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June 10, 2017 - The Ben Shapiro Show
24:13
Ep. 316 - The Apocalypse Has Comey
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On Thursday, in an apparent attempt to demonstrate that voters in the United States and Germany couldn't be the only ones to embrace reactionary unpredictability, the voters of the United Kingdom dealt the Conservative Party a stunning blow, elevating the far-left Labour Party, led by a Noam Chomsky-esque loon named Jeremy Corbyn, to the brink of power.
The Conservatives, led by Theresa May, will still retain leadership thanks to a coalition government, but they were expected to walk away with the election, and Labour was supposed to be in disarray.
Instead, the Conservatives are on the verge of chaos, and Labour is united under a terrorist-supporting anti-Semite with a gut-level hatred of Western civilization.
Well done, Brits.
Josh Krashour of National Journal makes an even more important point, though.
The youth vote in Britain went overwhelmingly for Corbyn.
Corbyn's surprisingly competitive showing was fueled by young voters who rallied behind Labour by a whopping 34 point margin, 63 to 29, according to British exit polling.
For all the fears of creeping nationalism, it's the growing discontent of the millennial vote that's been a consistent theme in recent Western elections.
Many young voters are rejecting capitalism entirely, attracted to rhetoric promising free tuition and a generous social safety net at a time when many are struggling to make ends meet.
Numerous studies also show younger voters are much more skeptical toward the value of democracy than their elders.
Crash Hour rightly points out that 27% of young French voters felt for an actual communist, Jean-Luc Mélenchon.
In the United States, Democratic Socialist Bernie Sanders drew, quote, more under 30 voters than Clinton and Trump combined.
Crash Hour is right to note that the reactionary left is responding to the reactionary right, that young voters who resonated to Corbyn, Melancon, and Sanders were responding in part to Brexit, Le Pen, and Trump.
And there's nothing new about young people embracing radical politics.
The 60s and 70s were full of such elections, see George McGovern, and the 1930s were full of radical political movements worldwide supported by youngsters.
Each generation has its own brand of radicalism, and given the success of the post-Cold War neoliberal consensus, the rebellion was bound to come in the form of far-left redistributionism.
Clinton and Bush and Blair and Chirac were all of the same general mind on capitalism.
Young people have reacted to that background.
Commentators are trying to find economic rationales for the blowback, but there is something else going on.
We live in a unique time in human history.
War between major powers is almost inconceivable, and despite economic worries, the vast majority of people are employed.
The American unemployment rate is currently 4.7%, the Brits 4.8%, the French unemployment rate is 9.6%, where it's been hovering since the economic crash of 2008.
Yes, terrorism is a threat, as is multiculturalism, but the far left isn't pledging to do anything about any of those things.
No.
What we have here is an entire generation of Westerners brought up to believe that prosperity and freedom are the norm, and given a background noise, and that the next mission for which they should fight is redistributionism.
Income inequality is the next Rubicon to cross, and income inequality springs from the same origins as racism and sexism and bigotry, Western civilization.
This perspective is not coming from disillusionment.
It's springing from an existential meaninglessness taught by two generations of parents who abandoned traditional values in favor of secularism and are now surprised to find their secular kids and grandkids embracing transformative Marxism as a way to animate their lives.
People want meaning.
Economics does not provide meaning, but causes do.
Bernie appears to have a cause.
So does Corbyn.
So did Melancon.
As economist Daniel Yergin and Joseph Stanislaw said way back in 1998, when it appeared the global capitalist consensus was unshakable, quote, a system that takes the pursuit of self-interest and profit as its guiding light does not necessarily satisfy the yearning in the human soul for belief and some higher meaning beyond materialism.
Few people would die with the words free markets on their lips.
The West has failed to teach its children meaning.
The children found their own meaning in Marxism, and so we appear ready to re-embrace the horrors of the past, unless we get to work right now teaching young Westerners that they are part of a fight for liberty and freedom and responsibility, rather than for transformative, crushing redistributionism.
I'm Ben Shapiro.
This is The Ben Shapiro Show.
Alrighty, we are going to get into everything Columbia related.
We're also going to talk more about the UK election, which really is quite stunning for Theresa May.
The worst political miscalculation in the modern era.
She called snap elections and then she ended up almost being thrown out of office, which is just an amazing thing.
We also have the mailbag today.
Yay!
So if you want to be part of the live mailbag, you're going to have to go over to dailywire.com right now and subscribe.
We will dedicate some real time to the mailbag today.
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There's a lot of unpredictability.
Plus, our enemies are on the move.
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Okay, so Lots happening in the news, obviously.
Lots of fallout from the James Comey hearing.
So, after having a chance to reflect, there are a bunch of headlines that come out of the James Comey hearing.
And I want to play, I think, the three key clips.
We have a little mash-up here of the key clips from the Comey hearing.
First of all, here are the headlines from the clips we're about to show you.
First of all, Comey said openly that President Trump and his staff did not ask, did not ask For killing of the Russia investigation.
This destroys the Democrat narrative.
And remember, as I said yesterday, the entire Democrat narrative since Hillary lost the election was that Hillary lost because Donald Trump worked with Vladimir Putin to corrupt the election.
And in doing so, he then had to fire James Comey because Comey was this close to finding out about it.
That was their narrative.
That was completely debunked.
Comey said that yesterday.
Also, in other big news, Attorney General Loretta Lynch apparently attempted to influence the Clinton investigation while Comey was there.
That was a big piece of breaking news as well.
And then the piece of news that the left is jumping on, which is that Comey called Trump a liar several times in the... in the...
In the hearings yesterday.
And the final piece of big news is that Comey leaked his memos to prompt the naming of a special counsel.
So people on the right are jumping on this to suggest that this means that Comey is a leaker and that Comey is going to be prosecuted for leaking.
We'll talk about all of these things, but here are the key clips from the hearing yesterday.
Did any individual working for this administration, including the Justice Department, ask you to stop the Russian investigation?
No.
At one point the Attorney General had directed me not to call it an investigation, but instead to call it a matter which confused me and concerned me.
And although the law required no reason at all to fire an FBI director, the administration then chose to defame me and more importantly the FBI by saying that the organization was in disarray, that it was poorly led, that the workforce had lost confidence in its leader.
Those were lies, plain and simple.
I asked a friend of mine to share the content of the memo with a reporter.
Didn't do it myself for a variety of reasons, but I asked him to because I thought that might prompt the appointment of a special counsel.
Okay, so here were the big headlines, and there's a lot of conflict over what the headlines should be.
I mean, just to show you how much conflict there was over what the headlines should be, this is a picture of CNN and Fox News covering the exact same hearing and having precisely opposite headlines.
Here it is, the conflicting chyrons.
You can see CNN saying that Comey took Trump's request about dropping the Flynn investigation as a directive.
And then on the right, you see Fox News saying, Comey, the president did not order me to let the Flynn probe go.
You know, again, everyone's sort of taking out of this what they want to hear.
I'm going to give you the big headlines as I saw them yesterday, and then we're going to go through what the reaction to all this has been.
So as I said, first headline, Comey basically blows out of the water the Democratic narrative that there was collusion between Trump and Russia in this election cycle, and that Trump fired Comey to cover this up.
Even Chris Matthews is acknowledging this now.
Here's Chris Matthews acknowledging as much.
But the big story to me has always been, as all of us, and I think Nicole really touched on it there, the assumption of the critics of the President, of his pursuers you might say, is that somewhere along the line in the last year, the President had something to do with colluding with the Russians.
Something to do with helping hand, encouraging them, feeding their desire to affect the election in some way.
Some role they played, some conversation he had with Michael Flynn, or Paul Manafort, or somewhere.
And yet what came apart this morning was that theory because, in two regards, the president said, according to the written testimony of Mr. Comey, go ahead and get anybody's satellite to my operation and nail them.
I'm with you on that.
So that would be Manafort, Carter Page, someone else like that.
And then he also came across what was fascinating.
Comey said, That basically Flynn wasn't central to the rushed investigation.
That he was touching on it.
Of course Flynn wasn't honest in his answering of the official forms the NFL had to become national security head.
But it only touched on that.
That it wasn't really related to that.
But he could be flipped for that.
But in other words, they could flip him because they had him caught on something he dishonestly answered.
But he wasn't central, it seemed, to the Russian thing.
And I've always assumed what Trump was afraid of, he had said something to Flynn, and Flynn could be flipped on that, and Flynn would testify against the President that he had had some conversation with Flynn in terms of dealing with the Russians affirmatively.
And if that's not the case, where's the there there?
And what Matthews is saying right there, what Matthews is saying right there is the key, and that's the thing that Trump should be seizing on because that debunks the entire leftist narrative.
And when even Chris Matthews gets it, that demonstrates that the democratic narrative fell apart.
So that was headline number one.
Headline number two was that Loretta Lynch pressured James Comey to change the way they were terming the investigation into Hillary Clinton, calling it, instead of an investigation, calling it a matter.
Okay, now that had already been revealed by the New York Times way back in April.
People really didn't pay attention to it at the time.
Comey said it now, so now it's in the testimony, and people on the right are jumping on that.
Yes, that's terrible.
And yes, Comey should have done something about it, he should have gone public with it, or he should have written a memo to file, as he is so fond of doing, and all of that is true.
It is also true, to be fair, that if we are going to say that we are disturbed by Loretta Lynch putting pressure on James Comey in how he discusses the Hillary investigation, Then we should be similarly concerned if President Trump is putting pressure on Comey in any way with regard to any other investigation.
Like, let's be a little bit consistent here in all of this.
Okay, third headline.
President Trump apparently acted improperly and Comey found it troubling.
So we can't get away from, and this is what the left is jumping on, they've now pivoted from their original narrative to the new narrative, which is that Trump is a bully and a thug because Trump said to Comey, pulled him aside in a meeting, told everybody else to get out of the room, and then told him he hoped that Comey could find a way To let Flynn go.
Now people on the right are sort of ignoring this or pretending it doesn't exist or saying, well, it's not obstruction.
No one's saying it has to be technical obstruction.
As Alan Dershowitz has said, Trump could overtly tell James Comey that he wanted him to drop the investigation and that he would, and he's ordering him to do so.
And that wouldn't necessarily constitute obstruction of justice.
On a criminal level, but impeachment is not a criminal offense.
Impeachment is about what is politically palatable to do.
Democrats could jump on this and they are.
The biggest problem for Trump is that now, because he said all this stuff, now you could end up with a situation where Trump actually is under investigation.
So we found out that Trump is not under investigation.
We found out that he wasn't under investigation when Comey was the head of the FBI, and that Comey told him that several times, and that's probably why Trump fired him, is because Comey wouldn't say it publicly.
But now, because of the conversations that he had with Comey, he may very well be under federal investigation from Bob Mueller, the special investigator.
So that means that Comey, if he wanted to nail Trump, has played his cards exactly rightly, which means that Comey is kind of a sleaze, but it also means that Comey has outplayed Trump here.
Right?
Here's how the chain of events went.
Basically, Comey was called into Trump's office and Trump said to him, I'd appreciate it if you could get rid of this Flynn thing, right?
I hope that you get rid of this Flynn thing, however you want to put it.
And then Comey didn't pay attention to Trump, continued on his merry way, didn't see anything so wrong he had to report it, and then he gets fired.
And then Trump tweets that there must be conversations between Trump and Comey that are on tape, and Comey better hope they're earned, at which point Comey responds by revealing the presence of the memos, which prompts the creation of the special investigator.
And now that special investigator is going to look into Trump over obstruction.
So in other words, Trump did two things that now have put him on the hook where he wouldn't have been on the hook before.
One, he had conversations with Comey about Flynn that he shouldn't have had.
And two, he then tweeted about how he had tapes, Which prompted, supposedly, Comey to reveal the memos, and leaked the memos out, which prompted the appointment of the special prosecutor.
Now some people on the right are saying, well that means we should get rid of the special prosecutor.
A little bit late for that, okay guys?
Regardless of whether you think that Comey did the wrong thing in revealing the contents of the memos, in order to debunk what Trump was saying about him, The cat's out of the bag.
You shut down the special prosecutor right now, it looks like Trump really does have something to hide.
So Trump's in a catch-22 because now the special prosecutor, according to Comey, will probably end up looking at Trump's activity toward Comey and may come up with some sort of obstruction charge, or at least the implication of obstruction, giving Democrats something to hang their hat on.
In other words, the quote-unquote cover-up of a crime that didn't occur may snag Trump because Trump has a big mouth.
That's what Democrats are hoping, anyway.
That's what Democrats are hoping.
Now I want to talk about how Trump can get out of this, and what Trump actually should be saying about all this, because I think that he has a pretty good case to make, if he were just honest about it, but he's not making that case, unfortunately.
We'll talk about it in one second.
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Okay, so with all the headlines that came out about Comey and with the newfound attempt by the left to push the notion that Trump obstructed justice, even though, as Chris Matthews says, there is no real there there.
There's something that Trump could do, right?
What Trump should do, here's what Trump should do.
I basically wrote this out yesterday.
If I were Trump, here's what I would say.
I would say this.
I did not collude with Russia during the 2016 election.
I had said that all along, people.
And Comey confirmed there is no evidence to suggest collusion by me.
He even admitted, finally, that I was not under personal investigation.
He told me privately.
He wouldn't say it publicly.
And that made me very, very angry.
That is the real reason I fired him.
Out of anger!
Anger that I was not being exonerated in public view, even though Comey knew I was not under investigation.
Also, I did not obstruct any investigation.
Comey admits I never tried to obstruct the Russia investigation.
He admits I said he should check out my associates on Russia.
As far as my comments on General Flynn, it was just because I like General Flynn.
It wasn't because I was trying to cover anything up.
There were hot-headed statements about what I hoped would happen.
I said, I hope.
Is hope in order?
I know how to give an order.
I'm Donald freaking Trump.
We have no evidence that Flynn even did anything.
Right?
Flynn lied about talking to the Russians.
Is that a crime?
Maybe, but it's not a big enough crime for me to care about.
That's why I said something to James Comey.
Why is this even a big deal?
Comey knows I didn't obstruct the Flynn investigation.
He didn't even quit.
He didn't even report it.
Look, I should have had patience.
I should have had patience with the process.
But I'm not a patient guy.
I want to get stuff done.
The cloud hanging over my administration, thanks to the Democrats, is crippling my ability to get something done.
Don't call it obstruction.
It isn't.
That's nasty.
There's no underlying crime.
I didn't obstruct when there's no crime.
So, let's get back to work.
I'll stop being impatient, and you guys stop saying stupid stuff.
Right?
That's what Trump should say.
That's what Trump should say.
And if Trump actually said that, then he might be able to make a good defense.
What he should not do is get into a credibility fight with James Comey.
He should not get into the business of trying to say that James Comey is lying about him and that James Comey is not telling the truth about what he said about Flynn.
The reason being, Comey just testified before Congress, under oath, under penalty of perjury.
Who is more credible?
Now I know there are a lot of Trump fans saying he's more credible than Comey.
Okay.
But Comey is a lawyer.
Comey knows that he doesn't want to get caught up in a perjury charge.
And he knows that right now the entire Trump administration would be happy to charge him with perjury.
So the idea that he's going to go out there and outright lie...
is just silly.
Like, Comey's not stupid.
Okay?
He may not be your cup of tea, but he's not a stupid man.
And if Trump wants to pit his perception of honesty against Comey's perception of honesty, that's not a battle Trump can win.
What Trump should have done is play a little bit of jujitsu here.
Trump should have said, what Trump should have said is, everything Comey said is true as to content, but not as to meaning.
Right?
That's what he should have said.
I'm an impatient guy.
I met with him because I was upset about the Flynn stuff.
I didn't mean he should quash the investigation.
Look, did I even have a follow-up?
Did I even try to quash the Flynn investigation?
Hard to accuse me of obstruction when I didn't do anything other than saying to him that I hoped he would see his way clear to letting Flynn go.
Maybe it was sort of a ham-handed thing for me to say, but obstruction?
Really?
And again, even Comey confirmed that there's this Trump-Russia stuff is a big nothing burger.
That's what Trump should be doing.
Unfortunately, that's not what Trump is doing.
So Trump came out on Twitter today, and Trump immediately decided to attack Comey's credibility, which is just not smart.
Because again, he's relying on Comey's credibility in order for him to get out of the Trump-Russia stuff.
Right, he wants to say that Comey is credible when he says that Trump was not under investigation and that there's no evidence of collusion, but he wants to say he's not credible when it comes to what Trump said to Comey in the privacy of the Oval Office or at Trump Tower.
So Trump tweets, quote, That's what he originally tweeted that got him in trouble.
our conversations before it starts leaking to the press.
That's what he originally tweeted that got him in trouble.
Now here's what he tweeted, quote, despite so many false statements and lies, total and complete vindication.
And wow, Comey is a leaker.
Okay, on this leaker thing, quick note, people who are trying to say that Comey should be prosecuted for leaking.
His notes were not government documents.
Okay, if he If I have a personal diary that I am taking, and it's not classified, and this apparently was not classified material, and Trump did not assert executive privilege, from a legal, from a lawyer's perspective, this is not prosecutable.
What Comey did, you may not like the leak, you may think it makes him a politically motivated actor, I certainly do, but I think that to say that he's a leaker and therefore he did something illegal, He didn't actually do anything illegal any more than Trump did something illegal by talking to the Russians about Israeli intel.
He has the capacity to do it.
It may be bad, but it's not necessarily illegal.
Again, this is just bad strategy.
I'm not saying that Trump, again, did anything deeply wrong here.
In fact, I'm trying to figure out a good way to defend Trump, but this is not the smartest way to do this.
You know, in conclusion with that, he sends out Mark Kasowitz, his lawyer, to make the case that Trump was, that Comey is lying about Trump.
This is not a smart tactic.
It's, again, Trump fighting back.
And he's fighting back aggressively rather than in intelligent fashion.
Here's Mark Kasowitz, his lawyer, saying that Comey's the liar, not Trump.
The president never suggested that Mr. Comey, quote, let Flynn go, close quote.
Okay, so him saying that is really not smart, because again, unless he has tapes to prove that, and he said he has, and now the White House won't say whether there are tapes or whether there aren't tapes, the tapes will be subpoenaed.
Trump, unless he goes under oath, is going to lose this particular credibility battle.
The best move would be to do what I just said, admit basically that everything that Comey said is true, and then say Comey is misconstruing everything because Comey's a politically motivated actor.
I'm a hothead.
I say things out of turn, but that's not what I meant.
There's no obstruction here.
There's no underlying crime.
That's what Trump should be saying.
Instead, he's not, and that's leading Democrats to be put in a position where they can actually do him some damage.
I'm going to talk about that in just a second, but for that, you're going to have to go over to dailywire.com.
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