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Jan. 19, 2018 - The Ben Shapiro Show
47:40
The Fusion GPS Scandal | Ep. 457
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Is the Fusion GPS scandal about to blow up?
Plus, Democrats shut down the government, but the media are about to blame Republicans.
And we will check the mailbag.
So many things to do today.
I'm Ben Shapiro.
This is The Ben Shapiro Show.
By the way, I didn't even mention the fact that President Trump apparently, according to certain reports, asked a porn star if she could spank him with a magazine cover with his face on it.
So we'll have to talk about that as well.
That is the most Freudian thing.
I mean, that's so Freudian that somewhere Oedipus was like, I'm out, man.
I can't.
Electro was like, no, we're done.
But we'll get to all of that in just a second, why no one cares.
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All right.
So the big news over the evening, over the course of the evening, was that Republicans had called for the release of a particular memo.
So what exactly is this memo?
So according to Sarah Carter, who is a national security reporter, she says, quote, a review of a classified document outlining what is described as extensive Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act abuse was made available to House members Thursday, and the revelations could lead to the removal of senior officials in the FBI and Department of Justice, several sources with knowledge of the document stated. and the revelations could lead to the removal of senior So what happened is in the House Intelligence Committee, there was a vote to allow other members of the House to take a look at this four-page memo.
And Democrats are claiming the memo is selective evidence with regard specifically to the Russian dossier and Russian collusion.
Republicans are saying this memo blows the lid off the entire Russian collusion scandal.
Sources say the report is explosive.
They were stating they would not be surprised if it leads to the end of Robert Mueller's special counsel investigation into President Trump and his associates.
The House Intelligence Committee passed the motion along party lines Thursday to make the classified report alleging extensive FISA abuse related to the controversial dossier available to all House members.
The report apparently contains information regarding the dossier that alleges President Trump and members of his team colluded with the Russians in the 2016 presidential election.
Some members of the House viewed the document in a secure room on Thursday.
So, what is likely to be in the document?
Well, one of the big questions about how this entire collusion investigation got started at the FBI is that Fusion GPS was compiling an OPPO research file paid for by Democrats.
They funneled that to Obama's FBI.
Obama's FBI then took that and used it as an excuse to go get a FISA warrant against American citizen Carter Page.
So they didn't do it on their own recognizance, the FBI.
They didn't do it because they were hearing from great sources.
Basically, they got an op-ed research dump from Hillary Clinton's team at Fusion GPS, and then they used that as an excuse to go after Trump's team.
That is the allegation.
I'll explain in a second why I think there are at least two holes in this allegation that need to be filled.
In order for the entire Mueller investigation to fall apart.
But you can see the Republicans are really starting to push this hard.
So Matt Goetz is a Florida congressman and he said yesterday we need to quote-unquote release the memo.
They keep saying release the memo.
There's a hashtag that was trending, release the memo.
They say they want the memo released to the entire public.
That would really be up to the leadership of the House Intelligence Committee.
I'll explain in a second why I think that this argument is a little bit flawed.
Here's what Goetz had to say.
Well, Liz, the allegations contained in this important intelligence document go to the very foundations of our democracy, and they require an immediate release to the public, in my opinion.
Unfortunately, I cannot talk about the specific facts contained within this memo.
I can only share my observation that if the American people knew what was happening, if they saw the contents of this memo, A lot would become clear about the information that I've been talking about on television for the last several months, and so I am calling on our leadership to immediately hold a vote on the floor of the House to make public the key contents of this intelligence memo regarding the FBI, the Department of Justice, and President Trump.
Okay, Getz is not the only person saying this.
Also, Mark Meadows, a member of the House Freedom Caucus from North Carolina, he's saying much the same thing, that this memo is shocking and that it needs to be released.
I'm here to tell all of America tonight that I am shocked to read exactly what is taking place.
I would think that it would never happen in a country that loves freedom and democracy like this country.
It is time that we become transparent in all of this, and I am calling on our leadership to make this available so that all Americans can judge for themselves.
OK, so there he is, and this is what Republicans are trying to trot out, the essence being that this memo needs to be released.
Now, Democrats are pushing back, saying the memo is basically selectively put together by Devin Nunes on the House Intelligence Committee, the Republican congressman from California.
They're also suggesting, and I think this is where there are a couple of open—so here are the couple open questions.
I say that the narrative is basically from Republicans that a FISA warrant was issued against American citizen Carter Bage on the basis of OPPO research for political reasons.
I have two questions about this particular narrative, and I think both need to be answered.
The first is, let's say that all of this is true.
Let's say that the FBI began an investigation into Carter Page on the basis of Democratic oppo research.
And let's say that Barack Obama was behind all of that because he wanted to finish Donald Trump for the general election campaign.
He wanted to knock Trump out of the race, and he wanted Hillary Clinton to win.
Why didn't we hear anything about the Russian dossier until the election?
Right?
Why didn't we hear that?
Why wasn't it leaked?
Why was it that the FBI didn't make an announcement about it?
Right?
James Comey came out and made an announcement about Hillary being prosecuted, and then not prosecuted, and then prosecuted, and then not prosecuted.
But we never heard word one, really, about Russian collusion directly from the FBI during that entire debacle of an election.
So, if this was all just a setup, where Fusion GPS was working hand-in-glove with the FBI and Loretta Lynch's DOJ and the Obama administration, why is it that we didn't hear about the Russian dossier, really, until January of 2017?
So, that's question I have, number one.
Question I have, number two, is if the idea here is that the FISA warrants against Carter Page was gathered under false pretenses, that basically the FBI and the DOJ were working hand-in-glove with the Hillary campaign, there's one way we can find this out.
The president of the United States has the ability, as the head of the executive branch, to declassify any single document that he wants.
Why won't he just declassify the FISA application?
He could just declassify it.
He could just say, listen, FISA application demonstrates this whole thing is a bunch of nonsense.
I'm declassifying that application.
And it shows you that the FISA application was based on all of this democratic nonsense that was taken up and used by the Obama administration.
Why doesn't he just do that?
So, there are people like Sean Davis over at The Federalist.
He and I were debating this on Twitter this morning.
He was saying, well, then it would look like Trump was interfering in the investigation.
To which I say, everyone on the left already thinks Trump is interfering in the investigation.
I mean, this is half of what this is about.
Them thinking that he fired Comey to interfere with the investigation, or that he pressured Rod Rosenstein in order to interfere with the investigation.
So, I'm not going to lay it on Trump's tact.
I think that's not a good enough excuse.
I don't think that Trump is tactful, and he really doesn't want to look like he's interfering, and therefore he's not declassifying the memo.
Maybe that's what's happening, but at the very least, wouldn't you have somebody look at the actual FISA application and leak that to the press?
His administration is leaked for every other reason.
So why wouldn't you leak that?
So what that says to me is that it seems like there are people on both sides who want to hide some information.
It seems like there are Democrats who want to hide the fact that FISA applications and FISA warrants are very often gathered with bad info or that the length to which the FBI and DOJ go to investigate certain matters is a lot further than they will go to investigate other matters.
So it looks like Democrats don't want this memo to get out.
It looks like Republicans don't really want the FISA application to get out.
Because if the FISA application gets out, it puts an end, maybe, to all of the rumors about the FISA application being based on Hillary Clinton oppo research.
So those are my two questions about this particular narrative.
Narrative being that the dossier, the Russian dossier compiled by Carter Page, or compiled rather by Christopher Steele, the spy under the auspices of Glenn Simpson and Fusion GPS at the behest of Hillary Clinton, that that was used as the DOJ and FBI's excuse to go after Trump.
I think there are a couple of holes in that.
Now, is it quite possible that Fusion GPS is doing something corrupt here?
Is it quite possible that Fusion GPS was working with the FBI and DOJ?
Sure.
Of course that's possible.
And we have another story today that says that the Fusion GPS group was trying to leak, at Hillary's behest, all of the information in the dossier in the last weeks of the election in order to finish Trump.
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Okay, so, is it possible that the Russians were using Fusion GPS as a cutout to funnel bad information about Trump to the FBI or the DOJ?
Lee Smith has a very good piece in tablet.com basically suggesting this.
Earlier this week, Senator Dianne Feinstein released a partially redacted transcript of Glenn Simpson's August 22, 2017 hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee.
Maybe it's a coincidence that just last week, Simpson himself, co-founder of the Washington, D.C.-based strategic communications firm Fusion GPS, that assembled and distributed the now-notorious anti-Trump dossier, wrote a New York Times op-ed calling for Republican members of the committee to release his testimony.
Feinstein said at first she was pressured to release the document.
Now she says she wasn't, and her statement was misunderstood.
The whole fight over the Simpson transcript is just part of a broader fight about what exactly was in the dossier.
Was the dossier used to garner the FISA warrant against Carter Page in the first place?
And here's the problem, right?
Here's the problem.
Lee Smith gets to the root of it.
He says, if the FBI and the DOJ used a piece of opposition research paid for by a political campaign as evidence for a warrant to intercept the communications of a rival campaign, and the questions asked by congressional investigators suggest they did, We are now living in a very different America than the one that generations of civil libertarians and small government conservatives alike desire to maintain, and which large majorities in Congress have repeatedly voted for.
The DOJ, the FBI, perhaps the CIA, would be embroiled in a scandal likely to have long-lasting, sweeping consequences for intelligence collection, national security, and the safety and privacy of American citizens, to say nothing of how it will demoralize federal law enforcement, which will appear to be mired in partisanship and political corruption.
So that is the big question.
Right, that is the big question, is whether the FBI, the DOJ, the CIA, the Obama administration, are wiretapping Trump, supposedly, at the behest of Democrats, essentially.
So that is a big problem.
On the other side, there's a big problem, which is that there are a bunch of people who are still trying to track down a lot of the allegations that are in the Russian dossier, that are in the Christopher Steele collusion dossier.
Glenn Simpson, you know, the Democrats have voted to release the transcript of Glenn Simpson, the founder of Fusion GPS, which is the Apple research firm.
The House Intelligence Committee voted to release the transcript of Simpson's interview with them, and according to Business Insider, the House investigators' line of questioning touched upon subjects the Senate Judiciary Committee did not delve into.
Democrats basically tried to lay out a series of breadcrumbs for the media to follow, right?
What were you finding, Glenn Simpson?
And then Glenn Simpson would come out and say, well, what we were finding was financial impropriety, and kind of trying to hint at what it was that was in the dossier that was substantiated.
So, there's a lot going on in this whole story.
And there's even more going on now that we know, according to Powerline blog, that the House Intelligence Committee transcript shows that Glenn Simpson tried to leak all of the information in the Russian dossier to the press right before the election cycle, which is not surprising since the DNC was paying for the dossier in the first place.
The Fusion GPS apparently doesn't have much on Trump, but that said, they were trying to leak it before the election.
So there's a lot of dirty business going on here.
None of it has come out.
But there are two ways to solve this, right?
There are two ways to solve this.
One, the House can release all the information that it has.
They can vote to do that.
They can release not only the Glenn Simpson memo, the transcript, but also the memo that they're talking about releasing.
They should release it.
And number two, Trump himself can end this right now.
All he has to do is release that FISA application.
So I'm calling on President Trump.
Release the FISA application.
Let's find out what it was that caused the FBI to investigate Carter Page.
Because all the speculation, all the rumor mongering, all the suggestion by people on the right that Trump is just exercising propriety, That's not Trump's habit.
Okay?
Trump is not a guy who cares much about propriety.
And let's be real about this.
If Trump were to release that FISA application, if it were to say, Fusion GPS memo is the basis of the FISA application, it basically ends the Mueller investigation right then.
Right?
Basically, everybody on the right goes, okay, well then this was all set up from the very beginning.
And that's why Trump should do it.
OK, speaking of things Trump should do, Trump is actually handling this whole government shutdown relatively well.
So the government is going to shut down today.
It's going to shut down because Democrats believe that it is in their political interest to filibuster the continuing resolution to fund the government.
There's not a new budget on the table.
We're talking about a continuing resolution that funds the government for 30 more days as a sweetener, as an attempt to cudgel Democrats into voting for the continuing resolution.
Republicans are putting in there a six-year funding for CHIP, which is the Children's Health Insurance Program, as we discussed yesterday.
They also are not putting in there anything about DACA.
They want that to be a separate negotiation.
They want a negotiation with Democrats over what happens to the Dreamers.
They don't want that included in the continuing resolution.
Democrats are saying, we will not vote for anything unless it includes basically amnesty for 800,000 people who already have gotten these passes basically from the Obama administration because they were here through no fault of their own when they were minors, and now they're between the ages of 16 and 30, and have lived in the United States since the time they were children.
That is what the Democrats want.
And so now they're actually willing to hold up all funding for the government in order to get what are essentially green cards for illegal immigrants.
And Trump is right.
Trump came out yesterday and said, listen, Democrats want a shutdown.
They want a shutdown because they want to change the subject from the fact that the tax cuts are working really well, from the fact that things are going relatively well on the foreign policy front.
They want the government shutdown.
There's no question the Democrats do want the government shutdown, by the way.
Because Republicans... Here's the funny part.
If Democrats didn't want the government shutdown, all they have to do is shut up.
Really, that's all they have to do.
The reason being that Republicans don't even have a majority in the Senate to vote in favor of continuing resolution.
So right now, Republicans have 51 votes as soon as the Alabama seat flips.
I think he was sworn in, so I guess they have 51 votes in the Senate now.
Republicans have 51 votes in the Senate.
They actually don't have 51 votes for the continuing resolution.
So all Democrats would have to do is say, listen, it's on the Republicans.
Whatever they pass, it's on them.
Right?
We're not going to be complicit in passing anything Trump does.
You know this.
So it's on the Republicans to pass their own stuff.
The problem is Democrats are openly stating that they want to filibuster the continuing resolution.
So if every Republican voted for the continuing resolution in the Senate, they had 51 votes, that's still not enough because you need 60 votes to break a filibuster.
And there is no reconciliation process when it comes to continuing resolutions.
The reason that you could pass the tax cuts with 51 votes is because there's a process that we've discussed often on the show.
The process is that you go to the Senate Rules Committee, basically, there's a Senate Rules Arbiter, and you say to them, we want to pass a law that does not increase the federal deficit and only changes current federal law.
And that we can do with 51 votes.
And then the arbitrator essentially rules, the Senate rules guy rules that that's okay and you can pass with 51.
That's not the way it works with the continuing resolution, which inevitably increases the deficit.
That's what it's there to do.
Right?
It is literally there to pay off a deficit that already exists.
That's what continuing resolutions are for.
It's to pay off obligations that have already been accrued.
and incurred.
So the idea that Democrats are openly filibustering a bill that they don't even have to demonstrates that they actually want the government shutdown.
They want to be blamed for the government shutdown.
They think they are winning on the public relations front when they shut down the government.
So we now have, this is the great irony, we now have the precise reverse of the situation in 2013.
In 2013, Ted Cruz, who did not have a majority in the Senate, led a government shutdown effort over Obamacare and Republicans They said, no, we're going to be blamed for this.
That would just be terrible.
Now, Democrats are leading a shutdown effort.
And the same people who are screaming at Republicans for leading a shutdown effort in 2013 are saying that a shutdown effort would be awesome.
They're now saying it would be great.
So here's Trump saying Democrats want a shutdown.
I really believe the Democrats want a shutdown to get off the subject of the tax cuts because they've worked so well.
Nobody thought, including the Democrats, it could work this well.
They've been so good that I think the Democrats would like to see us shut down in order to get off that subject.
That is not a good subject for them, the tax cuts, because of the way they've worked.
OK, and he is exactly correct about this.
Paul Ryan is using this as a club to beat Democrats, saying, listen, they won't even vote to fund the military.
They won't vote to fund children's health insurance.
They're garbage.
I mean, this is Paul Ryan's case.
Senator Schumer, do not shut down the federal government.
Do not jeopardize funding for our military and for our national security.
Do not jeopardize funding for the Children's Health Insurance Program.
It is risky.
It is reckless.
And it is wrong.
This is a strategy that Senator Schumer himself has called governmental chaos.
We sincerely hope, we sincerely hope, that cooler heads will prevail.
Okay, so, you know, this is exactly—it's so funny watching this now happen in reverse, and it is happening in reverse.
This is exactly what Democrats were saying in 2013, except they were also calling Republicans terrorists.
Mitch McConnell doing the same thing, saying Democrats are shutting down the government over illegal immigration.
Good luck with that one.
So what our friends on the other side are saying here is they're prepared to shut down the government over the issue of illegal immigration.
Now on that issue, there's a bipartisan interest in solving the DACA problem, but the president has given us until March.
Last time I looked, this was January.
My colleagues, where is the urgency here?
OK, so I do love the role reversal that's happening here.
Mitch McConnell then crawled back into his shell and sunk back to the bottom of the pond.
But it is amazing to watch how the political winds shift this quickly.
And in just a second, I'm going to show you how quickly they shift.
I'm going to play you some audio of Democrats demonstrating just how well they have reversed themselves on all this.
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Okay, so...
Speaking of absolute irresponsibility, so Chuck Schumer, the Senate minority leader who's leading this filibuster fight, let's flashback all the way back to 2013.
I know, we have to go back a really long way.
This is all five years ago.
Chuck Schumer, like pretty much this date in 2013, was going around suggesting that anyone who shut down the government over an ancillary issue is doing so for their own political purposes.
And listen, what about us Democrats?
What if we Democrats had shut down the government over like illegal immigration?
Wouldn't people go crazy?
He literally said this in 2013.
Persuaded my caucus to say I'm going to shut the government down.
I'm going to not pay our bills unless I get my way.
It's a politics of idiocy, of confrontation, of paralysis.
Idiocy, confrontation, and paralysis.
He actually did spell out in another one of these interviews, he actually did spell out, he said, listen, I could have shut down the government over immigration reform, but I'd never do that.
Now it's 2018.
Fast forward to 2018 and here we are.
It's just, it is an amazing, amazing thing.
So, who's gonna get blamed for this, right?
How is the political fallout gonna play?
Here's the truth.
I don't think people care about government shutdowns.
I don't think they cared in 2013.
I don't think they care in 2018.
I think the press cares.
I think people in Washington, D.C.
care because their livelihood goes away.
I think a bunch of people in Washington, D.C.
who cannot function if the government doesn't function, like, listen, I have a happy life.
If the government starts functioning the way that I want it to and it stops being a big deal in my life, I'll just talk about other stuff.
I'll just talk about the culture, which I prefer to talk about anyway.
I'll sit here and I'll talk about Plato and Aristotle and Aquinas.
I'll do all those things.
It'll be great.
Our listenership may not be as high, but it'll be awesome.
Okay, I'm happy to do all of those things.
But if you're in Washington, D.C., if you are the political press and you spend all day covering the minutiae of all the crap that our politicians do, and then the threat is, ooh, the government's gonna shut down, ooh, we're all gonna die, then this is a big deal to you.
Is this a deal?
Is this a big deal to some guy in Idaho?
Is it a big deal to you?
Okay, here's the reality.
Like 90% of all government function continues during a government shutdown.
You're still going to get your social security checks.
Nothing actually stops.
The military continues to function.
If a government shutdown continues entirely, then at some point the Congress can shift funding around that's already available.
They can make cuts.
I'm all in favor of government shutdowns.
I really have no problem with government shutdowns.
The government spends $4 trillion a year.
It seems to me that a little shutdown wouldn't be the end of the world.
It would be us canceling their credit card for a month or two.
I don't think that's the worst thing that could possibly happen.
But everybody in the political press thinks it's the worst thing that's going to happen.
They think for some reason that if we do a government shutdown and we don't fund continuing payment of our debt, that people are going to sell our debt on the open market.
It's going to crush our credit rating.
Really, where are those dollars going to rush?
Are they going to go invest in Italy?
You want to go invest in the euro?
That's not going to happen.
Because everybody knows the government shutdown is going to end.
So this is why both parties are sort of sanguine.
They're acting as though it's the end of the world.
But both parties are kind of sanguine about the government shutdown itself.
So how will it pay off politically?
You know, the Democrats will blame the Republicans.
The Republicans will blame the Democrats.
People in the middle will probably blame the Democrats because they'll say the Democrats are shutting down the government over illegal immigration.
Then they'll cut some sort of deal next week and we'll all be done and that'll be the end of it.
Republicans didn't lose seats in 2014.
They gained seats in 2014 after the government shutdown.
So this idea that government shutdowns inevitably hurt the party perceived to have been responsible for the shutdown, obviously is untrue.
The only reason to talk about this is to demonstrate the hypocrisy of the Democrats.
Because in reality, do I think this is going anywhere?
No, I don't.
I think that in the end, the Democrats will come around, Republicans will toss them some sort of bone.
It won't be DACA, but it'll be something else.
Or they'll cut a DACA deal, a last-minute DACA deal, and they'll say, OK, a little bit more border security, they'll go back to the original Lindsey Graham plan, or something slightly more lucrative than that.
Democrats don't want this thing continuing out for a full month.
And neither do Republicans.
So that means that this thing will be over inside a week, I think.
I think the chances that this thing continues very long are low, to my great chagrin.
I prefer that it continue forever.
Federal government shutdown sounds awesome to me.
Like, except for military function, I don't think the government should be doing nearly anything it's currently doing.
OK.
Now, on the immigration topic.
There's something that's been happening on immigration.
It's really nasty and it's really negative and it ties into how conservatives portray their position on immigration.
There are two really conservative positions on immigration.
Position number one is the sort of libertarian position on immigration.
This is my position.
My position is that people should be allowed to work wherever they want.
If they want to come into the United States to work and not take welfare, I am fine with that.
If people want to come in and become citizens and we don't actually have a welfare system, I'm fine with that.
But if you just want to come here and work and not vote and not take public benefits, I don't care.
That's cool.
It prevents corporations from outsourcing to foreign shores.
Because that's the reality.
When you increase the price of labor here in the United States, corporations start doing labor elsewhere.
They start purchasing their labor in China or India or Mexico.
So my position is very libertarian on immigration, but it is not libertarian when it comes to the idea of people who become citizens and what their culture is, since we now have a very big government and we have a government that has essentially no constitutional boundaries anymore.
The government can spend whatever it wants.
It can force you to buy whatever it wants.
That being the case, who we allow into the country does matter, and that's why we should, I think, pretty stringently screen for ideology and philosophy and skills.
I think that that would be a worthwhile thing.
That is position number one.
The libertarian, but I would say border security strong position.
Then there is position number two.
This is sort of the Jeff Sessions, Donald Trump position, and that is that bringing in foreign labor is Allowing an undercutting of the American workforce, that we have to protect American citizens from the predations of people who want to come here and work for less money, that you're born in America, therefore you deserve a job, and the idea is that we'll artificially boost the price of labor by preventing immigration into the country.
So, let's make immigration solely based on skills, or if it is solely based on—if it's not solely based on skills, then we should shut down immigration altogether.
Now, both of these arguments can be made without reference to race, ethnicity.
Both of these arguments can be made without reference to country of origin.
You can make the strict immigration argument without reference to country of origin.
You can just say, whoever's qualified gets in.
You can make the libertarian argument, certainly, without government of origin or country of origin.
You can just say, whoever wants to come in can come in, so long as they're not taking my money.
Both of these arguments can fairly, and I think should fairly, be made on the basis of non-bigotry, non-discrimination on the basis of place of origin.
Unfortunately, there is a tendency on the right to shift into some rhetoric that borders on the bigoted.
And I think that, obviously, the bleephole comments that Trump made a week and a half ago are indicative of the ease with which some people move into this space.
Tucker Carlson, on his show last night, he dropped a question that I thought was Particularly inappropriate, and I don't think actually a good question.
I like Tucker a lot.
I think Tucker does a really good show.
He's super talented, but his perspective on immigration does a disservice, I think, to conservatives on immigration.
How many big tech companies were started by people from Central and South America, Latin America?
So, right now, I'm sitting in Phoenix, Arizona, very close to a company called Fortis, who was—that was started by a gentleman from Panama.
It's one of our top engineering companies in this community.
And they actually are one of our largest employers of at-risk veterans.
Which is a wonderful success story.
I bet, I bet.
He's a great guy and the company's great, but how many big tech companies were started by the immigrants that you're talking about?
Okay, so Tucker didn't like the answer that he got there.
The woman actually gave a pretty good answer.
No one has that statistic, by the way.
If I asked Tucker how many people from Norway have started companies in the United States, Tucker wouldn't have that answer either.
If I asked him how many people from Britain have started great companies in the United States, he'd say, oh, I'll bet a lot.
He wouldn't have that number.
Nobody has that number.
Right, so the problem with what Tucker is saying there is, number one, very often it's the descendants of people from places of, you know, from bleephole countries, supposedly, who actually create a lot of these companies, right?
I created a company.
My great-grandparents came here in 1907.
My grandmother had a company.
But it wasn't my great-great-grandparents who really started those companies, right?
So this idea that it's only the first generation that matters is obviously not true.
I mean, I'm sure that Tucker's—I don't know Tucker's heritage, but I assume that at some point, somebody came over here.
His line did not begin in New York.
That being the case, that means that Tucker's success is due to the United States being relatively open to immigration, which it was for most of its history.
In a second, I'm going to discuss here another perspective that was on Tucker's show last night that also, I think, does a disservice.
Mark Stein was on Tucker's show last night, and here's what Mark Stein Had to say.
This comment is getting a lot of flack and I think rightly so.
Here's what Mark Stein had to say about the state of Arizona and DACA and illegal immigration and immigration more generally.
And in fact, to go back to what your Swedish guest was saying, you know, whatever the economic benefits, which are minimal and are not evenly distributed, the cultural transformation, which is what's happening in Sweden, other parts of Europe, and is what's happening in Arizona too, that's forever.
In Arizona, a majority of the grade school children now are Hispanic.
That means Arizona's future is as an Hispanic society.
That means, in effect, the border has moved north.
Okay, I don't even know what that means, the border has moved north.
All of those kids in Arizona who are actually born in the United States, or the ones who have legally immigrated, those are American citizens.
Why does it matter what color of their skin or their place of origin?
This sort of language does no service to those of us who've been fighting on behalf of a lot of the same policies that Mark Stein and Tucker Carlson want.
I think that we probably agree 90% on immigration.
But the idea that you can make these distinctions on the basis of ethnicity or place of origin as opposed to skill level, you're falling right into a trap the Democrats want to set.
And it betrays, I think, the cause of being an immigration hawk.
So I think that's a huge mistake.
OK.
So I want to talk about some things I like and some things I hate.
We'll get to the mailbag.
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All righty, time for a couple of quick things I like and then a couple of quick things that I hate.
Really, one thing that I hate.
Okay, first thing that I like.
So, if you missed it, earlier this week I did a Facebook Live with my personal trainer, Derek Gray.
Derek is a wonderful fellow, and Derek is 54 years old.
He looks like he's about 35, because he's in tremendous shape.
His story is really amazing.
He is the only male in his family in three generations to live past the age of 50.
because there's a heart problem that runs in his family.
He used to be in the stock business and he quit to become a personal trainer because he wanted to live basically.
He's written a book now, I wrote the foreword to it, called "How to Stop Being Lazy and Start Living Healthy." And it's all about kind of tips for nutrition and tips for fitness.
He also runs a personal training firm out of Los Angeles And if you want more information on that, I'll tweet out the link, or I'll put it out over at Facebook as well.
But his book, How to Stop Being Lazy and Start Living Healthy, is a fun read.
It sort of tells his story, and it's a good motivational read as well.
So Derek Gray, How to Stop Being Lazy and Start Living Healthy.
Check that out.
At some point, we're going to have to start actually posting videos of me working out with Derek.
I'm always concerned about looking solipsistic, about looking narcissistic.
But then again, everybody knows I'm a narcissist, so should I really care?
I mean, come on.
Anyway, I'll start putting up those videos as well, and you can see me work out with Derek, and you can see me do upside-down push-ups, and flip tires, and hit things, and climb walls using only my arms, etc.
It'll be amazing.
Okay.
Other things that, you know, let's go to a thing I hate.
We'll do one thing I hate, and then we'll do the mailbag.
So the media are going crazy today over stories about Stormy Daniels.
Stormy Daniels, of course, the porn star who had an affair with President Trump.
It does say something about our common culture that no one seems to care about this.
I talked for the last couple of days about why I think that is.
But one of the things that—there's an idea I want to talk about briefly that I think is very silly.
That is the idea where people say, well, maybe we never cared about it.
Maybe we never cared about it.
Maybe we never cared that people had an affair and we were just lying to ourselves.
Maybe politicians were always doing this stuff, like stooping porn stars on the side, and we just were willing to look the other way, but we never really cared about it.
You hear the same thing with regard to every social change, right?
When there's a social change in Britain, for example, with regard to toleration of Or the suggestion that transgender women are actually women.
And then the rate of transgenderism goes up significantly in places like Great Britain.
People say, well, maybe people were always transgender and they were just afraid to admit it.
Maybe it's only the common acceptance that's changed.
But people were always living like this.
They were just afraid to express themselves more fully.
The human mind is malleable.
People behave differently based on the society that they're in, and based on the social standards that are kept.
Maybe those social standards are good when they change.
To show how absurd the suggestion is that people always act the same and behave the same and are not changed by the society around them, look at the toleration for racism in the 1950s versus the toleration for racism today, and you can see that people's behavior has changed massively, how people think has changed massively.
The whole purpose of politics is to create a communal fabric in which we all live and that hopefully makes more people happy.
in consonance with freedom, obviously.
I think this foolish idea that the society has not degraded at all, that maybe we never cared about politicians having sex with porn stars.
No.
Bill Clinton changed the culture.
Donald Trump has changed the culture again.
We're moving in the wrong direction on all of this stuff.
And I don't care if you care whether Trump does it, but I think for a society, it is not good that we have decided that character considerations no longer matter when it comes to the people that we look up to and that we are now going to basically define deviance down and continue to define deviancy down.
Okay, time for the mailbag, so let's jump right in.
All right, Nicholas writes, Ben, what do you think the GOP needs to do to avoid getting clobbered this November?
Well, I mean, I think that passing some form of a border security bill would be very helpful.
I think that moving toward shoring up religious freedoms would be more—they need to do stuff.
The problem is right now they're not doing a lot of stuff.
So they did the tax cuts, and that is helpful.
But they're also going to need to avoid the taxicity of President Trump.
Trump is what's driving Democrats to the polls.
Not Paul Ryan, not Mitch McConnell.
Donald Trump is driving Democrats to the polls.
If he could get his Twitter under control, that would really help.
Seth does.
Hey, Ben.
My friend recently told me he was a feminist, so I thought he was crazy, as any normal conservative might think.
He then explained to me the definition of feminism just means equal rights for men and women.
He said these crazy new feminists have hijacked the term for their own cause.
So by the actual definition of feminism, aren't we all feminists?
Well, yes.
I mean, so there's first-wave feminism, second-wave feminism, and third-wave feminism.
First-wave feminism said women should be able to work in the workplace.
They should be able to vote.
Yes, of course.
We are all first-wave feminists.
Second-wave feminism suggested that marriage was patriarchal and bad, and that we had to set up social structures so that women didn't feel like they had to get married.
This was stupid.
Third-wave feminism goes even beyond that and suggests that men and women are essentially identical in every way, and any discrepancy between men and women can be explained by societal failures.
OK, that's that is pure nonsense.
So I would say that we are all at least first wave feminists.
I don't know that everybody is a second wave feminist.
And then obviously only the craziest people are third wave feminists.
So the OK, let's let's look on.
Nick says, Dear Ben, in your opinion, which is harder, becoming a licensed lawyer or a licensed doctor and why?
The answer is obviously a licensed doctor.
It is obviously a licensed doctor.
So being a licensed, I know this because Have I ever told you guys my wife's a doctor?
Have I ever said that?
Yeah, I feel like I've said that a few times before.
I am about my wife the same way that John Kasich is about his father being a mailman.
So, becoming a licensed lawyer requires you to go to school for three years.
The last two years of law school are basically a waste of time, and then you pass the bar, which in most states is not all that difficult.
Being a licensed doctor requires you to go to four years of college, four years of medical school, and three years of residency at minimum.
And then you have to take a bunch of board exams and you have to be re-licensed every 10 years.
It's very difficult to become a doctor.
So I believe that that book is not actually written by a vet of the Vietnam War.
I think that it's a fiction book that is written by... I've read the book.
Vietnam War.
So I believe that that book is not actually written by a vet of the Vietnam War.
I think that it's a fiction book that is written by—I've read the book—it's written by Tim O'Brien.
I don't believe that Tim O'Brien was actually a Vietnam vet.
I I think that he is just a fiction writer.
It is a very good book.
It's well worth reading.
In any case, it says, "It has brought up some good discussion questions about the justification of war, morals in a time of war, and so on.
I'm curious, what is your take on the Vietnam War?
Should we have been there?
Was it a war fought to preserve America's interests?" So, my take on the Vietnam War is, yes, we should have been there.
Yes, it was an attempt to protect America's interests.
The loss of the Vietnam War has been the single worst thing that has happened to foreign policy in America, in America's history, I would say, pretty solidly.
Not just because America, quote-unquote, lost the war, but because it made it almost impossible for America to, quote-unquote, win a war.
Because the idea was that Vietnam went on so long and drained so many resources that the idea of taking over a country until and occupying it until it had become civilized to Western ways of life, that fell off the table.
The Korean War ended in a stalemate, and at least we preserved the independence of South Korea, and South Korea is a fully westernized country, a modern Western economy, and a terrific place.
Vietnam completely falling, and America, and really being undermined from within by the American public, It demonstrated that Americans have no taste for anything resembling a transformation of a country.
Now, maybe we should never transform countries, but then we'd have to explain why we still have troops in Japan and Germany.
The reality is that Once everyone enters office, they all become quote-unquote neocons in the sense that they feel like, in order to prevent violence on America's shores or prevent the rise of America's enemies, we're going to have to use America's military might in ways that people had not considered.
Donald Trump has basically operated very much like George W. Bush on foreign policy, with a few exceptions.
Even Barack Obama was not a non-interventionist, obviously got involved in Libya, which I do think was not in America's best interest.
As someone who deeply believes in equality of opportunity, but not equality of outcome, how far do you think equality of opportunity should go?
Well, when I say equality of opportunity, I mean the rules have to be equal for everyone.
Equality of opportunity is not going to exist for everyone.
It just isn't, okay?
It doesn't from birth.
Some of us are smarter, some of us are dumber, some of us are taller, some of us are shorter.
I do not have an equal opportunity to play in the NBA, but there are no laws barring me from playing in the NBA.
Let's put it this way.
I think the government's job when it comes to equality of opportunity is to not pass laws that prevent people from rising.
When it comes to the rest of our duty in society, in informal society, our social bonds should help one another out.
This is why we have religious communities, where if a child's not being given opportunity, we give religious scholarships.
This happens all the time.
If you see somebody who's poor, we give private charity.
But once the government starts discriminating against one group in favor of another group, no matter what the group is, then you end up in a situation where equality of opportunity is not actually being provided by the government.
Equality of opportunity is being stifled by the government.
It takes two sides.
And this is, I think, the danger that's happening in American society.
There are people who believe that the government has to ensure equality.
And then there are the people who believe that the government does not have to ensure equality and that social fabric means nothing.
The social fabric means a huge amount.
The social fabric is deeply, deeply important.
And the fact that we've neglected the social fabric for so long is, I think, one of the reasons why we as a country are coming apart.
This is what I'm literally writing a book about right now.
I'll give you the tentative title a little bit later once we've actually released it.
But I think it'll be a really interesting book with some Fascinating historical and philosophical text.
Nicholas says, Hi, Ben.
Is regulation on business ever necessary?
Regulation on business is only necessary to the extent that regulations on individuals are necessary.
Regulations on torts, regulations on externalities, regulations on forced labor.
But in terms of regulating businesses so that they don't commit or so that they are prevented from, for example, participating in a business activity to which there are no externalities, no, I don't think that regulation is necessary.
When people say regulation on business, usually they mean We have to stop a business from acting in a way that does not even create externalities.
We have to knock down their profit margin, for example, or force them to collectively bargain with their employees.
That's a bunch of nonsense.
Taylor says, Dear Ben, I saw the California State Attorney General threaten criminal action against businesses that assist ICE in conducting enforcement raids.
Is there legal precedence for the state to criminally prosecute individuals or businesses assisting in the enforcement of federal law?
No, I mean, this is a blatant violation of the Supremacy Clause.
If there is a federal law and you are obeying the federal law and the state government tells you to disobey the federal law, this is a violation of the Constitution.
This is basic constitutional law.
The Constitution of the United States and federal law take precedence over state law, so long as state law is not acting within the purview of the Constitution or the federal government is not overreaching.
Braden says, Dear Ben, what exactly does it mean to be kosher?
Also, our leftist here is kosher.
So, leftists here should be kosher.
They are just water with salt in them, presumably.
I would prefer they be sterilized, obviously.
What it means to be kosher is that there's an entire lifestyle associated with being kosher.
Being kosher just means what you eat has to go through certain strictures.
So, animals have to be slaughtered in a certain way.
You can't eat meat and milk together.
You have to wait between when you eat meat and when you eat milk.
Some Jews wait an hour.
Orthodox Jews wait an hour.
Some Jews wait three.
Some wait six.
In my family, we wait three.
You have to go to restaurants that have mashkiach, meaning a rabbi has come in and taken a look to make sure that it's obeying all of the various dietary regulations.
Not all animals are kosher, so they have to have split hooves and chew their cud.
So cows are kosher, but pigs are not because they have split hooves but do not chew their cud.
Birds have to not be birds of prey.
Fish have to have scales and fins.
Those are sort of the basic rules.
All vegetables, all fruits are kosher.
And so our derivatives therefrom, so like jams and jellies, are kosher unless they've been made on non-kosher equipment, meaning that that equipment has been used for non-kosher products.
Craig says, Ben, I got all of your books as a Christmas gift and have been working my way through them.
I'm currently on bullies.
I can't help but wonder what was your favorite book to write and why?
My favorite book to write, the most enjoyable book to write, was probably Project President.
Project President was fun to write just because it's a bunch of historical research about kind of fun anecdotes about presidents.
So that was a kick.
I did enjoy writing bullies.
I think the least favorite book to write was Porn Generation simply because to immerse yourself in a world of disgustingness is not a pleasant activity for one's soul.
Moose says, "On campus today, I was handed a flyer with information about the on-campus socialist club.
I asked jokingly if it was a social group or if they wanted to be the next Venezuela as I continued toward my next class.
The girl cut me off.
Apparently I'm not as funny as I thought and she took offense to my joke and needed to let me know.
First of all, let me stop you there.
You probably are super funny.
Socialists don't have a sense of humor.
Okay?
Socialism basically outlaws humor.
The USSR was not known for its sense of humor.
She told me Venezuela isn't a socialist country and that true socialism has never been tried.
Aha!
Yes.
The famous true socialism has never been tried.
This is what we call the no true Scotsman fallacy in logic.
Right?
That if your theory doesn't work, you just say, wow, my theory has never really been tried.
Socialism has been tried in Soviet Russia.
It's been tried in China.
It's been tried in Venezuela.
It's been tried in North Korea.
It has not really been tried, at least in the traditional government owning the means of production sense in Europe, which is in many ways more capitalist than the United States when it comes to its business regulations.
Anyway, Moose Goose says, I shrugged and continued my walk.
I've been thinking about it all day.
Does Venezuela have a true socialist government?
Yes, I mean, it abides by all Marx dictates.
The state owns the means of production and then redistributes all the income therefrom.
Forrest, the only thing I disagree with you on is that suicidal mothers should be allowed abortions.
Couldn't this be abused as an excuse and even justify late-term abortions?
Thanks, Hebrew Hammer.
So, yes, but that's why I would be very careful about who you actually deem to be suicidal.
I think that should be a relatively strict process by which we determine Whether somebody is actually suicidal or whether they are faking it in order to do away with the baby.
Kristen says, "Hi Ben.
For a long time I thought direct democracy like that of Switzerland was the best way to legislate.
I've heard you criticize the model.
I was shocked when I saw the participation rates in votes have been around 45% in the last years.
Do you think this is a danger to Switzerland and is it inherent to all direct democracies?
What other issues are there with this kind of system?" Well, yes.
I mean, number one, the people who are most motivated to vote always vote, and those people end up controlling the society.
The number of people who are actually up on all the issues is really low, and it may work in small countries.
It works in your HOA, but it's not going to work the bigger you get.
The bigger you get as a republic, The more direct democracy doesn't seem to work particularly well, simply because people are not informed on the issue and they vote based on passion.
We talked about direct democracy versus the republic when we talked about Federalist number nine.
No, Federalist number 10 a couple of weeks ago here on the program.
So go back and listen to that episode.
I explicitly contrast direct democracy with the republic.
All right.
So we have now reached the end of today's mailbag.
Be here next week.
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