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July 12, 2017 - The Ben Shapiro Show
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Carry On, My Wayward Son | The Ben Shapiro Show Ep. 338
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On Wednesday morning, President Trump tweeted out his most important defense to accusations about Donald Trump Jr.
attempting to collude with the Russian government.
Look what Hillary Clinton may have gotten away with.
Disgraceful.
This has become the all-purpose alibi for Republican malfeasance.
Some call it whataboutism.
What about Hillary Clinton?
What about the media?
What about Bill Clinton or Teddy Kennedy?
There's a raging debate on the right about the nature of this defense.
Is it just excuse-making for bad behavior?
Or is it a legitimate reminder that politics is a dirty game and that we don't choose the rules of engagement?
This morning, Byron York of the Washington Examiner explained, Another word for whataboutism is precedent.
This seems kind of inadequate.
Whataboutism actually takes three basic forms, some of them useful, some of them counterproductive.
Let's run through them.
First, Reminders of leftist dishonesty.
When Trump tweets out that Hillary Clinton may have gotten away with bad behavior, he's at least partially reminding the media and the Democrats that they were fine with Hillary's bad behavior.
When conservatives spent much of yesterday reminding the media that Barack Obama pledged flexibility to the Russians in exchange for them backing off their aggression in the final days of the 2012 election, they were doing so in order to point out the media's obvious leftist bias.
That's important and it's worthwhile, but it should be made explicit.
Second, whataboutism can be a reminder of proportionality.
Sometimes, whataboutism takes the form of reminding people that something isn't that big a deal.
Seemingly, the entire left went ballistic this week when it first heard about a House rule that forbade bear arms in the Capitol.
The right promptly recommended, reminded the left, that this rule existed under Nancy Pelosi, too.
It wasn't a big deal then, it's not a big deal now.
Third, moral relativism.
Now this is the dangerous form of whataboutism.
It's also the most common.
This is the actual message underlying Trump's tweet.
This ignores two crucial facts.
First, Hillary did not get away with it.
She lost the election.
It's why she's not in the White House.
Second, Wrong is wrong.
The right now engages in a fantasy whereby the left's dishonesty somehow justifies conservative dishonesty.
Hey, if Hillary's corrupt, what's the big problem with the Trump campaign soliciting information from the Russian government?
In this case, whataboutism is itself dishonesty.
It's pretending to care about the sins of the left, In order to justify the sins of the right.
It actually throws into sharp relief the hypocrisy of the right.
We complained endlessly and justifiably about Loretta Lynch meeting secretly with Bill Clinton, but we're fine with Donald Trump Jr.
meeting secretly with Natalia Veselnitskaya and we're supposed to believe everything he says about it.
We ripped President Obama's flexibility hot mic moment, but we're fine with President Trump saying that America has killed people just like Putin.
We correctly targeted Clinton over Chinagate, but now we're happy to use Chinagate as an excuse to avoid talking about Russiagate.
This isn't conservative.
It's not even moral.
Kindergartners learn that, but he did it too, isn't an excuse for bad behavior.
We should know this stuff.
The right often embraces this form of whataboutism because many people believe that fighting the left requires tossing out morality of means in favor of morality of ends.
Fight fire with fire.
Since that was the animating principle behind a lot of conservative support for the Trump campaign, this form of whataboutism has also become the most common form.
Many on the right say this isn't actually moral relativism.
Relativism implies there's no moral answer to any given question, whereas situational morality says there is a moral answer, but it changes based on the fact pattern.
Therefore, it might normally be wrong to collude with Russia, for example, but it's a moral imperative to do so to stop Hillary Clinton, after all.
Well, we had to side with Stalin to defeat Hitler.
We might have to side with Putin to stop ISIS.
The problem is that this invites an obvious temptation.
If you can turn the other side into Hitler, you can make excuses for siding with Stalin.
In the game of politics, few are willing to honestly assess the moral quality of their opposition and the rules of engagement.
It's far more politically profitable to define all political enemies as Nazis, And then suggest it's okay to punch them.
This is just as true for the left as it is for the right.
Far more true for the left, actually.
It's always easier to win if you side with Stalin, even if you could win without siding with Stalin.
The temptation, therefore, is to demonize the other side so you can side with Stalin even if you don't need to.
We ought to be careful about how we use Whataboutism.
The goal should be to reinforce moral standards, not to undermine them.
But that goal seems to be receding into the distance as we use Whataboutism as a club directed at destroying principle rather than a shield for defending it.
I'm Ben Shapiro, this is The Ben Shapiro Show.
Okay, we are going to fully analyze everything having to do with Trump Jr.
and his treason and the Russians.
We're gonna get to all of that.
Plus, do you see this magical cup?
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Okay, so I'm gonna tell you about everything Trump Jr.
related.
We're gonna go through the tape.
We're gonna talk about Democrats.
Completely losing their minds over this as they have lost their mind over everything so far We'll go through all of that.
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appears on Sean Hannity's program.
And there are five big questions about the Donald Trump Jr.
meeting with the Russians story.
So as you recall, yesterday, these blockbuster emails are released by Donald Trump Jr.
on Twitter.
And he wasn't doing it out of the goodness of his heart, okay?
Trump said, my son is so, he's unbelievable, transparency, unbelievably.
You can see through him, he's like a glass of water.
You can see right through him.
Unbelievable people.
Okay, but it turns out the reason that he revealed the emails was because eight minutes later the New York Times ran a story on the email, so he knew the New York Times was going to reveal the story, so he threw the emails out there.
The problem is that the email said explicitly that Rob Goldstone, who is that weirdo who we played on the show yesterday, this publicist weirdo who talks about Andy's Arby or whatever it is, that guy brokered a meeting between Trump Jr.
and a Russian-connected lawyer whom he said was a Russian government lawyer And he also said, this is part of Russia's effort to support Mr. Trump.
This is a direct quote from the email, quote, part of Russia and its government support for Mr. Trump.
So, the left immediately jumped to, this is the collusion.
The collusion has happened.
Collusion has occurred.
Trump Jr.
saw this, and he said he loved it, and then he brought in Manafort, and he brought in Kushner, and this is where the collusion began.
The evil planning in the back rooms to decide how to militarize all of Hillary Clinton's seized emails from WikiLeaks, and John Podesta's seized emails from WikiLeaks.
Okay.
That is not what actually the email showed.
What the email showed was attempted collusion.
Okay, first of all, no.
Collusion is a term of art.
It is not a term of law.
Collusion is not a crime.
There's no crime called collusion.
There's a crime called conspiracy to commit a crime, but there is no crime called collusion.
Okay, not when it comes to this kind of stuff.
So when people say collusion and you go, ooh, he'll end up behind bars.
No, no.
You actually have to commit a crime under statute in order for you to end up behind bars.
So It can still be bad.
It can still be wrong.
It can still be a political problem.
It can still be an impeachment problem for President Trump if the Democrats ever, God forbid, got control of the House of Representatives.
But it is not actual legal crime.
This is not legal crime.
So we can put that to the side.
But what the Democrats were saying is that this was the beginning of actual collusion.
This is where they started coordinating.
Okay, well there's no proof that actual coordination actually happened, because all of the people in the meeting came out and said, that was worthless.
The lady didn't even have any information.
There are a couple of threats that exist, even if the information was worthless.
Threat number one was that this was sort of the opener.
That the Russian government now knew that the Trump campaign was willing to hear more stuff, and so maybe there'll be collusion down the road, but we haven't found any evidence of that.
Threat number two is that now that there's been this meeting, they can hold that over Trump's head.
Right?
They could—the Russians could hold this over Trump's head, and they could say, anytime we want, we can drop the information that you were quasi-colluding with us, or trying to collude with us, and destroy your presidency.
But now the information's been dropped, so the threat is a little bit gone, unless there are more shoes to drop.
But there are some outstanding questions that I want to go through about this particular meeting.
And I think they actually do require answers now, because they are things that Trump is going to be asked, and the Trump administration are going to be asked.
So, number one, did any information actually pass hand?
So, everybody at the meeting, as I say, Kushner, Paul Manafort, the then-campaign manager, Trump Jr., Vesel Nitskaya, Natasha, Natalia, whatever her name is.
All of them say...
No information changed hands.
The problem is, you wouldn't expect them to say differently.
Who in that meeting is going to say, yeah, they gave us a bunch of information about Hillary Clinton, then we used it?
No one's going to say that, right?
Veselnitskaya would have to then admit that she was basically an agent of the Russian government, and the other three people in the room would actually be in danger of prosecution if the information was illegally obtained.
So none of them are actually going to say it, and they all have a little bit of a history of dishonesty with this particular matter.
Manafort has been a Kremlin stooge for years.
I mean, like going back to 2012, there's a guy who approached me about working with Manafort and was basically posing him as a stooge of the Ukrainian government at the time.
So this is not any sort of great shock.
At that time, the Ukrainian government was in league with Vladimir Putin.
Trump Jr.
had fibbed about the meeting.
He said it didn't take place.
Then he said it did take place, but we talked adoption.
And then finally he admitted what the meeting was about.
Kushner did not put on his forms that this meeting ever took place.
So maybe that was oversight, maybe it was dishonesty, but it at least calls trust into question.
And we have no idea who this Veselnutskaya lady is, right?
I mean, she says she's not a Russian agent, but there's evidence to suggest that she is a Russian what they call a cutout, which is to say somebody who works for the Russian government but has plausible deniability.
So we just don't know if any information was passed in this meeting.
And the reason that I say this is because, you know, if you if you look back to here's Trump Jr.
This is clip three.
Trump Jr. talking about what happened in the meeting.
Did you tell your father anything about this?
No.
It was such a nothing.
There was nothing to tell.
I mean, I wouldn't have even remembered it until you start scouring through the stuff.
It was literally just a wasted 20 minutes, which was a shame.
Okay, so it's a wasted 20 minutes.
Now, this is believable, right?
I mean, like, he looks like he's telling the truth here, but I will just remind you that Hillary Clinton said this about Loretta Lynch's meeting with Bill Clinton.
They talked about grandkids, which is very much on our minds these days.
Okay, so I'm not suggesting that Donald Trump Jr.
is definitely lying, because I don't know whether he's lying or not.
What I will say is that if Hillary Clinton had done the exact same thing, we would have said, there's no way she's telling the truth, right?
Bill Clinton and Loretta Lynch don't get together in a room.
In the middle of the campaign to talk about grandkids, right?
We all said this.
This is complete nonsense.
And it turns out that it did compromise the investigation in such a way that James Comey felt the necessity to actually get himself involved in the investigation where he had no place.
If we're gonna hold the standard that we don't know what happens behind closed doors and we have to be suspicious, my feeling is that we have to be pretty consistent about this.
So that's question number one.
Did any information actually change hands?
Because that So, on Saturday, and I know, listen, I'm trying to give you the most honest take I can here, so as I say, no crime was committed.
It's not clear to me that Donald Trump Jr.
did anything, you know, Legally, well, I don't think he did anything wrong.
Legally wrong, anyway.
It's not treason, as the left is proclaiming, but to pretend that this is a big nothing burger is being dishonest, I think.
And when people say it's a nothing burger, it's because they're not actually taking an even quasi-objective look at this.
Okay, so, on Saturday, Donald Trump Jr.
released a statement about this particular meeting, and here's what he said.
He said, quote, It was a short introductory meeting.
I asked Jared and Paul to stop by.
We primarily discussed a program about the adoption of Russian children that was active and popular with American families years ago.
And was since ended by the Russian government, but it was not a campaign issue at the time, and there was no follow-up.
I was asked to attend the meeting by an acquaintance, but was not told the name of the person I would be meeting with beforehand.
So, all of this is technically true, right?
All of that's technically true, but it misses the two main points, which is the meeting was specifically held to pass on dirt about Hillary Clinton, and second, Trump Jr.
fully expected that he was going to be meeting a Russian government lawyer.
He didn't know her name, but it said right in the email that this is going to be a Russian government lawyer.
So, the problem is, the New York Times is reporting that the White House pre-approved Trump Jr.' 's statement on Saturday, which looks more like a cover-up than it does like an attempt to be transparent.
If Trump Jr.
had just released the statement, that'd be one thing, but for the White House to approve a statement that it knew was false and was going to be debunked within 72 hours, not a good look for the White House.
Okay, and then there's the biggest question of all, which is, did Trump himself know about the meeting?
And everybody at the meeting says no.
You know, Trump Jr.
says no.
It's a little hard for me to believe that Trump was completely out of the loop, given the fact that, again, all of his top campaign officials were in a room with this lady for half an hour, two days after he had secured the nomination.
But it's possible.
It's possible they had this meeting and they didn't tell him.
It's possible that they wanted to shield him, actually.
They wanted to have the preliminary meeting, and then if it had turned into something, maybe they'd go talk with Trump.
The left is trotting out this video, just so you know.
They're trotting out this video.
On June 7th, that's when Donald Trump Jr.
confirmed the meeting with the Russian official, Sor, supposedly.
I am going to give a major speech on probably Monday of next week and we're going to be discussing all of the things that have taken place with the Clintons.
pantry, let's clip 15.
I am going to give a major speech on probably Monday of next week.
And we're going to be discussing all of the things that have taken place with the Clintons.
I think you're going to find it very informative and very, very informative.
OK, so there are a lot of people saying he never gave this speech, right?
Everybody, I remember when he said this, everybody was expecting him to give this big barn burner of a speech where he tore down Hillary Clinton, he never gave it, so people were suggesting that maybe what happened here is that Jared and Trump Jr.
called him up and said, We're going to get some information, and you're going to want to hear this information.
And Trump got out in front of himself.
That's definitely a possibility, but that's correlation, not causation.
Again, no proof that Trump knew about what was going on here.
Okay, this brings into question, this is the fourth question about this, and that is, why did Trump fire Comey?
So, my theory, my working theory, it's still my working theory, is that Trump fired Comey because he knows that he's innocent.
And he's ticked off that James Comey wouldn't say that he was innocent, even though privately James Comey was saying he wasn't under investigation.
Because of this email, there's another plausible theory that's now gaining ground, because the counter-theory to that was Trump fired Comey because he was getting too close.
I never believed that because there was no there there.
It's hard to believe that Trump was going to fire him over a big nothing.
Right?
Maybe he fired him because he was mad, but to fire him for getting close to something that doesn't exist seems weird.
But because of Trump Jr.' 's involvement now, it's possible that, you know, Trump tried to fire Comey because maybe he was trying to protect Donald Jr.
This is the theory the left is trying to put forward now.
Do I believe that theory?
No, I don't think there's enough evidence for that theory at all, but I'm just informing you of what the left's theory with regard to Comey would be.
Like, why was it so innocent?
Why was it so urgent?
That Trump wanted Comey to announce that he wasn't under FBI investigation, except that maybe he was scared that it was going to get close to Donald Jr.
Okay, final question, and this one is the most interesting, I think, is who leaked the news of this meeting in the first place?
So, this meeting only had four people in it, right?
It had the Russian, and then it had three of Trump's campaign officials, all of whom are still working for Trump.
So, Manafort isn't, but he has no interest in revealing this meeting because it cuts against His attempts to distance himself from his Russian connections.
So, who actually leaked the news of the meeting to the New York Times?
Apparently they've been working on this for months.
What exactly drove all of this?
The most obvious source is obviously Corey Lewandowski.
So Corey Lewandowski was technically still the campaign manager at the time.
He wasn't fired until June 20th.
And he hates Manafort, because Manafort took his place.
He feels like Manafort ousted him.
He does not like Kushner, because he thinks that Ivanka ousted him.
And he's not a huge fan of Donald Jr., from what I understand, because Donald Jr.
was present at his firing.
So Lewandowski has a lot of interest in revealing all of this stuff.
To hurt the other three, and then Trump was talking about flirting with Lewandowski, bringing him in, bringing him back.
That'd be some pretty hard-nosed ball from Corey Lewandowski leaking news of this meeting that could definitely damage Trump.
Lewandowski has, of course, denied knowing anything about the meeting, but he was the campaign manager at that time, right?
This is two weeks before he was fired.
He was campaign manager at the time, so it's quite possible he was even copied on the emails.
Here's the bottom line.
This whole thing opens a can of worms the Trump administration did not want open.
It's going to be very difficult to close that can of worms.
Particularly when the credibility for Don Jr.
has been so shot on this particular meeting.
Now, do I think that this is all a distraction from Trump's legislative agenda?
Absolutely.
Do I think the media are overselling it?
Yeah, I do.
Because instead of treating this as the first step, or treating this as a case of we now have motive but we don't have means or opportunity yet, the media is treating this as the smoking gun, right?
This is the be-all end-all.
And it is bad.
I mean, I'm not going to pretend it's not bad, but It is not everything the media is cracking it up to be.
Now, I want to go through what Trump Jr.
actually had to say about this in just a second, but before I do that, I want to say thank you to our sponsors over at the USCCA.
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You should definitely be involved with them Okay, so let's go through what Trump jr.
Actually said so he's on Hannity Hannity is is the friendly press outlet that the Trump administration goes to When they have a problem because they know they're not gonna get a lot of hard balls, which is fine I mean Obama did the same thing with CNN and MSNBC for legitimately years.
So Trump jr.
Said that he would have done some things differently, which seems like the understatement of the century.
I Like I said, in retrospect, I probably would have done things a little differently.
Again, this is before the Russia-mania.
This is before they were building it up in the press.
For me, this was opposition research.
They had something, you know, maybe concrete evidence to all the stories I'd been hearing about, but they were probably under-reported for, you know, years, not just during the campaign.
So, I think I wanted to hear it out, but really, it went nowhere, and it was apparent that that wasn't what the meeting was actually about.
Okay, so basically, here he is just Joe Bluth, right?
Joe Bluth from Arrested Development.
I've made a huge mistake.
There are a lot of comparisons being made between Joe Bluth and Don Jr.
Last night, he would have done some things differently.
Yeah, that would have been good.
I mean, first of all, if you're going to engage in this sort of subterfuge, then perhaps you shouldn't put it in open emails.
That seems like not a good way to do it.
Trump Jr.
then says, if there had been anything illegal, I would have gone to the authorities right away.
I said it earlier, a hundred percent I would bring it to the proper authorities.
There's nothing that I would do to ever endanger this country.
I think the reason we fought so hard during this campaign, whether it was my father and the work that he put into it, whether it was the rest of our family and the efforts that we put into it, and you know those efforts well, it's because we'd do anything for this country, so we're never going to put that in jeopardy, ever.
I'm your older brother, Mike, and I was stepped over!
That's the way Pop wanted it.
It ain't the way I wanted it!
I can handle things!
I'm smart!
Not like everybody says!
Like, dumb!
than unfortunately Don Jr. as Fredo. - I'm your older brother, Mike, and I was stepped over. - That's the way Pop wanted it.
- It ain't the way I wanted it!
I can handle things, I'm smart!
Not like everybody says!
Like dumb, I'm smart and I want respect! - So, yeah, it hasn't been a good 24 hours for Don Jr.
So now I want to go to what the Democrats are saying about all of this, because what the Democrats are saying about all of this is full-scale nutty.
So as I say, I think that there's a little more nuance than the Democrats are saying.
Number one, it is attempted collusion, okay?
To pretend anything otherwise is stupid.
It is attempted collusion because clearly there is willingness on the part of the Trump campaign to meet with a Russian government official or what they perceive to be a Russian government official to pass on Hillary's information.
I'm going to talk about whether that's moral or not in a second, whether that's okay or not in a few minutes, because that is the lurking question underneath all of this, is how far is the right willing to go to defeat Hillary Clinton and the Democrats?
Is that okay?
Is it okay to work with the Russian government to take down Hillary Clinton?
Because I'm already starting to see the shades of Jack Nicholson in A Few Good Men.
You're damn right I ordered the code red.
You know, that's, like, we're almost there.
We're almost to the point where there are a bunch of people on the right who are basically saying, okay, so fine, so there was collusion.
What do I care?
He won, didn't he?
We'll talk about that in just a second.
But the Democrats are, of course, doing what they always do, which is blowing this way out of proportion It's one of the reasons why Americans can't take all of this super seriously because they're not waiting for the evidence.
So Tim Kaine, as you recall, the vice presidential candidate, one of the most quickly forgotten vice presidential candidates in human history, actually.
You recall that he ran against Hillary, he ran with Hillary Clinton, and it was basically Hillary Clinton and this bag of white paint.
And so that was the bag of white paint being Tim Kaine.
Here is Tim Kaine talking about how this is treason!
Treason!
You think this is treason?
The investigation, it's not, nothing is proven yet, but we're now beyond obstruction of justice in terms of what's being investigated.
This is moving into perjury, false statements, and even potentially treason.
Okay, into treason.
Here's the constitutional definition of treason.
Article 3, Section 3.
Article 3, Section 3.
No, we're not actually going to send Don Jr.
to the electric chair over having a meeting in Trump Tower with a lawyer who had no information as far as we know.
So that's just awesome.
So yes, the Democrats are of course making mockeries of themselves because they cannot take a win.
They cannot just sit there and take a win.
They of course have to blow it out of proportion and make asses of themselves.
We'll talk more about that.
Joe Scarborough saying that he is leaving the Republican Party.
Aww.
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So now is, of course, a perfect time for the right to virtue signals.
So, there are a bunch of people on the right who have decided that now is the time to virtue signal.
See, we told you so about Trump.
Okay, listen, I'm one of the people who is very, to put it mildly, I was rather Trump-skeptical during the election cycle, if you recall all the way back then.
But I don't think this is an I-told-you-so moment.
I don't think this isn't a, you know, I'll be people who voted for Trump, you are so wrong to see what he's doing now.
No, I think everybody who voted for Trump basically knew what they were getting, and what they were getting was a guy who was this, right?
I don't think this is a huge, enormous shock.
I think that, you know, this is basically you bought what you paid for, and maybe it was better than Hillary Clinton, but it comes along with some baggage, and you have to recognize that.
One of the great ironies is Joe Scarborough over on MSNBC.
He says that he is done with the Republican Party.
He's leaving.
He and Mika, they've had it.
They're leaving.
Mika was never a member of the Republican Party, but he's on with Stephen Colbert, one of the great schmucks in Showtime.
And here is Joe Scarborough, who apparently decided to copy the hairstyle of Andrew Garfield from any number of movies, and or to simply get out of the shower, rub his hair with a towel, What do you think is happening with your own party?
I think it's inexplicable.
Is it inexplicable Joseph A. Scarborough?
Is it truly inexplicable Josephina H. Scarborough?
Here is Joe Scarborough explaining why he's leaving the Republican Party like any of us truly care desperately.
What do you think is happening with your own party?
I think it's inexplicable.
Hold on, pause for a second.
Is it inexplicable Joseph A. Scarborough?
Is it truly inexplicable Josephina H. Scarborough?
Is it?
You spent the entire election cycle pumping up Donald Trump.
You spent the election cycle talking about how the American people just didn't get the appeal of Donald Trump.
You had him on your show every morning.
You had him call in.
You sat in a room with him during the primary results coming in.
And you chortled with him.
And now you turn around and, oh, he's so mean because he was mean to Mika's face.
Oh, okay.
So, as I say, everyone knew what they were getting.
There are very few surprises in politics.
If you are surprised by anything that is currently going on with the Trump White House, let me suggest that you were blinding yourself to reality before you did any of this stuff.
And the same is true for Joe Scarborough.
But I thought Donald Trump was my best friend.
He wasn't your best friend, dude.
Okay, I thought that the Republicans were all gonna turn on him.
Really, you didn't.
But here's Joe Scarborough, a three-term congressperson who's made a fortune being an iconoclast, and here he is talking about how he's gonna leave the Republican Party.
Maybe he'll start his own party, the Joe and Mika Wedding Party.
It'll be awesome.
Trump has elected president that my party has betrayed their core values.
Time and time and time again, they turn the other way.
And they're doing the same thing now.
And it's actually disgusting.
And you have to ask yourself, what exactly is the Republican Party willing to do?
How far are they willing to go?
How much of this country and our values are they willing to sell out?
But aren't you a Republican?
I am a Republican, but I'm not going to be a Republican anymore.
I've got to become an independent.
Yay!
And the crowd goes nuts.
So thank you for that virtue signaling, Joe Scarborough.
You're not going to stand inside the Republican Party and fight for the soul of it, if you really think all these things.
You're not going to try and correct the mistakes.
You're not going to try and win people over to your side.
You're going to leave the Republican Party altogether.
And this is what the left wants, right?
What the left actually wants, what they are calling for, is for everyone Who doesn't like the stuff that they are seeing from Trump, right?
And I don't like the stuff I'm seeing from Trump Jr.
I don't like a lot.
I mean, I think I've been pretty clear about when I think Trump is good and when he's bad, right?
We've done good Trump, bad Trump for nigh on two years at this point.
So I've been pretty clear about this.
My goal is to make Trump a better president at this point.
My goal is to make the conservative movement a better conservative movement at this point.
It isn't to leave and dump all over the movement because I have to signal to everybody what a swell guy I am.
The left keeps saying, well, if you really want to resist Trump, why don't you resist his agenda?
Well, when his agenda is wrong, I will resist it, but if you think that I'm going to want to raise taxes and increase Medicaid spending because I think that Trump is sometimes a jerk, and I think Trump may sometimes be corrupt, if you think that that, like, I just want to know, when was the last time a Democrat left Bill Clinton's agenda behind because Bill Clinton was a sleazy scumbag?
Like, when was the last time the Democrats decided, you know what, I can't take all these lies from Obama, I'm becoming a Republican.
That's not what people do.
Okay, so this is just a way to please that crowd over at Stephen Colbert.
So, virtue signaling from people like Joe Scarborough.
So, how is the right responding to all of this?
There are really four approaches on the right to all of this.
Approach number one is to focus on the legality.
People saying, listen, this is not illegal, okay?
No matter what you say, this is not illegal.
So, Jeffrey Toobin, who's not even on the right, he is a lefty, legal commentator on CNN, he makes the point and he is correct.
This is not illegal activity by Donald Trump Jr.
as far as we know.
How serious is this, these emails, from a legal perspective?
It's certainly very, very serious, but it's also important to say, you know, there is a long way to go, and these emails in and of themselves are not proof of any crimes.
Two things to think about.
One is, it is a crime for campaign officials to solicit anything of value from a foreign government.
So the question is, was anything solicited here of value?
Were emails solicited?
Was hacking solicited?
That is a question investigators will want to explore.
The other issue is that Jared Kushner, who is now a very high White House official, he's copied on these emails.
The question is, did he disclose this meeting to when he filled out his form applying for security clearance?
If he intentionally left it off, that's a crime.
It's not a crime if he simply forgot or made a mistake.
This meeting, though, certainly seems pretty dramatic, even in the context of a dramatic campaign.
The idea that he simply forgot about it strikes me as probably a little hard to believe.
Okay fine, so he's going after Jared but Donald Trump Jr.
didn't break any laws as far as we know even Jeffrey Toobin's admitting that so This defense that it's not illegal is correct.
I point out once again, illegal does not mean moral, okay?
So if it's not illegal, that doesn't mean that he did something good, and it also doesn't mean he didn't do something that could get his dad impeached.
So Democrats were gonna try to impeach Trump no matter what, but this does not help.
Okay, approach number two is the what about is what I talked about at the top of the show, and that is the what about Obama, right?
What about Obama?
And here's Ted Cruz talking about President Obama and why it is the media are ignoring all this stuff.
I think that we have had eight years of Barack Obama showing nothing but appeasement towards Russia.
Okay, and that is 100% true.
The question is, the question is, what kind of whataboutism are we going to engage in?
So I think that it is fair to say to the media, you guys are hypocrites, right?
Your over-the-top coverage of this just demonstrates how leftist you are.
So the critique is not of Hillary so much as it is of the media coverage, right?
Why is the media coverage so over-the-top about Trump, but when it comes to When it comes to Hillary Clinton, they were willing to brush all this stuff under the table.
When it comes to Obama, they were willing to brush all this stuff under the table.
That is an effective form of whataboutism.
What is not an effective form is, Donald Trump Jr.
did something bad, but Hillary also did stuff that was bad, and that wasn't a big deal, so why should this be a big deal?
Right?
That is the kindergarten version that when your kid comes home and it turns out that they did something bad, they say, well, Billy did it too.
And you say, well, I don't care what Billy did.
Why does that make any difference?
You know, that's like, this is stuff that we learned when we were in kindergarten, but we now have to relearn it in politics.
Okay, so that is approach number two, is what about the Democrats?
Okay, the Democrats are terrible.
Now, is this good?
Right, that's still a question that has to be asked, and we have to decide that for ourselves.
Is it something good?
I'm gonna get to that in a second.
Approach number three is, can we talk about the real issues?
Right, that is, this isn't that big a deal, right, the proportionality argument.
This isn't that huge a deal.
Okay, so they took a meeting.
What's the big deal?
Hillary Clinton did it about Ukraine.
No one complained about that.
Now there's one distinction, which is that the Ukrainian government is not adversarial to the United States the way the Russian government is.
And the Russian government was indeed trying to intervene in the election, even in ways the Ukrainian government was not.
But this is not a bad line.
So Sebastian Gorka, who's a White House foreign policy advisor, he says, why aren't we talking about, like, a huge news story that happened yesterday, which is the defeat of ISIS in Mosul?
Don't you think it's time the American people were served by the media justly, and you get to national security issues like Mosul?
We're going to get to Mosul in one minute.
When?
He's right.
When?
And the answer is never.
They're never going to get to Mosul.
So this, I think, is a good approach.
I think Republicans should be saying to the media, why don't you cover this stuff?
They should also be saying to Trump, dude, just ignore all of this.
Say Mueller's investigating.
It'll take its course.
I've been singing the same tune on this for months now.
All Trump has to say is, Sit on it.
It'll take its course.
It's being investigated.
Don't worry about it.
We'll get to it.
Now, look at all this magnificent stuff I'm doing.
Instead, what Trump does is he unleashes a tweet storm about the investigation, and then, at the end, he tacks on, and why don't you focus on Mosul?
It doesn't work that way.
He's the president.
He gets to help set the agenda.
If he is hiding in the White House for the past three days, he hasn't done any public events, instead of out there on the trail talking about Mosul, how are we supposed to know about Mosul?
He is right.
The media is adversarial to Trump.
They want to destroy Trump.
Hannity's destroy Trump media meme is not wrong, okay?
I think Sean's wrong on some stuff.
I don't think he's wrong on this.
I think the media do want to destroy Trump.
But it is Trump's responsibility to fight back using the best tools at his disposal.
And that is not, okay, I'm going to go out and I'm going to argue with Bob Mueller It's... I'm going to go out and I'm going to talk about Mosul incessantly.
I'm going to provide a counter-narrative.
And the counter-narrative is, we are doing things.
Things are getting done.
And the media won't talk about them because they'd prefer to distract you over here.
Right?
This is, I think, the best line that Republicans can use on this.
And also, we're going to be as transparent as we can be.
Okay.
Then there is the final approach.
And this is the most morally perilous approach.
Okay?
This is an approach taken...
My good friend John Nolte.
Now we published Nolte over at Daily Wire.
One of the reasons I like publishing Nolte, even though we have almost polar opposite opinions on these issues, is because Nolte is very clear about what he wants, right?
Nolte does not try to hide the ball.
John is an honest guy.
He's honest enough to acknowledge what his argument is and the ramifications of that argument.
So I want to read to you from Nolte's piece today on this on this story So he says the worst the Donald Trump jr.
Scandal gets the more I know Republican voters chose the right guy to run against Hillary Clinton in 2016 at first It looked as though the meeting in the question was something over to over something touchy-feely like adoption upon hearing that my first thought was wait You've just secured the nomination and the first thing you do is pull the campaign manager and Donald whisperer into a meeting about adoption Are you insane?
No kidding, I was furious.
Hey, when the future of the country is at stake, and you are up against the unholy trinity of the Clinton machine, the entire mainstream media complex, and their butthurt allies in NeverTrump, there is no time to waste.
But then the truth came out.
We learned that the meeting was set up in the hopes of receiving information from the Russian government that would ensure Hillary Clinton never, ever, ever became president, and my faith in the epic badassery of Team Trump was restored, maybe even bolstered.
This is why I love John.
I love John because John just says what he thinks, right?
He's not going to try and hide it.
So a lot of people on the right will deny that this is what they think, but what John says is actually indicative of a large percentage of what Republicans think.
He says, Trump world is populated with people who will do anything, anything to win, and as long as it remains legal, those are my kind of Republicans.
Oh, grow up.
Seriously, y'all.
Grow the hell up.
I understand there are a lot of people who listen to the show who agree with this perspective.
The reason I disagree with this perspective is because I think that it does walk into dicey moral territory, and I'm sorry to bring up things like principles and morality in the context of this, but I thought that politics was about upholding principle.
Now, you can say my chief principle is beating Hillary Clinton, but there are still rules of engagement.
So, for example, I assume that John would not be in favor of somebody walking into Hillary Clinton's office and shooting her to stop her from becoming president.
Even if she's the existential threat John thinks she was to the country, I'm fairly certain that John is not in favor of the use of violence.
My guess is that there would be other things that John would not be in favor of, like if you were going to set Hillary Clinton up in some sort of sexual peccadillo sting, you're going to entice her into something.
John might find that abhorrent.
Maybe not, maybe not.
But I think that we need to know what the rules of engagement are because otherwise we're going to get into some pretty dicey territory.
However evil you say your opponent is, However destructive you say your opponent is, that helps justify whatever action you take.
What makes a person immoral is when your means are not geared to your end.
So, someone cuts you off in traffic, you get out of your car, and you beat them to death with a baseball bat.
This makes you an immoral, evil person because the consequence did not meet the bad act, right?
Someone cut you off in traffic does not merit being beaten to death with a baseball bat.
Now, someone attempts to kill your child, that merits you beating them to death with a baseball bat, right?
So the same act can be moral or immoral based on what it is done in response to.
The problem is that in politics we are now reaching the point where the most political benefit can be gained if you say, my political enemy is Hitler.
My political enemy is the worst person ever.
But that also means that you're going to be using outsized modes of defeating that person, right?
You're willing to now cooperate with one of the worst people on planet Earth, Vladimir Putin, in order to stop who you perceive to be the worst person on planet Earth, Hillary Clinton, right?
Vladimir Putin is less threatening to you and less threatening to the world than Hillary Clinton, so Hillary Clinton must be stopped.
That justifies anything and everything up to and including Russia, Russian involvement.
Now, let's say, for example, and this is obviously not true, let's say that there was a situation where ISIS had some sort of damaging information on Hillary Clinton.
They knew that she had chipped guns to them or something.
And they went to the Trump campaign and they said, here's the information on Hillary Clinton.
Would people on the right go along with that?
Well, it depends how bad they think Hillary Clinton is.
Because maybe the means are okay in order to stop Hillary Clinton.
Here's my view of Hillary Clinton.
Hillary Clinton was a uniquely damaging figure in American public life.
Hillary Clinton was a uniquely dangerous character.
It's why I found her so unpalatable that I would not vote for either her or Donald Trump.
There was not a point in the campaign where I talked up Hillary Clinton.
None.
I thought Hillary Clinton would be a disaster for the country.
I did not think Hillary Clinton, however, was Vladimir Putin, which means that the methods I was willing to use were restricted to things like truth, and not cooperating with Russia, and engaging in certain means that were dedicated toward defeating her.
Here's the truth.
The easiest way to defeat Hillary Clinton was to side with Russia.
The easiest way to defeat Hillary Clinton might have been to shoot her.
But I wasn't in favor of any of those things because I think that's immoral.
In politics, the easiest way to defeat somebody is to have no rules.
This is why so many people on the right like Trump.
But having no rules can be immoral if you are miscalibrating the threat of your opponent.
Hillary Clinton is still an American.
Hillary Clinton may be a bad, bad person.
She may believe bad, bad things.
She may want to do bad, bad things.
But I still don't think that justifies cooperating with an enemy of the United States in Russia in order to take Hillary Clinton down.
Nor do I think it's necessary.
Nor do I think it's necessary.
I think Donald Trump very well could have taken down Hillary Clinton without Russia.
How do I know that?
Because I think that's what he did.
I think that Donald Trump defeated her without colluding with Russia.
So this bizarre perception by people that Donald Trump didn't collude with Russia, but if he tried to, that's awesome because it just shows how far he was willing to go.
He didn't need to do that.
Okay, that's like saying, I want to stop people from cutting me off in traffic.
I beat him to death with a baseball bat.
I didn't have to beat him to death with a baseball bat.
I probably could have just yelled at him or flipped him off or maybe honked my horn, but I beat him to death with a baseball bat.
And you know what?
What makes me so cool is even if I didn't beat him to death with a baseball bat, I was willing to beat him to death with a baseball bat.
No, the means have to be calibrated to the ends, and you also have to honestly judge us.
Listen, me saying that I think Hillary Clinton is not Vladimir Putin is not talking up Hillary Clinton, but it shows how ridiculous our political discourse has become.
That if I say something like that, people on my own side will say that this is me being soft on Hillary.
I don't think that Hillary Clinton has to be Hitler in order to think that Hillary Clinton is a bad human being who never should have been within a thousand feet of the White House.
And so that's, you know, so I think that we have to be very careful about this because our own mortal souls are in danger.
And if you think that that's not at risk, if you think that we can be as bad as anybody else, if we can just use any means, then I ask where you draw the line.
Because you're asking the left to draw some lines, so I would ask for you to draw some moral lines yourself.
Okay.
Time for things I like, and then things I hate, and we'll do a little bit of Bible talk.
But before we get to that, I first want to say thank you to our sponsors over at Upside.com.
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Okay, time for things I like, things I hate, and then we'll do a very, very brief Bible talk.
So, things I like.
So, since we mentioned Joe Bluth, I just have to say Arrested Development.
Have I ever recommended Arrested Development on the show before?
Arrested Development is the funniest series that ever was filmed.
Arrested Development is absolutely hilarious.
Um, you have to have a very quirky sense of humor to get it.
Job is maybe the best character, uh, on the show.
Job is the, the, uh, the, kind of, there are three brothers, uh, there is, uh, Michael and the, is it Michael?
Is that his name?
Uh, and then Job, uh, and then, um, Buster, that's right.
And it's been probably a couple years since I've watched the show.
The cast is phenomenal, hilarious, it's full of references that you'll end up using with your friends.
Here is a clip from the opening episode of Arrested Development, when you first meet Job Bluth.
Job stands for George, and then his middle initial is O, so it's G-O-B Bluth, but he's called Job, which of course is a play on the fact that everything bad in the world happens to Job in the course of the show.
So here's Joe Bluth.
This is Michael's oldest brother, or Jobe.
This is the magic trick, huh?
Illusion, Michael.
The trick is something a whore does for money.
And there are kids standing right next to him in case he can't see him.
Or cocaine.
Jobe recently started the Alliance of Magicians, an organization that blackballs any performer who reveals a magician's secret.
Hello, I'm Joe Bluth.
As a magician, I can make a lot of things disappear.
There are some things I can't make disappear.
No, not that candy ball machine.
The Aztec Tomb!
A tomb?
Or a box.
Boxes.
He's performing an old age home.
Oh yes, well, excellent.
Let's get you in the box!
There's a panel, just flip it around, curl up behind it, don't make any noise, alright?
Or has it the Aztec gods put a curse on any man who does?
He's gone!
George Michael was off from school for two weeks and was enjoying spending time with his uncle.
I'm intercepting some telepathic energy that's telling me it's the Eight of Diamonds.
That's amazingly close.
Gee, I got it wrong.
Well, I guess you won the shirt off my back.
Okay, that's amazing.
It's his Queen of Diamonds on his chest.
It's the Queen of Diamonds.
No, no, no.
Well, I hadn't... I mean, if that had been the actual card, I'm pretty sure I'd be almost too blown away.
This show's just amazing.
It's a hilarious show.
You should go check it out.
The Netflix did a fifth season, so there were four original seasons, and then it was not, three?
Okay, so the fourth is the Netflix season.
The original three seasons are great.
I can't speak for the fourth season.
I watched the first two episodes.
They didn't hold up.
I'll have to watch the rest of the season and tell you if it holds up, but it is just, like, it's a hysterically funny show.
Okay, time for a thing that I hate.
So Joan Walsh, who used to be the editor over at Salon.com, she was on the MSNBC's and she said that Ivanka, who, as you recall, took Papa Trump's place at the G20, she sat in his seat, and people were like, wait a second, we didn't elect Trump so we get Ivanka in that seat.
That's a decent criticism.
But Joan Walsh makes a not-so-decent criticism.
Here is her criticism of Ivanka Trump, which is legitimately the stupidest criticism of all time.
It's a pink dress with big, big bows on the elbows.
There's something incredibly ornamental.
That's not a dress that's made for work.
That's not a dress that's made to go out in the world and make a difference.
That is a dress that is designed to show off your girliness.
And, you know, God bless her, show it off!
But don't then tell us that you're crusading for an equal place for women at the table, because you're not.
So you can't be a feminist and be girly at the same time?
You can be a feminist and be girly.
We all have our girly days, but I think showing up, taking your father's seat in a pink dress with big bows on the sleeves is really an interesting message.
Really?
Okay, maybe Joan Walsh should force Ivanka Trump to wear, I don't know, like a red cloak and maybe like a bonnet, right?
And then she can like walk around in that and Joan can call her Of Joan and then she can be known as Of Joan.
That would just be Ivanka Trump's name.
Okay, this is how insane the feminist movement has become.
So a woman so powerful that she sat in for the President of the United States at an international conference She is not powerful because she has bows on her sleeve.
And this is your lead critique, Joan Walsh.
And then you wonder why we think feminists are a joke?
We think feminists are a joke because of people like you.
Because that's ridiculous.
Okay?
That is insane.
Women can look pretty and also be feminists at the same time.
My wife does it every single day.
She's super smokin' hot, and she wears pretty clothes a lot, and she is a doctor, as I have mentioned one bajillion times on this program.
She is fully capable of being a feminist and dressing like a beautiful woman.
This idea that you have to dress like a hag in order to be a feminist is not going to forward the feminist cause very much.
Boy oh boy, Joan Walsh.
Woo!
Okay, finally, I am going to do a quick, quick Bible talk.
So, this week is the Jewish portion of Pinchas from the Torah.
There's a, as I say every week now, there's an associated portion from the prophets and the writings that we read every week as well.
This one happens to be from the book of Jeremiah.
And this, of course, is one of the more famous verses from the book of Jeremiah.
And it says, It says, when I had not yet formed you in the womb, I knew you.
And when you had not yet emerged from the womb, I had appointed you a prophet to the nations I made you.
This is, of course, used by the pro-life movement to point out that your existence as a human being predates your emergence from the womb.
Of course, that is true.
The idea is that God provides you value from the very, very beginning.
And God knows you as a human being from the very, very beginning.
And you are predestined to have a certain skill set.
But as we see all throughout Tanakh, as we see all throughout the Torah, and the Prophets, and the Writings, and the New Testament as well, just because God has foreordained a particular job for you doesn't mean that you're necessarily going to fulfill it.
So there are two points to be made here.
One is that God knows you and He knows you well enough to know what He expects of you.
That's what it means.
When it says, When I had not yet formed you in the womb, I knew you.
I knew what to expect of you because I'm the one who created you.
And I appointed you and you had a responsibility.
I made you a prophet to the nations.
But we still have the choice whether to fulfill that responsibility ourselves.
This is where that moral choice comes in.
Because the fact is that Jeremiah could have decided not to fulfill that plan, and he would have been sinning against God in doing so, right?
This is the story of Jonah.
When Jonah refuses to take God's message at face value and he tries to run away from God, he's unable to escape it.
But he does have the choice to attempt to avoid it.
We all have that choice, but that's a choice that we should not make because God knows us even better than we know ourselves.
Okay, so we'll be back here tomorrow with all of the latest.
I'm Ben Shapiro.
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