you got to know these things, okay, or you got to not pretend to know these things.
00:41:38.940And that actually gets to a story coming out from Washington Post and ABC News.
00:41:42.760There's a new poll that was released on Monday, released yesterday, found that President Trump is now in a better position against nearly every 2020 Democratic competitor as a result of impeachment and the impeachment trial now.
00:42:01.660So the conclusion that all of these political analysts are reaching is that impeachment has been good for Trump.
00:42:08.960And that's why Trump is doing better against all the Democrats now, which may well be true.
00:42:13.760I think probably impeachment has been good for Trump.
00:42:15.560But the part that all of the political analysts are ignoring is the Democratic candidates themselves.
00:42:23.140Because the other thing that's happened in the past few months, other than the impeachment trial, is that we've gotten to see a lot more of these Democratic candidates.
00:42:34.760And I strongly suspect the more we see of these candidates, the less we like them.
00:42:50.320You see this from guys like Van Jones, Democratic analyst, who says, gosh, the people who show up to these debates are not ready to beat Donald Trump.
00:43:01.300You know, the more we see of Buttigieg, the worse his numbers get.
00:43:45.840He's probably the toughest of these candidates.
00:43:47.540And that's probably why his numbers are going up in Iowa and New Hampshire.
00:43:53.260Turning gears from people who are approaching 80 years old, we need to go back down to the youth of the Democratic Party and the youth of the left.
00:44:01.920There was a tweet that was sent out from David Hogg, the most prominent of the teen gun control activists.
00:44:18.780This is a tweet for the founders of the gun violence prevention movement, started centuries ago by almost entirely black, brown, and indigenous LGBTQ women and non-binary people that never got on the news or in most history books.
00:44:39.920We may not know all your names, but thank you.
00:44:42.780I actually want to defend David Hogg for a moment, but obviously that statement is ridiculous.
00:44:50.160First of all, I don't think he's talking about getting on the news.
00:44:53.200I don't think TV news existed centuries ago.
00:44:55.300I'm not sure how he would know that the founders of the gun violence prevention movement were almost entirely black, brown, and indigenous LGBTQ women and non-binary people.
00:45:05.140That seems like a really, really niche group of people to start the gun violence prevention movement, particularly considering the fact that most early gun control was actually specifically anti-black and that all of the great civil rights leaders from emancipation onward made a big point to arm themselves because they were the victims of systemic oppression.
00:45:31.800Never mind all of that, never mind all of that, obviously it's an absurd tweet, but I want to defend David Hogg because of how absurd this tweet is.
00:45:39.760First of all, he's a freshman in college and he doesn't know anything about anything.
00:45:45.820Freshmen in college don't know anything.
00:45:47.740Imagine if you were a celebrity when you were 18 years old.
00:45:51.620This is why teenagers should not be celebrities.
00:45:53.840Child stars tend not to turn out terribly well.
00:46:32.700I mean incredibly radicalized and turned into tools of political ideology.
00:46:39.120The academy is so hopelessly ideological now that facts are often abandoned in favor of political fantasies.
00:46:46.100Like the idea that the gun violence prevention movement, whatever that is, was started by black, indigenous, LGBT, non-binary people of color in the 18th century.
00:49:15.180The fact that we just, according to the left, waged World War III and then I guess won World War III in the killing of Soleimani with Iran retaliating in a weak way.
00:49:39.240And the only reason it's close is because the left is always playing offense, and we're always playing it safe.
00:49:45.020We are right now in 2020 looking at a race where the incumbent, very successful president, is running against an old communist, a radical liar, a small town mayor, and an empty suit whose teeth literally fall out of his mouth during debates.
00:51:27.040Hey everyone, it's Andrew Klavan, host of The Andrew Klavan Show.
00:51:29.640There's a new, utterly astonishing bombshell of a devastating revelation in the impeachment trial of Donald Trump for whatever the hell they're accusing him of this time.
00:51:37.680How many times do they think they're going to pull this stuff off and fool us?