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Jan. 2, 2018 - The Ben Shapiro Show

53:08

It's a Brand New Year! | Ep. 444

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	So, massive protests have now broken out in Iran, President Trump is doing the right thing, Democrats are not doing the right thing, and CNN turns to pot on New Year's Eve.
	Yes, really, we're back!
	It's a new year!
	I'm Ben Shapiro, this is the Ben Shapiro Show.
	So 2017 wasn't as bad as people thought it was gonna be.
	Everybody was all worried that the world was going to end and everything, and it didn't.
	Everything was pretty much okay.
	Yeah, there was turmoil.
	Yes, it had its ups and downs, like The Last Jedi, but was it okay in the end?
	Yeah, it was okay in the end, sort of like The Last Jedi and sort of not.
	So, we will get to all of the late breaking news that happened over the break, most of it coming from abroad.
	We'll get to all of the media's insane coverage of the situation in Iran.
	We'll also get to some guy named Logan Paul, who I hadn't heard of until the last five minutes, and him walking into the Japanese suicide forest.
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	All righty.
	So over the last week and a half, while we have been gone, massive protests have broken out in Iran.
	Those protests are ongoing.
	They've resulted in the death of apparently 15 The Iranian Revolutionary Guard is shooting people in the streets.
	They are now arresting hundreds of dissidents.
	The protests apparently started originally when people who did not like Hassan Rouhani, who is the radical leader of the political arm of the Ayatollahs in Iran, they didn't like Rouhani because the economy has been bad and they started protesting him.
	Just like all the other protests in the Muslim world that took place during the Arab Spring, The original purpose of the protest very often has nothing to do with where the protest goes, right?
	The original protest against Hosni Mubarak in Egypt ended up with the Muslim Brotherhood taking power.
	In this particular case, it looks like there were some radical fundamentalists who started some of the protests, and then the moderates turned out in force.
	And now you have thousands of people marching through the streets of Iran.
	It's so bad over there that the Iranian government has shut down Twitter, they've shut down Facebook, they've shut down social media.
	I don't know whether these companies, by the way, are engaging in that process, whether they're allowing Iran to do that or not.
	If they are, they should stop.
	They should stop allowing Iran to do so immediately.
	In any case, the Europeans have been utterly silent, as the Europeans often are when it comes to moral atrocities throughout history.
	President Trump, however, has not been silent.
	President Trump has been speaking out.
	And this is driving the left up a wall.
	It's driving the left up a wall for two reasons.
	One, President Obama was awful on the issue of Iranian freedom.
	He routinely quashed any sort of capacity for Iranian revolution and resistance.
	During 2009, you recall, a woman named Netta was shot to death on camera.
	It was a major worldwide story.
	And she was a protester.
	President Obama really did nothing about it.
	In fact, we have a clip of President Obama in 2009 While he's protesting how Iran was treating dissidents, he also said, we respect Iran's sovereignty.
	Basically, they can do what they want.
	We're not going to do anything about it.
	I've made it clear that the United States respects the sovereignty of the Islamic Republic of Iran and is not interfering with Iran's affairs.
	Okay, that remarkable opening came to nothing because President Obama did nothing to foster it.
	In fact, at the time when President Obama was basically kowtowing to the Iranians, he was doing so because he was trying to force forward That Iranian nuclear deal that was just a disaster area for all involved, maximized Iran's power, shipped pallets of cash to Iran, made Iran a regional power, allowed them essentially to take over Iraq, allowed them to prop up Bashar Assad in Syria, allowed them to extend their influence into Lebanon and Afghanistan and Yemen.
	A lot of that had to do with President Obama deciding that he was going to turn the radical government of Iran into some sort of beacon of power in the region.
	That was Obama's decision.
	And he threw dissidents under the bus.
	He allowed them to die without any sort of worldwide effect.
	He says that there's been a remarkable opening in Iranian society.
	There was no remarkable opening in Iranian society.
	The media, Obama, they pretended that there was some sort of moderate regime that had taken the reins in Tehran.
	That obviously was untrue.
	As late as five months ago, there were Christians, newly converted Christians in Iran who were sentenced to 10 years in prison, maybe about 11 of them, all of them sentenced to years and years in prison for converting to Christianity.
	There is no major opening in Iranian society.
	There has not been.
	And now people are protesting.
	And President Trump, look at the contrast between President Trump and President Obama on this.
	Obama, who says, we respect Iran's sovereignty.
	Not as interested in that routine.
	Here is President Trump's reaction over the break to what was going on in Iran.
	Oppressive regimes cannot endure forever.
	And the day will come when the people will face a choice.
	Will they continue down the path of poverty, bloodshed, and terror?
	Or will the Iranian people And that's of course what Trump said at the United Nations a few weeks ago.
	But he retweeted that in the middle of these protests.
	And that's, of course, what Trump said at the United Nations a few weeks ago.
	But he retweeted that in the middle of these protests.
	And then he came out and he basically said, I'm happy to watch the regime fall.
	Right.
	So Trump has not been unclear about his perspective on this.
	And Trump is 100 percent right.
	He is joined in this response by Benjamin Netanyahu, the Prime Minister of Israel.
	Here's what Netanyahu had to say about the protests in Iran.
	Brave Iranians are pouring into the streets.
	They seek freedom.
	They seek justice.
	They seek the basic liberties that have been denied to them for decades.
	Iran's cruel regime wastes tens of billions of dollars spreading hate.
	This money could have built schools and hospitals.
	No wonder mothers and fathers are marching in the streets.
	The regime is terrified of them, of their own people.
	That's why they jail students.
	That's why they ban social media.
	Okay, this is what we call leadership.
	Now, it's funny.
	The left likes to proclaim that President Obama was a world leader.
	And we're going to get to the Obama administration response to all of this in a second.
	They like to claim that Obama was a world leader and that Trump has abdicated world leadership.
	Susan Rice, the awful national security advisor for Obama, the lady who used to go on TV and lie routinely about Benghazi, she wrote an op-ed for the New York Times in which she accused Trump of abdicating moral leadership in the world.
	But that's because the left and the right have two very different pictures of what moral leadership constitutes.
	The Obama administration is the kind of administration where when Israel had a guy named Qasem Soleimani, who was the commander of the Quds Force, which is a branch of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, a terrorist group, Israel had that guy in their crosshairs.
	They were going to kill him.
	And President Obama found out about it and he told the Iranians.
	He told the Iranians about it because he was trying to prop up the nuclear deal at the time.
	That is world leadership according to the left.
	World leadership according to the right is President Trump saying, listen, the United States has an interest in Iranian freedom.
	We'd be better off if this terrorist regime were not running that country and we had instead a moderate regime.
	Yes, a moderate Muslim regime in Iran.
	That would be much better.
	That's leadership.
	Now, why does that gap exist?
	Why is it that people on the left believe that Obama was a great world leader and people on the right believe that Trump is actually exhibiting leadership here?
	First of all, I'd like to point out that what Trump is doing here is very different than what Trump did on the campaign trail.
	On the campaign trail, Trump was a quasi-isolationist.
	America First seemed like a slogan that was more from Pat Buchanan than it was from Ronald Reagan.
	It seemed more like a Charles Lindbergh slogan than a George W. Bush slogan.
	In practice, it turns out that President Trump has acted a lot more like Ronald Reagan than he has like...
	Woodrow Wilson, or rather, then he has like a Pat Buchanan or Charles Lindbergh figure.
	That has been, I think, a very positive move.
	But the big difference between Obama and Trump on this stuff is how they view universal values like freedom and liberty.
	So, for Obama, the way that he defined liberty and freedom is he looked to the Europeans.
	He called it leading from behind.
	He basically said, you know, there are morally relativistic values.
	There's no universal value of liberty.
	There's no universal value of freedom, really.
	It's just what majority decides upon.
	And if the entire European body says that freedom in Iran is allowing the regime to continue to maintain control, then we will allow them to do so, because that's freedom.
	That's liberty.
	So we'll follow the majority.
	The majority will tell us what freedom and liberty are.
	That was his version of leadership.
	Leadership is bowing to the majority.
	Trump's version of leadership is saying, listen, I think that there's a value called freedom.
	I think there's a value called liberty.
	And I think that America is a promulgator of those forces in the world.
	I think that America makes the world a better place.
	And I think that so long as we can pursue policies that make America stronger, that benefit America first, but America should be benefited because it is good, and because it is great, and because it is true to those universal values that are not decided by majority vote in the halls of power in Europe, then we should stand by the Iranian people.
	And that's the difference.
	And it's a major difference.
	And it's much more akin to George Washington than anything that Obama said.
	If you look at what George Washington said about foreign policy, he said that we shouldn't get caught up in entangling alliances.
	What he meant by that was he said, the big danger to the United States, the big danger to the United States, because we will be a world power, this is what he said in his farewell address, the big danger to us will be entangling alliances.
	Did he mean that we can't have alliances at all?
	No, what he meant was that America has to follow her own star.
	That American values are not necessarily going to be the values of Europe.
	And we can't sign permanent agreements with nations on the basis of values that can change over time.
	And we can't see ourselves seduced away from universal values that are worthwhile.
	We can't be seduced away from those values simply because the Europeans would like us to be.
	I think that is what Trump is saying here.
	And I think Trump is doing the right thing here.
	Pretty clearly.
	Now, in a second, we're going to discuss exactly what it is that the left is responding to, because the left's response to Trump has been truly astonishing, right?
	These are all the people who say that Trump was not going to react well to chaos in the world, that Trump was going to be a danger to the world, that Obama was some sort of great halcyon of freedom and liberty and world leadership.
	But the response from the Obama administration figures, from the media too, has just been astonishingly garbage.
	I mean, really, really quite terrible.
	So, here is what Samantha Power tweeted.
	So, Samantha Power, And tweeted this out.
	She's the former UN ambassador under President Obama.
	She tweeted out, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, the press secretary for Trump, and tweeted out, The days of America looking the other way from the Iranian regime's oppression are over.
	America stands with the Iranian people.
	Great.
	Samantha Power, who wrote a book on genocide and then presided over part of the administration that actively sought to allow Bashar Assad to participate in genocide, Samantha Power tweeted out, And so she's slapping Trump.
	So we're in the middle of a fight with the Iranian government that is repressing its own people, and Samantha Power takes time out to bash Trump because Trump has a travel ban against people traveling from Iran.
	Now, I think what Samantha Power misses here are a couple things.
	One, Samantha Power has no leg to stand on whatsoever, as in no leg to stand on whatsoever, when it comes to speaking about the Middle East.
	She was a participant in an administration that upheld and strengthened the worst terror regime on planet Earth in Iran.
	But beyond that, the reason that so many Iranians want to flee the country is in part because they were propped up by the Obama administration.
	If the Iranians actually had a good government, they wouldn't need to come here.
	That's the whole point.
	This idea that we have to let all of the Iranians in, not vetted.
	We have to let any Iranian in who wants to come in, not vetted by the government because we can't trust the government over there.
	Or we have to shut up about what's going on in Iran.
	No, the whole point is we want to change the government over there so they don't have to come over here.
	That's the entire point.
	And it's not just Samantha Power, Ben Rhodes, who is just a despicable human being.
	Ben Rhodes is, of course, the former deputy national security advisor and special counsel to the president on foreign policy.
	He was a fiction writer who wrote short stories, unpublished short stories, from a Brooklyn apartment before he was elevated to foreign policy specialty under the Obama administration.
	You'll recall that Ben Rhodes is the same guy who lied repeatedly to the American people.
	The Obama administration had a ridiculous story that they used to push the nuclear deal.
	The ridiculous story that they used to push the nuclear deal was that the Iranian regime had now become more moderate, that Hassan Rouhani, the new leader after Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, he was actually a new moderate type.
	And we had an opening.
	We had a gap.
	We were finally going to be able to do something moderate with the Iranians.
	And it was Rhodes who pushed this nonsense.
	It, of course, was not true.
	And then he lied to the American people about what the Iran deal would do.
	And then he helped ship pallets of cash to the Iranians so they could use them for terror.
	The Obama administration openly recognized that that cash was going to be used for terrorism against Western sources.
	Ben Rhodes tweeted this.
	He said, In looking at U.S.
	Iranian people are rightfully demanding dignity, less corruption, more opportunity, and greater control over their lives.
	In looking at U.S. Twitter, it seems lost on too many that this is about what Iranians want for Iran and not about us.
	First of all, Ben Rhodes shot it, dude.
	If there's one guy who's responsible for the rise of Iran in the region, Ben Rhodes is that guy.
	But beyond that, if they're rightfully demanding dignity, less corruption, more opportunity, and greater control, might that have something to do with them protesting the same regime you just handed billions of dollars?
	The same regime you gave regional power?
	And it's not just Ben Rhodes.
	John Kerry tweets out, too.
	John Kerry, back from the dead, with his collapsing face.
	Looks like a mudslide in the San Fernando Hills.
	Says, with humility, about how little we know about what's happening inside Iran.
	This much is clear.
	It's an Iranian moment, and not anyone else's.
	But the rights of people to protest peacefully and voice their aspirations are universal, and governments everywhere should respect that.
	He's so boring that when you even read his tweets in John Kerry's voice you start to fall asleep, and there are less than 280 characters.
	Let's be clear about something.
	When he says this is an Iranian moment and we should shut up, and when he says the rights of people to protest peacefully are universal, governments should respect that, those are mutually exclusive statements.
	If it's an Iranian moment and we should shut up, Then we should shut up about how Iran is putting down the protesters.
	But the point here is that we shouldn't shut up about how Iran is putting down the protesters.
	We should be siding with the protesters.
	We should be giving them as much covert aid as possible.
	Because they are part and parcel of bringing down possibly the most evil regime on the planet.
	The only other possibilities for that title would probably be North Korea and some of the Sub-Saharan African regimes that have led to slaughter of their own people.
	The notion that John Kerry is some sort of voice of leadership here.
	All of this is to say, you know, Susan Rice is saying the same thing.
	She wrote an op-ed for the New York Times saying that everybody should be quiet, Trump should be quiet.
	We tried quiet in 2009.
	How'd it work out for us?
	How'd it work out for us?
	Not well.
	The reason that so many people are saying this is twofold.
	One, they're embarrassed by Obama's record on this.
	And they should be embarrassed by Obama's record on this.
	Obama's record on this is embarrassing.
	Obama's record on Iran is embarrassing.
	It is the great blot on his presidency, even more so than Obamacare.
	His movement of Iran to a central focus of the Middle East demonstrates that his heart was not in the right place when it came to the Middle East.
	And not only that, I truly believe the Obama administration has blood on its hands for handing billions of dollars to a terror regime knowing full well that the terror regime was going to use that to fund Hezbollah and Hamas and Islamic Jihad and terrorist groups around the world.
	So the media are working full time to avoid criticizing Obama because Obama, of course, is their great god and he must never be ripped or sneered at in any way.
	Now the other thing is that there is this feeling among a lot of the intelligentsia that America is evil too.
	This is what I objected to when President Trump during the campaign was saying things as I mentioned before about how the United States was like Russia and we kill people too.
	That sprang from the sort of Ron Paul isolationist wing of the Republican Party.
	I objected to it.
	But that is a mainstream thought on the left.
	There are a lot of people on the left who believe that America is a negative force in the world.
	Obama believed this.
	He believed that America had done terrible things across the globe and that as America shrunk her influence that somehow this would make the world a better place.
	He believed that America was a participant in domestic In domestic evils that were on par with some of the things that were happening abroad.
	I remember he gave a speech at the United Nations.
	And at the speech at the United Nations, he criticized America's policies on policing.
	I remember this because I wrote about it.
	I used to actually watch all of his speeches and write them up.
	And there's a reason that the Iranian government is jumping on that.
	The Iranian government loves the perspective of the left on the United States.
	The Iranian government believes that the United States is an evil place domestically.
	And that America is a place filled with horror and awful and evil and garbage.
	That's what they believe.
	So Ayatollah Khamenei, who is the current Ayatollah, he wrote, tweeted this out.
	The U.S. government commits oppression inside the U.S. too.
	U.S. police murder black women, men and children for no justifiable reason.
	The murderers are acquitted in U.S. courts.
	This is their judicial system.
	And they slam other countries in our country's judicial system.
	And so America is hypocritical and terrible.
	That's the line that Khamenei is using.
	And he's not alone.
	The Huffington Post political commentator named Alex Mohajer tweeted, quote, You know how crazy you have to be to believe this?
	But this is a mainstream thought on the left.
	march are all the same.
	Across the world, people are fighting autocracies and oppressive regimes.
	President Trump is no different than the oppressive ayatollahs in Iran.
	You know how crazy you have to be to believe this?
	But this is a mainstream thought on the left.
	I tweeted out in the middle of these protests that you want to see true courage.
	Look at the women who are protesting a regime that will jail them for taking off a hijab.
	Those are the people who are brave.
	Not the women wearing pussy hats in New York City.
	There's no risk to that.
	To be brave, you actually have to undergo risk.
	It is no risk to protest on the streets of New York or Los Angeles because this is a free country.
	But I'm not seeing the Women's March.
	I'm not seeing Black Lives Matter have one damn thing to say about what's going on in Iran.
	Maybe Black Lives Matter doesn't have that agenda, but the Women's March certainly should.
	The Women's March is talking about women's rights.
	You want to talk about a place with no women's rights?
	Talk about Iran.
	But apparently they have nothing to say.
	And Khamenei knows it.
	The far left in the United States believes that America is a force for evil in the world.
	They always have.
	The far left.
	And that's why America's enemies have always used the far left as their useful idiots.
	Constantly they've used the American far left as their useful idiots.
	I'll explain that in just a second.
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	Okay, so, as I mentioned, there's a reason that the Ayatollahs are pushing the notion that America is a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad place.
	The reason that they are pushing that notion is because they have allies in the United States who are happy also to push that particular notion.
	And those allies are not just crazy columnists for the Huffington Post.
	Right?
	Those allies are places like the New York Times.
	So here is what the New York Times was tweeting out in the middle of these demonstrations.
	"Iranian authorities have clamped down on Tehran after demonstrators across the country ignored calls for calm." So this is the real problem, is that the demonstrators ignored the calls for calm.
	It's not that there's a repressive regime that will literally arrest or shoot people who dissent.
	The real problem is that these people were just ignoring calls for calm.
	It's funny, I don't remember any of these sorts of headlines with regard to the Palestinians who literally assault Israeli soldiers, like walk up and slap them in the face.
	I don't remember any of this.
	And the Israeli government is not a repressive government.
	The Israeli government is the only free government in the Middle East.
	I don't remember any of these headlines.
	Every time the Palestinians throw rocks at an Israeli soldier, they're heroes.
	And the Israeli government's a democratic government, and the Palestinian government is not.
	Every time Iranian protesters stand up against a repressive regime, the New York Times is talking about how, really, they're just ignoring the moderation of the Iranian regime.
	This article from the New York Times is astonishing, right?
	It's astonishing.
	And it demonstrates the fundamental disconnect that the left has with reality with regard to Iran.
	Which, again, is reflective of both Obama administration policy and, more deeply, of the left's discontent with America's role across the world and in the Middle East.
	Thomas Erdbrink is the author of this New York Times piece and says he reported that violence broke out in Iran, quote, after demonstrators ignored calls for calm by President Hassan Rouhani.
	And then he termed Rouhani, who is a tool of the mullahs, right?
	No one gets elected president of Iran unless the mullahs say, OK.
	He calls him a moderate.
	Meanwhile, one CNN anchor fretted that President Trump might, quote, put a finger on the scale against the Iranian regime.
	This is what CNN was deeply worried about that.
	Again, the New York Times piece is really amazing.
	I'm going to try and find a couple of excerpts from the New York Times because it really is that garbage-y.
	Let's see.
	Here's what the New York Times had to say.
	What they said is, quote, Despite Mr. Rouhani's diplomatic language.
	It was clear the demonstrators would be given no leeway.
	Mr. Rouhani has urged demonstrators to avoid violence, but defended their right to protest.
	He did so again on Monday on Twitter.
	Yes, I am sure that Rouhani is speaking absolutely objectively and honestly, that he believes in their right to protest and won't arrest them or shoot them at all.
	15 people are dead in protests.
	Can you, you need to, that sounds like not a big number.
	Imagine if in one weekend there were protests in the United States against President Trump and 15 of the protesters wound up being shot by the cops.
	Imagine that for half a second.
	You understand how crazy that would be?
	Do you understand how evil that would be?
	Do you understand how we'd all go nuts?
	And yet we just accept that the Iranian regime is supposed to be moderate because the New York Times says so?
	Here is their rationale.
	Rouhani, by the way, is a Holocaust denier.
	He's a radical just as much as anyone.
	According to the New York Times, here is why these protests are happening.
	And here's what they add.
	Many youths in larger cities enthusiastically voted for Mr. Rouhani when he was re-elected in May, raising expectations among many in the reform camp.
	But since then, even many of the president's supporters say he has failed to fulfill his promises for improving an economy sorely hobbled by years of sanctions, corruption, and mismanagement.
	Beyond that, the United States has continued other sanctions, making it still harder for Mr. Rouhani to make gains.
	See, it's Trump's fault.
	Don't you understand?
	The reason there are protests in Iran is because Trump is mean to Rouhani, and then Rouhani doesn't have the money to pay off the youngsters.
	That's the reason.
	If you believe that, you have to be stupid enough to be a member of the media to really believe that.
	It's just astonishing.
	It's just astonishing.
	And terrible, but not a shock at all.
	Here's a CNN correspondent.
	Again, this just demonstrates that when the left thinks moral leadership, they think the Europeans ought to be exhibiting it, and American presidents ought to be taking a back seat.
	This is Arwa Damon, who is a senior international correspondent for CNN, and she talks about how America doesn't have any moral leg to stand on.
	A lot of nations and their populations, no matter how they feel about their governments in particular, do perceive the United States as not really having a moral leg to stand on.
	They don't perceive us as having a moral leg to stand on?
	The Iranian government literally hangs gay people from cranes, and we don't have a moral leg to stand on?
	And CNN is repeating that sort of nonsense?
	And the fact is, the people in places like Rasht in Iran, they require our help.
	And I hope that President Trump has authorized all covert help to topple this regime.
	It would be a massive benefit to the world.
	Honestly, I didn't think we would see a repeat of 2009 in my lifetime.
	I could not be more pleased that within 10 years we are seeing another huge movement against the Ayatollahs.
	That is a great thing, and I hope that the Trump administration continues to do what it's doing.
	The media's defense for Obama on this is just astonishing, and it's really gross, and there's really no excuse for it.
	But speaking of media bias, The New York Times has now released a story in an attempt to quash all of the talk about the Russia dossier.
	The New York Times has released a new story.
	This was the big news story last week.
	That we didn't have a chance to discuss.
	So if you will recall, all the way back to last year, I know it feels like forever ago.
	If you recall, all the way back to last year, there was a, the narrative was basically now that the Mueller investigation had originally been launched.
	The FBI investigation into Trump-Russia collusion had originally been launched based on the dossier, the so-called Russian dossier.
	That Russian dossier had been paid for by Fusion GPS.
	Fusion GPS had been funded by Democrats.
	They dug up a bunch of supposed dirt about Trump.
	And then the FBI had jumped on that dossier to get a bunch of FISA warrants and go after members of the Trump team.
	A lot of people, including me, had said that if that was true, if that was really why FBI had launched its investigation based on this dossier, then that called into question the entirety of the investigation.
	If based on a Democrat-funded OPPO research project that had not been substantiated in any real way, they've started this entire effort, then it looks like a lot of smoke and no fire.
	So the New York Times came out with an article over the break, and that article basically tried to kill that narrative.
	So the article essentially suggested That the reason the FBI originally launched its investigation is because there was a guy, as you remember, his name was Papadopoulos, right?
	His name was George Papadopoulos and George Papadopoulos was a foreign policy advisor to the Trump administration.
	And the idea was that George Papadopoulos had basically gone around telling people that the Russian government had hacked Hillary's servers or had hacked the DNC and had been giving material to the Trump campaign.
	And based on that, the FBI had found out about this and then launched an investigation into collusion between Trump and Russia.
	So it had nothing to do with the dossier at all.
	The dossier is a backburner issue.
	This is what the New York Times reported.
	So number one, I'm not sure how much to trust the story because, again, it is based on anonymous sourcing.
	And whenever you have an anonymously sourced story like this, it's very difficult to trust it all the way.
	Second of all, even if it was based on Papadopoulos going around and saying things, that doesn't necessarily mean that the actual investigation came up with anything, or that it wasn't biased in how it pursued the investigation.
	If they then went ahead and used the dossier in any way, then that calls into question bias in the investigation, the fact that Peter Strzok, who was, as you recall, a high-ranking lawyer who was working with the FBI and the DOJ in their pursuit of Trump-Russia collusion, that he was an anti-Trump crusader and that he was having an affair with another member of the team and that they had suggested that there was an insurance policy against Trump should Trump win the presidency
	all of that continues to call into question the Mueller investigation as a whole however I wanted to report that to you so at least you have the full information David French has a very good piece about this so does Andrew McCarthy over at National Review and And he points out, does Andrew McCarthy, that the Times collusion narrative, the Times story about Trump-Russia collusion seems to be a lot of garbage for the most part.
	That the catalyst for this entire investigation was not actually Papadopoulos, it was actually Carter Page.
	You remember that Carter Page was the guy who originally they got the FISA warrant against, and that deepened into a full-scale investigation because Carter Page traveled to Moscow.
	Again, a lot of smoke, no fire, not much here.
	Here's what we do know.
	This is another astonishing story that broke over the weekend.
	Hillary Clinton supported David Brock's American Bridge 21st Century Foundation.
	This, according to the New York Times, again, gave attorney Lisa Bloom's firm $200,000 to help support a sexual misconduct case against Donald Trump, according to the New York Times.
	Sources were described as two Democrats familiar with the arrangements.
	They also said that a fashion designer named Susie Tompkins Buell gave $500,000 for the same purpose.
	The sources claim that Bloom returned money to Buell but kept the cash from Brock.
	Bloom declined to name the donors when the Times reached out for comment.
	She said the donors reached out to her and asked how they could help.
	She told them that she was working with several women who could find the courage to speak out if funds were given for security and the like, even a safe house.
	One woman wanted $2 million and declined to talk.
	This is pretty dirty stuff.
	You want to talk about dirty campaigning?
	Dirty campaigning involves partisan people funding sexual assault allegations against a particular candidate.
	Like, I understand that it's a risky business for women to come forward and claim sexual assault, but it does cast a lot of doubt on your account if you are being paid by the opposition.
	If you're being paid by Hillary Clinton's camp, and then you're making allegations against Donald Trump, it does raise some serious questions about the nature of the allegations that you are putting forth.
	So that is not good for the entire narrative that the only person who was cheating in the election, the person who was really manipulating the election, was President Trump.
	Okay, before I go any further, I want to say thank you to our sponsors over at ZipRecruiter.
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	Which, again, you're going to get the best employees.
	You don't have to worry about your inbox being filled up because it all runs through their website so you can accept or dismiss an employee really quickly.
	Okay, so I want to talk for a second about Logan Paul.
	So Logan Paul is this YouTube star.
	You've probably never heard of him, but your kids probably have.
	He has just a ton of social media following, something like 9.4 million followers on YouTube.
	And again, he's one of these folks who I have no idea who he is, because while I am technically a millennial, I'm at the upper bracket of millennial.
	I'm not close enough to millennial age to really understand why a guy running around being weird is worth watching, particularly.
	But Logan Paul decided that he was going to Japan's so-called suicide forest near Mount Fuji.
	They've made a movie about the suicide forest recently.
	I'm trying to remember who was in it.
	Was it Christian Bale?
	I mean, there was a movie about this recently.
	This forest is very famous because apparently A lot of people go here to commit suicide.
	Something like 100 people have committed suicide in the past few years in this forest.
	So it's super creepy and terrible.
	So this guy goes there, Logan Paul.
	I'm not sure what he expected to find.
	I guess he was going to try and do a Blair Witch Project type of thing, like go camping in the forest.
	And then it was going to be creepy and everybody was going to laugh and that was going to be it.
	Well, he went into the forest and instead what he actually found is within basically minutes of walking into the forest, he found a guy hanging from a tree.
	He found somebody who'd hanged himself.
	And we're not going to show much of the video, because it's now been pulled down, but Logan Paul walks in wearing, you know, the green alien's hat, really, from Toy Story, and then he stumbles on this dead body, and they shoot the dead body.
	I mean, they, like, shoot it on camera for minutes at a time, and basically end up joking about it.
	It's just really gross.
	You think that's real?
	Well, it could be because one of my classmates in the junior high school, he really killed himself.
	No!
	Yeah, when he was only 21.
	No!
	Logan.
	Excuse me?
	How long ago do you think he did that?
	Yo, this is crazy, dude.
	Okay, so they actually show the guy hanging from the tree and then they keep showing the guy hanging from the tree and it's like a ten minute video.
	So Logan Paul pulled down the video because he got a lot of flack for it.
	As well he should, making light of this.
	There's no reason why you would show video of suicide.
	Suicide particularly is an imitative act in many cases.
	There have been a lot of high profile suicides and data show that after high profile suicides, there's actually a wave of suicide that happens because people think, well, if that person can do it, then so can I. This is a really bad move by Logan Paul.
	He got a lot of flack.
	What I want to discuss here is not the bad move by Logan Paul because I think that's obvious and everybody understands it.
	What I want to discuss here instead is the fact that the entire media internet went crazy even after he pulled it down.
	So the guy pulls down the video and people continue to lose their minds over it to the extent that they were calling for the entire demonetization of his YouTube channel.
	I think that's a massive, massive mistake.
	There are these social media pylons that now happen that I think are not good for the country or for the world.
	I think that There should be enough blowback that people like Logan Paul pull down their stupidity and there is social media upset.
	I think that's relevant.
	But the idea that you're going to destroy the guy's entire life or entire career for posting a bad video, I think is foolish.
	And I think what it really mostly has to do with is it's a low-cost, high-reward way of making clear that you are a moral person.
	It's to find something that is obviously terrible, like showing dead bodies on a YouTube video and turning it into kind of joke.
	That's obviously terrible.
	And it's a way for you to turn that into, I'm a good person.
	I'm a better person.
	We all understand it's terrible.
	And this is not about taking suicide, anything but deeply seriously.
	My grandfather suffered from suicidality.
	He tried to commit suicide at least once that I know about.
	There are other members of my family who have had this problem.
	The idea that Logan Paul is doing anything worthy here is ridiculous.
	He is not.
	There is this tendency now that when something goes wrong and we can all condemn it, like 100% of people condemn it, that now we have to rip down the person's career or destroy their entire life over it, even after they do the right thing.
	He pulled this thing down within like 24 hours.
	He apologized for it.
	He'll probably end up giving a bunch of money to a suicide charity.
	I'm not sure what more you want from the guy other than take him for what he is, which is kind of adult.
	Maybe people have a clearer vision of what the guy is.
	He's kind of an idiot.
	It's easy to talk about what I object to in the video, which is quite terrible, but I think I'd rather talk about what I object to in the social media age, which is this idea that if somebody like Justin Sacco tweets something Yucky about about how she's flying to Africa and people in Africa have AIDS Then by the time she lands her plane.
	She's been fired and her career has been destroyed I think that's that's making for a very nasty social environment that doesn't actually That doesn't actually make the world better even though you're trying to shut down stupidities like this video.
	Oh Okay, so, I have a lot more to talk about.
	Things I like, things I hate.
	The Federalist paper today, because we didn't have a show on Monday.
	But before we do any of that, first you have to go over to dailywire.com.
	So for dailywire.com, you become a subscriber.
	$9.99 a month gets you that subscription.
	And it is phenomenal.
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	The Shapiro store will be launching sometime this year.
	No, really.
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	Okay, time for some things I like, and then we'll do some things that I hate.
	So, things that I like.
	Let's begin with the Sam Harris debate.
	So, as I said late last year, I think it was early December, I did a debate with Sam Harris, who does his own podcast called Waking Up With Sam Harris, and Eric Weinstein, who's become a friend.
	He's also the CEO for Peter Thiel.
	And we all did a debate slash discussion about religion and free speech and atheism and meaning of life and morality.
	And it was really great.
	We did this big event up in San Francisco.
	Sam has a great audience and a great crowd.
	Probably 2,500 people, 3,000 people showed up, and it was just a lot of fun.
	It's now up.
	You can go listen to it over at Sam Harris' website.
	You can also download it, I believe, from Sam Harris' podcast, so check that out.
	That's well worth listening to.
	Also, this week, tomorrow, we're going to be doing Dave Rubin's show, so you should take a look at that, because we're going to livestream that as well, so I'll be on Dave Rubin.
	Also, I believe I'm on Jordan Peterson's show this week.
	I'll be making the rounds in the New Year, so that's really exciting.
	But this was a really fun discussion, and it gets to some really root issues about religion and belief and meaning and free will and determinism and choice.
	It was really quite fascinating.
	I enjoyed it quite a lot.
	Sam's a really good guy, and we may disagree on some of the most fundamental issues of the universe, but there are certain things we definitely do not disagree on, and that is the value of discussion and the value of free speech.
	So go check that out.
	Okay, other things that I like.
	So I have become a big fan of this show on Netflix called The Last Kingdom.
	So if you're on sort of Game of Thrones hiatus and you're looking for something to watch, this is basically Game of Thrones without the magic.
	It's got some sex scenes, but they are kind of parodic in how they're done.
	In any case, it's really a good show.
	I like it a lot.
	The show is about the birth of England in the 9th century.
	It's all about how England was unified into one country because it used to be a bunch of separate kingdoms, basically.
	And it follows this guy, Uhtred, who is basically a Saxon kid who was kidnapped by the Danes and raised as a Dane, and so he's sort of half Dane, half Saxon.
	If you don't know anything about British history, it's really fascinating.
	The Vikings were a large part of British history.
	They basically invaded the island of Britain What is it?
	Ships!
	I saw them first on the beach!
	What ships?
	Thieves!
	the Saxons, and then later you'd have the Normans who are coming over from France.
	It's all really interesting stuff.
	In any case, check it out.
	The Last Kingdom, it's well worth watching.
	Here's a little bit of the preview.
	What is it?
	Ships.
	I saw them first from the beach.
	What ships?
	Thames!
	We were kings there once, boy.
	Our ancestors took this land, and it has been strengthened with our blood and bone.
	Now, Now you are the new heir of Bebbanburg, and you will die for it if needed.
	Yes, father.
	What kind of hell is this?
	So the battle scenes are actually really cool.
	It shows how the Danes use particular strategies.
	And if you like the Battle of the Bastards episode from Game of Thrones, there's a lot of that kind of stuff in this show.
	So it's really fun and worth watching.
	OK.
	One more thing that I like.
	So as you recall, we made fun of it on the show.
	Clay Travis was on CNN last year, one of my favorite media moments in all of last year.
	Clay Travis was on CNN with Brooke Baldwin, and he was talking with her, and suddenly he just launched into a random monologue about how his two favorite things were boobs in the First Amendment.
	Should have said his three favorite things were boobs in the First Amendment.
	And she acted all offended, and it was just terrible.
	So there was a couple who decided to fake a wedding proposal to mock CNN.
	So watch this.
	They just shout Clay Travis' slogan.
	Pretty spectacular.
	But we want to introduce you, hey, come here, to this guy.
	What's your name?
	My name's Dustin.
	Dustin, we understand you have something special.
	Yeah, yeah, for sure.
	All right.
	Well, come on.
	Hey, come here.
	And your girlfriend in the red.
	Beautiful.
	Hi.
	Where are you from?
	Atlanta.
	Yeah, I'm an Atlanta girl.
	Let's do it.
	Marissa, I love you.
	And-- Ah!
	Wait for it.
	Wait for it, guys.
	Will you marry me?
	She said yes!
	She said yes!
	I love boobs!
	B-double-O-B-S!
	And so the entire thing was a prank so that she could shout into the microphone on CNN, I love boobs, B-double-O-B-S.
	Well done, Clay Travis fan.
	Well done.
	And that's exactly what CNN deserves, because I'm going to show you in my Things I Hate in just a second some things about CNN that, um, yeah.
	So things I hate.
	So CNN as a network, you'll remember, was filled with such umbrage.
	Their propriety was insulted by Clay Travis saying boobs in the First Amendment.
	Here's what they do on New Year's Eve.
	On New Year's Eve, they just make a mockery of themselves.
	So they send down Brooke Baldwin to New Orleans, a place for boobs in the First Amendment.
	It's basically Clay Travis' frat house.
	And there, you have people like Brooke Baldwin, right, who is very offended, as you'll recall, super-duper offended by that language.
	How dare you say B-O-O-W-B-O-O-B-S?
	How dare you say that on national TV?
	Here's where she tells Don Lemon about the size of her testicles.
	Yeah, really.
	Right here.
	My balls are bigger than your balls.
	Probably.
	Oh!
	Do you want to dance, or should we talk to some people?
	And then they all dance on CNN because this is the most trusted name in news.
	Get that James Earl Jones voice going over there.
	Okay, that wasn't the only ridiculous moment from New Year's Eve.
	Also, they decided to legitimately do drugs on the air on CNN.
	So that was exciting.
	This is clip eight.
	So this is CNN had a reporter who legitimately started smoking weed on air on New Year's Eve in Denver.
	How's it going, Randy?
	It's going great.
	I'm definitely earning the nickname Kush K. That's for sure.
	Right?
	Oh, yeah.
	Oh, come on.
	Everybody knows what Kush is.
	So listen, I came prepared, you know, this year.
	I thought maybe I would bring a gas mask with me so I wouldn't, you know, get that contact eye.
	But look at what's on the other end of the gas mask.
	Yes, a bong.
	And of course, they couldn't stand to see a bong that didn't have any cannabis in it.
	So you actually Put it in the bong.
	You filled it up.
	Yeah.
	And you don't want it, you don't want it.
	We packed it.
	You packed it.
	Okay.
	Okay, so you're gonna, now what?
	Now you're gonna celebrate a little New Year's early or what?
	To be honest with you, I've never hit one of these before.
	Oh, right.
	Okay.
	This, I don't think this is really what a gas mask is used for, but, um, wow.
	And everybody's just gonna do pot right there on the air.
	And there's Anderson Cooper just grinning along.
	Look at that newsiness.
	Look at that newsiness!
	Why don't we trust them?
	Why do we call them fake news?
	I don't know.
	I can't imagine.
	How could such a thing happen?
	That is crazy.
	And why would we call them fake news when, over the break, they do things like this?
	Okay, here is CNN complaining that they can't cover Trump golfing.
	So, you know, they're covering all the important things.
	By the way, CNN's coverage on Iran has been really garbage-y over the last few days.
	As I showed you, a CNN commentator saying that America has no moral authority.
	They went crazy because over the break, President Trump went golfing.
	You know, like over Christmas break?
	Like most presidents do?
	And a white truck.
	So CNN tried to get tape of Trump golfing because we desperately needed to know what Trump looks like when he golfs.
	Like, I'm sorry, I really don't care.
	I didn't care when Obama golfed.
	I don't care when Trump golfs as far as what they look like or how good they were.
	Who cares?
	CNN went crazy because the Trump team hired a white truck to basically roll alongside the CNN camera crew and prevent them from shooting into the golf course.
	And they went nuts over on CNN about it.
	The President doesn't really and his staff doesn't really tell us when he is golfing and we have taken to going outside the golf course and filming him as he golfs through a break in hedges near the club.
	Today a big white box truck parked in front of those hedges trying to obscure our shot of President Trump golfing.
	Now this may seem trivial but it is important to get video of the President as he does these things on a daily basis and it gets to something that is larger.
	The President and the White House have tried to obscure the fact that President Trump golfs on a regular basis.
	What now?
	What the, what the, like yes, I'm, yes, clearly you guys are covering the news that matters.
	It's deeply important that you see Trump swing the club.
	That's deeply important and how dare that truck.
	So people started making memes of the white truck pulling in front of the Iranian protests so that CNN would have an excuse not to cover the Iranian protests.
	I think that that is basically correct.
	Okay, final stuff that I hate.
	So President Trump, I spent a lot of the show praising him over what he has done with Iran.
	I think that he is correct on this.
	I'd like to see more aid being sent to the protesters in Iran.
	Whatever can be done should be done for those protesters.
	But it is the first day of the new year and that means that we have to do some good Trump, bad Trump.
	So let's do it.
	Alrighty, so there we are.
	Brand new year, thanks to Brandon Snipes, of course, the creator of that theme.
	So, we had some good Trump earlier.
	Bad Trump.
	So, President Trump took to Twitter this morning.
	And I don't like when Trump tweets stupid things in the middle of a serious news cycle because it allows the media the excuse to distract from the actual news, which is what's going on in Iran, which is what they should be forced to cover.
	Like, Trump should be using his Twitter, his Twitter machine, as a battering ram.
	He should be clubbing the media with it.
	Instead, Trump tweets out stuff like this.
	So here's what Trump tweeted out.
	There were zero commercial aviation deaths this year.
	Here's what Trump tweeted out.
	Since taking office, I've been very strict on commercial aviation.
	Good news.
	It was just reported there were zero, capital Z, deaths in 2017.
	The best and safest year on record.
	Yes, I am sure, Mr. President, you're responsible for the planes not falling from the sky.
	I'm sure that was you.
	Just for the record, there have been zero commercial aviation deaths in the United States since 2008.
	Okay, so it's been a pretty good run for commercial aviation.
	I really don't think that it's Trump hanging out at air traffic control directing the planes.
	This is on par with Al Gore saying he invented the internet.
	And as long as we're going to try this strategy, I'm going to take credit for our house being cleaned today.
	I'm not going to do any of the cleaning and probably will get cleaned, not by me, but I'll take credit for it because, hey, it's my house.
	Just absurd.
	That was not the only absurd tweet of the day.
	President Trump trying out a little bit of game theory.
	He tweets about DACA.
	So DACA, as you'll recall, is the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program.
	He had struck down Obama's executive order on that and then thrown it to Congress.
	And then he said at the time that if Congress If Congress didn't act, then maybe he'd replace it, put it back in place in March.
	So here's what he tweeted.
	Democrats are doing nothing for DACA, just interested in politics.
	DACA activists and Hispanics will go hard against Dems.
	We'll start falling in love with Republicans and their president.
	We are about RESULTS.
	All capital, RESULTS.
	Here is the problem with this particular statement.
	So, what this is basically saying is that if the Democrats don't make a deal on the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals programs, if they don't give him his wall, or if they don't give him his increased immigration funding, or his crackdowns on some illegal immigration, Then President Trump will just put DACA back in place, and then presumably Hispanics will be super happy with him.
	That's not a bargaining strategy, and it doesn't even make any sense.
	If you're going to bargain, you actually have to take a hard position.
	I'm not sure by what math Hispanics are going to go hard against the Democrats who are pushing for a pure DACA and fall for President Trump and fall in love with Republicans and their president, unless, presumably, Trump were to basically throw over his base and just replace DACA with new DACA, Trump DACA, Trump-ACA.
	I don't think that that's going to happen.
	Maybe it will.
	But I don't know what the hell he's talking about here.
	So that's that's not good, Trump.
	OK, finally, it is a Tuesday.
	Normally we deconstruct some culture, but we're going to do a Federalist paper instead.
	Every week on Mondays, we do a Federalist paper.
	We'll go through this one really quickly because we're already running over time.
	But hey, it's the first show of the year.
	We have to ruin everything.
	So Federalist number nine is Federalist paper number nine, written by Alexander Hamilton.
	So this one, Hamilton is continuing his discussion On how a national government is going to be stronger than several governments in the United States that are not under the rubric of one united government.
	You know, just the country of South Carolina, for example.
	So critics, says Hamilton, condemn republicanism as unstable.
	And he points out, from the disorders that disfigure the annals of those republics, the advocates of despotism have drawn arguments, not only against the forms of republican government, but against the very principles of civil liberty.
	They have decried all free governments as inconsistent with the order of society, and have indulged themselves in malicious exaltation over its friends and partisans.
	First of all, Hamilton's a beautiful writer.
	But second of all, what he is saying here is he's saying there are a lot of people who say that monarchy despotism is better than democracy because democracy devolves into anarchy.
	And this would be sort of the Thomas Hobbes argument in Leviathan.
	This, Hamilton says, is wrong because there are many different types of democracy and equating all of them is foolish.
	Like there's messy democracy and then there's well-ordered Republican checks and balances.
	And that's what Hamilton is making the argument for.
	He says we've basically designed a new form of government which includes modern inventions like checks and balances and institutions of courts composed of judges holding their offices during good behavior.
	And he says that this is also going to, one of the checks against an overpowering central government here is going to be the states.
	The states are going to be their own republics and they will have their own localities.
	And so the devolution of authority down to lower and lower levels is going to lead to checks and balances that prevent the irrigation of all authority in a centralized figure and also prevent the decay into anarchy.
	So Hamilton quotes a philosopher named Montesquieu.
	If you studied this in high school at all, you'll know Montesquieu was a French philosopher who died, I believe, 1755.
	And he was very instrumental in formulating a lot of the early ideas about legislative checks and balances.
	He really created that idea.
	He was in favor of basically a three-branch government.
	You'll remember this legislative executive judicial just like the United States.
	And Montesquieu had said, one one state that would make alliance with another state, other states would oppose that.
	So, the basic idea here is checks and balances.
	This is Hamilton making the affirmative argument for it in Federalist No.
	9.
	As always, Hamilton is a well-argued and articulate spokesperson for this position.
	Okay, we will be back here tomorrow with all the latest news.
	Welcome back.
	Happy New Year, and we'll be here with you all year long.
	Looking forward to a big year.
	Midterm election's coming up, so lots happening.
	I'm Ben Shapiro.
	This is The Ben Shapiro Show.
	The Ben Shapiro Show is produced by Mathis Glover.
	Executive producer, Jeremy Boring.
	Senior producer, Jonathan Hay.
	Our technical producer is Austin Stevens.
	Edited by Alex Zingaro.
	Audio is mixed by Mike Cormina.
	Hair and makeup is by Jesua Olvera.
	The Ben Shapiro Show is a Daily Wire Forward Publishing production.

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