Knowledge Fight Interactive Search Tool

All Episodes

Previous Next

Oct. 31, 2017 - The Ben Shapiro Show

47:07

Happy Halloween! | Ep. 407

Large

Audio Only |

Scroll

Time	Text
	I'm Keith Olbermann, and this is The Resistance.
	Yesterday, we received a magnificent present, a present so large, so impressive, so monumental, as to boggle the mind and set the heart aflutter.
	Yes, my friends, we are well on our way to seeing the usurper Trump brought low, to seeing the restoration of this republic, to seeing, I think, the greatest collapse Because, you see, Special Counsel Robert Mueller has uncovered a scandal the likes of which make Watergate seem like child's play.
	This evidence shows that Donald J. Trump is more dangerous than Hitler, more dangerous than Stalin, more dangerous than that mobile pet spa that somehow used the wrong shampoo on my cat Fluffy, leaving her less cuddly than usual and reducing me to a quivering ball of humanity lying prone in my own tears and urine.
	Now, you may say that Mueller's indictment of Paul Manafort, Trump's former campaign manager, says nothing about Trump or his campaign, but you do not have the depth of intellect that earned me entrance to the prestigious Cornell College of Agriculture and Life Sciences.
	You do not have the nuance to understand that Mueller just put the final nail into Trump's political grave.
	No one does.
	No one did it ESPN.
	No one did it MSNBC.
	No one did it Fox Sports Net.
	No one did it ESPN2.
	No one did it Current TV.
	It took me a lifetime to find the political geniuses at GQ, but they understand me and love me as I deserve to be loved.
	As I deserve to be loved.
	Donald J. Trump, you, sir, are a liar.
	You, sir, are a buffoon.
	You, sir, are the kind of human being for whom decency means nothing and for whom the world is merely a whorehouse of refuse and trash that somehow turns me on and yet simultaneously repulses me.
	Suffice it to say, Donald J. Trump is on his way out.
	To the big house.
	To the slammer.
	To the hooscow.
	To the calaboose.
	To the pokey.
	To Sing Sing.
	And Robert Mueller, with my help and God's will, will put him there.
	If you wish to purchase my new book, Keith is effing crazy.
	This is not a joke.
	Go on over to Amazon.
	Now, I know there have been some criticizing me for mocking Tommy Lahren.
	I said that Tommy Lahren misused the flag.
	And some look at my book cover and say, well, Keith, you also misused the flag.
	I am the flag.
	The flag, me, the same.
	Amazing.
	Resist.
	Remove.
	Peace.
	I'm Ben Shapiro.
	This is the Ben Shapiro Show.
	Okay, so I couldn't all get through that whole thing without laughing, so...
	Sorry about that, folks.
	But there is your Keith Olbermann impersonation for a Halloween.
	Hope you enjoyed it as much as I did, writing it and reading it.
	Probably not, but tough.
	It's my show.
	So, we have a lot to get to today.
	We are going to be discussing the fallout from the Manafort indictment and from the George Papadopoulos indictment.
	And he actually made a plea bargain.
	I'm going to talk about whether Trump is going to be tempted into firing Robert Mueller, the special counsel.
	I think that would be a very large mistake.
	We're going to get to all of that.
	Plus, I want to talk a little bit at length about this insane ad that I mentioned yesterday from a Latino victory caucus in Virginia against Ed Gillespie, the Republican candidate for Virginia governor.
	But first, I want to say thank you to our sponsors over at Bull and Branch.
	One of the things that you actually should spend some money on is the sheet set that you use to sleep.
	Because you're going to spend an inordinate number of hours tonight trying to sleep and tossing and turning around in those uncomfortable old bedsheets.
	That's where Bowl & Branch comes in.
	Bowl & Branch makes the most affordable and high quality sheets that you can buy.
	They are made from 100% organic cotton.
	That means Bowl & Branch sheets not only feel incredible, they also look amazing.
	And they sell exclusively online.
	So that means you're not paying the expensive retail markup.
	Half the price for twice the quality.
	You will love the sheets.
	Try them for 30 nights and see for yourself how much you like them.
	If you don't like them, then you can always return them for a full refund.
	So it's a risk-free proposition.
	Go to bullandbranch.com today.
	You'll get $50 off your first set of sheets, plus free shipping when you use promo code Ben.
	Again, these sheets are so good that I will not buy any other type of sheets except for Bull & Branch for my own family.
	That's $50 off, plus free shipping right now at bullandbranch.com.
	That's B-O-L-L and branch.com, promo code Ben.
	Again, bullandbranch.com, promo code Ben.
	Okay, so I actually want to start today with the ad that I talked briefly about yesterday from the Latino Victory Caucus in Virginia.
	And for those who missed it, I want to play it because this is, I think, the worst political ad I have ever seen in my life.
	I mean, I think this makes the Daisy ad, the famous Daisy ad from 1964, where LBJ essentially accused Barry Goldwater of wanting to get the United States nuked It makes that ad look like nothing.
	I mean, this is really an egregious ad.
	So for those who can't see, you're about to see a bunch of minority children who are running away from a truck that has on it a Confederate flag, a don't tread on me license plate and an Ed Gillespie bumper sticker because the truck is going to run them over because it's a white supremacist seeking to kill minority children.
	So Latino kid stops and then he sees an Asian kid and then both of them start running because here comes that truck again.
	He's got an Ed Gillespie bumper sticker on it.
	And every racially diverse child in Virginia is on this block.
	And here they're all running away from the truck.
	And oh no, they've run into a dead end.
	And here comes the truck.
	Suddenly it's night, and the headlights come up, and all the kids wake up from their terrible dream.
	Is this what Donald Trump and Ed Gillespie mean?
	And then it's a picture of the parents watching the Charlottesville hate rally, and it says, reject hate vote November 7th.
	And it's paid for by the Latino Victory Fund.
	It's not authorized by the candidate, but obviously the candidate did not condemn it.
	The reason that I'm playing this ad again is because it really does speak to the insanity that has now engulfed huge parts of the left.
	You know, the great conflicts in American history have largely been driven not just by political differences, but by the feeling that those political differences are not We are unable to overcome those political differences, that we hate each other, right?
	The actual hate in this ad is not from Ed Gillespie, right?
	The actual hate in this ad is from this Latino Victory Fund.
	It's from the campaign for Ralph Northam, who actually, you know, if he didn't give the go-ahead to the ad, which would have been illegal, he obviously hasn't condemned the ad.
	And there was another mailer that actually went out from the Northam campaign, endorsed by the Northam campaign, linking again Ed Gillespie to what happened in Charlottesville, Virginia.
	It's really pretty horrific stuff.
	When I read Federalist One yesterday, and I talked about how Alexander Hamilton had specifically cited the idea that in politics, you have to assume the best intentions on the part of your opponent if you want to convince them.
	We're no longer in the age of convincing.
	We're now in the age of getting out your base.
	And I think that that's a political truism.
	I think that people missed that in 2012.
	But in 2016, I think people got that.
	That it was all about getting out the base.
	No one was trying to appeal to the median voter.
	Now it's just about getting out the people who already like you.
	And the best way to get them out is to essentially say that your opponent is evil and horrible and nasty and terrible.
	But if you do this too much, if you rely on this tactic too much, you actually end up telling Americans that the people that they live with in their same community are evil, horrible, nasty, brutish people.
	And if you do that, it's very hard to put the country back together again.
	Because I can have conversations with people with whom I disagree.
	I do it all the time for a living.
	I do it all the time casually.
	I live in LA.
	I mean, this stuff happens.
	But I don't actually think the people I live with in L.A.
	and the individuals with whom I speak are nasty, horrible people.
	I think they may believe things that are bad, but I don't believe they're nasty, evil people.
	This ad essentially suggests that people who disagree with you are nasty, evil people.
	Again, it falls into the intersectional politics.
	You want an example of intersectional politics at its finest?
	This is the example of intersectional politics at its finest, right?
	This idea that You're going to have all of these various minority groups and they're all running away from the evil white majority that is chasing them down on streets.
	It's really a horrific ad.
	And that's not the only evidence that we have of that over the last 24 hours.
	Elliot Hamilton, reporter for Daily Wire, he got a hold of an email that was issued by a woman apparently named Madelaine Leader.
	She is the head of data services for the technology department at the DNC, and she wrote this letter.
	She was trying to search people out for jobs.
	She said, What's more important is that we are focused on hiring and maintaining a staff of diverse voices and life experiences, something that we desperately need if we hope to secure the future of our country.
	So they're not just trying to hire a data science lead, or a full stack engineer, or a product designer.
	They're trying to hire a staff of diverse voices and life experiences, because you know when your computer crashes, what you really need is somebody coming in And explaining to you how they grew up poor in inner city.
	That's really, really important.
	I know when my computer crashes, the first thing I do when I call our IT guy is I say to him, please tell me the story of your life and how your diverse experiences have led you to the point where you can fix my Mac.
	No, that's not how any of this works, but that's not even the bad part.
	Here's what the email apparently says, according to Madeleine Leder, again, the Democratic National Committee data service manager, who gave a no comment to Daily Wire when we asked her about it.
	She said, Please let me know if you have any questions or concerns and feel free to forward on to your contact.
	I personally would prefer that you not forward to cisgender straight white males since they're already in the majority.
	She says straight out in the email that she doesn't want this email forwarded to people who happen to be straight and white because they're already in the majority.
	It's that same sort of intersectional logic that leads to the idea that we can gauge your value as a human being.
	We can gauge your worthiness in the workplace by your color, by your life experiences, as opposed to by the quality of work you do or by the kind of activity in which you take place.
	Again, the slander in that Latino victory ad, the slander that everyone who flies a Confederate flag is trying to run down black children.
	Which is insane.
	I mean, there are legitimately hundreds of thousands of Americans who are not doing that and have Confederate flags.
	The idea that everyone who's voting for Ed Gillespie sides with the Charlottesville hate protesters.
	The idea that anyone who has a don't tread on me on the front of their car, that that person is trying to run down some poor Muslim child on the streets of Alexandria.
	It's just insane.
	But again, it comes from the same intersectional place that this white majority is inevitably imbued with a nasty, horrible racism that cannot be fixed.
	And as long as we think that, as long as the left keeps doing that, they're going to get pushback from the other side.
	Trump was a symptom of this.
	You want to know one of the reasons why Trump won?
	One of the reasons why Trump won is because Americans got sick and tired of being told that they were the types of people who are trying to drive people down.
	And Hillary's deplorable lines was the worst thing she could have said during that campaign, because when she said deplorables, she may have been referring to the alt-right, but instead she painted with a broad brush that half of all Trump supporters were members of the alt-right.
	That, of course, was untrue.
	Well, what this leads to is an insane amount of doubt in our institutions.
	Because we no longer trust the institutions.
	We no longer trust the people who staff our institutions.
	Now, we look at the motivations of the people who staff our institutions and we say, are these people well-motivated or not?
	Or is everything a partisan battle?
	And that's why I think what happens in the Manafort indictment or the Papadopoulos situation, all of that is going to have bearing on how Trump thinks.
	Trump is an oppositional thinker.
	He tends to think that people are out to get him by nature.
	And in many cases, he is right.
	Right now, I don't think that Mueller actually has him in the crosshairs.
	I'll explain why in a second.
	I actually don't think that Mueller is going to be able to make a case against President Trump.
	I think the worst case scenario for President Trump is this ends up looking a lot like a Ron Contra, where the guy at the top is basically let off the hook and some underlings go down.
	But with all of that said, Trump could be convinced to fire Robert Mueller and really create a political firestorm for himself by people whispering into his ear that everyone is out to get him.
	I'm going to explain all of that in just a second, plus what Tony Podesta and Hillary Clinton and everybody else have to do with this.
	Why is DC so darn corrupt?
	I'll explain in just a second.
	First, I want to say thank you to our sponsors over at the USCCA.
	So you would do whatever it takes to protect your family.
	Somebody would try to break into your house in the middle of the night, you'd go to your gun safe, you'd take out your shotgun, and if somebody tried to break in you would blow them away.
	But owning a gun for protection should not be intimidating, overwhelming, or confusing Even in light of the fact that one mistake could land you with a mountain of legal fees, a lifetime behind bars, or worse.
	It's your right to own a gun.
	It's your right to use it properly.
	That's why I work with the USCCA to give my listeners their complete concealed carry and family defense guide, 100% free.
	It is 164 pages of life-saving information you can't find anywhere else.
	It'll help you understand confusing gun laws, responsibly own and store a gun, particularly if you have small kids, train for real-life scenarios, survive the murky waters of the legal system, and a lot more.
	Go to defendmyfamilynow.com right now to begin your simple, rewarding journey to concealed carry and home defense confidence.
	And right now, you will also get the complete audio version and bonus home defense checklist 100% free.
	Go to defendmyfamilynow.com.
	Again, that's defendmyfamilynow.com for free instant access.
	defendmyfamilynow.com gives you the information that you need to protect and defend your family.
	So, to recap in very brief terms, yesterday's news, there are basically two big pieces of news.
	First was Trump former campaign chair, Paul Manafort, who was in charge of the campaign for something like five months.
	Paul Manafort was indicted on 12 counts.
	Virtually all of them had nothing to do, well, all of them had nothing to do with Trump.
	And the vast majority of them had nothing to do with even the period in which Manafort was working for Trump.
	And the White House essentially said as much.
	Here's Sarah Huckabee Sanders saying that yesterday.
	But look, today's announcement has nothing to do with the president, has nothing to do with the president's campaign or campaign activity.
	The real collusion scandal, as we've said several times before, has everything to do with the Clinton campaign, Fusion GPS and Russia.
	Okay, and she, of course, is at least partially correct.
	The idea that the only scandal here is Fusion GPS and Russia is not true.
	Okay, the fact is that there is some other material, the Donald Trump Jr.
	letters, the George Papadopoulos stuff, that is troubling.
	So the Trump campaign, and the Trump White House more specifically, is doing what they're supposed to do, right?
	They're saying George Papadopoulos was a low-level staffer who had nothing to do with anything.
	He was really not in charge of anything in the campaign.
	And so they're now minimizing his presence in the campaign, just as they did with Carter Page, who's also a former policy advisor with connections to the Russians.
	It was extremely limited.
	It was a volunteer position.
	And again, no activity was ever done in an official capacity on behalf of the campaign in that regard.
	What about the outreach that he was making to campaign officials to try to You mean that outreach that was repeatedly denied and pushed away and said we're not going to take any action on that?
	How can you describe Mr. Papadopoulos as having a limited role when there's a photograph of Mr. Papadopoulos sitting at a table with a candidate Trump at a national security meeting?
	Okay, and she's not wrong about this.
	Again, the idea that Trump was sitting there trying to direct from the top George Papadopoulos seems kind of ridiculous.
	Here's the problem with regard to Papadopoulos.
	So basically, to recap, Papadopoulos was making some sort of entrees to the professor, right?
	Not the guy from Gilligan's Island, a professor who's located in London who apparently had connections with the Russian government and was trying to fix up the Trump campaign with the Russians.
	And Papadopoulos was trying to make this happen.
	The Russians also told him they had access to thousands of Hillary emails, or thousands of emails more specifically, and they said also that they had dirt on Hillary Clinton.
	Papadopoulos apparently tried to pass this up the chain and this was shut down.
	It's now coming out that some of the people he talked to included Paul Manafort.
	He was Basically, he was going to be indicted on charges of lying to the FBI about the extent to which he had been working with the Trump campaign while he was making these connections.
	And instead, he pled guilty in order so that he could basically get out of it.
	There's some rumors today that Papadopoulos may have been wearing a wire, that the federal government turned him, and that he was wearing a wire in context of all the other Trump officials.
	We're going to have to find that out.
	But having read the Papadopoulos statement of the offense, I can say with certainty that there is nothing in there that is significantly more damning, for example, than the Donald Trump Jr.
	letters that Trump Jr.
	released himself on Twitter, where he basically said that he was willing to hear the Russians out about their own Hillary.
	And again, Huckabee Sanders and the rest of the Trump team, they're not wrong to say that Hillary Clinton was willing to do the same thing in that Fusion GPS dossier.
	So, in the end, I don't think any of this really touches Trump.
	I don't think this reaches all the way to the top.
	Manafort's lawyer is saying also there's no evidence of collusion, and he's right.
	I mean, the indictment doesn't contain any evidence of collusion between Manafort and the Russians with regards to the campaign specifically.
	There's no evidence that Mr. Manafort or the Trump campaign colluded with the Russian government.
	Mr. Manafort represented pro-European Union campaigns for the Ukrainian.
	And in that, he was seeking to further democracy and to help the Ukraine come closer to the United States and the EU.
	Okay, so, you know, again, I think there's a bit of a benevolent spin on what Manafort was doing, but the evidence simply is not there.
	Trump's own lawyer, Ray J. Sekulow, he's saying that Trump is not interested in firing Mueller.
	The only thing that can damage Trump, in my opinion, here.
	The only thing that will really hurt him is if he fires Mueller.
	There are two things that Trump can do that will start a political firestorm in the midst of all of this.
	One of them I think would be justifiable, one I think would be unjustifiable.
	The thing that he could do that would be justifiable is to tell his Attorney General to open up a special counsel investigation into Hillary Clinton and Fusion GPS to see if there was actual collusion taking place.
	Eli Lake has a really good piece over at Bloomberg View in which he talks about the fact that because Hillary basically used lawyers as go-betweens, and she has both plausible deniability as well as a chain of payment, and it wasn't like a gift from the Russian government, because of that, there may not be any laws violated, but certainly an investigation would be a worthwhile thing.
	Trump could do that.
	It would start a firestorm.
	It would look like he's trying to misdirect from the Mueller episode.
	I'm not sure it'd be politically smart, even though it'd rev his base up, for sure.
	On the other hand, one he could do that could really hurt him is firing Mueller.
	If he fires Mueller, based on suspicion that Mueller is going to do something, it will look more like a cover-up than like a legitimate exercise of presidential power, even though he does have the power as President of the United States to fire the special counsel.
	The law that allowed Kenneth Starr to basically operate free of being fired by President Clinton.
	Both parties said this is no good.
	We can't have independent councils who are running around willy-nilly doing whatever they want without being subject to being fired by either Congress or the executive branch.
	So they let that law expire.
	Now special counsels can be fired by the president.
	But, if Trump were to fire the special counsel, and if he were to do so on the basis that the special counsel was looking at his family finances, for example, which he has said he doesn't want Mueller to do, or if he were to fire Mueller on the basis that Mueller is going too far into his investigations of Trump personally, it would look like a cover-up, and it would create not a constitutional crisis, because it would be constitutional, but it would create a political crisis for Trump, It'll create the appearance that he's firing Mueller in order to avoid being convicted of something.
	In order to avoid being investigated, in order to protect his family members.
	And there are people encouraging him to do this.
	So Trump's lawyer, Jay Sekulow, is doing the right thing here.
	He's saying, I don't think Trump is going to fire Mueller and he has no intention of doing so.
	No, you know, I saw a couple people talking about that this morning and the answer to that is no.
	The president is not interfering with the special counsel Mueller's position.
	He's not firing the special counsel.
	He's said that before.
	I don't think that anybody is surprised that an indictment came down today or that there was this plea because we expected this indictment.
	I mean, I think I've been on your broadcast talking about this a couple months back.
	Now, all of that that he says there is exactly correct.
	John Kelly, Trump's chief of staff, he says the same thing.
	He says, let the indictments work, let's see where the legal system works, and let the system do what it's supposed to do.
	All of the activities, as I understand it, that they were indicted for were long before they ever met Donald Trump or had any association with the campaign.
	But I think the reaction of the administration is, let the legal justice system work.
	Everyone's innocent until—resumed innocent, and we'll see where it goes.
	Okay, and that exactly would be the right thing to do, right?
	You should just let this thing roll out.
	Unfortunately, I think that there are forces on the left and forces on the right that are basically trying to troll Trump into firing Mueller.
	Because once he fires Mueller, then there is going to be an accusation that he fired him for the same reason that he supposedly fired Comey, because Comey was getting too close.
	Now, as I said all along, I think the real reason that Trump fired Comey is he wanted Comey to come out publicly and exonerate Trump.
	Comey wasn't willing to do that because Comey said, if I exonerate you now and then you come under investigation later, then I'm gonna have to say so.
	And Trump didn't like that, so he fired Comey.
	Well, the same thing could easily happen with Mueller, where he goes to Mueller and he says, listen, I want you to exonerate me.
	And Mueller says, well, I can't yet.
	And Trump says, you're fired.
	If that happens, it will look like a cover-up of epic proportions, and it will lead the Democrats not only to try and impeach him if they gain control of the House in 2018, but it'll put Republicans in a tough spot, too, because it will look a lot more like the Saturday Night Massacre under Richard Nixon than it'll look like him just firing somebody who deserves to be fired.
	As I said, there are people on both right and left who are trying to troll him into this.
	Steve Bannon apparently is trying to troll Trump into firing Robert Mueller.
	That's because Bannon has more balls than brains.
	I'll explain that in just a second.
	But first, I want to say thank you to our sponsors over at stamps.com.
	Stamps, you know, are the only way that you can send your mail, but you don't want to wait in line at the post office.
	Well, I don't like waiting in line at the post office because I don't like wasting time.
	As much as I enjoy the wonderful smells and sights of the post office, I would much rather not go and simply be able to print my postage off onto my mail directly and then put it in the mail slot and be done.
	Well, that's what stamps.com allows you to do.
	I can mail any letter, any package, using just my computer and printer, and the mailman picks it right up.
	Stamps.com never closes, so you don't have to worry about it.
	Got to get there before 5.
	It prints postage for letters or packages at your convenience 24-7.
	It is convenient, it is easy, it is reliable, and it is flexible.
	They bring you all the services of the U.S. Postal Service right to your fingertips.
	Again, you can buy and print official U.S. postage for any letter, any package, any class of mail using your computer and printer.
	and they will even send you a digital scale, automatically calculating your exact postage so you don't have to estimate it.
	And they will even send you a digital scale automatically calculating your exact postage so you don't have to estimate it.
	Stamps.com will even help you decide the best class of mail based on your needs.
	Stamps.com will even help you decide the best class of mail based on your needs.
	I use Stamps.com because I don't have time to run out to the post office every day, and we here at the office use Stamps.com for exactly the same reason.
	I use Stamps.com because I don't have time to run out to the post office every day, and we here at the office use Stamps.com for exactly the same reason.
	Right now, you can try the Stamps.com service with a special offer that includes a four-week trial, plus postage and a digital scale without long-term commitments.
	Go to Stamps.com, click on the microphone at the top of the homepage, and type in Shapiro.
	That's Stamps.com, promo code Shapiro.
	Again, Stamps.com, there's a microphone at the top of the page, click it, and then type in Shapiro, and that will give you a four-week trial, plus postage and a digital scale without long-term commitments.
	Pretty awesome.
	Stamps.com, never go to the post office again.
	Okay, so as I say, there are some folks on the right who are trying to tell Trump to fire Mueller, and there are some folks on the left who are trying to tell Trump to fire Mueller.
	I think that some people on the right who are trying to tell Trump to fire Mueller are trying to get in good with Trump.
	They understand that the easiest way to earn Trump's respect and his good grace is to suggest to Trump that he has ultimate power, right, like Jafar at the end of Aladdin.
	The ultimate power in the universe.
	Itty bitty living space.
	The problem is that people like Bannon who are telling Trump, obstruct Mueller, don't give him any documents, try to stop him because he's out of control.
	You do that, it's going to come out, it's going to look like you're trying to obstruct, and then you have a political problem on your hands.
	Whereas you just say, listen, my doors are wide open.
	I have nothing to hide.
	It makes it very difficult for the left to claim that this Trump-Russia collusion stuff is a reality.
	Folks on the left are desperately hoping against hope that Mueller has the evidence to go against Trump.
	But again, I don't think he does.
	You know, Laura Ingraham said this last night.
	She said that if Mueller had anything on Trump, he would have hit with that first.
	I think that that may or may not be true, but I don't see, based on the Manafort indictment, unless it's just an attempt to get Manafort to flip, I have this reflex on Trump.
	I have always thought that if there was any sort of collusion inside the Trump campaign, it wasn't because Trump was sitting atop the campaign directing it.
	It was because Trump had said, I want to be closer to the Russians.
	I like Putin.
	I hate Hillary.
	And so some low-level staffer says, OK, he likes Putin.
	He doesn't like Hillary.
	What if we just go to Putin and help Trump take out Hillary?
	It seems to me that this could very easily be a case of Henry II, well, no one rid me of this meddlesome priest.
	And that would be the easiest answer here, but that would not necessarily be the actually, that wouldn't actually be Trump directing this from above.
	Again, I think both the right and the left, though, are trying to kind of push Trump into using that gun that's over the mantelpiece.
	You know, there's this old rule in drama.
	It's a rule from Chekhov, the playwright Chekhov, that when you put a gun over the mantelpiece in the first act, it must be used by the end of the second act.
	Well, the gun over the mantelpiece is firing Mueller, and I have a feeling that Trump is going to be tempted to do it just because that's what Trump has been tempted to do.
	Again, the only audacious move he's made as president, really, is firing Comey, which blew back on him, which should be a good example not to do this.
	Leon Panetta, obviously a man of the left, he says that more indictments are coming.
	Again, Democrats are going to keep saying this and keep saying this, hoping they can trip Trump into firing Mueller so that then they can go after him on that basis, as opposed to the actual underlying supposed crime.
	What these indictments may indicate is that as a result of it, there will be other trails of evidence that will be followed by Bob Mueller.
	And I think there's probably a very good bet that additional indictments will be forthcoming and could involve members of both parties.
	Okay, well, I think that that last point is the really important one.
	One of the people who was basically called on the carpet, or is going to be called on the carpet, is Tony Podesta.
	Tony Podesta is the brother of John Podesta.
	Very, very close to the Clintons.
	The Podesta Group was founded by the Podesta brothers.
	It's a lobbying group inside Washington, D.C.
	They worked very closely with Paul Manafort in his sort of pro-Ukrainian dealings from 2006 to 2014.
	And in doing so, Podesta got himself into some hot water.
	The same day that the Manafort indictment came down, Tony Podesta has now resigned from the Podesta group.
	He's resigned because he's got to imagine that something is coming down the pike for him.
	Well, this should tempt Trump to basically hold his fire.
	Because if people from both sides get indicted, it's going to look like what it is.
	This is the swamp.
	It's not going to look like Trump.
	It's going to look like the swamp.
	Trump's best move here is to hold his fire.
	Unfortunately, Steve Bannon, being more balls than brains, is telling him not to do that.
	Bannon apparently, according to the Daily Beast, spoke on the phone with Trump on Monday, offered a message, get yourself some new lawyers.
	Now listen, I know Bannon pretty well.
	I was on a phone call with him twice a day, for an hour a day, for an hour a call, for two years.
	So I know Bannon's tendencies.
	Bannon's tendencies is always honey badger, right?
	Honey badger this, honey badger that.
	This is not a situation where the honey badger is going to be successful, because the fact is, the more you dig in here, the more the Democrats actually have something to play with.
	According to the Daily Beast, the former White House chief strategist has grown increasingly concerned the president's legal team is falling down on the job, proving too accommodating to Robert Mueller, leaving Trump vulnerable as former campaign aides are handed indictments.
	In terms of Steve's thinking about how the president is handling this, yeah, he thinks the legal team was not prepared for what happened today.
	They're not serving the president well, a source close to Bannon said.
	Another confidant said Bannon believes Ty Cobb and John Dowd, the top two attorneys on the president's legal team, are, quote, asleep at the wheel.
	Apparently, two sources inside and outside the White House with knowledge of a conversation between Trump and Bannon told the Daily Beast Bannon advised Trump not to demote Dowd and Cobb, but to bring in new lawyers to work over them in the hopes that fresh blood would bring an order and ruthlessness to Trump's legal team that Bannon sees as desperately incompetent.
	And Doubt and Cobb have both said that they should cooperate with the Mueller investigation, and both Cobb and Doubt have had their problems.
	But the idea that you're going to fix this by basically stonewalling is the biggest mistake that you can make.
	Stonewalling here, again, if Trump is really innocent, I think that stonewalling is probably the worst thing that he can do.
	And I'll give you an example of this, right?
	Tony Podesta Steps down from the Podesta group.
	And he is talked about by Tucker Carlson on Fox News.
	Well, Venable, which is a very, very good national law firm, they sent a letter to Tucker Carlson and they basically threatened Tucker Carlson to stop talking about this.
	Is it going to help Tony Podesta to do this?
	And the answer is no.
	Here's Carlson talking about it.
	We got a letter from Jeff Garenther.
	He's a lawyer with Venable LLP, a big law firm here in D.C.
	The letter demands that this show, quote, immediately cease and desist disseminating false and misleading reports about Mr. Podesta and the Podesta Group.
	It demands we retract and delete all our prior reporting on the Podesta Group and warns that if we don't do this, quote, Mr. Podesta may pursue legal action, including for damages, in order to fully protect his rights.
	The letter doesn't stop there, though.
	It also warns us that we will face legal action under the Copyright Act merely for quoting from this letter publicly, as we just did.
	The most amusing line, though, is this one.
	Quote, Paul Manafort did not work with the Podesta Group in its representation of the European Center for a Modern Ukraine.
	That's what the lawyer's letters told us.
	Apparently that lawyer hasn't read the Manafort indictment yet.
	In paragraph 22 of that indictment, we read this, quote, at the direction of Manafort and Gates, companies A and B engaged in extensive lobbying on Ukraine.
	The indictment also says that the Podesta Group and Mercury were selected personally by Paul Manafort to lobby on behalf of Ukrainian interests.
	So stonewalling, in other words, is the worst thing that you can do here because if you stonewall, it's just going to lead to more information being disseminated like Tucker Carlson did correctly last night on his program.
	So this is a mistake.
	The way that Trump should play this, the way that Trump should play this, first of all, let me just say this.
	The person who is most in agreement with me on this is Alan Dershowitz, the Harvard Law professor, who I actually had at Harvard Law, and he says that he doesn't think that Mueller is going to quote-unquote get Trump.
	I think this is correct.
	His indictment has everything to do with Trump.
	They never would have indicted him for money laundering or tax evasion if he weren't somebody who they thought could turn on Trump, could provide information and evidence.
	If not Trump, somebody higher up in the chain between Manafort and Trump.
	This is dominoes.
	You knock down the first domino, that knocks down the second domino.
	Ultimately, what Mueller is aiming for is the big domino in the Oval Office.
	I don't think they're going to get him.
	I don't think they have anything because collusion, even if it were to be established, isn't a crime.
	This is correct.
	As I've said before, collusion is not, in fact, a crime.
	You actually have to engage in conspiracy in order for you to achieve a crime.
	None of that is real.
	And so the best thing that Trump can do is sort of open his arms and say, bring it at me, you know, come at me, bro.
	Right.
	That's that's sort of the best thing he can do, especially because, as I'm about to explain, The Trump can actually turn this whole thing to his advantage.
	I'm gonna explain how Trump can turn this whole thing to his advantage.
	But for that, you're gonna have to subscribe to the podcast if you want to watch me talk about it live.
	So for $9.99 a month, you can get the rest of this show live on video.
	You can always listen to us later, of course, and you can always watch Uh, our Facebook free and YouTube free section of the video later, but if you want us to have the whole show on video, then you have to download it and stream it by subscribing at $9.99 a month to Daily Wire.
	You get my show, you get Knowles' show, you get Clavin's show, you get all of those things.
	Clavin's not dressing up today, I believe that Knowles is, and it should be pretty horrific if Knowles holds true to form, so check that out.
	Also, if you want the annual subscription, $99 a year gets you the annual subscription, which comes complete with this Leftist Tears hot or cold tumbler, the greatest of all vessels holding beverages.
	It holds the brew that is true, as they say in the court jester.
	So, Leftist Tears hot or cold mug, you get that when you subscribe annually.
	Please subscribe to our YouTube channel as well because we always have cool new kind of cultural content coming out.
	And if you want to subscribe just to the audio, go to SoundCloud or iTunes or Spotify or any of the various downloading apps and subscribe and leave us a comment and review.
	We always appreciate it.
	it.
	We are the largest, fastest growing conservative podcast in the nation.
	So here's where I think that President Trump can turn all of this to his advantage.
	I think the way he can turn this to his advantage is by pointing out what he's always been pointing out, which is the swamp.
	Now the problem is that the swamp also encompasses a lot of his lower downs.
	And what Trump should do, and this is where Trump fans are going to have to swallow hard here and accept the reality.
	Donald Trump is not playing 40 chess.
	Donald Trump is not playing underwater, MAGA, MAGA, MAGA, upside-down, hungry, hungry hippos.
	He's not doing any of those things.
	Donald Trump, even if you like him, even if you think he's a well-motivated man, he is not a sophisticated player in this space.
	The lie that he was going to come in and clean everything up because he was just so sophisticated business player, knew the ins and outs, had bribed people, all this, it's just not true.
	The best case you can make for President Trump, if you are a Trump supporter right now, is saying that Trump came in here And it turns out that even during his campaign, the swamp was basically trying to infiltrate his campaign and trying to infect his campaign with swampiness, right?
	Manafort was a Republican insider long before, long before President Trump had ever been on the political horizon.
	Again, I told you, I was made aware of Manafort being kind of a swamp creature.
	Back in, like, 2012, 2013.
	And he was working deeply with the RNC at the time.
	He was close with the Bushes.
	The idea that Manafort was some sort of Trump-specific pick who was personally close to Trump is not true.
	Probably what happened is that people at the RNC said, you know who you could use?
	You could use Paul Manafort.
	And he said, OK, sure, Manafort, why not?
	What he should be saying is, listen, all these people who were recommended to me by the RNC, all these people who were recommended to me by the Republican insiders, these are the people who are involved in the swamp.
	You want to know how I know?
	Because look how Manafort was working with Podesta, right?
	Podesta is a part of the swamp, too.
	These are all part of the swamp.
	Now, the one thing about this that I like particularly is that it is true, okay?
	It is true that Washington, D.C.
	is filled with swamp creatures.
	Now the reason that Washington, D.C., however, is filled with swamp creatures is not because we just elected the worst people, invariably.
	Very often the people we elect are good people.
	The problem is that the swamp eats people because the swamp is in and of itself just a swamp of money.
	When we say the swamp, people think, oh, well, look at all that corruption, all these corrupt people.
	If we just elected the right people, then that would fix everything.
	I'm a believer in the Milton Friedman line.
	It's not about electing the right people.
	It's about getting the wrong people to do the right thing.
	And that means you have to minimize the power in Washington, D.C.
	All of this swampiness, And it does.
	It engulfs both parties.
	It involves people in both campaigns.
	All of this is because Washington, D.C.
	is so powerful, because Washington, D.C.
	has so much money in it, because there are so many people who are seeking to take advantage of that wealth and power in Washington, D.C.
	I'm going to give you a list of names of people who have basically been implicated in all of this.
	Manafort, Hillary Clinton, Tony Podesta, Donald Trump Jr., Christopher Steele, James Comey, George Papadopoulos, Jeff Sessions, Rod Rosenstein.
	Right?
	There's like everyone.
	Everyone has been implicated in something here that is not good and is swampy in some way.
	And the reason for that is not because all these people are bad.
	It's not because all these people are evil people.
	It's not because they all have bad intent.
	It's because the people who are drawn to Washington D.C., the people who are drawn to power, tend to be the people who most want to take advantage of the money and power.
	The only way to stop this swampiness is to cut Washington D.C.
	down to the bone.
	Now, I don't know that President Trump is willing to do that, but if he were, this would be the perfect time to say this.
	The perfect time to say this would be right now.
	Look at all this corruption.
	Manafort, I had no idea who the guy was.
	He came in, he ran my campaign for a while.
	I really brought him on for delegate stuff, which is probably true.
	When I found out about all the Russia stuff, then I fired him, which is also true.
	I'm not here to participate in the swamp, but I have to admit that being an ignoramus about this sort of stuff, it was pretty easy to infiltrate my campaign, and this is one of the problems that we need to solve by minimizing the power of Washington, D.C.
	That would require Trump to say that he's made mistakes before.
	It would require Trump fans to say that he's made mistakes before, but it seems to me that's the best tactic and can actually be used as a positive for President Trump going forward.
	Okay, time for some things I like, things I hate, and then we'll deconstruct the culture for a moment.
	Okay, so things I like.
	I've been doing books for parents because I was asked about it last week.
	So this book is called The Happiest Baby on the Block by Harvey Karp.
	So yesterday I gave you sort of a guide to dealing with toddlers because I have a three-and-a-half-year-old and, you know, disciplining toddlers is a difficult thing.
	This one is about how to get some sleep when you're a parent.
	The Happiest Baby on the Block is basically about very, very small babies, right?
	Newborns.
	How do you calm crying and help your newborn baby sleep longer?
	It's become basically the holy writ when it comes to calming newborn babies.
	They call them the five S's and I won't get them all off the top of my head, but it's swaddling and shushing and swinging.
	And this is what you do to a baby that won't stop crying.
	Karp's theory is that there's no such thing as colic.
	The idea that there's a colicky baby who's just crying and crying and crying because they won't stop crying.
	He thinks that if you use these methods, it calms the baby pretty quickly.
	I've used it on both my children.
	It definitely works.
	Check out The Happiest Baby on the Block by Harvey Karp.
	There's also a little documentary that you can view online where Karp actually shows you how to do these techniques to get your baby to stop crying so you can finally get some sleep, so check that out.
	Okay, other things that I like.
	So this is pretty incredible.
	Hillary Clinton was asked what she's gonna dress as for Halloween, and she said she would, quote, go as the president.
	Really, that's what she said.
	She said that she would go as the president, which led me to ask, well, why would she dress as Donald Trump?
	That's weird.
	First of all, that would be a great thing if Hillary Clinton were to dress as Donald Trump.
	I don't think she's actually going to do it.
	Hillary Clinton at this point has basically become Miss Havisham from Dickens.
	She was jilted at the altar 30 years ago and now she still walks around wearing her wedding dress and that's her shtick now.
	So here she was doing that yesterday.
	She was asked about these indictments and Hillary says, well guys, I have a great chapter on indictments in my book.
	Please buy my book.
	Please, please keep me relevant.
	- Hi guys.
	- Madam President.
	- What happened?
	- Madam President.
	- You can find out what happened.
	And what is still happening.
	- Terry Clinton, anyone about today's indictments?
	- Every minute.
	- Anything about today's indictments?
	- I have a great chapter about Russia in here.
	- Madam President.
	- Why don't you guys come on down?
	Let's start saying that.
	- Thank you guys.
	- She's still trying to shill her books here.
	There's one thing she will never be and that of course is president of the United States.
	What a charmer she is.
	I can't believe she's not president.
	Okay, other things that I like.
	So Bryan Cranston is very rare to run across actors who are not so eaten by the Hollywood machine that they don't feel the necessity to go out there and just rip Trump up and down every five minutes.
	Brian Cranston is one of these.
	Maybe it's because he's sort of late to the ballgame.
	He was a comedic actor until he did Breaking Bad, and now he's probably one of the most sought-after actors in Hollywood.
	He came out and he said, listen, people who are rooting for Trump to fail essentially screw you guys.
	So he said, if you think that Trump should fail— Here's what he said, let me get the direct quote.
	According to the Hollywood Reporter, he said, "If he fails, the country is in jeopardy.
	It would be egotistical for anyone to say, 'I hope he fails.' So that person I would say, 'F you.
	Why would you want that?' So you can be right?
	I don't want him to fail, I want him to succeed.
	I do, I honestly do.
	And if you've got a good idea that helps the country, oh man, I'm going to support you.
	I don't care if you're a Republican, I'm a Democrat or whatever, I don't care.
	A good idea is a good idea." Now, this harkens back to right after Obama was elected and Rush Limbaugh said he wanted Obama to fail.
	What he meant by that is he wanted Obama's policies to fail.
	He wanted Obama to... He didn't want Obama's... He didn't want bad outcomes for the country.
	He wanted Obama to fail in implementing his policies.
	But I think that Cranston's comments here go to something deeper, which is people have a personal investment in Donald Trump personally failing, and that's a problem.
	I agree with him, and good for Cranston for saying it.
	Okay, time for a quick thing I hate.
	Okay, so today's thing I hate, John Kelly, the chief of staff, has become more and more sort of openly political.
	I think there's a mistake by John Kelly.
	I think John Kelly had the love and respect of a vast majority of Americans, the Chief of Staff, because of his military service, his great career, the fact that he's a gold star father.
	And now it seems like he's getting more and more political, and when he does so, he's mirroring the Trump line on a lot of topics.
	Sometimes that's good, and sometimes what he's doing is true, but he's getting himself in trouble.
	I'm not sure this is his best use to the President of the United States, is going out there and speaking on things like removal of Confederate monuments.
	Not because I disagree with him about the Confederate monument removal, but because his job is to act as a shield for President Trump, not to act as a sword for Trump's rhetoric.
	In any case, he was on with Laura Ingraham last night, launching her new show.
	It shows you how much of a lack of appreciation of history and what history is.
	I would tell you that Robert E. Lee was an honorable man.
	He was a man that gave up his country.
	for his state, which in 150 years ago was more important than country.
	It was always loyalty to state first back in those days.
	Now it's different today.
	But the lack of an ability to compromise led to the Civil War.
	And men and women of good faith on both sides made their stand where their conscience had them make their stand.
	So people are basically ripping him up and down for that last comment about the Civil War, that Robert E. Lee was an honorable man, that people made stands of conscience on both sides, and they're trying to suggest that he's a racist because of this.
	Watch Ken Burns' documentary, and Ken Burns basically says a lot of these same things.
	This was, until the last five to ten years, sort of the way that the Civil War history was taught.
	When I was in middle school, this was the way the Civil War was taught.
	Not just that it was about slavery, but there were people who were arguing on behalf of states' rights disconnected from slavery, and didn't hold slaves, and didn't even particularly like slavery.
	This was sort of commonplace teaching.
	That may be wrong, right?
	It may be that the revisionist history is correct, that this was all about slavery, that Lee was not an honorable guy, that he was fighting on behalf of a treasonous cause, and that the entire thing was about slavery from beginning to end.
	That seems to me, in many ways, more historically accurate than the traditional way this has been taught, but to suggest that Kelly's a racist because of this is to be ignorant of how the Civil War has largely been taught in American schools for the last 150 years.
	Now, again, I think his last line there that the Civil War happened because failure to compromise.
	I'm not sure how you compromise with slavery, exactly.
	Obviously, Lincoln tried, actually.
	Lincoln wanted to try and cut some sort of deal.
	Republicans had been trying to cut some sort of deal, even though they were abolitionists, but that failed because the South basically could not accept the results of the 1860 election.
	Okay, time to deconstruct the culture a little bit.
	So, in deconstructing the culture, what we like to do is we like to take a piece of culture that maybe you are listening to, your kids are listening to, your friends are listening to, and talk about what exactly the message is in the culture.
	This one is kind of subtle.
	There's a very, very catchy song out by a group called Portugal the Man.
	I guess that it's... the name of the group is...
	Based on some obscure thing about how they felt like more than one person, so they're one man and also a country.
	But they picked Portugal at random.
	In any case, band names are basically come out... Band names are basically just segments from a James Joyce novel.
	It's like Finnegan's Wake.
	They just pick a phrase and then that becomes the name of the band.
	In any case, the song is called Feel It Still.
	It's a very catchy song, but there's something going on in the music video that if you didn't know about it, you're not going to catch.
	Music.
	We go dust them off, put them back up on the shelf.
	Guess my little baby girl isn't me.
	Am I coming out of left field?
	Ooh, I'm a rebel just for kicks, yeah.
	I've been feeling it since 1966, yeah.
	Might be over now, but I feel it still.
	Okay, so what's weird about this particular music video, aside from the fact that it's a weird music video, is the fact that they actually embedded Easter eggs throughout this music video.
	So you'd have to watch it online, but you can actually click in the middle of the music video and it puts out messages.
	So the people who designed it, right, the band, actually said they wanted it to be a rallying cry for politics.
	They said that they wanted this to be a song for the resistance.
	So you can listen to it and not get that it's a song for the resistance.
	Right, basically they're saying that, you know, you feel the lyric is all about how They're supposedly apathetic, but they can still feel the resistance of 66.
	They say, I'm a rebel just for kicks now.
	I've been feeling it since 1966 now.
	The idea is they're still part of this Woodstock generation.
	That's why the album is called Woodstock.
	So the left has never gotten over this idea.
	Stop it right there.
	Actually, if you go back to that particular freeze screen of the people making out in the car, if you were to click on the freeze screen of the people making out in the car, an Easter egg actually pops up when you click on it.
	And it's a direction to Planned Parenthood.
	Uh, so that's an example.
	There's also a direction to give money to the ACLU, or to help refugees, and so they've embedded all these political messages.
	So, right, there's a sort of random shot of people making out in a car.
	If you click on this, then it gives you the direct contact information for the, it gives you the direct contact information for Planned Parenthood.
	So this is the way that Hollywood sees it's making a difference.
	And this is why when people in Hollywood say, we're just out there to make money, we're just appealing to the population.
	No, they feel the necessity to actually push a particular message.
	And everybody's living in this afterglow from the 1960s.
	The 1960s happened literally 50 years ago now, folks.
	50 years ago, okay?
	The 1960s ended 14 years before I was born.
	It's been a long time, and you've got all these young people who have this glorified version of what happened at Woodstock, which was basically a bunch of hippies smoking dope and screwing each other in the mud.
	And this is supposed to be some sort of great and glorious point in American history, but now we're gonna revitalize that.
	We're gonna make all of that come back through our hippiness.
	I don't think that's the case, and I think that this constant search for a cause is not good, particularly when you don't even know what the causes are that you are talking about.
	The song itself is super catchy, but you should always know what it is that you are watching and listening to, or at least the messages that they are trying to portray.
	I mean, there's a more obvious one, right?
	You see a Hindu guy burning a copy of InfoWars.
	The idea being everyone on the right is an InfoWars Alex Jones reader.
	So, I assume this guy is a Sikh.
	In any case, The embedded messages in a lot of these songs are a little bit hard to spot, but this one was very purposefully put in there.
	The creative director, a guy named Jason Kreeher, he said, quote, we love the idea of presenting the apathetic, decadent rebel just for kicks from the song against a hidden message of resistance.
	He says this is a real practical laundry list of ways you can get out there and fight injustice.
	So just understand that the pop culture is trying to push a particular point of view.
	The reason they're trying to hide it is because if you know they're trying to push a particular point of view, they're not good at doing it.
	Katy Perry pushing a particular point of view in I Kissed a Girl and I Liked It is much more effective than Katy Perry on stage at the DNC speaking on behalf of Hillary Clinton.
	Okay, we'll be back here tomorrow with all of the latest breaking news.
	I'm Ben Shapiro.

▲