All Episodes
Previous Next
March 7, 2017 - The Ben Shapiro Show
22:09
Ep. 265 - Trump Tweets, The World Goes Insane
| Copy link to current segment

Time Text
On Monday morning, New York Daily News race-centric columnist Sean King posited a new change to the Constitution to oust Donald Trump.
He tweeted, quote, A few serious but wild questions.
One, could the people of the United States somehow hold a vote now or in the next year to oust Donald Trump like a recall of some sort?
And then he also tweeted, What other ways exist for the American people to legally oust an unethical president?
Impeachment only?
We have long since crossed a point where real Donald Trump is so dishonest, so unethical, that it is truly dangerous for our democracy.
In layman's terms, what would it take for the USA to pass a constitutional amendment for a president recall like California has for governor?
Apparently, Sean King was too busy tweeting to read the Constitution.
You know, the document that answers this exact question many, many times.
Impeachment is the only constitutional way of ousting a sitting president, of course, unless Trump is declared mentally unfit for office under the 25th Amendment by the VP and a majority of cabinet officers, or of such other body as Congress provides by law.
But our constitutional system was designed to avoid the instabilities of parliamentary democracy, with its constant votes of no confidence, its constant elections, its shifting governmental powers.
As for revisions of the Constitution, the Constitution also sets out how amendments work, but that would require, you know, actually reading things.
It would also require Donald Trump to do something so bizarre that VP Pence or House Republicans had no choice but to initiate Trump's ouster.
He hasn't.
The left's hysteria right now is so over the top, they can't even wait for Trump to implode for him to become unfit in their eyes.
He was unfit the day he won.
Here's the truth.
Trump's Twitter feed is not a threat to the Republic.
His rhetoric may not be good for civil discourse, but That's nothing new.
President Obama spent the last eight years undermining civic discourse in a far more sophisticated way than Trump does with his 140-character blasts.
And Obama undermined faith in the government far more than Trump has, which is how Trump was able to sweep into the White House on the back of popular discontent.
The left can keep dreaming that Trump will just disappear, or they can deal with reality.
So long as they do the former, Trump will keep winning.
It looks like Trump's winning streak will probably continue on that basis.
But just as importantly, the left's lack of care about basic civics is one of the reasons politics breaks down.
Our system is actually pretty durable.
The founders created it that way.
But the left doesn't care about the system, which is why the executive branch continues to accrue power.
Civic ignorance leads to populism that favors powerful demagogues.
If the left ever once read the Constitution and respected it, there might be an actual shot at a government of, by, and for the people, rather than an elected oligarchy every four years or so.
I'm Ben Shapiro.
This is The Ben Shapiro Show.
All righty, so tons to get to.
Obviously Donald Trump tweeted something and that set the world on fire, and we'll talk about whether what he tweeted was accurate or inaccurate, or whether it matters, or if the media has completely lost their mind.
A lot to get to on that score, but first, we have to say thank you to our sponsors over at Mack Weldon.
So Mack Weldon, M-A-C-K-W-E-L-D-O-N dot com.
Mack Weldon dot com.
They sell the best underwear That is available.
They sell undershirts and hoodies and sweatpants.
It is so comfortable.
It is so durable.
It really is fantastic, fantastic stuff.
They believe in smart design and premium fabrics and simple shopping.
They have a line of silver underwear and shirts that are naturally antimicrobial, which means that they eliminate odor, which is really cool, and they want you to be comfortable.
So if you don't like your first pair, you don't even have to return it.
You can keep it, and they'll still refund you, no questions asked.
And not only do they look good, they perform well too.
I can I can attest to that.
Basically, I had a bunch of underwear from other brands, and as soon as I got Mack Weldon underwear, I threw all of it out because Mack Weldon is just that much superior to all the other underwear that I own.
I also got one of their hoodies, and it is fantastic.
It's just great stuff all the way through.
MackWeldon.com.
You get 20% off using promo code Shapiro.
That's promo code Shapiro, S-H-A-P-I-R-O.
If you don't know how to spell my name, by the way, then you probably shouldn't be listening to or watching the show.
It's exactly how it sounds.
MackWeldon.com using promo code Shapiro, S-H-A-P-I-R-O.
You get 20% off if you use that promo code.
Plus, they will know that we sent you.
Okay, so everything went nuts over the weekend.
Why did everything go nuts over the weekend?
Because, unfortunately, we now live in a world where when Donald Trump tweets things, everybody takes it seriously.
And this is a silly world, okay?
Donald Trump tweets lots of stuff.
And the stuff that he tweets is usually coming straight out of his butt, okay?
Donald Trump just sees stuff on TV and then he tweets it.
And that's not the end of the world.
It doesn't mean he's a bad president.
It doesn't mean he will be a bad president.
It means that he uses Twitter as some sort of diarrheic format for him to just spew out his thoughts.
And sometimes that's actually really useful because his thoughts are useful.
And sometimes his thoughts are not.
But to pretend that every tweet, and this is what the media is doing, to pretend that every tweet that Donald Trump sent is some sort of reflection of internal Donald Trump administration policy or reflects the best available intelligence.
No.
No.
So here's what happens.
Donald Trump sends a series of tweets on Saturday morning.
He's all mad because he saw a story in Breitbart that was basically a synopsis of all of the various actions taken by the Obama administration and the DOJ in the run-up to the election.
And after the election, with regards to sort of the deep state going after Donald Trump, and here's what he tweeted.
He tweeted, And then he tweets, let me find the exact text, because it's hard to see here a little bit.
Nothing found.
This is McCarthyism.
Is it legal for a sitting president to be wiretapping the president prior to an election?
Turn down, right?
And then he tweets, let me find the exact text because it's hard to see here a little bit.
He says, turn down by court is new low, right?
And then he tweeted also, I bet a good lawyer can make a great case out of the fact that President Obama was tapping my phones in October just prior to election.
He said, how low has President Obama gone to tap two Ps, my phone, during the very sacred election process?
This is Nixon Watergate, bad or sick guy.
And so he tweets all this out, and everybody loses their mind, right?
And then, like an hour and a half later, he tweets out, Arnold Schwarzenegger isn't voluntarily leaving The Apprentice.
He was fired by his bad, pathetic ratings, not by me.
Sad end to great show.
The reason I add that last tweet is because this is how Donald Trump tweets, gang.
Okay, just get used to it.
Donald Trump is not tweeting the best available intel available from his intel community.
He's not tweeting government secrets.
He's tweeting whatever comes into his head, which I kind of like in some ways because it means we know what he's thinking.
And in some ways I think, well, he's the president, he probably shouldn't be doing that.
But this raises a bunch of questions, so everybody loses their mind.
So we'll answer the first question first.
The first question is, is Donald Trump correct?
Is, in fact, did Obama order him to be surveilled?
Did Obama order his wires to be tapped?
So, that specific charge is wildly overblown.
That specific charge is wildly overblown.
Marco Rubio was on one of the TV shows and he says that he's not sure exactly what Trump is talking about here.
President Trump made this very serious allegation.
You're on the Senate Intelligence Committee.
Do you have any evidence at all to suggest that President Trump is stating something factual here?
By that you mean the tweet yesterday about the President Obama?
Yes.
Yeah, so obviously I have no... I'm not sure what it is he is talking about.
Perhaps the President has information that is not yet available to us or to the public.
And if it's true, obviously we're going to find out very quickly.
And if it isn't, then obviously he'll have to explain what he meant by it.
So I don't...
I'm not sure what the genesis of that statement was.
Okay, so not a ringing defense from Senator Marco Rubio.
Then, Martha Raddatz has on Sarah Huckabee Sanders, who's another one of these spokespeople for the president.
She is not good at her job.
Here's Martha Raddatz grilling her over Trump's tweets.
Sounds like the White House is really doubling down on what President Trump says happened.
As we should, Martha.
If this happened, once again, this would be the greatest abuse of power and overreach that's probably ever occurred in the executive branch.
It's something that certainly deserves to be looked at.
But what about the accusation?
You just keep saying, if, if, if the President of the United States said it was a fact, He didn't say, I read a story in Breitbart or the New York Times or wherever else.
He said, just found out that Obama had my wires tapped in Trump Tower.
That's not an if.
Look, I will let the President speak for himself, but in terms of where we are in the White House, our ask... You're his spokesperson.
And I'm speaking about it right now.
But you're backing off of it.
You're backing off of what President Trump said.
How am I backing off of it while I'm saying that I think that this happened and I think that the American people have a right to know?
And I think that we should get definitive answers.
I think we need to put out hard facts that show that this happened.
I think we need to- well, then do it.
And this is the problem.
Okay, so James Comey, who's now- the left loves James Comey.
So basically, James Comey just bounces around between being loved by various political parties.
When he says that Hillary didn't commit a crime, then he's the best FBI director ever, according to the left.
Then, he says that we've reopened the investigation into Hillary's email, and he is the worst person ever!
And then, a week later, he says, well, we closed that, and then he says, oh, well, I guess he's okay.
And now he's ripping on Trump, saying that this never happened, that Obama never ordered the DOJ to wiretap Trump, and suddenly he's everybody's friend again.
Everybody looooves James Comey, right?
He's just the best!
Everybody loves James Comey.
And then, you know, and then you have people responding to James Comey, saying, so here's Kellyanne... Here's a White House spokeswoman, it's again Sarah Huckabee Sanders, this morning, saying that Trump doesn't believe Comey when Comey says that Obama didn't wiretap him.
...asked by Sarah Huckabee Sanders, spokesperson for the president.
Sarah, thank you for joining us this morning.
So we now know that the FBI director has told the Justice Department that President Trump's explosive claims are inaccurate.
Does President Trump accept the FBI director's denial?
You know, I don't think he does, George.
I think he firmly believes that this is a storyline that has been reported pretty widely by quite a few outlets.
The wiretapping has been discussed in the New York Times, BBC, Fox News, and we believe that it should be looked at by the House Intelligence Committee.
Sarah, I have got to stop you right there.
Every single article you just mentioned does not back up the President's claim that President Obama had him wiretapped.
Not a single one of those articles backs that up.
So what is the President's evidence?
It does back up the fact that the administration was wiretapping American citizens.
There was a wide reporting suggesting that his administration, whether it was directly ordered by this president specifically, his administration could have done that.
Okay, so there's a lot of wiggle room here now.
I'm going to get to the wiggle room in a second and the fact of what actually happened here, but...
But here's the reality of what basically happened.
Donald Trump read some reports.
He then did a very summarized version of those reports that was not quite accurate, and then the media blew up with it.
And so every scandal basically follows this pattern.
Every scandal basically follows this pattern for the left, okay?
Donald Trump tweets something.
It is not accurate, but it has a connection to reality, right?
This is how Trump operates.
He says something that's not quite accurate, but it has a connection to reality.
The left goes, that's false, and it has no connection to reality.
And then the right says, no, but it does have a connection to reality.
And then the left says, you're all liars.
It's fake news.
And the right goes, but it's not fake news because you know what?
Obama was involved.
His administration was involved in asking FISA courts for wiretaps on people related to the Trump campaign.
And then we just repeat the cycle.
So basically you end up with one side saying everything Trump ever said is a lie, and the other side saying everything Trump ever said was true, when the truth is that Trump says really silly things on Twitter all the time that are summaries of a reality that is a little exaggerated, and then the left says nothing he ever says is true, which is also really silly and really stupid.
So basically, it's a bunch of stupid people hitting each other with clubs.
That's basically the news today.
And is this the end of the republic?
Is this crazy?
No, it's not.
But the media are treating it like it's the end of the republic.
Look at Mika Brzezinski just losing her ever-loving mind over this.
It's really, it's really pathetic.
When you are out speaking for President Trump, I would urge you not to laugh at yourself.
Because this is not funny.
This is really bad.
Just for the record, We're all really nervous.
So if people out there feel nervous, we do too.
We don't think this is funny.
Oh, give me a freaking break.
Oh my God.
What are we going to do?
Mika and Joe sat in Trump Tower with Trump the entire campaign, basically kissing his ass.
And now, oh my God, he tweeted something and it was mean to Obama and it's not accurate.
Who did you think you were talking to all this time?
Did you think that you were talking to the king of accuracy, Donald Trump?
Who did you think you were yucking it up with this entire time, Mika?
Unbelievable!
Okay, so, now we're actually going to get to the facts.
So, when I say that what Trump tweeted is not true, but it has a tenuous relation to reality, that is accurate.
There is no evidence that Barack Obama directly ordered a wiretap of Trump Tower and Donald Trump particularly.
Okay, that is not true.
Here is what is true.
Okay, National Review.
To summarize, this is Andrew McCarthy.
To summarize, Reporting indicates that prior to 2016, the Obama Justice Department and FBI considered a criminal investigation of Trump associates, and perhaps Trump himself, based on concerns about connections to Russian financial institutions.
Preliminary poking around indicated that there was nothing criminal involved.
But rather than shut the case down, the Obama Justice Department converted it into a national security investigation under the FISA Act.
Okay, FISA allows the government, if it gets court permission, to conduct electronic surveillance, which could include wiretapping, monitoring of email, and the like, against those it alleges are agents of a foreign power.
FISA applications and the evidence garnered from them are classified.
We would not know about any of this unless someone had leaked classified information to the media, which is a felony.
James Barrett over at Daily Wire, he says, According to multiple reports during the 2016 campaign, the Obama administration allegedly submitted two requests with the FISA court targeting Trump or those associated with him.
The first, submitted in June 2016, was reportedly a request to monitor several of Trump's associates.
The request was denied.
The Obama administration then allegedly submitted a second FISA request in October focused on the computer server in Trump Tower.
Which they suspected had some connections to Russian banks.
That request was granted, but nothing was found.
And then there were some reports that the wiretaps of that computer continued nonetheless.
Heat Street reported something similar on the issue.
So, we really don't know the extent of the wiretaps.
We know that the FISA court refused one application and granted another, or at least that's the report.
We also don't know whether those wiretaps were trained at Trump's associates.
They weren't trained at Trump himself by any of these reports.
None of these reports say Trump himself was tapped.
So we also don't know if the information is being gathered because we were wiretapping Russian sources and we caught Mike Flynn on the line talking with the Russians.
So in other words, there's a lot of information that the intelligence community was concerned with the connections between Trump and Russia.
But the idea that Obama himself was dictating from top down that this is the case, that you have to follow Trump and you have to dig all this up, Not any evidence of that, but by the same token, can you trust any of the people who are saying that?
This is my biggest problem.
My biggest problem with all of this is that the left keeps saying stuff like, what's the big crisis here?
Let's just stop there for a second.
What is the big crisis here?
I'll tell you what the big crisis is after we say thank you to our sponsor, which is today, which is the USCCA, United States Concealed Carry Association.
If you are very into the Second Amendment, if you want to defend it yourself, if you feel like guns are the best protection of all the other amendments, then you need to talk with my friends at the United States Concealed Carry Association.
They provide industry-leading firearms education.
They have classes, they have training, they have self-defense insurance.
So if, God forbid, somebody breaks into your house and you have to shoot them and then you need a defense lawyer, then USCCA helps you take care of it.
And right now, they're doing something really cool, the U.S.
Concealed Carry Association.
They're gonna buy 10 of my listeners, 10 of my listeners specifically, the gun of their dreams.
You're about to get 10 chances to win $1,500 for any gun that you want.
Just visit DefendMyFamilyNow.com to enter.
DefendMyFamilyNow.com to enter.
Doesn't cost anything, no restrictions.
You can pick any gun, any brand, any caliber you want.
DefendMyFamilyNow.com to enter.
And you get $1,500 toward the gun of your dreams.
If you win their little lottery here, it's DefendMyFamilyNow.com right now and check it out.
Again, USCCA, this is a cause you know I feel passionately about.
I feel very passionately about the Second Amendment, about gun ownership, about the right to self-defense, about the right of collective self-defense against an overarching, overreaching federal government.
USCCA, these are the people that help make that right a reality.
United States Concealed Carry Association, go to DefendMyFamilyNow.com and check out all the services they have to offer.
Plus, you have a shot at winning that $1,500 for any gun that you want, which is a pretty awesome deal.
Okay, so what is the big issue that the media are focused on here?
What's the big issue?
If it's just not true, let's say that it's just not true, then what's the big deal?
So Trump tweeted something out that's not true.
Would this be any grave shock to anyone?
And this is a guy who tweeted for three years that Barack Obama wasn't born in the United States.
So, like, no.
It's not a... Like, no.
I'm sorry.
I'm not going to get all exorcised about Donald Trump tweeted crap.
But what they're saying is this undermines the foundations of democracy.
It undermines what democracy is all about.
Democracy was already undermined, folks.
Democracy was already undermined.
All of the people who are currently denying that anything happened from Obama, all of those people can't be trusted.
So, for example, James Clapper was the Director of National Intelligence under President Obama.
And here is James Clapper talking about how he ordered no wiretap of the Trump campaign.
This idea that maybe President Obama ordered an illegal wiretap of his offices.
If something like that happened, would this be something you would be aware of?
I would certainly hope so.
Obviously I can't speak officially anymore, but I will say that for the part of the national security apparatus that I oversaw as DNI, there was no such wiretap activity mounted against the President-elect at the time as a candidate or against his campaign.
I can't speak for other Title III authorized entities in the government or a state or local entity.
I was just going to say, if the FBI, for instance, had a FISA court order of some sort for a surveillance, would that be information you would know or not know?
Yes.
You would be told this?
I would know that.
If there was a FISA court order on something like this.
So he's saying none of this ever happened, this is all nonsense.
Okay, I would believe him except for the fact that here's what James Clapper had to say in 2013 in front of Congress under oath.
So, what I wanted to see is if you could give me a yes or no answer to the question, does the NSA collect any type of data at all on millions or hundreds of millions of Americans?
No, sir.
It does not?
Not wittingly.
There are cases where they could inadvertently, perhaps, collect, but not wittingly.
Okay, that is called perjury, what you just saw there.
And that guy is out there on TV telling you that you ought to believe him now.
James Comey is saying you ought to believe him now.
Really?
Which version of Comey did we believe during the election?
The pro-Hillary version or the anti-Hillary version?
Nobody knew.
Okay, here is the reality.
A lot of this is based, what Trump is basing this on, is Mark Levin did a good job on Friday of laying out all of the various attempts by the Obama administration to basically surveil members of the Trump campaign.
Here's Mark Levin doing the same thing yesterday on Fox News and explaining the case.
And it's a pretty solid case, what Levin says here.
The evidence is overwhelming.
This is not about President Trump's tweeting.
This is about the Obama administration's spying.
And the question isn't whether it's spied.
We know they went to the FISA court twice.
The question is, who did they spy on?
The extent of the spying.
That is, the Trump campaign, the Trump transition, Trump surrogates.
And I want to walk you through this.
The American people.
Exhibit one.
Exhibit one.
This is all public.
Head Street, two separate sources with links to the counterintelligence community have confirmed that the FBI sought and was granted a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act court, this is spying, in October, giving counterintelligence permission to examine the activity of, quote, U.S.
persons in Donald Trump's campaign with ties to Russia.
Let me go on.
This isn't me.
They say the first FISA request, sources say named Trump, was denied back in June, denied by the court.
But the second... ...out earlier, all these facts are publicly reported, publicly available, and we don't, excuse me, know what's true.
And what's not true at this point.
So, again, let me lay out the chain of events here.
Donald Trump tweets something that isn't true but has a connection to reality.
The left says it has no connection with reality.
The right says, wait, no, it has some connection with reality.
Plus, he's making a bigger point, and the bigger point is true.
And the left goes, the bigger point isn't true and it has no connection to reality.
Okay, many things can be true at once.
The Obama administration could not be trusted.
The Obama administration clearly had information on Trump and Russia, or wanted to gather information on Trump and Russia, and now they're saying they can't even find any real connection.
They were pushing this story, I mean it was being leaked out at the time almost, and so the fact that they're saying now that nothing ever went on that was illicit is not trustworthy.
So when people say Trump is the one who's quashing the public trust, no.
No one can be trusted.
No one can be trusted here.
And I'll tell you what's, I think, good about that, but you'll have to stick around at Daily Wire for that.
So if you want to hear more, go to dailywire.com.
Check it out.
$8 a month at dailywire.com.
Get to a subscription.
You can be part of our mailbag, which we'll be doing later this week.
You can also get the rest of the show live, plus we're going to have a Shapiro store launching in the next couple of, in the next few weeks here, and so you're going to want to check that out as well with discounts for subscribers.
Annual subscribers right now, you get a free copy of The Arroyo, which is a fictional film set on the southern border about the situation where ranchers are having their land overrun by drug cartels and illegal immigrant smugglers.
You'll have to check it out.
It's a really good movie.
The Arroyo, made by my friend and colleague Jeremy Boring here at The Daily Wire.
And you get that for free when you become an annual subscriber, plus other goodies that will be coming shortly.
Dailywire.com, become a subscriber.
▲
Export Selection