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Jan. 3, 2018 - The Ben Shapiro Show
56:36
Can Somebody Please Steal Trump’s Phone? | Ep. 445
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Time Text
So, are we going to go to nuclear war with North Korea?
Who knows?
It's on Twitter.
Plus, President Trump is threatening the fake news again, and Steve Bannon completely loses his mind for the 97th time that I personally know about.
I'm Ben Shapiro.
This is the Ben Shapiro Show.
So many magical things happening.
I know.
We're right back here.
It's the second show of the year.
And already, President Trump is in top form.
Last night, he went on Twitter and issued some all-time great tweets.
And we will go through them.
And they are all-time great, guys.
They're spectacular.
But first...
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Okay, so President Trump goes off on North Korea, but I don't want to start there today.
I'll I want to save that for a few minutes from now, because it's just so glorious.
First, I want to discuss my old boss Steve Bannon, who apparently has lost whatever was left of his marbles.
After he left the White House, Steve has been trotting around, globetrotting, going to hot spots like Alabama, so that he could talk with people about the glories of Roy Moore, sticking his reporters from Breitbart News on unsuspecting I don't know what's going through Bannon's head at this point, except that he's basically lost all connection with the White House, as far as I know.
He believed the victims, but they still had to investigate because they needed to protect Trump or something.
In any case, Steve Bannon did an interview with an author named Michael Wolff.
I don't know what's going through Bannon's head at this point, except that he's basically lost all connection with the White House, as far as I know.
He's lost all connection with his money in the Mercer family, as far as I know.
And that means that he is sort of adrift in the world.
The reason that this is important is because when the media say today that a new controversy has arisen because of Steve Bannon, or that Steve Bannon has the secret sauce, he knows all of the evils inside the Trump administration, when they say that he has started a new controversy, understand, Steve Bannon is desperate for relevance.
Steve Bannon is not a major player on the American political scene anymore, despite the media's wishes for him to be so.
And so whatever he has to say about what's going on with regard to Trump-Russia collusion, you got to take it with a grain of salt.
Now maybe it'll turn out that there's a smoking gun.
Maybe it'll turn out there was some fire there and there was actual collusion.
So far I have seen nothing of the sort.
So far it seems like this is a lot of overblown rhetoric and maybe some stupidity from people like Carter Page and George Papadopoulos.
But I really have seen nothing so far that suggests in any significant way That Trump-Russia campaign collusion was a thing.
Well, the media are jumping on Bannon's comments today because Bannon suggests the opposite.
So, on Wednesday, former White House chief strategist Steve Bannon, who apparently, upon leaving the White House, the phone bill to the New York Times has gone down dramatically because Steve was good friends with some of the folks over there.
He tore into his former boss, President Trump, the man who made him famous, as well as Trump's son, Donald Jr., his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, as well.
So basically, all of his enemies inside the administration, namely all of the Trump kids, he ripped into, and then he knocked Trump as well.
And then, because Steve is just an unguided missile, he also backhandedly swiped his own publication, Breitbart News, which was the part I found kind of hilarious.
So here is what he said.
He spoke with author Michael Wolff for Wolff's new book.
That book has now been reported by The Guardian, the UK Guardian, which is a far-left newspaper, which shows you, you know, Steve has a real tendency to talk to The American Prospect and The Guardian and The New York Times, you know, all the fake news media that he used to decry.
Bannon told Wolf that Robert Mueller's investigation would, quote, crack Don Jr.
like an egg on national TV.
He only speaks in metaphors from a Martin Scorsese film, as I think it was Josh Hammer pointed out, or Stephen Miller.
The fact is that everything that he says is a dramatic line from a bad film, everything Bannon says.
So Bannon says that they will crack Don Jr.
like an egg on national TV, which would be weird because that's a crime.
He then stated that Donald Jr.' 's campaign meeting with a lawyer associated with the Russian government, you remember Don Jr.
back during the campaign had a meeting with a Russian lawyer named Veselnitskaya, And she came to Trump Tower and she met with some members of the campaign.
The members of the campaign basically blew her off, blew Don Jr.
off.
And despite his willingness to hear information about Hillary Clinton, no information actually exchanged hands as far as we know.
And Trump himself was not personally involved as far as we know.
In any case, here's what Bannon said.
He said Donald Jr.' 's campaign meeting with that lawyer was, quote, treasonous or unpatriotic or bad bleep.
And it added that Trump Jr.
and associates should have called the FBI immediately.
Now, this is weird.
You might say to yourself, wait, Steve Bannon, weren't you part of the campaign?
If you had known about this, shouldn't you have called the FBI?
Well, Steve Bannon joined the campaign in August.
This happened in July.
So he wasn't there for several months, I guess, or at least a couple of months before any of this, when any of this was happening.
Which means he has no special inside information.
But if he'd found out about it, shouldn't he have called the FBI?
But he didn't.
And then he went on 60 Minutes while he was working for the White House.
You remember when we had Bannon on the cover of Time magazine?
And he called the Russia investigation a farce and a waste of time.
Remember he said this on 60 Minutes.
And everybody said, look at Steve Bannon out there defending his boss.
Well now he says that his boss is a traitor.
That the Trump campaign was treasonous.
So just as soon as Steve Bannon becomes an irrelevant lord of nothing, just as Steve Bannon's massive power devolves into just the bag of hot gas that he is, then all of a sudden, he's back out front saying that Trump is guilty of treason.
And so the media have jumped on this with both feet.
Ah, Steve Bannon must know he was there.
Steve Bannon didn't know anything.
He didn't know anything.
The only reason Steve Bannon was on the campaign is because the Mercer money was behind him.
That's the only reason Kellyanne Conway was on the campaign.
I know I was there, okay?
The only reason that Steve Bannon was in the White House is because of the Mercer money.
He was immediately shelved in a tiny office off the Oval Office with a whiteboard filled with Trump promises that Trump had not yet fulfilled and that Bannon would leak about to the New York Times every so often.
In any case, It doesn't stop there.
If you're a Trump fan, you should be pissed at Steve Bannon today, because Steve Bannon just made trouble for Trump in the middle of Trump actually trying to push some good policy.
So Bannon went on to tell Wolf that such a meeting should have occurred, quote, and information should then have been dumped down to Breitbart or something like that, or maybe some other more legitimate publication.
So a few things about this are hilarious.
Number one, if you just said that it was a treasonous meeting, how does it make it not treasonous if your lawyers are in New Hampshire with them?
It's still treason, so I'm confused about that.
But my favorite thing by far in this interview is where Bannon says that the information from the Russians should have been dumped down to Breitbart.
First of all, implying that Breitbart was basically a vehicle for the Trump administration and the Trump campaign, which it was.
And that they should have acted illegally, or at least colluded with the Russians, that Trump should have used Breitbart as basically a go-between with the Russian government, which is an incredible admission.
And then finally, the admission that maybe they should have dumped that information to some other more legitimate publication.
So there's Bannon, who is the chairman of Breitbart News, calling his own publication illegitimate.
So well done, Steve.
Just, remember, this guy's Darth Vader.
Remember, he's the great genius.
He's the great, the great, unbreakable, brilliant honey badger who was behind the Trump campaign.
Uh-huh.
Or is it possible he's just a doof?
Is it just possible he's a loud-mouthed doof and the media treat him as something special because they hate Trump and so they want to make it seem like Bannon's the real power behind the throne?
He didn't stop there.
He says about Jared Kushner, quote, Okay, well first of all, we knew that already because Kushner was interviewed and they requested bank records.
So thanks for the revelation, Steve.
He says, "Muller chose Andrew Weissman, a prosecutor, first, and he's a money laundering guy.
Their path to effing Trump goes right through Paul Manafort, Don Jr., and Jared Kushner.
It's as plain as a hair on your face.
It goes through Deutsche Bank and all the Kushner bleep.
The Kushner bleep is greasy.
They're going to go right through that.
They're going to roll up those two guys and say, "Play me or trade me." They're sitting on a beach trying to stop a category five." Again, everything he says is from a bad movie trailer.
Every single thing Steve Bannon has ever said is from a bad movie trailer.
It's just spectacular.
And what's so great about this is that Bannon just blew himself up with the people who made him famous.
Now, I understand that Bannon thinks he's going to go to war with Javanka, right?
With Jared and Ivanka.
That's his thing.
He's going to go to war with Jared and Ivanka, right?
But no one cares about that.
No one cares about Steve Bannon's little petty internecine fights.
The only thing people care about, at least where I come from in the conservative movement, is whether Trump gets things done or not.
Whether Trump is winning or not for the policies that we like.
I don't care whether Trump even personally wins.
I care whether he does policy that I like.
Yeah, but Steve Bannon is out there making trouble for Trump, and now the media are going to jump all over him, of course, and they're going to try to turn this into a big story, because they've been building up Bannon as something he is not for a long time.
I have been saying consistently for well over a year now, Steve Bannon is not a powerful figure.
Steve Bannon doesn't know anything.
Steve Bannon is a leech on the ass of power who wrote Michelle Bachmann's name to Sarah Palin, to Andrew Breitbart, who died, to Donald Trump, to the Mercer family.
Okay, that's all that happened here.
That's all that happened here.
But the media will jump on this.
So ignore all the media bloviating about how Trump has abandoned, he has the inside scoop.
He just doesn't.
Okay, moving on.
Now we can finally talk about President Trump's magnificent set of tweets last night.
Magnificent.
Okay, so I don't know whether Trump just has, you know, John Adams once said about Alexander Hamilton, that Alexander Hamilton had a, had an, a, What was it?
Okay, I am not joking.
That's something that John Adams actually said about Alexander Hamilton.
I don't know whether Trump just builds up Twitter secretions and then he has to let them off on Twitter.
I don't know, he just, he builds up steam and then he has to let it all off on Twitter.
I'm not sure what the story is there.
But whatever the story is, it's spectacular.
Okay?
Whatever the story is, it is magical.
Last night, Donald Trump takes to Twitter, and nothing prompts this.
It wasn't like Kim Jong-un did anything, or like he tweeted at him, or any of that sort of thing.
Instead, Donald Trump tweeted this thing, and I will read it to you in just a second.
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Okay, so.
Here is this, this is just spectacular.
So Trump tweets this out.
"North Korea leader Kim Jong-un just stated that the nuclear button is on his desk at all times.
Will someone from his depleted and food-starved regime please inform him that I too have a nuclear button, but it is a much bigger and more powerful one than his, and my button works." Amazeballs.
Okay, just amazing.
Donald Trump likes big buttons and he cannot lie.
That is just, that is glorious.
What can you say except we're all going to die?
So are we actually all going to die?
So the media treated it as though we are all going to die.
The media treated this as though it is the end of the world as we know it and they don't feel fine.
A lot of pop culture references today.
Basically went crazy over this.
So an MSNBC analyst, because this actually poses for analysis on MSNBC.
His name is Anand Giridharadas, which is the name for you, and he says that Trump's sexual insecurities are threatening to destroy the planet.
So Donald Trump is very obsessed with his genital size, and therefore he's tweeting this out, and then we're all going to die.
So he's in All In With Chris Hayes, talking about, again, the show's called All In With Chris Hayes, and he's talking about sexual insecurity on national TV.
Anyway, here is the MSNBC analyst, the famed MSNBC analyst, Anand Giridharadas.
Perhaps never have we seen a man whose profound sexual and masculine insecurities are literally threatening to annihilate the planet.
I mean, the way he's literally capitalizing in that tweet is nuclear button.
I mean, any psychiatrist or psychologist would have a field day with that, but we all live in a world that could literally be ended in terms of a habitable planet.
No.
No, it won't.
No.
It's just—oh, come on!
Really?
Okay, the truth is, no one takes Trump seriously about this stuff.
No one cares.
Trump says a lot of crap.
No one is—like, really, is anybody at this point going, yes, we're really all going to die?
Ross Dudehead, I thought, had a great point on Twitter last night.
If people actually thought that everyone was going to die, don't you think there'd be millions of people in the streets protesting Trump's Twitter feed?
And don't you think that there would be some people going, guys, this would be crazy, right?
Wouldn't there be anybody who's like, oh my god, build a, wouldn't all of my sponsors who sell survival gear be just doing unbelievably well because of these tweets?
They're doing unbelievably well because they sponsor with me, but wouldn't they be doing unbelievably well because of the tweets?
Wouldn't that be what's going on?
No, none of that's happening because no one takes this seriously.
The reality is that if Trump's tweets are going to have any impact on foreign policy, it's not going to be because of stuff like this.
Okay, Jimmy Kimmel, though, he also goes crazy over this.
So Pope Jimmy, as Mary Catherine Hamm has termed him, he comes out.
He did not have his son on his hip for this one, but he did say that this is just insane.
Two maniacs arguing over who has the bigger button.
He took some time off.
He almost seems like a new man.
He's very positive.
Tonight, just minutes ago, he tweeted, North Korean leader Kim Jong-un just stated that the nuclear button is on his desk at all times.
Will someone from his depleted and food-starved regime please inform him that I, too, have a nuclear button, but it is a much bigger and more powerful one than his.
And my button works.
That's right.
Happy New Year, everybody.
We have two maniacs with nuclear warheads bragging about who has the bigger button.
Mmm.
OK, so I love this.
First of all, I wish that I had pulled the clip of Willy Wonka saying, button, button, who's got the button?
Because it would be so perfect here.
But in any case, Jimmy Kimmel saying, oh, it's too maniac.
But everyone's laughing, right?
That's the point.
People immediately start laughing when they hear that tweet.
They don't go, oh my god, we're all going to die.
They go, that's kind of funny.
Because you know what?
It's kind of funny.
It is, OK?
Like Trump saying, I have a bigger.
First of all, that button on his desk, it just brings him Diet Coke, guys.
Okay, that button is not for the nukes.
The phone is for the nukes.
The button is just for the Diet Coke.
So we can hope that he doesn't switch the phone and the button.
We hope that he doesn't pick up the phone and order himself two Diet Cokes and people take that as a code.
But at the same time, come on.
This idea that we're all going to die?
Now, is it stable behavior?
Is it the kind of behavior that we would wish to see from a president?
Would you expect this from Abraham Lincoln?
Abraham Lincoln just would tweet out, Silly Jefferson Davis, I have an enormous army on your doorstep.
It's long, beautiful, and hard.
Is that really what you would expect from Abraham Lincoln?
Probably not.
Probably not from Honest Abe.
It's not what we're used to in the Oval Office.
Jake Tapper goes after Trump over this yesterday.
This is the President of the United States issuing a threat to use nuclear weapons and then turning around and glibly chastising the media.
These tweets coming on the same day that President Trump also suggested that a former Hillary Clinton aide who has been charged with no crime should be jailed.
And said the former FBI director, who is a witness in the investigation into the Trump campaign, should be investigated himself.
And also said that his own Justice Department is part of a conspiracy known as the quote, deep state.
None of this normal, none of this acceptable, none of this frankly stable behavior.
Okay, so this is just, like, is that true?
Yeah, it's kind of true.
I mean, like, is this something you would expect from the president?
But this idea that we're all going to die because of it is just not true.
OK, the reality is that if you are going to actually have a situation in which the president of the United States is a threat on foreign policy, it would not be because of this, right?
Ronald Reagan, back in 1984, I believe, during his reelection campaign, he was caught on a live mic saying, the bombing of the Soviet Union begins in five minutes.
Right?
And everybody laughed.
Actually, the Soviets took it seriously enough they actually put their bombers on alert, because people took Reagan seriously.
Did North Korea put its bombers on alert?
No, North Korea did nothing, because no one's taking Trump seriously on this.
If there were to be any danger from Trump's Twitter feed, it's if Trump would start signaling friendliness or apathy toward a regime he should not.
So for example, let's say that Vladimir Putin were to amass a bunch of troops on the border of Estonia or Latvia, and Trump were to say, Well, I don't care about those places.
I don't even know how to spell them.
Right?
Then, you would say, OK, well now we're on the brink of war, right?
Because Putin's just going to walk right across that border knowing Trump's not going to do anything.
Because even when Trump bluffs with force, there's a good shot that the force is never going to come.
So if he actually says he doesn't care about something, he probably really doesn't care about something.
But as far as him making militaristic threats, like that's what, why do you think Trump wanted the job?
It's just so he could say this kind of stuff.
It's just so he could, like, Trump does have some deep insecurity, right?
There's no question he has some deep insecurity, but no one's taking this seriously anymore, which is why I tweeted out last night that I think that President Trump should simultaneously launch nuclear weapons in North Korea during the State of the Union Address, in which he is railing about fake news, and fire Robert Mueller at the same time, and then the next day he should start tweeting about why no one is talking about the stock market gains.
That seems like I think the best move for President Trump at this point.
Okay, so moving on, I want to talk a little bit more about another tweet that President Trump sent out.
And it is real, and it is spectacular.
It is quite grand.
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Okay, so that wasn't the only great Trump tweet that was sent out yesterday.
Here is another fantastic Trump tweet that was sent out yesterday.
So, Trump tweets out, quote, I will be announcing, all capitals, the most dishonest and corrupt media awards of the year on Monday at 5 o'clock.
Subjects will cover dishonesty and bad reporting in various categories from the fake news media.
Stay tuned!
First of all, I continue to enjoy his capitalization habits.
I don't know what to say about them.
I've been reading a lot of philosophy lately, and very often you'll see philosophers use terms that they've coined.
You'll see the noumenal and the phenomenal in Kant.
And sometimes, in certain editions, they will actually capitalize those terms, because they're new terms that are being introduced.
In contracts, we do the same thing in contract law.
Whenever we introduce a new term in parentheses, we put all caps what the term means, right?
We capitalize it.
But apparently Trump thinks he coined the terms dishonesty and bad reporting from the fake news media.
And what I'm hoping is that President Trump actually says that he wants to deliver a nationally televised address and deliver his diatribe against the fake news media on all three networks.
That would be pretty spectacular.
And I'll admit, I'm going to tune in on Monday at 5 o'clock.
Is he going to do it on Twitter?
Is it going to be an actual reality show?
Are there going to be awards presenters?
Is it going to be like Kim Kardashian walks out?
Who's going to actually be the emcee?
Is he going to emcee it himself?
Or is he going to be the guy who just comes out and opens up the envelopes?
I am very curious as to how this is going to go.
Is it going to be Ted Nugent and Sarah Palin in the Oval Office actually making this happen?
Or will it be the Mooch?
I root for the mooch.
On behalf of Marshall, one of the producers here, I root for the mooch.
And I would try to get Marshall front row seats for the mooch.
But in any case, President Trump going after the fake news media as well.
Again, I don't know what's driving these tweets, but I can safely say that it's nothing supremely rational.
He also tweeted about his accomplishments last night, and this one was pretty good.
He really had fun on Twitter last night, and I like that the president has fun with things.
He tweeted out, President Trump has something now he didn't have a year ago.
That is a set of accomplishments that nobody can deny.
The accomplishments are there.
Look at his record.
He has had a very significant first year.
And then he quotes it from the Lou Dobbs show, David Assman and Ed Rollins.
So I do love that he is now giving citations.
So that's exciting.
Also, a few days ago, the President of the United States suggested That he did not, in fact, watch a lot of TV.
That's not true.
He watches a lot of TV.
So here is Trump on, Daniel Dale, who is a reporter, I believe, for, is he for ABC or Axios?
In any case, he tweets out, he tweeted out Trump's schedule yesterday.
11.03 p.m.
Live tweets, Fox Business.
8.16 p.m.
Urges people to watch Fox Show.
7.49 a.m., I assume these are all a.m., or I guess, Is this the last 24 hours?
24 hours.
Okay.
7.49 p.m.
Mocks Kim Jong-un after Fox segment.
9.13 a.m.
Takes credit for aviation safety after Fox segment.
9.08 a.m.
Talks North Korea after Fox segment.
8.49 a.m. Tweets about taxes after Fox segment.
8.44 a.m.
Tweets to Fox.
7.48 a.m.
Attacks Justice Department Abedin after Fox segment.
That also actually, I think that missed a couple.
I think that's a good one.
I think the Trump actually left a couple of other Fox segments as well.
I mean, at least Fox knows who their P1s are, right?
In radio you call them the P1s, the people who listen to your entire show.
At least, I mean, they know who they are programming to.
So, you know, the President of the United States, I can't say he's a deeply busy man.
Now, the good news about this, I guess, if you're on the left, is that he's not busy doing other things.
Like, he could be busy paring back regulations.
And if you're on the right, he could be busy doing other things like, I guess, mouthing off.
But he is mouthing off, so I guess it's not all great.
Here is the problem that I'm having.
A more broad problem.
Now, I've been joking about this a lot because, let's face it, it's Freaking hilarious.
I mean, it's just funny.
It's just funny, okay?
If you can't enjoy this, then take a chill pill, because it is one of the more enjoyable things in life, is watching the President of the United States, who seems as though the music from Benny Hill should be running under the administration continuously.
Here is the problem, the actual problem.
The actual problem is I am now invested in President Trump's policies.
I like his policies.
Over the last six weeks, I've gotten a lot of good policy.
In the middle of these tweet storms that I've been talking about, he tweeted that perhaps he should cut aid to the Palestinian Authority, which he should.
It's a terrorist entity.
In the middle of all of this, he was saying things that are true about the Middle East and Iran.
He was tweeting out that the United States was going to support the protesters in Iran.
All of this is true and good and important.
Now, if the President of the United States had, let's say the President of the United States had been pushing nationalist populist banditism, an agenda that I didn't like.
Let's say he was pushing a bunch of policy that I thought was bad.
And then he was doing all of this stuff that was stupid.
I would say, well, it's not great the President of the United States is doing all that stuff, but what he's really doing is he's maligning an agenda that is not my own.
He's hitting an agenda that I am not particularly fond of.
So the impact on that agenda, it makes less of a difference to me.
If he sinks his own infrastructure bill, I'm not going to shed any tears over that.
But if the President of the United States is pushing policies that I like a lot, right, as he's been doing for the last six weeks, now there's the significant possibility that in 2018, if he loses the House, or if he loses the Senate, or if things really go to hell in a handbasket and he loses in 2020, that it's not just going to be seen as a repudiation of him personally and his Twitter habits, It's not just going to be seen as a repudiation of the president of the United States as a human being.
It will instead be seen as a repudiation of his policies.
My business partner, Jeremy Boring, god-king of The Daily Wire, Jeremy has been saying this for years about Herbert Hoover.
What he said about Herbert Hoover is that if you actually look back at Herbert Hoover's record, the president who preceded FDR, his record was very much along the lines of FDR's record.
He increased government spending.
He pushed tariffs.
He increased regulations.
He was very interventionist in the economy.
In fact, members of the FDR administration said openly that Herbert Hoover's policies were basically the groundwork for their own.
But then in 1932 when he ran for reelection and afterward, he posed himself as a real conservative.
He's a guy who wanted small government, less government interventionism.
And so Hooverism became synonymous with conservatism, and it smeared conservatism for a generation, a full generation.
Didn't matter that Herbert Hoover wasn't actually conservative.
His toxicity smeared conservatism, even though his own policies had not been conservative.
This is what I fear from Trump.
And in some ways worse, because he's actually implementing policies that I like.
I don't have to go through the litany again, but in the last month, in the last six weeks, he has announced the move of the capital of the embassy to Jerusalem in Israel.
He has gotten his major tax cut, which will not be reversed.
He's nominated a bunch more appellate court judges yesterday.
Don Willett joined the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, which is a fantastic pick.
Don Willett is terrific.
He has cut regulations at record rates.
He has prevented the establishment of new national monuments and is paring back on some of the old ones because there's too much federal land in the West.
The President of the United States has supported the protesters in Iran.
All of this is good stuff.
But if the President makes himself toxic and therefore makes his agenda toxic, then you do have a much more serious problem on your hands.
And that is not good, okay?
That's not a good thing.
That's something that has to stop.
And so I encourage the president to go on break and just enjoy himself.
Instead, he went around to Twitter and said things, and that's not good.
Again, I just want the president to be successful for the country, and I don't think that these tweets are particularly helpful in that.
Now, with that said, the president of the United States did tweet something about the deep state yesterday that is not completely inaccurate.
So here's what he tweeted yesterday.
He tweeted, quote, Crooked Hillary Clinton's top aide, Huma Abedin, has been accused of disregarding basic security protocols.
She put classified passwords into the hands of foreign agents.
Remember, sailors, pictures on submarine?
Jail.
Deep State Justice Department must finally act.
Also on Comey and others.
So what he's suggesting here is that Hillary Clinton's top aide, Huma Abedin, should go to jail because she actually put a bunch of passwords, like government passwords, on her Yahoo email.
And that Yahoo was then hacked.
And what Trump says is that he's comparing this to another case of a woman who was jailed.
She was in the U.S.
Navy and she was jailed for taking pictures on some Marines and then putting them on social media.
And this was considered a security breach and she did time in jail.
And he again is suggesting that the Justice Department is the deep state.
Well, the President of the United States is the head of the Justice Department.
He can instruct them to investigate Hillary Clinton and Huma Abedin anytime he wants.
He has not done that.
Instead, he prefers to mouth off about it.
But is it true that the Justice Department has acted in heretofore bizarre ways and did so while it was under the auspices of the Obama administration and has continued to act in, I would say, slightly less weird ways with Jeff Sessions, but the Comey investigation, Robert Mueller's investigation has acted in strange ways?
I think that that's unquestionable.
And in just a second, I want to tell you about the situation with Trump, Russia, and Hillary, because there's an op-ed in the New York Times that is quite telling.
But first, Jeffrey Toobin on CNN went off over the deep state.
Here's what he had to say about Trump ripping the so-called deep state again.
Well, I think it's pretty reprehensible to use that phraseology in any event.
I guess who that refers to are long-serving civil servants, career civil servants, who are patriots and dedicated to the country.
I'd point out that when you take the oath of office as a civil servant, you swear to uphold the Constitution.
It doesn't say anything about pledging loyalty to this president or any other.
And if not doing so is what constitutes being part of the Deep State, I think that's... That's actually James Clapper.
But James Clapper, you know, talking about the Deep State, this is the problem, right?
When James Clapper says that Trump is wrong about the Deep State, who is going to trust James Clapper about that?
Because James Clapper was a motivated part of the so-called Deep State.
When people say Deep State, I think they're thinking of something more conspiratorial than it is.
It's just Obama holdovers who have a political agenda.
And there's no question that there are people in positions of power who do have that agenda.
Again, it was The Daily Caller that reported that Abedin forwarded her State Department passwords to Yahoo before it was hacked by foreign agents.
Luke Rozziak, who does some really good investigative reporting over there, he's the one who reported on this yesterday.
He said that Huba Abedin regularly forwarded work emails to her personal account, and then she'd use these accounts if her state account was down or if she needed to print an email or document.
Abedin further explained that it was difficult to print from a Department of State system, so she routinely forwarded emails to her non-DOS system, which of course defeats the entire purpose.
Trump's not wrong to ask questions about the behavior of the Obama administration and the so-called deep state during this time.
I just think that it's not smart of him to tweet it out.
There are plenty of people who can ask those questions for him.
Well, in just a second, I want to discuss an op-ed from Fusion GPS that a lot of people are apparently suggesting puts an end to all of the blowback on the Mueller team for corruption.
But it doesn't.
I'll explain why in just a second.
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Okay, so...
There's an op-ed in the New York Times that the left is trotting out as evidence that the right is conspiratorial in its views of the Mueller investigation.
So, to recap, as I said yesterday, the right has suggested that there's a serious problem with the FBI investigation into Trump-Russia collusion.
The serious problem is that the Fusion GPS dossier that was allegedly used as the basis for FBI attempting to get FISA warrants on Trump administration officials was commissioned by Democrats and was full of crap.
Basically, there were Democrats inside the DOJ and the FBI.
They were politically motivated.
They got a hold of this dossier from Fusion GPS, which is a Democratic-funded OPPO research group, basically.
And then they used that as an excuse to go after Trump.
That's the allegation from Republicans.
The co-founders of Fusion GPS, Glenn Simpson and Peter Frisch, one of whom pled the fifth in front of Congress.
They have an op-ed today talking about how Fusion GPS has nothing to do with it, we did nothing wrong, and the FBI investigation has nothing to do with Fusion GPS, et cetera.
So here's what they write.
They say, a generation ago, Republicans sought to protect President Richard Nixon by urging the Senate Watergate Committee to look at supposed wrongdoing by Democrats in previous elections.
The committee chairman, Sam Ervin, a Democrat, said that would be, quote, as foolish as the man who went bear hunting and stopped to chase rabbits.
Amid a growing criminal inquiry into Russian meddling in the 2016 election, Congressional Republicans are again chasing rabbits we know because we are their favorite quarry.
In the years since the publication of the so-called Steele dossier, the collection of intelligence reports we commissioned about Donald Trump's ties to Russia, the President has repeatedly attacked us on Twitter.
His allies in Congress have dug through our bank records and sought to tarnish our firm to punish us for highlighting his links to Russia.
Conservative news outlets and even our former employer, The Wall Street Journal, have spun a succession of mendacious conspiracy theories about our motives and backers.
We are happy to correct the record.
In fact, we already have.
Three congressional committees have heard over 21 hours of testimony from our firm Fusion GPS.
Again, they're neglecting to mention several members of Fusion GPS pled the fifth.
They say we walked investigators through our year-long effort to decipher Mr. Trump's complex business past, of which the Steele dossier is but one chapter, and we handed over our relevant bank records while drawing the line at a fishing expedition for the records of companies we work for that have nothing to do with the Trump case.
Well...
They don't really get to decide where they draw the line in a subpoena situation.
One of the questions is, who funds you?
Who bankrolls you?
Well, I'd like to see them release full transcripts because I'd like to see what was said.
they selectively leaked details to media outlets on the far right.
Well, I'd like to see them release full transcripts because I'd like to see what was said.
I would also like to find out who pled the fifth and why.
They say, we don't believe the Steele dossier was the trigger for the FBI's investigation into Russian meddling.
As we told the Senate Judiciary Committee in August, our sources said the dossier was taken so seriously because it corroborated reports the bureau had received from other sources, including one inside the Trump camp.
There are some problems with this particular claim.
The dossier corroborated reports from other sources.
They only started monitoring George Papadopoulos apparently after this dossier came out, is my understanding of the timeline.
So I'm not understanding how they could corroborate reports that had already been issued unless those were basically just reported leads or rumors.
And the intelligence committees have known for months that credible allegations of collusion between the Trump camp and Russia were pouring in from independent sources during the campaign.
Yet lawmakers in the thrall of the president continue to wage a cynical campaign to portray us as the unwitting victims of Kremlin disinformation.
And then they say that they suggested investigators look into bank records of Deutsche Bank and others funding Trump's business.
Congress appeared uninterested in our tip.
We told Congress that we found widespread evidence that Mr. Trump and his organization had worked with a wide array of dubious Russians.
Okay, all of that is being investigated by Mueller, but I'm just confused in general by this claim that the dossier had nothing to do with the original launch of the wiretap on Carter Page, because there is nothing about George Papadopoulos that suggests that you actually have to launch a wiretap against Carter Page.
That's what the FISA warrant was for.
Carter Page was apparently only mentioned in the Fusion GPS dossier.
So, again, there's something fishy here.
I'm not sure that all of this washes for me.
Well, meanwhile...
Congressional investigators are saying they found written evidence of criminality in the Clinton probe.
So according to The Hill, Republicans on congressional committees conducting their own investigations have obtained highly redacted documents from the FBI that show the agency did suspect that laws were broken.
Lawmakers say in numerous passages the FBI stated the sheer volume of classified information that flowed to and from the former Secretary of State's unsecured private server was proof of criminality.
There was also an admission of false statements by a key witness.
The name of the witness was redacted.
Congressional investigators say it was an employee from the computer firm that maintained Clinton's server after she left the State Department in 2013.
So, in other words, the FBI shut down a fully plausible investigation into Hillary Clinton, but launched a really sketchy investigation into Trump-Russia.
Again, the only indictments that have come down right now are from Mike Flynn on obstructing justice by lying to the FBI during the transition, and George Papadopoulos, who apparently lied to the FBI about reach-outs from a London contact who apparently had contact with the Russian government.
That's about all that we have so far from the Mueller investigation.
Meanwhile, the president continues to try to push forward an agenda.
Trump is trying to push forward his agenda.
And that agenda has been slightly hampered by the news that Orrin Hatch is out, the senator from Utah, who was widely seen as the only barrier between Mitt Romney and the Senate seat in Utah.
He has decided that he is going to step out of the Senate.
He is 1,000 years old, I believe.
He may be 1,001.
He's actually 83.
And Orrin Hatch has been in the Senate for 41 years, so significantly longer than I have been alive, he has actually been in the Senate.
And Hatch is leaving, and he also has said that he He's fine with Mitt Romney taking over for him.
Romney, who is 70, changed his Twitter profile to highlight the fact that he is located in Holiday, Utah.
So it looks like Romney is likely to run.
A lot of people in the Trump camp are not happy about this.
They think that Romney will be a thorn in Trump's side in the same way that Jeff Flake was sort of a thorn in Trump's side.
Again, I think that Romney will likely vote a lot of the right way on all of this, but I'm confused as to You know, I don't know why Romney is necessarily the logical pick.
I think he'll make a fine senator from Utah.
I don't see any serious problems there.
Although, you know, we'll have to go back and rehash his record.
The guy did invent Obamacare.
So making him into the greatest Obamacare opponent.
There's always this revisionist history that goes on after campaigns.
In 2012, I did not vote for Mitt Romney in the primaries, nor did I endorse him in the primaries, specifically because I didn't think he was quite as conservative as he was pledging to be.
So I was pretty clear about my doubts about Romney then.
I think a lot of the passion about Romney now is driven by the fact that he is seen as a counterweight to Trump.
In reality, will he be that?
He'll say some stuff, but will he actually be that?
Not in any way different than Jeff Flake has been, which is to say, not much.
What else is on the Republican agenda for 2018?
Well, now they're talking about welfare reform.
So I think Trump is on a different page than some of the members of Congress.
Trump is talking about immigration, per se.
Steve Scalise, who is the House Majority Whip, he is saying we're going to tackle welfare reform next.
Again, this would be a greatly necessary change.
This would be useful.
Well, there's a lot that we're going to be doing in 2018, and it starts where we left off.
Tax reform is working incredibly well.
We're seeing our economy take off.
The next big thing you're going to see is a need for workers.
And I think the best thing we can do is to go and reform those welfare programs that are trapping people in a failed welfare state.
Let's actually put some work requirements in place so that we can get people back to work, rebuild the middle class.
OK, so this is a useful piece of information.
Trump is also pushing along an agenda with regard to DACA.
So yesterday I mentioned that Trump didn't seem to have any clear strategy on the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program.
And that's a problem, right?
It seems like he's saying that he's going to reinstate DACA if Democrats don't reach a deal with him.
Which would not be a loss for Democrats.
It would look like Trump backed down.
It would look like he backed down.
His base would be angry at him.
So I'm not sure how that's even close to a negotiation strategy.
But there are members of Trump administration now who are saying that Trump is not going to sign into law any deal for the Dreamers unless it also includes an end to chain migration.
And what's fascinating is there's sort of a rift that's broken out among Republicans about whether Trump should go for border funding for the wall or whether he should go for an end to chain migration.
If you have to pick one, you have to go with chain migration.
Chain migration is significantly more of a problem in terms of immigration and illegal immigration than is the border wall itself.
We can always staff up ICE.
There is border wall in some places already.
I'm in favor of a border wall.
I've always been in favor of a border barrier.
No question.
But if you have to choose, chain migration is a much greater threat to America's immigration system than is the border wall, because that's basically a legal policy that says that if you come in and you get in, you now get to bring all of your extended family.
It turns into Thidwick the Big-Hearted Moose from Dr. Seuss.
You get to bring in everybody on your horns, and that's a huge mistake.
The latest terror attack that we saw in the United States was perpetrated by somebody who got in basically through chain migration.
So that's not a... If they're going to go for something, let them go for chain migration.
I think that's the right move.
Again, the American immigration system changed radically in 1965 and it was designed instead of It was designed instead to be based on empathy for people from various parts of the globe that might be more downtrodden coming from places that were less European in origin, places that had typically less of a history of Western civilization.
And that changed how immigration was done.
The chain migration system combined with that shift in the places where people come from means that a higher percentage of people are coming from countries that are not used to all of the things that make Western civilization, Western civilization.
So I hope that Trump can push that.
It's one of the reasons why, please, Mr. President, stop with the Twitter distractions.
Stop.
It's just not useful in any real way.
Okay, so in just a second, I'm going to do some things I like and some things that I hate.
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Okay, time for some things I like and then some things I hate.
So, things I like.
The President of the United States, I mentioned this, amid his tweets yesterday, amid the crazy tweets, there was a very good tweet, okay?
And the tweet that he put out was with regard to Pakistan and then with regard to the Palestinians.
Here, it was two tweets.
He tweeted, quote, It's not only Pakistan we pay billions of dollars to for nothing, right?
He cut off military aid to Pakistan, which is a good move, but also many other countries as well.
As an example, we pay the Palestinians.
Hundreds of millions of dollars a year and get no appreciation or respect.
They don't even want to negotiate a long overdue peace treaty with Israel.
We've taken Jerusalem, the toughest part of the negotiation, off the table, but Israel for that would have had to pay more.
But with the Palestinians no longer willing to talk peace, why should we make any of these massive future payments to them?
This is a good question.
We never should have been making these massive future payments to them at all, because they are a terrorist group.
The Palestinian Authority is a terrorist group in a terrorist coalition with Islamic Jihad, in a terrorist coalition with Hamas.
The idea that we pay them money, taxpayer money, my money, is totally insane.
By the way, he did not take Jerusalem off the table for Israel.
Right?
He just said we're not going to pressure Israel on Jerusalem, which is not quite the same thing.
The U.S.
has budgeted $251 million in aid for the West Bank, the Judean Samaria, and the Gaza Strip in 2018.
That means money for Hamas.
We should cut off that aid immediately now.
We should have done it years ago.
And good for Trump for doing it.
Hopefully he will actually follow up on that.
Okay.
Other things that I like.
So...
There's a book that I read over the weekend, and it's kind of interesting.
It's a book by a guy named Albert J. Nock.
This was written in, I think, 1934.
The book is called Our Enemy, the State.
Now, there are a lot of people who are sort of anarcho-capitalists who are big fans of this book, because the basic premise of the book is that there's a difference between government and the state.
The state is this instrument of power that is used in order to harness wealth for a particular few.
I obviously agree with that general premise.
Where I think he goes off the rails, he uses a very Charles Beardian analysis of the American founding.
He basically suggests that the American founders were seeking to enrich themselves, and that's why they founded the country in the way that they did.
As a republic, he prefers the Articles of Confederation system because he thinks that a non-centralized American government was a better solution.
I disagree with him on some of this analysis, but I think that he makes a good case for the idea that the sort of German progressive-style state has taken over America's perception, Americans' perception of what the state should do.
And we need to rethink that.
The government should basically be returned to as far of a local system as possible.
It's really interesting.
When I was growing up, I was a big fan of John Adams.
I still am a fan of John Adams.
As I get older, I tend to be more friendly to Jeffersonian philosophy with regard to devolution of authority to local government.
John Adams obviously was in favor of more centralization of function in the federal government.
That Jefferson was precisely the reverse, but Jefferson also was happy to use the federal government to do the Louisiana Purchase, an unconstitutional move that he felt would enrich the country.
So Nock is not completely incorrect when he says that it's pretty easy for people who view themselves as small government advocates to become advocates of big government when it's useful for them to become part of the state apparatus.
The book is called Our Enemy, The State, and it is worth a read.
Again, it's more of an anarchist book than it is—an anarchist book than it is a conservative book, per se.
But it was apparently formative for William F. Buckley, among others.
Okay, time for a couple of things that I hate.
OK, so we'll do one quick thing that I hate.
Well, a couple of quick things that I hate, I suppose.
OK, so there's a New York Times op-ed today from a woman named Kashana Cowley all about how Erica Garner, her death on Saturday is the fault of the American system or some such.
So, Erica Garner, you'll recall, is the daughter of Eric Garner.
Eric Garner is the guy who died after he was put in a suppression hold by the New York City Police Department for selling loosies, which were cigarettes that were not licensed.
Because the cigarette taxes are so high, there are people undercutting them on the black market.
And he died.
He had a heart attack.
So, here is what this woman, Kaushana Kali, writes in the New York Times.
She says, other families could devote themselves to spending time together around tables piled with celebratory food.
But the Garners had to keep vigil around a hospital bed because Erica suffered a heart attack on Christmas Eve and spent most of the last week in a coma.
She died unfairly young at 27.
That's three years after her dad died unfairly young at 43 when Officer Daniel Pantaleo of the New York Police Department placed him in a banned chokehold.
So you'll, number one, have to ask why a woman would have a heart attack at 27, right?
And that's not the fault of the cops, right?
If you have a heart attack at 27, then that's because you either have a congenital heart situation or because you have a severe weight problem, which could also be congenital.
That leads to a heart disease, right?
Erica Garner had two kids.
If both she and her dad had been alive this holiday season, they would have almost certainly spent it together.
He was a family man, she said about him.
It's all very sad, obviously.
But here's where she starts to go off the rails this columnist.
She says, I don't know about millions.
I'd have to actually look up the statistics.
options to different owners.
Obviously true.
Millions of black family members were killed during slavery and the lynching era from 1877 to 1950.
I don't know about millions.
I'd have to actually look up the statistics.
I don't think that certainly millions of people were not lynched That's a wild exaggeration in terms of lynching itself.
In terms of black family members who died, I mean, I assume that that's millions.
Black defendants often receive far longer sentences than similarly situated white defendants.
So the idea here is that black families are being destroyed by the constant ongoing oppression.
This was true during slavery, not as true during Jim Crow, because even under Jim Crow, families could live together.
I mean, once you are free to marry, then it is your responsibility to stay with your kids.
The fact is that the black single motherhood rate in 1960 was 20%.
Today it's 70%.
How is that the fault of American government, per se, other than a welfare system that incentivizes men not to stick around and incentivizes women not to get married before having babies?
It's difficult for me to imagine how you can blame slavery for an elevation, a 350% elevation in the black single motherhood rate since the advent of the civil rights movement, essentially.
It's a very weird contention.
But the idea here is that it's all the fault of the system, that black families are disproportionately affected by child protection systems.
I haven't seen the evidence for that.
She concludes by suggesting, if there is no sin in killing Eric Garner, no crime, then black families like the Garners can be destroyed without anyone having to answer for it.
Now, we can go over the Garner case again, but the idea that most black families are being destroyed by the system is just not true.
Most black families are not in place in the first place in the sense of a mother and father who are married having kids.
Most black families are not made like that.
It's not like they're married couples and then they're being broken up by the state as it was the case during slavery.
That's not what's happening here.
And to pretend otherwise is just to be non-factual.
Speaking of non-factual, there are a lot of people who are talking this week about the new statistics out from New York City where murders are down again and the crime levels are really low, and they're suggesting that this is because of the end of Stop and Frisk.
That Stop and Frisk, it turns out, didn't do anything.
I find the evidence on this strangely weird.
You can't use New York City as the only evidence of proactive policing.
Proactive policing has stopped in places like Ferguson and Baltimore.
The crime rate has risen dramatically.
Proactive policing has stopped in Los Angeles and Detroit.
The crime rate has risen dramatically.
In New York City, one of the reasons the crime rate has not risen dramatically is because stop-and-frisk was so I mean, New York City coined this stuff.
And now you're seeing the kind of trailing effect.
Heather MacDonald has a very good piece.
You should go over and check it out at City Journal, all about what's happened demographically in the city of New York.
And what she basically says is that the areas that were responsible for super high crime in New York have largely become gentrified as a result of good policing.
And so you're now seeing the evolutionary overhang of good crime policies.
And if you continue to have bad crime policies eventually, then you will see a breakdown again.
But you won't see it in those gentrified areas.
You'll see it in areas that are not as gentrified.
Okay.
Quick final thing, we'll deconstruct the culture very briefly.
So, Justin Timberlake has a new video out.
As you know, I love Justin Timberlake.
I don't know anything about Justin Timberlake.
Except that he grabs Janet Jackson's boob occasionally.
In any case, Justin Timberlake has cut a new video.
The part that I find noteworthy about this is that the left is going crazy about this music video and I really don't see why.
So here it is.
It's produced by Pharrell.
And his wife, Jessica Biel, is there in a voiceover.
So here is the trailer for his album, Man of the Woods.
This album is really inspired by my son, my wife, my family, but more so than any other album I've ever written, where I'm from.
and it's personal.
Justin Timberlake loves nature, man.
It's a river.
It's fire.
There's like mountains, trees, campfires, wheat, corn.
We're the best at corn.
Okay, so in any case...
And the reason that this is noteworthy is because, first of all, Justin Timberlake is from Tennessee.
He is from Tennessee.
So people treat him like, oh, look at this city boy going and acting like he likes all the nature and such.
He is from Memphis, Tennessee.
He grew up in Shelby Forest, which is a small community between Memphis and Millington.
I know this because of Dr. Wikipedia.
So this idea that he has no connection with the country is just silly.
But there are a bunch of people who are pissed about it.
There's an article in an outlet called The Outline where they say Justin Timberlake is rebranding as a white man because he's embracing his authentic roots.
Rebranding as a white man?
Was he ever black?
Did I miss that part?
Because I'm pretty aware that everybody knew that he was white for his entire life because he's white.
But is it rebranding as a white man to go back to where you're from?
I mean, he's from Memphis.
I just, I don't understand this.
But again, the race baiting is so thorough here that if you are, if you're a guy who wears a cowboy hat, you want to talk about kind of cultural, cultural discrimination.
If you're a guy, a white guy who wears a cowboy hat or boots in a place with a bush, Then all of a sudden you are considered a hick who hates black people.
I mean, that's basically what the outline is trying to say here.
This is literally what they say.
I have to read this because it's insane.
They say, What now?
Like, huh?
for Timberlake's new album, Man of the Woods, present the former NSYNC heartthrob looking pensive in various natural settings, hitting every note of the white man finding himself in the empty West trope that has long been part of America's romantic, fictional past.
What now?
Like, huh?
This is white colonialist fantasies aside.
There's something very familiar about this pivot in Timberlake's style.
White colonialist fantasy?
He's literally standing on a rock.
I don't see his slaves.
I don't see him fighting with Native Americans.
Pocahontas is nowhere to be found.
But the insane race consciousness here?
is just beyond.
So what they're saying is that Timberlake has a long history with hip-hop and R&B, genres invented and dominated by black people.
And to be clear, without African-Americans there would be no rock or country music as we know it either.
But I digress.
So he moved from quote-unquote black culture, but now he's pandering to white America.
Or maybe he just wants to do an album about where he's from.
Is that possible?
Okay, what if I just like jazz?
I like jazz, not because it was invented by black people, but because classic jazz is great stuff.
What if I like country music?
Because I'm Jewish, I have no connection, I have no root connection to any of these musics, probably more to jazz than I do to country music.
But this notion that everything has to be broken down by sort of cultural stereotype, it just demonstrates the intersectional stupidity of so many people who are commentators on our culture.
I don't see what Justin Timberlake is doing wrong by standing in a jacket in a forest.
The forests belong to us all.
Okay, enough.
Enough.
Okay, so, we will be back here tomorrow with much, much more, because there's always news breaking, and I assume President Trump will have access to his Twitter, so we'll have a lot to talk about.
I'm Ben Shapiro.
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