All Episodes
Previous Next
June 13, 2017 - The Ben Shapiro Show
19:31
Ep. 318 - The Get-Trump Brigade
| Copy link to current segment

Time Text
Rumors are now flying that the brand new NBA champion Golden State Warriors will unanimously refuse to go to the White House to celebrate their title.
Several major sites have reported such rumors.
Many members of the Warriors have criticized Trump personally before.
Athletes have skipped White House celebrations before, too.
Earlier this year, many members of the New England Patriots decided to forego the trip to the White House to protest Trump.
In 2011, Boston Bruins goalie Tim Thomas refused to visit the White House to meet with President Obama, with Thomas explaining, quote, Back in 2011, of course, the leftist media was the one ripping an athlete getting involved in politics.
As Heath Street reported, Joe McDonald of ESPN wrote that Tim Thomas put himself above the team.
James Hardy from Bleacher Report said if Thomas was a real man, he would have gone to the Boston Bruins management and ownership, returned the money from his contract, and quit the balance of it by retiring.
Here is the truth, though.
All of these people have the absolute right not to stand next to a president they don't like.
And actually, I think we should kill the tradition of winning teams visiting the White House altogether.
The presidency is not a ceremonial position.
The temptation on the right to condemn the patriots for standing against Trump was strong as well.
Here is the truth, though.
All of these people have the absolute right not to stand next to a president they don't like.
And actually, I think we should kill the tradition of winning teams visiting the White House altogether.
The presidency is not a ceremonial position.
It is an executive one.
You wouldn't expect the local high school regional champs to visit the head of the local water board for a photo op.
Why should politicians treat athletes like subjects who must visit the White House at the whim of a monarch?
None of this actually used to be a big deal.
According to ESPN, the first sports team to visit the White House were the Brooklyn Atlantics and the Washington Nationals back in 1865.
The first World Series team champions to visit the White House were the Washington Senators in 1924, but both of those visits were by local teams.
The first NBA champions to visit the White House were the Boston Celtics in 63 with JFK.
The first NCAA champions to show up came in 1976, but ESPN reports, quote, it was Ronald Reagan who made the practice of honoring championship teams at the White House a regular occurrence.
Whoever invented the practice, it should die a quick and painless death.
There is nothing dumber than athletes coming to pay homage to a president who doesn't even watch their sports.
See, for example, the WNBA champions who show up every year to meet with some dude who's never seen a WNBA game.
And there's something oligarchic about the national expectation that sports champions must receive the blessing of the President of the United States.
Separating the president from the sporting scene would also prevent the infusion of politics into sports.
If we don't want athletes getting political, there's one easy way to avoid that eventuality.
Prevent politicians from trying to co-opt athletic popularity in the first place.
I'm Ben Shapiro.
This is the Ben Shapiro Show.
Okay, we're going to get to everything sessions-related.
We're going to get to everything Bob Mueller related.
We're going to get to a bizarre press conference yesterday at the White House with Trump's cabinet.
And we're also going to get to this big hubbub over Alex Jones and Megyn Kelly.
But before we get to any of that, I want to say thank you to our friends over at Birch Gold.
So, right now it is worth noting that gold has been up the last five months in a row.
There are some doubts about the stock market, about whether we're in the stock market bubble or real estate bubble.
Whatever you think.
There is no doubt that you should have some of your assets in gold, in precious metals.
And that's why I work with my friends over at Birch Gold Group.
They have a long-standing track record of continued success with thousands of satisfied clients, countless five-star reviews, an A-plus rating from the Better Business Bureau.
Right now, when you call them, you can get a comprehensive 16-page kit Which shows how gold and silver can protect your savings and how you can move your IRA or 401k out of stocks and into a precious metals IRA, if that's something that you want to do.
To get that no cost, no obligation kit, go to birchgold.com.
That is birchgold.com.
Make sure you ask all your questions.
And then when you decide how much you want to invest in precious metals, and as I say, I have some money in precious metals.
Then you call my friends over at Birchgold Group.
Birchgold.com slash Ben.
Use the slash Ben so they know that we sent you.
Again, it's just a safe financial play.
Okay, so lots going on in the news as always.
We begin today.
With the attempt by the left to get Donald Trump.
And this has now become over the top.
It's been over the top for months, obviously.
The whole Trump-Russia collusion scandal was an attempt by Democrats to shift blame from Hillary Clinton to Donald Trump and Russia for her loss.
Now they are searching for an alternative strategy.
Well, that means that today, in just a couple of hours here, Attorney General Jeff Sessions is supposed to testify on the Hill before the Senate Intelligence Committee.
Now, why he's testifying is sort of beyond me.
I'm not sure why exactly Sessions is expected to testify, what he's supposed to reveal.
Anybody who thinks... I mean, I've met Senator Sessions several times.
I've spoken with him at length.
Anybody who thinks that Jeff Sessions...
The Senator from Alabama is in cahoots with the Russians to somehow affect the election cycle or is attempting to cover up such collusion.
Again, I don't think they've ever met Jeff Sessions, seen Jeff Sessions, heard Jeff Sessions.
It doesn't make any sense at all.
But here are some of the questions that they're going to be asking Senator Sessions.
He did something, former Senator Sessions, he did something smart yesterday.
He said that he wanted to have the Hearing out in the open.
He didn't want to do it behind closed doors.
I said yesterday, I think that's smart.
The reason I think that's smart is because it means that we get a first-hand look at what he's saying.
We don't have to hear the leaked information from behind closed doors from Democrats who spin that information in the worst possible way.
Here are the four questions the Democrats will certainly ask Attorney General Sessions today.
First, they're going to ask him if he lied about meeting with the Russians.
So if you recall, one of the reasons that Sessions recused himself in the first place from the Trump-Russia investigation were there was an accusation that he testified in front of Congress that he never met with the Russian government officials, that he was not involved in any sort of collusion.
And then it came out that he had had a couple of meetings with Russian Ambassador Sergei Kislyak, who's widely seen as an FSB, which is the KGB, an FSB operative.
In any case, That was overblown in the first place.
The first meeting that Sessions supposedly had with Kislyak was at a Heritage Foundation event where there were something like 50 other ambassadors present.
That's according to the Washington Post.
The second meeting that Sessions had with Kislyak was at the Senate offices, and Kislyak meets routinely with members of the Senate, like, all the time, so You know, Sessions has a pretty easy rebuttal there.
Second question that Sessions will be asked today is why FBI Director, former FBI Director James Comey would suggest that there were reasons for Sessions to recuse himself beyond the meetings with Kislyak.
So if you recall all the way back to last week, I know, time has slowed.
There's so much news.
Last week, former FBI director testified in front of Congress.
He said, Now, pretty vague, right?
Now, pretty vague, right?
It's pretty sneaky of Comey to drop that in there and then hide the ball behind the classified information wall.
What are the reasons?
Sessions will be asked, and Sessions has an easy answer here too.
He can say, I have no idea what Comey was talking about.
Like, I don't know what Comey was talking about.
Do you know what Comey was talking about?
Nobody knows what Comey was talking about.
He was just saying stuff.
Okay, third question that Sessions will be asked is, will you stand up to Trump?
So, as we're gonna talk about in a few minutes here, there's a rumor flying around Capitol Hill put out there by Newsmax CEO Chris Ruddy, who's friends with Trump, very close friends with Trump actually, Ruddy said that Trump was thinking about firing the special counsel Robert Mueller.
So this has created all sorts of chaos inside the Trump administration.
Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein had to come out earlier this morning and say that there was no intent to fire Bob Mueller and that he would not participate in the firing of Bob Mueller.
Sessions will be asked the same question.
Again, I think it is worthwhile here to note that Sessions is basically being asked what level of independence he has from Trump.
Barack Obama's Attorney General Eric Holder called himself Barack Obama's wingman.
And no one cared.
No one cared.
There was always just an assumption that the Attorney General under Barack Obama was dirty.
Obama used executive privilege in order to protect Eric Holder in the Fast and Furious investigation.
Eric Holder used his methodologies to try and protect Barack Obama multiple times.
So, again, I think that Sessions is being held to a standard that Democrats certainly are not being held to.
Should Sessions have some semblance of independence?
Absolutely.
Again, I think they're asking something of Sessions that is a little bit over the top.
And finally, they are going to ask Sessions why he recommended that Comey be fired after he recused himself from Trump-Russia.
The implication, of course, being that Sessions was involved in something nefarious.
Then he recused himself, and then Comey was getting too close.
So Sessions recommended that Trump fire him.
There's an alternative explanation that makes a lot more sense here.
That is, there was no Trump-Russia collusion.
Sessions recused himself because he didn't want to be the center of the Trump-Russia stuff, and he thought that it would muddy the waters.
And then finally, Trump went to him and said, hey, do you think that we should fire this Comey guy?
And Sessions said, yeah, I think he's incompetent.
That would be the most obvious answer.
But watch, the media will make hay out of the hearings today.
They'll make a very big deal out of the hearings today, no matter how dumb that is.
And you can see how over the top the left is in their attempts to get Trump.
Elizabeth Warren, who was fresh from some sort of rain dance, actually, she came in out of the cold.
She exited her wigwam, and the senator from Native American landia, she came out and she said that Sessions should just be fired.
He should outright be fired.
For what?
She couldn't really explain, but fire him.
Sessions, look, I posed Sessions for being Attorney General of the United States.
And you may remember, I got sent away from the Senate for that and got shut down and not allowed to speak again until after the vote.
That was the rule.
I could not speak again until the Senate had had a chance to vote on Jeff Sessions.
And then when it came out that Jeff Sessions had lied, I called again.
He needs to be fired.
He needs to be taken out of that job.
If you're not going to be honest during your confirmation hearing, then you ought to be gone.
Okay, again, this is just ridiculous.
The quote-unquote lie is that Sessions didn't remember that he had once shook the hand of Russian Ambassador Kislyak and that he had one meeting with him one time.
And again, there are pictures all over the internet of various Democratic senators meeting with Sessions, but you can see that Democrats are running in 2018 on how much they hate Trump.
I keep saying this, Republicans need to get with the program.
It's not enough for us to just say that that's what's happening here, because clearly that's what's happening here.
Trump has to do a good job now.
Trump has to not make mistakes.
In a little while, I'm going to get to Trump's response to all of this, but I just want to show you the extent to which Democrats have lost their minds on the impeach Trump stuff.
Maxine Waters is legitimately one of the dirtiest figures in Congress.
During the financial meltdown, she was attempting to get bailouts for her husband's bank, allegedly.
Maxine Waters, the Congresswoman from my neck of the woods out here in California, who called the L.A.
riots an L.A.
uprising and said it was not, that violence was called for.
This same person is out there shouting impeach Trump.
They're pleased because they don't know what to make of this man in Washington D.C.
who calls himself president of the United States of America.
He's not my president!
He's not your president!
He lies!
He cheats!
I love how the left has termed her Auntie Maxine.
She's only your aunt in the sense that there's this crazy old loon aunt who shows up at your barbecues and you don't really know who she is because she's not related to anybody but she just seems hungry so you feed her.
Auntie Maxine Yes, it turns out that Trump is your president.
He is everybody's president because he was duly elected in an election in the United States.
That's how things work out here.
Bernie Sanders is out there doing this routine, too.
Here is the senator from Loonland out there talking about how Trump is the most dangerous president we have ever seen.
He is the most dangerous.
He is so dangerous, I am very much afraid.
He will take my pudding cup, and then I will not know what to eat, and I will be forced to drink cans of inshore, which are just not as tasty as my pudding.
Bernie Sanders, go.
Today, today, in the White House, we have perhaps the worst and most dangerous president in the history of our country.
And we also have, not to be forgotten, Extreme right-wing leadership in the U.S.
House and the U.S.
Senate.
I love how the Democrats can't decide whether Trump is incompetent or super dangerous.
It's kind of hilarious to watch them bounce around between the two.
Finally, the D.C.
and Maryland Attorneys General held a press conference yesterday in which they announced they were filing a loss against President Trump.
They're trying to suggest that he has violated the Emoluments Clause of the United States Constitution.
The Emoluments Clause of the U.S.
Constitution bans public figures in the United States elected officials.
from taking bribes basically from foreign governments.
And they're trying to suggest that that is what Trump is doing with the Trump hotels, that there's a bunch of foreigners who are renting rooms in an attempt to get in good with Trump.
Here are these attorneys general wasting the time of their citizens, time and money of their citizens.
Earlier this morning, the state of Maryland and the District of Columbia filed a lawsuit in federal court against the president of the United States.
The suit alleges that President Trump is flagrantly violating the Constitution, which explicitly bars presidents from receiving gifts or inducements from foreign or domestic government entities.
Never in the history of this country have we had a president with these kinds of extensive business entanglements.
Okay, look, I am not a fan of how President Trump has handled his business.
I don't think that... I think he should have divested himself.
I always thought that his ethics rules were not stringent enough.
But the idea that they're going to be able to sue... Number one, they don't have standing.
They have to have something called legal standing.
They can't show they were damaged.
What they're trying to say is that they are damaged because one of the Trump hotels is in Washington, D.C.
or some such nonsense.
No.
Second of all, the emoluments clause does not really talk about what happens if the president has an ongoing business, and that ongoing business does business with somebody else when the president isn't running it.
Right now, Trump isn't actually running his business.
His kids are running the business, and it's not clear what constitutes a gift.
Again, there were services rendered by the Trump Hotel, and people from abroad are allowed to pay for those services.
Not clear that this amounts to a gift.
Again, the emoluments clause has always been pretty vaguely defined, particularly since presidents end up receiving all sorts of presents from foreign governments.
Remember, when the Clintons left the White House, they took a crap load of presents from foreign governments in order to...
Enrich themselves, and that was not considered a violation of the emoluments clause.
But this just goes to show you, the Democrats are just searching out there.
This is not really to get rid of Trump.
This is all about driving out the base and increasing the perception that Trump is corrupt.
And we're going to talk about how Trump has been responding to that in just a second.
But first, I want to say thank you to our friends over at My Patriot Supply.
So, right now, North Korea is as militant as it has ever been.
There's a new study showing that the Russians are attempting to, they attempted to hack voting machines.
We know that natural disasters are on the way.
We're hitting hurricane season.
Whatever you are concerned about, and one of the things you should be concerned about is the possibility of some sort of disaster that renders the government unable to give you aid for a certain period of time.
You need to go and get an emergency food supply over at MyPatriotSupply.
All you have to do is go to preparewithben.com.
That is preparewithben.com.
888-803-1413.
You get a four-week emergency food supply for just $99.
Takes care of you and your family for four weeks.
Emergency food supply, $99.
Order now.
It's something out here in California.
The government actually recommends that you have emergency food on hand.
Nobody does it, but you can.
Be the person who's prepared with my Patriot Supply.
PrepareWithBen.com.
All of this food lasts for years and years and years, and apparently, according to folks in the office, it tastes like home cooking.
So, only $99 plus free shipping, you stuff it in a closet, you don't have to worry about it until disaster hits, and then you're the person who protected their family.
888-803-1413.
888-803-1413, or preparewithben.com, preparewithben.com.
Okay, so, all of this said, if it's obvious that the agenda of the Democrats is to take down Trump, it would behoove President Trump to behave in the most morally rectitudinous fashion he can possibly find.
Right?
That he should behave, he should be as clean as the driven snow.
He should say, come in, check me out, everything's great, you know, welcome the health inspectors, everything is fine.
And he certainly should not Continue to boost this kind of widespread notion that he sees himself as a potentate.
Which is why it was not great yesterday when he had a meeting with his cabinet and a bunch of cameras showed up.
And his cabinet members know, unfortunately, that President Trump's personality foibles mean that the best way to get through to President Trump, the best way to stand on his good side, is flattery.
And so this just kind of humiliating exchange happened.
Reince Priebus, his chief of staff, says this at the meeting in front of all the cameras.
...senior staff around you, Mr. President.
We thank you for the opportunity and the blessing that you've given us to serve your agenda and the American people.
And we're continuing to work very hard every day to accomplish those goals.
The opportunity and the blessing.
And the Lord responded with favor to Ryan's Ben Richard.
I mean, really?
Come on, come on, come on.
You work for him.
Like, we all get that.
But the entire table goes around and thanks Trump for the opportunity to serve you and serve the agenda.
Wilbur Ross has said something similar.
Again, this sort of stuff just does not look good on a president.
I don't care who the president is.
If it were a Democrat, can you imagine the mockery from the right?
If Barack Obama had forced all of the members of his cabinet to go around and praise him personally for appointing them, can you imagine how—the mockery would never end, and rightly so.
I mean, it's sad when Chuck Schumer successfully trolls the president of the United States.
Chuck Schumer's just awful, but here's the Senate Minority Leader successfully trolling Trump yesterday.
I want to thank everybody for coming.
I just thought we'd go around the room.
Lucy, how'd we do on the Sunday show yesterday?
Your tone was perfect.
You were right on message.
Michelle, how'd my hair look coming out of the gym this morning?
You have great hair.
Nobody has better hair than you.
Before we go any further, I just want to say thank you for the opportunity and blessing to serve your agenda.
That's great.
Okay, I have to admit, I laughed.
The whole thing is kind of ridiculous.
Now, is it damning of Trump?
Is it the end of the world?
No, and we're not going to blow this out of proportion, but I just want to point out that when it comes to Trump, most of the problems he's had are problems of his own making, and they spring from his personality, which is volatile and egocentric, and that is not a good combo when you're president of the United States.
He's going to need to get himself under control a little bit.
We're going to talk about that in just a second.
Plus, I want to talk about what's happened with Megyn Kelly and Alex Jones.
I want to talk about all of the hubbub surrounding Katy Perry.
We're going to deconstruct the culture a little bit today because it's a Tuesday.
So lots more coming up.
But you're going to have to go over to dailywire.com right now and subscribe for that.
$8 a month gets you a subscription.
▲
Export Selection