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May 16, 2017 - The Ben Shapiro Show

22:32

Ep. 303 - Another Day, Another Russia Scandal

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	So, it's apparently terrible to tell millennials to save their money or invest their money these days.
	On Monday, news broke worldwide that an Australian real estate developer, Tim Gurner, had explained that one of the secrets to financial success was saving and investing rather than spending.
	Quote, Quote, Quote, Quote, Quote, Quote, Quote, Quote, They want to eat out every day.
	They want to travel to Europe every year.
	I think until this generation realizes that the people that own homes today worked very, very hard for it, saved every dollar, did everything they could to get up the property ladder, they won't get ahead.
	You might have to buy an investment property first.
	You might have to share with mom or dad.
	You might have to buy with a friend.
	But you've got to get your foot in the door and you've got to slowly get up the ladder.
	This was apparently a terrible thing to say.
	Never come between a millennial and her avocado toast.
	But obviously, Goerner was talking about the choice by some young people to spend repeatedly on lifestyle rather than saving.
	He didn't restrict his comments to the rather silly example of avocado toast.
	He talked about European vacations too, which are a little bit more expensive.
	Naturally, to avoid the implications of Goerner's correct statement, the New York Times fact-checked him.
	They wrote, quote, The truth is, even if millennials assumed the eating out habits of baby boomers, it would take around 113 years before they could afford a down payment on a home, assuming a 20% down payment on the median price for a home in the U.S., $315,000 in March 2017, and a 1% yearly yield rate.
	The average price of a single avocado in March was $1.25, according to the Haas Avocado Board.
	One Twitter user, Nora Biet-Timmons, calculated that a serving of avocado toast cost her about $1.65.
	Or $477,896, the average price of a home in Brooklyn.
	But does the New York Times have any decent advice for millennials, other than snarking about avocados?
	Of course not.
	Here is the fact.
	Everybody is spending more now, but millennials cannot afford to do so because they are younger and poorer.
	While the New York Times acknowledges that all generations of Americans are eating out more, for example, it fails to evaluate whether younger people can afford to do so in the way older people can.
	When we were younger, my wife and I didn't eat out nearly as much as we do now.
	We also had a lot less money.
	Overall, young people are racking up debt much faster these days.
	Here's ABC News from several years ago.
	Quote, The percentage of students holding at least one credit card in 2001 rose 24% since 1998, according to the latest figures from student loan provider Nellie May.
	The median debt level among card-carrying undergrads rose to $1,770 in 2001 from $1,236 in 2000, an indicator that more students are using their cards regularly and may not be paying off the balances each month.
	Here's CNBC from 2015.
	More than half of millennials, people aged 18 to 34, reported a credit score below 670.
	Millennials are even turning to payday loans and pawn shops to put cash in the bank.
	Millennials aren't getting married or buying homes thanks to cost, and they're not putting money in the stock market, but they are spending money on travel.
	Some millennial money trouble comes from the global financial downturn, of course, but to neglect personal decision-making in terms of investing is a mistake.
	Why wouldn't investors tell kids to save up?
	Because it might hurt their feelings and suggest that they have agency in their own lives.
	When I told a group of students in a downtrodden public school, O.T.
	Ranch High School, that in a free country like America, permanent poverty is a function of making poor financial decisions, the high school principal actually dismissed the students Telling me that too many of their parents were impoverished and thus might feel insulted.
	The problem here isn't loose talk about avocado toast.
	It's that people don't want to hear the truth.
	Their lives are in their hands, and if they don't like their financial situations, perhaps they should start by examining their own decisions.
	I'm Ben Shapiro.
	This is The Ben Shapiro Show.
	Alrighty, another day, another quasi-scandal.
	We will talk about two big stories, one from the right and one from the left, that everybody seems to be buying into, and what is true and what is not.
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	Okay, so, the big story of the day.
	There are two big stories of the day, one from the right and one from the left, and I want to discuss them both in detail.
	I'm going to start with the one from the right, because I think that there's more to talk about in the one from the left.
	That's the one that's leading all the newspapers.
	So, the one from the right that is being pumped by Fox News, is being pumped by Drudge, is being pumped by Breitbart News today, is this story about a guy named Seth Rich.
	So, Seth Rich is a former, was a former He was a member of the DNC, he was a guy who worked at the DNC, and he was shot back in, during the middle of the election cycle.
	He was killed on the street.
	And there was a lot of suspicion about that because while the police had been investigating it as an armed robbery gone wrong, nothing was stolen.
	He had like a $2,000 necklace on him, his wallet was left on him, and so there are a lot of accusations that this was actually an assassination.
	So, last night, Fox DC5 reports that a private investigator named Rod Wheeler I do believe the answer is to murdered who murdered Seth Rich sits on his computer on a shelf at the DC police or FBI headquarters.
	I do believe the answers to murdered who murdered Seth Rich sits on his computer on a shelf at the DC police or FBI headquarters.
	So the accusation here is that the WikiLeaks group was actually getting the DNC emails not from the Russians, but from an insider at the DNC, the DNC.
	The DNC was basically, they had a mole, and the mole was very upset about Bernie Sanders losing, and so he was sending all sorts of information, thousands upon thousands of emails, to Wikileaks, and then he was shot over it, presumably by somebody associated with the DNC or the Hillary Clinton campaign, is what the right would have you believe, or at least the conspiratorial right would have you believe.
	It would also debunk a lot of the stories about how Russia was the one hacking the DNC.
	It would turn out that it was an inside job from somebody who was presumably just a Bernie Sanders supporter.
	It would be more of an Edward Snowden situation, not necessarily a spy situation, which would change a lot of the Trump-Russia talk.
	Fox News has now reported that an anonymous federal investigator said 44,053 emails and 17,761 attachments between DNC committee leaders spanning January 2015 through late May 2016 were transferred from Rich to the director of WikiLeaks, Gavin McFadden, who's also recently deceased.
	They say that an anonymous federal investigator had said this.
	So we have an anonymous source saying something.
	Well, the family has denied these reports and slams Wheeler for violating confidentiality.
	Basically, they release a statement that says that there is no evidence and no emails suggesting WikiLeaks links.
	Their statement says, as we've seen through the past year of unsubstantiated claims, we've seen no facts, we've seen no evidence, we've been approached with no emails, and only learned about this when contacted by the press.
	Even if tomorrow an email was found, it is not a high enough bar of evidence to prove any interactions.
	As emails can be altered, and we've seen that those interested in pushing conspiracies will stop at nothing to do so.
	We are a family who is committed to facts, not fake evidence that surfaces every few months to fill the void and distract law enforcement and the general public from finding Seth's murderers.
	The services of the private investigator who spoke to press was offered to the rich family and paid for by a third party, and contractually was barred from speaking to press or anyone outside of law enforcement or the family unless explicitly authorized by the family.
	So, here is the bottom line on this particular story.
	We just don't know enough at this point.
	We don't know.
	The family, obviously, is saying they don't believe this.
	The FBI has not released a statement on any of this.
	The DC police denies all of this.
	With all of that said, people are jumping onto the anonymous sourcing here, and they're jumping onto this...
	P.I., this private investigator, who has a bit of a sketchy history, they're jumping on this to basically suggest that this is the big scandal of the day, is that Seth Rich was murdered because he was sending DNC emails to WikiLeaks.
	So, here's the bottom line.
	Not enough evidence to say one way or another.
	Not enough evidence to say one way or another.
	We still don't know who did the murder.
	We know that the family objects to this.
	We know that the P.I.
	is shaky, and the FBI has not released a statement.
	When more information comes out, then we can make a judgment.
	Unfortunately, people aren't waiting to make a judgment, they're just jumping on it.
	And this shows, I think, that confirmation bias has absolutely seeped into every aspect of news coverage.
	Right now, people are seeing a story, they're deciding whether they like the story or not, and then they're believing it based on whether they like it or not.
	They're seeing a story that's filled with anonymous sources, like this anonymous FBI guy, and they're deciding whether they like the anonymous source based on what the anonymous source is saying.
	They're looking at a story like this and they're saying, well, sure the family says that this was leaked in violation of confidentiality, but leaks are okay because we think it's an important story.
	So, now flip the script and we're going to talk about the story from the left.
	Okay, so the Washington Post reports last night that President Trump, during that meeting with the Russians that we talked about last week, the day after he fires FBI Director James Comey, the Washington Post reports that he has this meeting with Sergei Kislyak, who's the ambassador from Russia and who is a spymaster by pretty much every available piece who's the ambassador from Russia and who is a spymaster by pretty much every available piece of information, as well He has this meeting behind closed doors.
	There are no American press people at this meeting.
	It's just the Russians who are there and Russian press coverage, apparently.
	And according to the Washington Post, he revealed, quote, highly classified information to the Russian foreign minister and ambassador in a White House meeting last week, according to current and former U.S. officials, who said Trump's disclosures jeopardized a critical source of intelligence on the Islamic State.
	The information the president relayed had been provided by a U.S. partner through an intelligence-sharing arrangement considered so sensitive that details have been withheld from allies and tightly restricted even within the U.S. government, said officials.
	The partner had not given the United States permission to share the material with Russia, and officials said Trump's decision to do so in dangerous cooperation from an ally that has access to the inner workings of the Islamic State.
	After Trump's meeting, senior White House officials took steps to contain the damage, placing calls to the CIA and the National Security Agency.
	This is code word information, said a U.S.
	official familiar with the matter, using terminology that refers to one of the highest classification levels used by American spy agencies.
	The Washington Post, by the way, says that they have the information.
	But they're not going to print the information because it would be unsafe to print the information.
	They say the Post is withholding most plot details, including the name of the city that apparently Trump mentioned, at the urging of officials who warned that revealing them would jeopardize important intelligence capabilities.
	So, the story is basically that there are a couple of anonymous sources inside the Trump White House who leaked that Trump had revealed highly classified information to the Russians.
	So, a couple things out of the way, first and foremost.
	One, Even if Trump did that, it's not criminal.
	Okay?
	The President gets to decide what's classified and what's not classified.
	Article 2 of the Constitution says nothing about classification standards not being impacted by the President.
	The President can decide to declassify things as fast as the President wants, so Trump didn't do anything criminal.
	That said, if the Democrats decide, or if the Republicans decide, Congress can impeach for stuff that's not criminal.
	So, this is still not great stuff.
	I mean, just because the president did something legal doesn't mean it's something good.
	Point number two.
	Yes, Democrats are hypocrites when it comes to leaks.
	The Democrats leaked all the time.
	They leaked classified information to our enemies on a routine basis.
	In 2011, for example, this did not get a lot of attention, even though it was a big story.
	In 2011, Joe Biden, then the vice president, revealed that it was SEAL Team 6 that had killed Osama bin Laden, and there were members of SEAL Team 6 families who felt that he had put a target on their back by revealing this information publicly.
	Let me briefly acknowledge tonight's distinguished honorees.
	Admiral Jim Stavridis is a real deal.
	He could tell you more about and understands the incredible, the phenomenal, the just almost unbelievable capacity of his Navy SEALs and what they did last Sunday.
	Okay, so there he was, you know, spilling classified information, and it ended up actually being quite tragic, because SEAL teams were then targeted by Al-Qaeda, apparently, but that was not a big scandal on the left or among the media.
	Obviously, the Obama administration also leaked Information from our allies repeatedly, particularly from Israel.
	They leaked information over and over and over about Israeli plans to strike the Iranian nuclear facilities in an attempt to stop Israel from doing all of that.
	So, those two points out of the way.
	One, it's not criminal.
	Two, the Obama administration did stuff like this all the time.
	It is still bad.
	It's still a really bad thing.
	If the President of the United States cannot be trusted with classified information, if he's just going out there and saying things to people openly because he's got an ego problem, which is supposedly what happened, you got a problem.
	So apparently what happened is that when Trump described measures the U.S.
	has taken or is contemplating to counter the threat of ISIS, including military operations in Iraq and Syria, as well as other steps to tighten security, Trump cast the countermeasures in wistful terms.
	He said, can you believe the world we live in today?
	Isn't it crazy?
	So he was just supposedly showing off.
	Now here is the problem.
	Okay, so the White House denies the story.
	But there are a couple of different types of denial.
	So, Dina Powell, who is the Deputy National Security Advisor, she denies this story wholesale.
	She says, none of this ever happened, none of this ever happened.
	And then, H.R.
	McMaster, who is the National Security Advisor, who has a high level of trust with conservatives, as well he should, he comes out, and he gives a statement, a 60-second statement last night without taking any questions, and here's what he said last night about this Washington Post story.
	There's nothing that the President takes more seriously than the security of the American people.
	The story that came out tonight, as reported, is false.
	The President and the Foreign Minister reviewed a range of common threats to our two countries, including threats to civil aviation.
	At no time were intelligence sources or methods discussed.
	And the President did not disclose any military operations that were not already publicly known.
	Two other senior officials who were present, including the Secretary of State, remember the meeting the same way and have said so.
	Their on-the-record accounts should outweigh those of anonymous sources.
	And I was in the room.
	It didn't happen.
	Thanks, everybody.
	Okay, I was in the room.
	It didn't happen.
	Now, the question has become, what does it mean?
	Because the fact is that what H.R.
	McMaster is saying here is sort of a denial.
	Like, I just want to be exact about this.
	It's sort of a denial, and it's sort of not.
	Okay, so it's a denial of things that the Washington Post never claimed.
	So the Washington Post never claimed that Trump had revealed intelligence sources or methods.
	What the Washington Post claimed is that Trump had said something about a particular city where there was an ISIS operation taking place, and the fact that we knew about it endangered one of our sources.
	That's basically the Washington Post's claim.
	McMaster is denying something the Washington Post never claimed there.
	This morning, H.R.
	McMaster came out and he said something different, which we'll get to in just one second.
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	So, McMaster goes out there, he denies it, sort of.
	Dina Powell denies it, Completely.
	Secretary of State Rex Tillerson echoes McMaster's statement.
	And then President Trump, who just cannot help himself, he just cannot help himself, he gets up this morning and he goes on Twitter and he tweets, As president, I wanted to share with Russia at an openly scheduled White House meeting, which I have the absolute right to do, facts pertaining to terrorism and airline flight safety, humanitarian reasons, plus I want Russia to greatly step up their fight against ISIS and terrorism.
	So he had his entire team go out there and say it never happened.
	And then he goes out there and he says it happened, but it's okay that I did it.
	Okay, that's not the same case.
	That's not the same case.
	And that's open to debate, because we don't know what the information is, so how are we ever supposed to confirm or deny that what he said was okay to say?
	We have no way of knowing that.
	If it really was okay, then presumably the White House could do something very easy.
	They could just release the transcript of the conversation, which they have.
	McMaster came out this morning and he said, yeah, Trump said something but none of us found it objectionable.
	It wasn't really a big deal.
	McMaster said the president was not even aware of where the information came from.
	He wasn't briefed on the source and method.
	So he couldn't have revealed the source and method.
	Okay, well, but that wasn't the claim.
	I mean, the claim was not that he was briefed on the source and method or that he revealed the source and method.
	The claim was that he revealed confidential information, classified information that could actually put somebody in the line of fire.
	That was essentially what he, what the claim was.
	And McMaster is now saying, and Trump is now saying, that it's not a big deal what he revealed.
	Okay, but there are two problems with this.
	One, that's subjective.
	So it's possible that our allies could look at that and they could say, well, he may not think it's a problem, but I think it's a problem.
	I'm never giving Trump classified information again.
	There was a report from earlier this year that the Israelis had stopped giving Trump classified information because they were afraid that Trump was just going to spill it on the record somewhere.
	So there's that.
	There's also the problem with, okay, well, if it really was not that big a deal, why don't you just declassify it?
	Why don't you just release the conversation?
	Again, why is any of this a big deal?
	Because it goes to character, and President Trump is having a problem of character inside his administration.
	He's having a problem of character inside his administration, and he's undermining people inside his administration whose credibility he needs to uphold.
	He needs to uphold McMaster's credibility, and it doesn't look good when McMaster comes out last night, says the story is false, and then the next day comes back and says, well, I really said that most of the story was false, you know, the parts that weren't there, but it's kind of true, but it's not a big deal.
	This is the same thing that happened last week, if you recall, all the way back to last week.
	My God, time just has stopped moving.
	Last week, the President of the United States trotted out half his administration, including Vice President Pence, to say...
	That all of this that was going on with FBI Director Comey had been spurred by the Deputy Attorney General sending a letter.
	And then two days later, he went on national news and he said, no, no, no, I was going to do it anyway.
	It had nothing to do with that.
	After his entire press team had gone out there and blamed it on Rod Rosenstein.
	So the big problem here is Trump.
	The big problem here is Trump.
	And the reason that this is a problem is because if you don't have credibility with the American people, then you're going to have a hard time pushing legislation.
	You're going to have a hard time wooing allies.
	You're going to have a hard time doing the things the president actually needs to do.
	You're also going to be undercutting your case for how careful you are about classified information.
	So, I mean, the left is having a field day with this, of course, and you knew they were.
	It doesn't make them not dishonest.
	They are dishonest.
	But the left is having a field day.
	The point here is that the left is going to be left.
	You knew they were going to be the left.
	Are you going to be the one who decides to step on every rake in a hundred mile radius?
	It's just foolish.
	You know, Trump spent half of this campaign talking about how Hillary had not protected classified information.
	Here's a montage of Trump talking about it over and over and over again.
	The Secretary of State was extremely careless and negligent in handling our classified secrets.
	She lied about passing on classified information, right?
	In my administration, I'm going to enforce all laws concerning the protection of classified information.
	She said she said nothing more classified!
	A total lie!
	We can't have someone in the Oval Office who doesn't understand the meaning of the word confidential or classified!
	Okay, again, you spend the entire campaign saying this, and then you undercut your own case because you can't stay off Twitter.
	And because you can't keep your mouth shut.
	It's a problem of character, and that does have ramifications.
	Now, I could sit here and make everybody happy today by just bashing the left, and that's very easy to do.
	But here's the problem.
	The same people on the right who are buying the Seth Rich story hook, line, and sinker, which we don't have verified yet, are saying this is all fake news now even though Trump has already sort of confirmed it.
	And conversely, people on the left who are dismissing the Seth Rich stuff are immediately buying everything about this story before anything has sort of been confirmed.
	The confirmation bias in the news is extraordinarily strong.
	There's more information that the Washington Post story is true at this point, because Trump has quasi-confirmed it and so has McMaster, than there is that the Seth Rich story is true, but I would just like to point out the inconsistency that everybody seems to be suffering from in evaluating these stories.
	Anonymous sources are anonymous sources until there's confirmation.
	Leaks are bad.
	Leaks are really bad.
	But the leak is not actually the story, and you don't get to say that the leak is the big story if you spent the entire campaign saying that WikiLeaks was not the story, it was the content of the WikiLeaks that actually mattered.
	This is really not good stuff, but I want to talk a little bit more about how Trump can fix this, because it's actually really easy to fix if you would just listen and stop.
	It's easy to fix.
	And we'll talk about Democratic overreach, plus we have to deconstruct some culture.
	But for this, listen, guys, you know, I wish every day I could come on here and talk about the great stuff Trump is doing, but he needs to do good things in order for me to talk about it.
	So, again, I just hope and pray that he does.
	For the rest of the podcast, go over to dailywire.com.
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