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June 12, 2017 - The Ben Shapiro Show
24:34
Ep. 317 - Is Trump On The Ropes...Or On Offense?
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On Sunday, LGBT protesters decided to march through Los Angeles, shutting down traffic as they went, before meeting up in gay Mecca West Hollywood, where they were treated to speeches from House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti, and, of course, RuPaul.
But the theme of the day was not tolerance and diversity.
It was hatred for President Trump.
Resist stickers festooned garbage cans and telephone poles.
People milled it out in anti-Trump t-shirts.
In fact, the usual Pride March was recast into a Resist March against the Trump administration.
Which is actually kind of weird given that Trump is pro-gay marriage and is the first politician to enter the White House with that position.
Monday marked the first anniversary of a jihadist massacring patrons at an Orlando gay nightclub, an event Trump marked by stating, quote, a radical Islamic terrorist targeted the nightclub not only because he wanted to kill Americans, but in order to execute gay and lesbian citizens because of their sexual orientation.
It's a strike at the heart and soul of who we are as a nation.
It's an assault on the ability of free people to live their lives, love who they want, and express their identity.
Trump is the first major Republican politician to publicly loft a gay rainbow flag, but Trump is also the first Republican politician to have the honor of watching an LGBT march morph into a movement against him personally.
All of which shows that identity politics for the left is more of a strategy than a principled adherence to the notion of protecting supposed minority victims.
While the left maintains that government must be bigger and stronger and more invasive, In order to protect the rights of various political identity groups, and while the left polarizes those identity groups for political purposes, the truth is that identity politics is a mask for leftism, not an outgrowth of it.
If identity politics were truly organic, if dividing Americans by identity groups truly led them to coalitional politics, you'd expect alliances to shift.
LGBT Americans, for example, might support Trump in larger numbers than they'd supported other Republicans.
But exit polls show Mitt Romney won more LGBT votes by a solid 8 point margin than Trump did.
So what's all this about?
Leftism panders to various intersectional groups by positing special benefits for them via government.
But if the interests of the groups don't run in favor of leftism, leftism wins out anyway.
In other words, most LGBT voters are primarily leftists.
Not single-issue identity politics voters.
Leftist pandering to identity politics is very often a political ploy designed to grant individuals a feeling of solidarity with fellow identity group members, but it's not an actual principled opposition to a candidate based on that candidate's adherence to the identity group's priorities.
All of which means that it's foolish for conservatives to engage in identity politics to counter the left.
For the left, each identity group is a brick already stacked in the leftist wall, merely cemented in place with identity group politics.
The right can try to chip away at the cement, but the brick is still going to be part of the leftist wall.
Instead, conservatives should try to blow up the wall completely.
We should try to treat people as individuals rather than as members of identity groups.
Destroy the notion of people as atoms in broader bricks to begin with.
Identity politics is dangerous, but it's more of a tool than an endgame.
The left knows that, which is why an LGBT march can turn into an anti-Trump march at the drop of a hat, even if Trump is fine with Caitlyn Jenner using the women's bathroom at Trump Tower.
I'm Ben Shapiro.
This is The Ben Shapiro Show.
All right, tons to get to.
So Attorney General Jeff Sessions is supposed to go before the Senate tomorrow in open hearing.
Very smart of Attorney General Sessions.
We'll talk about that.
We'll talk about Trump actually getting some things done, Republicans actually getting some things done while the media are busy focused on the Comey mania.
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Okay, so lots to get to about in terms of the fallout from the from the Comey testimony last week.
And again, the Comey testimony sort of did two things.
Number one thing it did was it got rid of the Trump-Russia collusion narrative.
So if you recall, the Democratic narrative was Trump had worked with Russia to steal the election, and then after stealing the election, Trump had fired James Comey in order to prevent that from coming out.
That was left's theory.
And that has been completely blown away by the Comey testimony.
So that's the upside.
Even Democrats are now acknowledging openly there's no evidence of Trump-Russia collusion.
This story is falling apart.
Joe Manchin, a senator from West Virginia, he said as much on the Sunday shows.
Do you agree with this conclusion that the president has reached that there was no evidence of collusion?
You know, we haven't seen any of that whatsoever, George.
We've been looking and showing everything that they possibly have.
That has not led to that.
Okay, so again, I think that it just demonstrates that the left's narrative on this whole thing has fallen apart.
Beyond that, it's also obvious that there's a second aspect of this narrative that is now being drawn out by the left.
So the left is now pivoting.
It's like that episode of Friends where Ross is trying to get a couch up the stairs and he's just shouting, Pivot!
Pivot!
Pivot!
Well, that's where we are right now.
The Democrats are now pivoting off of the Trump-Russia stuff and now pivoting toward the Trump-Flynn stuff.
So, the most damning part of Comey's testimony and the part that was apparently codified in a memo was this part that says that Trump essentially brought Comey into a room by himself, told everybody else to leave, told Attorney General Sessions to leave, told DNI Coats to leave.
So let's everybody get out and then turn to Comey and said, I hope you can find your way clear to letting Flynn go.
And Comey says he took that as a directive.
Well, a couple of things.
Number one, obviously he didn't really take it as a directive because he didn't slow down his Flynn investigation.
But what the left would say is, okay, Trump meant it as a directive.
Comey may not have taken it seriously enough to act as a directive, but the fact that he was fired over it demonstrates that this is obstruction of justice and the fact that he He said the same thing to Dan Coats, the Director of National Intelligence, and the same thing to the National Security Agency leader, Mike Rogers.
He said the same thing, that he wanted to let Flynn go.
He said it to all these people.
That means it's obstruction of justice.
So I think that it is worthwhile now for you to understand just what obstruction of justice is before we get to the left.
Kind of falsification of what obstruction of justice is.
Because the left is all over this thing.
The left is trying to claim now that Trump has committed some sort of crime.
I want to go through the actual law.
So, Professor Alan Dershowitz said last week that there is no obstruction of justice.
The president could have told Comey, you are commanded, directed to stop the prosecution against Flynn.
The president has the right to do that.
Comey acknowledges that.
He says in the statement that historically, historically presidents have done that to the Justice Department.
So there's a fair bit of legal debate over whether, whether Professor Dershowitz is correct about this.
But the general idea is the FBI director works for the president.
The president can fire whoever he wants.
Remember, Nixon was not actually prosecuted criminally for obstruction of justice.
He was impeached.
And it's important to keep this in your mind, okay?
Because when you talk about impeachment, Trump does not have to have committed, technically, a crime in order to be impeached.
All that has to happen is the Congress thinks he's done something bad enough to impeach him.
You don't have to be convicted of a crime in order to be impeached.
The reason that's worth noting is, one, the left, when they claim that Trump did something illegal, they can be wrong and still try to impeach.
And two, just because Trump didn't do anything illegal doesn't mean that he was acting very smart or good with regard to FBI Director Comey.
Now, Trump obviously has the right to fire the FBI director, Whether he has the right to intimidate the FBI director is another story.
So there are three statutes, but here's the problem.
There are three statutes that basically cover obstruction of justice federally.
There are three statutes.
None of them appear to apply in this case.
None of them appear to apply to President Trump, even if you took the most egregious Comey-like reading of what Trump was saying.
Even if Trump said that, it's not clear it's obstruction of justice.
So here are the three provisions of federal law.
One is 18 U.S.
Code 1503.
This is called the Omnibus Clause.
The Omnibus Clause with regards to obstruction of justice covers, quote, So that sounds pretty bad, right?
Because if you assume there's an FBI investigation going on and he's trying to threaten, to influence, then that's obstruction.
impede the due administration of justice.
So that sounds pretty bad, right?
Because if you assume there's an FBI investigation going on and he's trying to threaten, to influence, then that's obstruction.
But the clause legally requires a pending judicial proceeding.
So it's not enough for there to be an FBI investigation.
There actually has to be like a trial going on, and then you try to threaten a prosecutor, right?
That would be obstruction of justice.
But we don't know of any pending judicial proceeding against Mike Flynn.
We also don't know of any pending judicial proceeding with regard to the Trump-Russia stuff.
In fact, good shot that a lot of this was a counterintelligence investigation, not necessarily a criminal one.
Counterintelligence investigations are not pending judicial proceedings.
Furthermore, the Supreme Court is pretty exacting on the application of this law.
A prosecutor would need to show that Trump's conduct, quote, materially impeded the investigation.
And even Comey has said that really didn't happen, right?
Comey said that he didn't actually do anything to shut down the investigation.
Okay, so that's provision number one.
Provision number two is 18 U.S.C.
1512C.
And the reason I'm going through this is because I want people, left and right, to have a good picture of what the law is before they start spouting off nonsense.
15... 18 U.S.C., 1512 C. This provision of the law covers anyone who, quote, obstructs, influences, or impedes an official proceeding or attempts to do so.
It's not clear an FBI investigation is an official proceeding.
And in this case, you'd actually have to prove intent.
You'd have to prove that Trump actually wanted to shut this down.
And typically, that doesn't just mean saying things.
It means you have to take, quote, a substantial step toward the accomplishment of shutting it down.
And as Flynn has testified, he is not aware that there was really any Hard evidence to attempt to shut down the Flynn investigation.
So it would be a long, a long punt to have to, to have to try and prove this.
Finally, there's 18 U.S.C.
1519.
This is the provision covering destroying evidence related to a federal investigation.
So this one would basically say that if you, this, this would deal like specifically with a federal investigation, like an FBI investigation.
If Trump had destroyed documents, that's one thing.
Him saying something to Comey is not the same thing.
So in other words, Just from a fact-checking perspective, the idea that Trump committed obstruction of justice, very, very questionable.
Now, does that mean that Trump is pursuing a smart strategy in response to this stuff?
Does it mean that it's smart how Trump is responding to it?
Not particularly.
Trump's best strategy here would be to say, listen, I didn't mean to impede an investigation.
I was just spouting off.
I spout off all the time.
I said some stuff to Comey.
Big frickin' deal.
What you gonna do about it?
I mean, Obama did the same thing with the IRS.
Loretta Lynch did the same thing with Comey with regard to the Hillary investigation.
I don't see the left going nuts over this.
This would be his smartest strategy.
And as far as the Lynch stuff, even the left acknowledges now that the Loretta Lynch stuff is very damaging because Loretta Lynch basically did straight out what the left is accusing Trump of doing with regard to Comey.
So if you recall back to last week, James Comey testified that Loretta Lynch, who is Obama's Attorney General, told him she wanted the Hillary investigation referred to as a quote-unquote matter.
And he said that he felt nauseous, or queasy I think is the word he used, with regard to Loretta Lynch's involvement in the Hillary investigation.
Now, this goes to Comey's credibility.
It really does, because the fact is, Comey didn't say anything publicly.
Comey didn't call out Loretta Lynch.
He didn't actually stop her from getting what she wanted.
In fact, he started using the term madder, just like Loretta Lynch wanted him to, which suggests that Comey is a guy who really wants to keep his job.
I mean, he wanted to keep his job with Trump.
He wanted to keep his job with Obama.
Call me for all of his rectitudinal talk about how he is the spine of moral decency.
This is a guy who didn't say much when Loretta Lynch said, I want you to basically skew this thing.
Instead, what he did is he said, listen, I think Hillary's innocent, so I'm going to do Loretta Lynch's work for her so Loretta Lynch won't be accused of having skewed the investigation.
That's pretty crazy, right?
I mean, that's bad stuff with regards to James Comey.
The left realizes this is pretty damaging right now.
And so here is Dianne Feinstein, the Democratic senator from California, basically acknowledging that what happened to Loretta Lynch is pretty bad and has to be investigated.
Now, the reason that Dianne Feinstein is saying that, of course, is because she wants to be able to say, listen, Loretta Lynch should be investigated and so should the president.
That's smart by Dianne Feinstein.
They understand the Loretta Lynch story is a problem.
Here is Senator Feinstein from my state, California.
I think we need to know more about that.
And there's only one way to know about it, and that's to have the Judiciary Committee take a look at that.
So you think it's worth investigating if, in a way, this was semantic cover given to the Clinton campaign?
It was clearly an investigation being described as a matter.
Yeah, but this is a separate investigation we're talking about.
And I don't think we should...
Okay, so again, this is Smart by Dianne Feinstein.
What's stupid is Chuck Schumer.
He's giving the more honest Democrat response, which is, nah, you know, I think Loretta Lynch is fine.
Trump's really bad, right?
Trump's super bad.
And, you know, when he intimidated Comey, that was really bad.
But when Loretta Lynch did the same thing to Comey, now that was okay.
Here's Chuck Schumer, the Senate minority leader.
Look, I heard what Jim Comey said, and he said he was troubled by it.
I respect him a great deal, but I haven't heard Loretta Lynch's side of the story, so I'm not going to come to a conclusion as to who was right or wrong, or whether it rises to the level that she should come testify.
Okay, so he doesn't think she should come testify, but Trump should definitely come testify.
Again, this just demonstrates there's a ton of hypocrisy on both sides.
So people who are very disturbed by what Loretta Lynch did in the last election cycle, you should be disturbed that President Trump told James Comey that he hoped that the Flynn thing would be dropped.
You should be, okay?
That's not to say that Trump necessarily did anything tremendously wrong.
It's not to say that Trump did anything criminal.
Yeah, I think that he did something wrong, but not criminal.
I think you shouldn't call the FBI director into your office and then tell him you want an investigation handled a particular way.
That seems inappropriate to me.
But if you're disturbed by Lynch, you should be disturbed by Trump.
And if you're disturbed by Trump, you should be disturbed by Lynch.
People who are disturbed by neither are consistent.
People who are disturbed by both are consistent.
People who are disturbed by one or the other are wildly inconsistent, and I would suggest that you examine your partisan bias if you are disturbed by Lynch, but not by Trump, or if you are disturbed by Trump, but not by Lynch.
This holds true for both sides of the aisle.
With all that said, President Trump, you know, he has his own response to all of this.
I already laid out what I think his response should be, what the smart response would be, right?
Which would be, okay, you know, on the obstruction stuff, right?
Look, the Trump-Russia stuff is great.
He already can say that I've been vindicated on that, and he is saying that.
His real response on the obstruction stuff should be, I didn't legally break the law, and by the way, I didn't even do anything to intimidate Comey because he clearly wasn't intimidated.
I was just saying stuff because that's what I do.
I say stuff.
I'm Donald Trump.
I mean, for God's sake, why are you taking me so seriously?
That'd actually be his smart response.
I want to get to how he's actually responding and why it's not so great in just a second.
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Okay, so President Trump is now responding to the Comey testimony as President Trump typically does with Just frontal assault.
I mean, it's just full abandon.
And this is where it would be really helpful if President Trump would listen to his lawyers for once.
For once.
But last Friday, in case you missed it, because it was late in the afternoon, President Trump gave a press conference, and at that press conference he said something deeply stupid.
He said he was willing to go under oath to say that James Comey had lied.
There are two problems with this.
One, James Comey's credibility is what Trump is betting on with regard to the Trump-Russia stuff.
It's hard to say, James Comey is a liar, liar, liar, liar, but he's totally right about this Trump-Russia stuff.
Very difficult to do that.
Instead, what Trump should have said is, everything he said is basically true, but he misconstrued everything because he insists on seeing me in the worst possible light, where he saw Loretta Lynch and Obama in the best possible light.
We now know that Comey did not write contemporaneous notes over the Loretta Lynch stuff.
He didn't write contemporaneous notes even when he came to a one-on-one meeting with President Bush back in the 2000s, according to Comey.
So what exactly is his issue with me?
Clearly he's just interpreting me in the worst possible light.
That's not my fault, that's Comey's fault.
That's what Trump should be saying.
So everything he says I said, I did say, but I didn't mean it the way he's saying it.
That's what Trump should be saying.
Instead, he goes out there and he calls Comey a liar because President Trump He is incapable of backing down from a fight or even strategically edging around a fight for his own benefit.
So instead, he says he's willing to go under oath.
And all of his lawyers had to just be doing the full-on Jean-Luc Picard double-faced poem.
I mean, every lawyer, most of them doing the Tommen straight-out-the-window routine from Game of Thrones.
So here is President Trump saying this at a press conference on Friday.
Would you be willing to speak under oath to give your version of these events?
100%.
Okay, again, no, no, no, no, no, no!
No!
Okay, if you are a Trump defender, if you're somebody who likes Trump, this is not him playing 40 chess, this is him being aggressive and getting out over his skis.
Not smart.
Not smart.
And really not smart because, again, once you go under oath, you can be asked anything.
And then, is Trump the kind of guy who... I mean, he's casual with how he talks, even if you want to say he's not a liar.
He's casual with the truth, okay?
Casual with the truth is a very kind interpretation of things that President Trump has said in the past.
There's a guy who accused Rafael Cruz of killing JFK, okay?
Truth is not President Trump's strong suit.
Him going under oath is just a mistake for the ages, if you were to do it.
Which is why he's not actually going to do it.
He's just sort of saying it.
But the problem is, by him saying it, now the Senate Democrats are saying, well, fine.
Here's your invitation.
Come on.
Come on down.
And we're not going to take you seriously until you do go under oath.
That's a mistake.
Another mistake.
Trump is still hanging on to this tweet.
He tweeted out that he has tapes of James Comey with him.
What he really said was, James Comey better hope that there are no tapes.
First of all, don't try to intimidate James Comey by saying that you might have tapes.
James Comey knows this game better than you do, Mr. President.
And second of all, once you say you have tapes, now you actually are in obstruction of justice territory.
Remember, one of the three statutes that I cited It was a statute that said you're not allowed to destroy evidence in the middle of a federal investigation.
So now, what happens if Trump comes out and he says there are no tapes?
Well, people are going to say, okay, we're going to subpoena the tapes.
And then what if he says there are no tapes?
People might claim there were tapes because you implied there were tapes and you refused to say there were not tapes.
They might say, well, there were tapes and you destroyed the tapes.
It's just not smart, not smart, not smart.
Here's Trump talking about the tapes again.
When, when, when will you tell us about the rover?
For a fairly short period of time.
Are there tapes, sir?
Oh, you're going to be very disappointed when you hear the answer.
Don't worry.
Okay, so if we're going to be very disappointed when we hear the... Why is everything a reality show reveal?
We'll hear the president.
Just say, no, there are no tapes.
I was tweeting that out because I think that Comey is not interpreting things correctly.
I mean, again, all of this is so easily explainable if he just had the brains to look at this in realistic fashion as opposed to, I just have to call everybody who's a liar, who's disagreeing with me.
It's just not smart.
And it's especially not smart when you have Donald Trump Jr.
then going on national TV And saying openly, yeah, my dad told Comey to back off, but that's not what he meant, which is the proper defense.
But Trump has now forbid that defense by going out there and saying that Comey was lying.
You and I both know my father a long time.
When he tells you to do something, guess what?
There's no ambiguity in it.
There's no, hey, I'm hoping.
You and I are friends.
Hey, I hope this happens, but you've got to do your job.
That's what he told Comey.
And for this guy as a politician to then go back and write a memo, oh, he felt so threatened, but he didn't do anything.
Okay, this is the proper defense.
Everybody's on Donald Trump Jr.
for saying this.
This is the proper defense.
But Trump has already kind of foreclosed that defense by doing the whole Comey lied about the entire situation.
And then Trump goes out on Twitter and he says, I believe the Comey leaks will be far more prevalent than anyone ever thought possible.
Totally illegal.
Very cowardly.
Okay.
Again, if we're going to talk about cowardly leaks, the president leaks all the time.
We'll talk about the legality of Comey's leaks.
Forget about what you think of Comey.
Forget about what you think of Trump.
This is not smart strategy.
It's just not smart strategy.
And it's unnecessary, particularly because right now, Trump is starting to do some good things.
So last week, end of the week, President Trump He suddenly nominated a bunch of conservative judges to fill a lot of appeals courts vacancies.
Good!
This is good.
He should be leading with that.
That's what he should be talking about.
You know, even in that tweet storm where he goes after Comey, he's talking about the good in the economy and then he goes after Comey.
How about just talk about what you want to talk about?
You know, one of the keys to politics, this is like politics 101, is you always answer the question you want to answer in the way you want to answer it.
You don't always have to answer directly the question that's being thrown in front of you.
But it's just, it's a mistake Okay, so I want to talk about Comey's credibility, whether Comey might be in danger of prosecution as well.
Plus, should Bob Mueller, who's the special counsel, recuse himself on the Trump material?
We'll talk about all of that.
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