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Aug. 5, 2017 - The Ben Shapiro Show

48:58

A Very Special Episode With A Very Special Counsel | Ep. 355

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	We have a lot to get to today.
	Lena Dunham lies again.
	We're going to get to the special counsel apparently opening a grand jury.
	We're going to talk about Jeff Sessions, the Attorney General, looking to crack down on leakers.
	We'll get to all of that.
	This is Ben Shapiro, and this is The Ben Shapiro Show.
	So, we do have a lot to get to today.
	I want to get to all of the stuff that's really in the news, the kind of main news of the day.
	But the best story of the day is this story about Lena Dunham.
	And I would just be remiss if I didn't lead off with it because it is so grand and so glorious and she is such a terrible person in every way.
	This, of course, is Lena Dunham, the wildly unattractive star of Girls.
	The reason that I point out that she's wildly unattractive is because she has said in the past that if you find her wildly unattractive, it's because you're sexist.
	Um, no.
	It's because you have eyes.
	So, Lena Dunham, apparently, she's lied about a bunch of things in the past.
	She's said, in the past, the Star of Girls, she campaigned with Hillary Clinton.
	She has said in the past that she was raped by a Republican named Barry.
	Not true.
	She has said that she did not abandon her dog.
	She just was given a dog that had a history of being abused, also not true.
	And now, her latest story, her latest iteration in her stupidity cycle, comes courtesy of American Airlines.
	On Thursday, Dunham tweeted that she overheard two American Airlines employees speaking about how they believed that the transgender agenda was terrible for children.
	Horror!
	Shock!
	No, they must be stopped!
	It's just too terrible!
	She tweets out, late last night, quote, At this moment in history, we should be teaching our employees about love and inclusivity, American Air.
	That was the worst part of this night.
	Everything that she does is always about the drama, right?
	Oh, it's the worst thing that ever happened.
	It's just the worst part of the night.
	I can't handle it.
	And American Airlines wrote back, you have us concerned.
	Please meet us in DMs with your record locator and details.
	What they really should have said is, you have us concerned, please see a psychologist as soon as humanly possible.
	And then she started DMing with them.
	And here's what she said.
	Quote, So in other words, there are two women walking along talking about one of the hottest issues of the day, Trans children, right?
	Kids who believe that they are a member of the opposite sex.
	And these women were saying, I would not accept it if my child said that they were a member of the opposite sex.
	Which is perfectly rational, since you shouldn't really accept that because your child is not a member of the opposite sex.
	You should look for treatment.
	And this idea that, as a parent, you should accept this new idiocy Foisted on Americans by leftist society.
	It's just dumb all the way through but she says big sister Lena Dunham You know big sister the one who said that she once pleasured herself next to 11 year old sister So she's not just big brother.
	She's big sister and the best kind of big sister big sister reports that to American Airlines What if someone had been walking behind them someone was and she was a terrible person so she reported that and And then, she said, I wasn't flying American, this was at JFK, and I was in a terminal with American attendants.
	And American wrote back, do you know what gate this was at?
	She said, I was in the arrivals hall, coming from gate B30 to baggage, by the Hudson News, across from the wine bar.
	Okay, Stalin!
	My God, just reporting people for having normal conversation in the hallways at JFK, like this is what this has come to now?
	It wasn't manifesting in their behavior toward trans people?
	It wasn't manifesting in how they treated any of the trans customers?
	It wasn't manifesting in anything, even assuming all of this is true.
	They said, thanks for the info, Lena.
	We're passing this along to our team to review.
	And she wrote back, thank you.
	And then she wrote, hashtag, across from the wine bar.
	So now we're now, like, targeting and tracking down anyone who has wrong think.
	I mean, this is Orwellian garbage.
	Orwellian garbage.
	Number one, these women can say whatever they like.
	Even if they'd been saying stuff that was really anti-Semitic, do you think that I would have gone to American Airlines and said, You have these two vicious anti-Semites working for your company.
	Like, get over it.
	Get over it.
	It's a free country.
	You may think that people are terrible.
	That doesn't give you the excuse to destroy their jobs.
	As I said, you know, on Sunday, we did a Q&A.
	As I said, if it's not impacting how they do their job, it makes no difference.
	Okay, then there's a big, and then she tweeted, For those who followed my airport saga yesterday, here's my takeaway.
	These days, it's the little things.
	A smile, offering a seat, respect.
	You mean the little things like not getting people fired because you're a giant douchebag of a human being?
	Like the little things like not targeting random passers-by who happen to disagree with you on a hot political issue of the day?
	I mean, God, heavens forfend if they had said they voted for Trump.
	I mean, my God, then Lena Dunham really would have reported them to American Airlines.
	Except there's one extra wrinkle to this story, as always.
	American Airlines checks out the story, and on Friday they told Fox News, quote, we always look into complaints from customers, but at this time we are unable to substantiate these allegations.
	So there is no evidence that any of this happened at all.
	And Lena Dunham, once again, is just saying crap.
	Because this is what Lena Dunham does to get attention.
	Leftists, I never give you advice because I want you to continue to be a giant fail.
	But, here's a piece of advice.
	Stop associating with nutcases like Lena Dunham if you want people to take you seriously.
	Number one, having your little emissaries going around and reporting people in USSR, East Bloc Stasi fashion, When they say things you don't like, that's gross enough.
	Having them lie about it, or say it without evidence, is really, really super gross.
	And at this point, the fact that the left continues to hang on to Lena Dunham, just like they hang on to Linda Sarsour, is just demonstrative of the fact that they don't care about middle America, they don't care about people who disagree.
	They want the heroes that they want, and it doesn't matter if those people are garbage heaps.
	Those people must be upheld.
	It doesn't matter that Lena Dunham is a personal dumpster fire.
	They're going to continue to label her just the woman of the year.
	Amazing, amazing stuff.
	But that's just another great story from the Lena Dunham annals of joy.
	Okay, in other big news today, bigger news obviously, there are a couple of big stories that are breaking.
	The first big story that is breaking is that Attorney General Jeff Sessions has now announced a broad crackdown on leaks.
	Now there's a lot of speculation that the reason that Sessions is cracking down on the leaks Is because he knows that Trump is angry with him and so he is trying to please the President of the United States by cracking down on leaks.
	The truth is he should be cracking down on leaks anyway.
	We saw a very dangerous leak yesterday when we saw that the Washington Post had run on the front page a story that was full transcripts from calls between President Trump and the leaders of Mexico and Australia.
	As I said yesterday, that is super dangerous stuff.
	It doesn't matter that nothing really important was said in those transcripts.
	What had happened if there had been something important?
	That kind of stuff should not be made public, especially because America's enemies are looking for the inside scoop And what exactly Trump is telling our allies and our enemies.
	So, that stuff is really bad.
	Obviously, Sessions should be looking for the leaks.
	Here's what Attorney General Sessions had to say today.
	First, let me say that I strongly agree with the President and condemn in the strongest terms the staggering number of leaks undermining the ability of our government to protect this country.
	Just yesterday, we saw reports in the media about conversations the President had with foreign leaders.
	No one is entitled to surreptitiously fight to advance battles in the media by revealing sensitive government information.
	No government can be effective when its leaders cannot discuss sensitive matters in confidence or talk freely in confidence with foreign leaders.
	Okay, and then he continued.
	Everything that he's saying there is exactly correct, but it's the latter part of what he said that is a bigger problem.
	So he now says that he is going to start targeting media sources for subpoenas about their sources.
	He actually accused the media of getting people killed.
	So, he talked about this in a long statement as prepared for release.
	He said, This, of course, is because they're a bunch of Obama holdovers who are leaking everything they can get their hands on.
	Obviously, that's criminal activity.
	It is also true that President Trump should have moved much more quickly.
	to clear these bureaus and put in members of his own staff.
	It's ridiculous to leave and place all these Obama holdovers.
	It's one of the main failures of his administration.
	He says, furthering this goal, we are here to announce some of the steps being taken and underway by the National Insider Threat Task Force to ensure this government's first priority to protect this country and her citizens is not undermined by the very people who have been entrusted to pursue this.
	And then he talked specifically about what he was going to do with regard to the media.
	He said that the media had basically got people killed.
	He said, I have listened to career investigators and prosecutors about how to most successfully investigate and prosecute these matters.
	At their suggestion, one of the things we are doing is reviewing policies affecting media subpoenas.
	We respect the important role the press plays and will give them respect, but it is not unlimited.
	They cannot place lives at risk with impunity.
	We must balance their role with protecting our national security and the lives of those who serve in our intelligence community, the armed forces, and all law-abiding Americans.
	That's some pretty harsh stuff.
	I mean, it's some pretty heavy stuff.
	And I think that it's worthwhile discussing it for just a second.
	First of all, Should the media be printing stuff that actually puts American national security at risk?
	Of course the media should not be doing that.
	But the media very often, at least the Washington Post and New York Times from what I've seen, they tend to take a general level of care with national security information so as not to reveal stuff that would actually put people in harm's way.
	In fact, the most obvious example that comes to mind in the last six months is there was that New York Times report about how Trump Had spilled classified information to the Russians in that Oval Office meeting behind closed doors with Sergei Kislyak, the Russian ambassador, and Sergei Lavrov, the foreign minister of the Russians.
	And if you recall, the New York Times actually said that they were not going to print some of the material because they thought it would hurt national security.
	And then Trump promptly went out and basically blew that wide open by saying exactly what it was that he had said, putting an Israeli national security asset at risk.
	The media obviously has to be careful about what it leaks.
	If somebody leaks to you that we are the nuclear codes, to give the most obvious example, and the New York Times prints the nuclear codes, obviously that would be something that falls into the realm of endangering American national security.
	But we have to be very careful just because we like Attorney General Sessions or the Trump administration, we still have to be careful about the idea that the press can be cracked down upon to reveal their sources just because the Trump administration doesn't like it or an Obama administration doesn't like it.
	I didn't like it when Obama did this.
	Obama Famously prosecuted leakers.
	He also went after particular news sources that were involved in releasing the information from the leakers.
	This is dangerous stuff.
	We do want a high level of transparency when it comes to American government.
	Obviously, if you're working for the government, you shouldn't be leaking.
	But going to press outlets and trying to force them to reveal their sources because you don't like the information There's a very thin line between trying to protect national security and going after press outlets because you just don't like the information that's being leaked.
	And I'm not sure how much to trust the Department of Justice with drawing that line in a relevant and decent way.
	I want to talk a little bit more about that.
	I also want to talk about the big breaking news, obviously, which is that Robert Mueller, who's the special counsel, has now appointed a grand jury.
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	Okay, so the other big story of the day is this breaking news that the special counsel, Robert Mueller, has now impaneled a grand jury.
	So, what exactly does that mean?
	Well, it means a couple of things.
	Andrew McCarthy, over at National Review, who's been all over this, he says this is officially a criminal investigation now.
	You don't impanel a grand jury for a counterintelligence investigation.
	Grand juries are essentially, it's a group of jurors Who are set up in order so that they can issue subpoenas for documents and testimony with the power of law.
	That's what a grand jury does.
	It doesn't necessarily mean that the grand jury is going to indict, but you set up the grand jury so that they have the power to compel testimony and the power to compel documentation.
	The next logical step is an indictment if they find some element of guilt.
	Now, what is this grand jury actually going to do?
	Well, it's not going to be investigating Mike Flynn.
	So Mike Flynn, the former national security advisor, there's already a grand jury that's been impaneled in Virginia to check out Mike Flynn, which suggests that there are other people who are now in the line of Robert Mueller's fire.
	According to CNN, Federal investigators exploring whether Donald Trump's campaign colluded with Russian spies have seized on Trump and his associates' financial ties to Russia as one of the most fertile avenues for moving their probe forward, according to people familiar with the investigation.
	So, there are a lot of people on the right right now who are legitimately saying, and I think this is correct, that this investigation has now broadened beyond collusion.
	They can't prove collusion, and so now they're looking for other criminal activity.
	That is not within the scope of the investigation.
	It's not within the scope of the investigation.
	And Trump is now stuck between a rock and a hard place because if Mueller exceeds the scope of his investigation, if he's no longer just required to restrict it to Russian collusion, now it looks like he's just looking for criminal activity every which way.
	He's just looking in every nook and cranny for criminal activity, and that would be an excuse just to get Trump out of office by the Democrats.
	Now, if Trump fires Mueller, it's going to look like he's trying to obstruct something.
	If he doesn't fire Mueller, there's the good shot that Mueller comes up with the prosecution of some ancillary official in the Trump campaign, and the Democrats use that as a brick bat in order to club Trump into submission.
	It's a rock and a hard place.
	Again, this is why it was such a mistake for Trump to get a special counsel appointed in the first place.
	It was his own fault.
	If you recall back to the firing of James Comey, the only reason a special counsel was appointed in the first place
	Is because the Attorney General had already recused himself on Russia, the Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein had not, but Trump used Rod Rosenstein as an excuse to fire Comey, and then Comey leaked out that Trump had basically threatened him, at least according to Comey, and then Rosenstein was now implicated in this whole thing, and then Trump went on national TV and said he really fired Comey because of the Russia thing, using Rod Rosenstein as cover, and forcing Rosenstein to recuse himself and appoint a special counsel.
	So, Trump is stuck between a rock and a hard place.
	According to CNN, The FBI is reviewing financial records related to the Trump Organization, as well as Trump, his family members, including Trump Jr.
	and campaign associates.
	They've combed through the list of shell companies and buyers of Trump-branded real estate properties, scrutinized the roster of tenants at Trump Tower, reaching back more than a half-dozen years.
	This is exactly the kind of stuff Trump said he didn't want.
	If you recall back to a New York Times interview two weeks ago, Trump said, if Mueller starts looking into financial impropriety, then maybe I'll fire him, which would trigger not a constitutional crisis, but certainly a major constitutional conflagration.
	Again, it's not a constitutional crisis because there are means to deal with it, but it would certainly create a firestorm.
	It would look a lot like Nixon trying to fire the special prosecutor in the middle of the Watergate investigation.
	And again, Trump could do this even if he's completely innocent, but it would just look bad.
	Trump attorney Jay Sekulow is openly stating now that there's no reason to think Trump is under investigation and an inquiry from the special counsel that moves beyond the mandate might be a reason to fire him.
	This is not a surprise because the impaneling of a grand jury in situations like this, when you've got an investigation, is typically how they move forward.
	It is really very much a standard operating procedure when you've got a situation like this.
	But with respect to the impaneling of the grand jury, we have no reason to believe that the President is under investigation here.
	Okay, so they're suggesting still that there's separation with Trump, and this is true.
	I mean, we don't have any information that's not true.
	The problem is that Sekulow has had credibility problems in the past.
	Just in the last week, it was revealed that Donald Trump was intimately involved in the crafting of Donald Trump Jr.' 's statement about the Russia meeting from 2016, and Sekulow had gone on national TV and said, as you recall, that Trump had not been involved in the drafting of that statement.
	So there's credibility problems all the way across the board.
	This is going to be a thing that just dogs the Trump administration.
	And this is the problem.
	You know, because Trump kept talking about it, because there are all these leaks coming out, and the leaks are truly egregious, you know, special counsel should not be leaking.
	Because of all this, it's just a dark cloud on the Trump horizon that he can't seem to get rid of.
	And if he fires Mueller, then that actually accelerates.
	Now the media, of course, have been have been suggesting that this is the be-all end-all.
	Now there's a grand jury, that means Trump is going down.
	A lot of wishful thinking in the media, and it's driven the left a little bit nutty, to the point where they now suggest that Trump was intimately involved, that he was in bed with Vladimir Putin again, without evidence.
	I thought that Kellyanne Conway did a good job on CNN pointing this out.
	In this case, again, I think people are just talking about an investigation that exists, but looking for collusion and conclusions that don't exist.
	And I like the fact that CNN took about almost a full week off, slinking away from covering the Russian so-called investigation.
	Because you know that the polls say that 6% of Americans say it's the most important issue to them, but that it's consumed 75% of the coverage.
	So I do think Americans are owed full coverage of all the issues they say affect them.
	The economy, jobs, health care, certainly national security, and the like.
	And I hope that your network will continue to do that.
	Well, you know we try to cover everything that matters, and sometimes...
	All credit to Kellyanne there shellacking a piece of wood, Chris Cuomo, who's a living embodiment of a tree.
	I mean, you just think of him when he was in high school and they're like, we need someone to play the tree.
	Chris!
	Step forward!
	And he plays a fantastic oak.
	His pine is mediocre, but his oak is just absolutely terrific.
	So well done, Kellyanne Conway.
	This is the problem with the media on all of this, is that the media have declared that every element of the case means that Trump is guilty.
	It doesn't matter what happens.
	The conclusion is Trump is guilty.
	The grand jury doesn't mean that Trump is guilty.
	It doesn't even mean that we know that anything is wrong.
	Here's what we do know at this point.
	Apparently, CNN is saying the investigation is focusing on four key figures.
	It's exactly who you would have thought.
	Exactly who you would have thought and who I've been saying for months were going to be the people who are involved, right?
	If there was involvement.
	Paul Manafort, who is always in bed with the Russians— Okay, they're suggesting now that Paul Manafort was being targeted because investigators had found conversations among alleged Russian operatives regarding Manafort's attempts to encourage help for the campaign from the Russians.
	That would be the collusion that people are talking about with Manafort.
	Trump has a good answer to that, which is, I found out about it, I fired Manafort.
	The problem is that he didn't just say that up front.
	He should have just said that up front, and then he would be in the clear.
	Carter Page, who's a foreign policy advisor to Trump, is under investigation.
	Apparently, he's been under FISA surveillance since 2014, which means there's lots of records of his conversations.
	And, of course, Roger Stone, the political operative, who is very close to the Trump campaign.
	Does any of this mean that Trump is guilty?
	No, it doesn't mean that Trump is guilty.
	And if you're actually going to find evidence, then let's see the evidence.
	But I think that it is a problem for the Trump administration to suggest that nothing is wrong, and it's a problem for the media to suggest that everything is wrong.
	I want to talk a little bit more about this.
	Plus, Trump does something pretty great and it demonstrates the movement of the country that has not as much to do with Trump as it does the movement of the country toward a redder country in terms of the map.
	But for that, you're going to have to go over to dailywire.com.
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	Okay, so the other big news that happened yesterday was at this Trump rally, the West Virginia governor, who's a guy named Justice, that's really his actual name is Justice, and he, Jim Justice, which that's really his actual name is Justice, and he, Jim Justice, which is just a great comic book name, but he does not look like a comic book That'd be awesome, but he does not.
	He looks like...
	A governor from West Virginia.
	And he was a Democrat, he was a Republican, then he was an Independent, then he was a Democrat, and now he's converting back to being a Republican.
	Is he doing that because he has principled agreement with President Trump?
	No, he's doing that because West Virginia is turning red.
	Just like an enormous amount of the country is turning red.
	There are just 15 Democratic governors in the entire nation at this point.
	15 in a nation with 50 states.
	Republicans are dominant across the country.
	Why can't they get anything done, you ask?
	Because they're stupid.
	But here is Jim Justice declaring that he is now a Republican.
	Apparently his own staff didn't know, so they're going to be kind of disappointed.
	But here he is announcing his shift.
	I've been to the Oval Office twice in the last two or three weeks.
	I've been there to present an idea on coal and an idea on manufacturing. - I agree.
	I've had the great opportunity to be with our president.
	Now, let me tell you just this.
	I have to be really serious with you just a moment.
	I have to tell you that the last session of our legislature, I tried with all my soul.
	Okay, so he's obviously happy moving in that direction because both houses of his legislature are Republican in West Virginia.
	So it's now a united Republican-dominated state in West Virginia.
	So add another one to the Republican column as well.
	And he also paid homage to Trump, which is what you probably have to do in West Virginia.
	A state that Trump, I believe, won by about 43 points.
	I mean, it's just a blowout in West Virginia.
	I'll have to check that.
	In any case, he actually said, there's nothing to this Russia stuff, right?
	Anytime you're in Trump's presence, you have to say there's nothing to the Russia stuff, just as sort of a point of homage.
	And then Trump jumped on that bad wagon too.
	Again, I'm not sure this is helping Trump's case too much.
	He should really just be quiet and let everything take its course, and then defend himself when the time comes.
	But Trump decided to go off on the Russia stuff too, prompting chants of, you guessed it, because we will never escape 2016.
	2016 is now the time loop we can never escape.
	2016 is a black hole of human time, and will forever be sucked into its maw, reliving the death of Harambe over and over and over, as well as the 2016 election.
	It's like Groundhog Day all over again.
	It's time to chant, Lock Her Up.
	The Russia story is a total fabrication.
	It's just an excuse for the greatest loss in the history of American politics.
	That's all it is.
	What the prosecutors should be looking at are Hillary Clinton's 33,000 deleted emails.
	They're all chanting, lock her up. lock her up.
	I mean, it's, you know, everybody's very enthusiastic about Trump.
	Again, we're never going to escape 2016.
	Here's the thing.
	Until we escape 2016, we can't actually move forward with a Republican agenda.
	Instead, we're just going to keep reliving this thing over and over and over.
	And Trump's just going to keep talking about Russia as a distraction.
	Russia is a distraction, but the distraction isn't from Hillary Clinton.
	Okay, the distraction is from your agenda.
	I'd say, listen, we could be moving forward on popular legislation that helps Americans, except the media and the Democrats keep focusing on what is a giant nothing burger.
	They've yet to show a shadow of proof of actual collusion.
	Right?
	Instead, we're going back to Hillary Clinton.
	I understand this is a cheap throwaway line.
	I understand.
	Listen, if he wants Hillary Clinton prosecuted, his attorney general can do it.
	But I don't see him ordering the Attorney General to reopen an investigation into Hillary Clinton because it's just another one of these throwaway lines.
	Okay, so, what this is causing with regard to Trump, all of this is causing with regard to Trump...
	People on the right to go to this place where everything that Trump does that is bad is justified by some of the things that Trump does that are good, and on the left, everything Trump does is awful and evil and terrible and garbage-y, and there's no in-between.
	So Greg Gutfeld, who has been at times, I think, a rather well-calibrated critic of President Trump's, yesterday, he's talking about how Trump lied about the Boy Scouts because he had said that the Boy Scouts were calling him to say that he'd give him the best speech ever, and Gutfeld basically says, About the rally itself.
	You can see how Trump's persuasion works.
	What he does there, when all this other stuff is going on, he focused on the everyday issues.
	He brought up taxes, crime, drugs, terror, jobs, coal, the Paris Accords.
	These are things that are major concerns for people.
	And what it does is it marginalizes, by comparison, the obsessions of the media.
	Whether it's about his language, about his meetings, about his fibs, about- comes off as superfluous, irrelevant, because all the people- if you went up to somebody there and you said, yeah, but did you hear they're impaneling?
	They'd go, I don't give a damn!
	You know what?
	I have a problem with Oxy- I got problems with Oxycodone in my society.
	I'm glad he's destroying ISIS.
	He's bringing- Okay, and so this is the right-wing line.
	The right-wing line has become, I don't care about the Russia stuff because he's doing things that I want him to, or at least talking about things that I want him to do.
	I have other concerns.
	And the left-wing line is, I don't care about Trump's other concerns or the people's other concerns because of the Russia stuff.
	That's Anna Navarro's line over on CNN.
	Here she is saying that yesterday.
	The real story here is that you have the Prime Minister of Australia having to explain policy to him like you teach a four-year-old how to read.
	A is for apple, B is for boy, C is for cat.
	The President of the United States was completely ignorant and clueless as to the policy that they were discussing.
	It was cringe-inducing.
	It was painful.
	Okay, so let me just say this, and I've been saying this all along.
	Please do not gauge your level of political participation, knowledge, the stuff that you care about, by President Trump.
	If you're on the right, Don't gauge what he's doing wrong by what he's doing right.
	And if you're on the left, don't gauge what he's doing right by what he's doing wrong.
	Don't pretend that he's universally one way or another.
	Don't pretend everything he does is great.
	Don't pretend that his sins are excused by his good deeds.
	That's not how it works.
	And on the left, don't pretend that the stuff that Trump is doing that some of which you like is stuff that is somehow antithetical to the American way because you don't like the Russia stuff.
	Instead, why don't you put Trump aside and say, okay, what is he actually doing?
	Why don't we all try to do the same thing?
	If we all try to do the same thing, at least we could exist in the same realm of facts.
	The problem is we no longer even tell the same narratives.
	You look at the headlines at Huffington Post, it's Trump lies about Boy Scouts, and Trump lies about Russia, and then you hover to Breitbart and it's...
	Trump succeeds in West Virginia with coal.
	I mean, it's like two separate worlds that you're living in and never the two shall meet.
	We have to keep both of those things in our mind if we're actually going to create, I think, a relatively reasonable and objective and useful picture of the President of the United States and how well he is doing.
	Okay, time for some things I like, things I hate, and then I want to do Uh, an extra special mailbag today.
	So, uh, the thing I like today, we've been doing Anthony Scaramucci, uh, all the way through the week.
	This actually isn't a movie that I like a lot.
	I don't like the movie very much, but, uh, this is Anthony Scaramucci in a nutshell.
	I-I just, I had a hard time saying goodbye to him, guys.
	I mean, I gotta be real about this.
	Anthony Scaramucci was my favorite character in Trump the series.
	And it makes me really sad.
	I mean, just the way that I felt terrible after the Red winning in Game of Thrones, and I just kept thinking, God, that was terrible what they did to Rob.
	Now, I just think about Anthony Scaramucci, and I think, what would he be doing with this news cycle?
	WWASD.
	What would Anthony Scaramucci do?
	I just think that every so often, and it makes me sad.
	I said earlier in the week that we shouldn't mourn, we should just be thankful for the time we had together with Anthony Scaramucci.
	But, you know, it's a line that people say at funerals and then two days later they feel terrible because they remember the person's not there anymore.
	That's how I feel about Anthony Scaramucci.
	You know, every few days I just think and I think back and I go...
	Man, that guy, that dude, that Anthony Scaramucci dude.
	So, this of course is from American Psycho, the movie that I think most closely resembles Anthony Scaramucci.
	It's not a great movie, it's a cringe-inducing, horrifying movie.
	Christian Bale plays...
	This Wall Street guy who's a yuppie and has gotten sucked into the power games of yuppiedom and then is driven totally mad by it.
	He's a sociopath who murders people.
	And he decides to murder this particular guy because this particular guy has a nicer business card than he does.
	And so he decides that it is relevant, it is worthwhile to murder him while listening to Huey Lewis in the news.
	He's been compared to Elvis Costello, but I think Huey has a far more bitter, cynical sense of humor.
	Hey, Albus, you're in.
	Yes, Alan?
	Why are there copies of the style section on the play?
	Do you have a dog?
	A little chow or something?
	No, Alan.
	Is that a raincoat?
	Yes, it is!
	In 87, Huey released this.
	Four.
	Their most accomplished album.
	I think their undisputed masterpiece is Hip To Be Square.
	A song so catchy, most people probably don't listen to the lyrics.
	But they should!
	Because it's not just about the pleasures of conformity and the importance of friends.
	It's also a personal statement about the band itself.
	Hey, Paul!
	Ah!
	Okay, we can leave it there.
	So, the movie itself is terrifying and insane.
	And you're left at the end with the...
	You don't know whether Christian Bale actually did any of the things or whether it was all in his head.
	But I think that's Scaramucci in a nutshell.
	Everything is sort of over the top and crazy.
	And he may be an axe murderer.
	I just don't know enough about him at this point.
	But maybe one day we'll find out.
	You just don't know.
	Okay, so, time for some things I hate, and then we'll get to the mailbag.
	All right.
	Okay, so the first thing that I hate is Colin Kaepernick's girlfriend came out yesterday.
	You remember Colin Kaepernick?
	He's the guy who used to play quarterback for the San Francisco 49ers until he started becoming incredibly crappy, became a second string quarterback, and then decided to kneel for the National Anthem, cratering a lot of the NFL's ratings and destroying a lot of their credibility with non-black communities.
	And I say that because the polls show that black Americans liked the National Anthem stuff and non-black Americans really didn't.
	Hispanics and whites really didn't.
	In any case, Colin Kaepernick's girlfriend tweeted out...
	That being a quarterback in the NFL was like being owned as a slave, okay?
	If that is the way this works, I mean, I make myself a good living here, but if that's slavery, then boy, sign me up.
	Because if slavery is being paid $100 million, like some of these quarterbacks are, I mean, Colin Kaepernick signed like a $20 million contract, and he was an awful quarterback, he was a garbage quarterback who couldn't read a play, and he couldn't even look, he couldn't even check his secondary receiver, my goodness, and he's making millions of dollars.
	His girlfriend tweeted out that if you are warm with the owners of a team, that's because they're like slaveholders and you are like a house negro, essentially.
	Stephen A. Smith says that all that's happening here is the NFL is trying to silence future Colin Kaepernick.
	And of course, the, oh god, the excreble Max Kellerman, who I cannot stand.
	The worst host in the history of mankind for any purpose ever.
	Okay, Max Kellerman does a show in LA, a sports show in LA, called Max and Marcellus.
	It is legitimately the worst show in the history of humanity.
	If Satan could have crapped out a show, it would sound like Max and Marcellus.
	It is the worst show ever.
	So anyway, with that ringing endorsement in his ears, here's Max Kellerman with Stephen A. Smith talking about how Colin Kaepernick is obviously being victimized.
	Last point, it goes deeper than that, and here's why.
	Because far beyond the importance of winning, what you're trying to do by keeping Colin Kaepernick out the game is not just silence him, but silence all those aspiring to emulate Colin Kaepernick.
	It's a dissuasive measure being exercised by league owners regardless of what they're willing to admit.
	So if they play with this, where Colin Kaepernick is kept out of the league, and there is no noise that's reverberating, then you know what?
	They're going to succeed.
	And suddenly you're going to hear a lot of folks being very, very quiet and not speaking up about issues, and that would be tragedy.
	It would just be tragedy.
	If Colin Kaepernick couldn't kneel for the National Anthem, other people might think twice about kneeling for the National Anthem.
	That would certainly be tragic.
	I mean, not that there are any consequences or anything to the NFL for all of this, but if we dissuade athletes from doing... Like, where... You know, I don't know where Stephen A. Smith was.
	I honestly don't know where Stephen A. Smith was when it came to Kurt Schilling basically being thrown off of ESPN for implying that ISIS and the Nazis were part of the same sort of general mentality about Jews.
	Like, I don't know where Stephen A. Smith was for that.
	I don't know where Stephen A. Smith was when Mike Ditka got kicked off the network for suggesting that he was going to vote for President Trump.
	I don't know where Stephen A. Smith was when Chris Broussard was suspended because he said he wasn't personally in favor of same-sex marriage during the Jason Collins stuff.
	But this idea that dissuasion can only be practiced against the right, and that Colin Kaepernick should feel nothing, you can't even disagree with him.
	Look, if you're an NFL owner, why would you put a guy who made himself wildly unpopular with NFL fans on your roster, particularly when he sucks?
	By the way, I promise you that if Colin Kaepernick were really a terrific player, he would still be playing in the NFL.
	I promise you that right now.
	They've got criminals playing in the NFL.
	Perfect example, Steve Nash, right?
	Terrific point guard for the Phoenix Suns.
	And he was with the Dallas Mavericks, and then he was also with the L.A.
	Lakers briefly.
	Steve Nash, if you recall, he's Canadian, and during the Iraq War, he refused to put his hand over his heart for the American National Anthem.
	He wouldn't stand for the American National Anthem, exactly the same as Kaepernick during the Iraq War.
	Did he play again?
	Yeah, because he's a good player.
	So this idea that Kaepernick is not being hired because of his politics, no.
	Kaepernick is not being hired because he's not a good player.
	The same way that, you know, for all the talk about it, Tim Tebow was not hired in part because of his politics, but I think largely because he wasn't a very good player.
	If he was a much better player, Tim Tebow would have been in the NFL still.
	Okay, time for the mailbag.
	So let's do that.
	Doreen writes, Hey Ben, how did you become so good at argumentation?
	Did you actively study it?
	Are you simply very well informed on the topics you speak or both?
	Thanks.
	Well, I think that Arguing is a tactic.
	You know, debating is a tactic.
	So, number one, you have to feel comfortable with your own positions, really have thought them through, thought the information through, really feel comfortable in debate, and stick and move and be able to move with people.
	That's the best way to be good at debating.
	But you also have to study the debate tactics of the person against whom you're debating.
	So, when I debated Cenk Uygur, I still don't know how to pronounce his last name, but Cenk Aiger over at Politicon on Sunday, I had studied his previous debates, I had looked at how he had done it with Dinesh and Anne in the past.
	Actually the debate ended up being very different than those debates, but I was prepared if he was going to go low, I was prepared for how to counter that if he had decided to do that.
	So every debate you have to have a game plan for.
	I would say that every argument that you have in public you should have a game plan for.
	Benjamin writes, hey Ben, I'm Ben.
	Well, congratulations, dude.
	Today I was scrolling through my Facebook and saw a post that infuriated me.
	The post read like this.
	Don't call transgender people mentally ill if you believe a man in the clouds loves you unconditionally, but only under certain conditions.
	The implication, of course, is that all religious people are mentally ill.
	How would you respond to this?
	Thanks.
	I would respond by saying that's ridiculous.
	The reason that's ridiculous is because there's no evidence that religion is mental illness.
	It is a belief system.
	People believe lots of things.
	Lots of people believe in secular human rights.
	There is no basis for secular human rights.
	Okay, it's based on your own logic.
	My belief in God is based on my idea that there is a planner and creator for this universe, and that God is intimately involved in the continuing fate of man.
	Because I believe that people generally, as a whole, get what they deserve, both here and in the afterlife.
	And I can give you all the logical reasons why I believe that.
	I will freely admit there are logical reasons that go the other way.
	I think the only evidence-based position on God is agnosticism.
	That's the only evidence-based position on God.
	Because I think that you can make a very solid evidentiary case for the presence of God, the idea that there was a designer of this complex universe that would be nearly impossible to comprehend in terms of random chance, and also would be nearly impossible to comprehend in terms of why human beings would be able to grasp at the essence of the universe and uncover all of its secrets.
	Like, why aren't we all just animals who basically move sticks around?
	Why is that?
	So, that's a good case for God.
	Free will is the best case for God.
	The idea that you can choose to do otherwise.
	If you're a determinist, then that's a good case for atheism, right?
	So, I think there's evidence on both sides, but...
	But certainly a belief system is not the same as mental illness.
	The reason that I say it is mentally ill if you are transgender is because you believe something that is objectively not true.
	You're objectively not a woman if you are a man.
	You're objectively not a man if you are a woman.
	Things have categories, okay?
	It is not objectively untrue that there is no God.
	I can believe lots of things, and as far as what God wants of me, I can believe that the system that God promulgated at Sinai and was then promulgated to the world through Christianity more broadly, I can believe that that system of morality has led to the greatest civilization in the history of mankind by a wide margin, and that's relatively good evidence for its at least utilitarian value.
	So, again, trying to link belief systems with mental illness, again, it's not objectively verifiable that it is false, Judaism, Christianity, or the presence of God.
	It is objectively falsifiable that you are a female if you are a male.
	Okay, that's the answer.
	Also, if you want to talk about why it's a mental illness, again, religion is linked to better mental health, actually.
	Religious belief generally is linked to less depression, less suicide, less drug use, less alcoholism, higher grades of happiness.
	Transgenderism is linked to a 40% suicide ality rate, higher rates of STDs, higher rates of not just suicide, but depression.
	Higher rates of self-harm.
	Okay, Adam says, Hey Ben, Orthodox Jews believe in Jesus, correct?
	They don't believe he's the Son of God though, right?
	Does the Jewish religion believe he claimed to be the Son of God though?
	If so, isn't this blasphemy?
	Can you please clarify what type of person Jesus is in the eyes of the Jewish religion?
	So, Orthodox Jews believe that there was a Jesus and that Jesus existed, historically speaking.
	What we believe is that Jesus was another Jew, and that he did not claim to be the Son of God, that that was a later addition In the Christian Gospels, because Paul is writing 40 years after the death of Christ, and that's when he sees Jesus on the road to Damascus, and that Jesus was essentially attempting to lead a rebellion against the Romans and was killed for his trouble, just like a lot of other Jews were killed for their trouble.
	That's the Jewish take on Jesus, obviously.
	That's why we differ, right?
	I mean, the Jews and Christians don't believe the same things about Jesus.
	John says, Ben, with all this talk about healthcare, why are we not talking about the health of Americans?
	Childhood obesity, processed food, diabetes, heart disease.
	We are a fast food nation.
	Where and where, when and where does the actual health of Americans come into the equation?
	Cheers, John.
	John, such a good question.
	So, Every time the left says that health care outcomes in the United States are lower than health care outcomes in places like Europe, one of the answers is America is a very diverse place with people who eat lots of different things and have lots of different habits about exercise.
	And the fact is that if you look at ethnically similar populations in the United States and Sweden, for example, look at Swedish people living in the United States, they have exactly the same life expectancy as Swedish people living in Sweden.
	So these two populations are not comparable.
	And it's worthwhile noting that because otherwise you have a confounding statistic that's destroying the perception of what healthcare is and what it does in the United States.
	Kyle says, Team Euron or Team Daenerys in Game of Thrones?
	I didn't know that Euron had a team, although I am appreciating the goth rock Euron of this year, and I'm enjoying his, like, rabid smiling at people.
	That's a thing.
	I'm definitely not Team Daenerys.
	I find her to be an incredibly boring character, highly incompetent at her job.
	She has, like, she has a couple of jobs.
	One, be good at outreach.
	Sucks at outreach.
	Terrible at outreach.
	Everywhere she's ruled, she's been garbage at outreach.
	Legitimately, the only people who like her are slaves that she freed.
	Understandable, but she's not exactly the queen of popularity.
	Then, she's supposed to be this great war leader.
	She blows as a war leader.
	She's awful.
	Okay, the strategy that she has undertaken in season 7 of Game of Thrones, as promulgated by supposedly the wisest guy on the show, Tyrion, I don't know where Tyrion got this great reputation as an advisor.
	I'm not seeing it, dude.
	Like, in Meereen, you were awful.
	He was an awful advisor in Meereen, and now he comes to Westeros, and he's a similarly awful advisor.
	Again, seems like a nice guy, but not really good at his job.
	Daenerys is a terrible negotiator, she's terrible at outreach, she's terrible at the military, and she happens to be, I'm sad to say, a terrible actress.
	So not good all the way through.
	Okay, Kyle says...
	Hello, Ben.
	I always hear about how America is severely in debt to China.
	Is this like owing money to a loan shark for a bad gambling trip kind of debt?
	Or is it a more complex economic issue?
	A brief synopsis would be great.
	Love the show.
	So, I think that people need to stop mixing up trade deficits with debt.
	So, the United States has a lot of debt to China.
	That means that China has bought a lot of American bonds.
	They've bought a lot of American bonds because the United States has been financing its debt, its public debt, right?
	The things that we take out to pay for Social Security and Medicare.
	We've been taking out a lot of that debt on the open market, and China has been buying a lot of those bonds.
	If China wanted to sink the value of the United States dollar, all they would do is kill our ability to actually borrow more money.
	And the way they would do that is by reselling the bonds.
	Put the bonds on the open market, flood the market with bonds, and then that would inflate the value of the dollar.
	Right?
	That's the danger of China owning our debt.
	There are a lot of people who have this weird idea that because we buy lots of product from China, that's a debt.
	That's not a debt, okay?
	When you buy a product from your local grocery store, you don't owe a debt, you just bought a product.
	They made money off of you, but you made the product off of them.
	In fact, the way that international economics works, if you spend a lot of money in China, you're spending dollars.
	Can Chinese people in China spend dollars on other Chinese products?
	No, they don't use that.
	They use the yuan, right?
	So they actually would actually have to spend those dollars back in the United States.
	What you've actually seen, it's called the capital surplus.
	The United States with China, Has a trade deficit but a capital surplus, meaning that China is investing much more in the United States than the United States investing in China.
	This also happened with Japan in the 80s, and everybody was freaked out.
	Ooh, we have a trade deficit because everybody's buying these cheap Japanese tape recorders.
	Oh no!
	We're all gonna die!
	Okay, and it turned out, did Japan end up overtaking us as the leading world economy?
	No, they collapsed in the 1990s.
	They're all buying American land, American real estate, we had a capital surplus with them.
	Trade deficits do not mean debt, and trade deficits do not mean that you are economically failing.
	You know what's a country with a trade surplus right now?
	Really.
	A country with a trade surplus?
	Venezuela.
	We talked about them earlier this week.
	They have a trade surplus because they won't let anybody ship goods and services into their country.
	What does that mean?
	Absolute poverty, people shooting dogs in the streets to eat them.
	Okay.
	Ben says, hey, Ben, a lot of Ben's watching the show.
	There's even another one in the mailbag.
	Wow.
	He says, hey, Ben, I must ask, in what order would you put God, family, country?
	So as a religious person, that's the order, right?
	God, family, country.
	Now, what you hope for and what you hope to create is an absolute symbiosis between those three things, right?
	Where there is no conflict.
	Where your country is not infringing on your capacity to worship God.
	Where your family, which you have worked to mold in a godly image, is in consonance with the country.
	This is why you need a free country.
	That allows families to operate as they will and worship God as they see fit.
	This is why freedom is necessary.
	So when everything is in alignment, these are not in conflict.
	God, family, country.
	But if you were to ask me, you know, if my family were to come into conflict with the country, which one would I choose?
	I would choose my family because, I mean, to be fair, I don't know that that is even a hierarchy because it depends on the values.
	Bottom line is values are values.
	So if my family was right, I'd side with my family.
	If the country was right, I would side with the country, presumably.
	But if you're saying that, you know, where do I think I have a more heavy stamp of my values?
	Obviously my family.
	I have much more of a heavy stamp of my values on my family than I do on my country.
	But if, you know, all that put aside, this is true for everyone, okay?
	Ben says, Why are there legal issues presented upon an individual for using their firearm in a situation Why are there legal issues presented upon an individual for using their firearm in Doesn't that in one aspect defeat the purpose of owning a firearm?
	Is there a way to get this amended to ensure the full rights of our illegal gun owners?
	So, yes.
	You can violate some laws but not others in self-defense situations.
	So, for example, this is why, you know, I'm not a big fan of gun laws.
	If I own an illegal firearm and somebody breaks into my house and is trying to hurt one of my children, I shoot him, I could be prosecuted for illegal use of a firearm even if I properly act in defense of self or others.
	That's why I don't like a lot of these gun laws, and I think that they're really, really stupid.
	As far as why you would be arrested in a situation where you need the USCCA, that's just because the cops can't tell.
	I mean, if they walk into your house and they see a dead guy on the floor, they don't know all the circumstances.
	They have to arrest you first off just to ensure safety.
	But, you know, obviously we hope and pray that in a decent legal system you are acquitted and not even prosecuted in the first place.
	Elhanan just says Shabbat Shalom.
	Okay, well, you too, dude.
	And Rogoff says, Hey Ben, how is it the progressive tax system was put into place?
	Isn't there something in the Constitution that says the government has to protect your property and not take it away just because that's what the collective decided?
	Yes.
	So, the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States has what people wrongly call the Eminent Domain Clause, okay?
	This is the idea that the government cannot take away private property for public use without just compensation.
	That's the exact language of the statute.
	Richard Epstein has a really good book called Takings.
	In it, he basically argues that if you look at that closely, what that really means is the government can't take your money from you for public use without giving you an equal amount of services in return.
	So yes, the income tax itself was unconstitutional.
	The progressive income tax was unconstitutional.
	The 16th Amendment is the one that legalized the income tax.
	Worst amendment in the U.S.
	Constitution.
	And yes, the constitutional framework never conceived of the idea of this massive Okay, so we'll be back here on Monday, and I'm sure there will be much more news, because the news never stops, gang.
	I'm Ben Shapiro.

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