All Episodes
Previous Next
Jan. 26, 2018 - The Ben Shapiro Show
52:04
Mulling Over Mueller | Ep. 462
| Copy link to current segment

Time Text
So, did President Trump try to fire Robert Mueller, and if so, does it matter?
Plus, the Trump administration rolls out its big immigration plan, and people on both sides are unhappy, and we'll go to the mailbag.
I'm Ben Shapiro.
This is the Ben Shapiro Show.
All righty.
So here we are, and it's finally a Friday.
Time has moved so slowly that, let me remind you, the government shutdown ended on Monday.
Okay, blipolgate started 14 days ago.
We have now gone down to the water planet in Interstellar, where every hour is actually seven years of time, and we are stuck there because every day is at least 73 news cycles.
But the good news is that gives us a lot to talk about and we'll get to all of it first.
I want to say thank you to our sponsors over at Birchgold.
So, if things feel relatively uncertain, even with the economy as good as it is, the fact is that you need to diversify.
You need at least some of your money in precious metals.
Birchgold Group has a long-standing track record of continued success, thousands of satisfied clients, countless five-star reviews, an A-plus rating with the Better Business Bureau.
And if you contact Birchgold Group right now, you get a free information kit on physical precious metals.
It's a great hedge against inflation.
One of the reasons people are investing in Bitcoin is because they don't trust the government manipulation of the currency, while owning precious metals also hedges your bet against that sort of thing.
They will send you this comprehensive 16-page kit revealing how gold and silver can protect your savings, how you can legally move your IRA or 401k out of stocks and bonds and into a precious metals IRA.
To get that no-cost, no-obligation kit, go to www.birchgold.com slash ben.
That's birchgold.com slash ben.
Check it out.
birchgold.com slash ben.
And again, they're the people who I would trust.
Make sure you ask all your questions, make sure that you get all your answers, and then, when you're ready to invest in precious metals, birchgold.com slash ben, use that slash ben so that they know that we sent you.
Okay, so, the big breaking news of the day is, of course, this big New York Times report that back in June of 2017, President Trump tried to fire Robert Mueller.
So according—Mueller.
I looked it up.
It's now—it's Mueller.
Okay, I've been getting it wrong for months.
It's Mueller.
Okay, so Robert Mueller is, of course, the special investigator who was appointed in June 2017 after President Trump fired James Comey and then after he used Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein in the process of doing it, forcing Rosenstein to recuse himself in the Trump-Russia collusion investigation and turn the whole thing over to a special investigator.
Jeff Sessions did not protect Trump because he'd recused himself.
Rosenstein didn't protect Trump because he had to recuse himself because of the Comey firing.
And now it looks as though Mueller, as I've been saying for at least several weeks, is moving from collusion to obstruction.
Now, the problem with the obstruction of justice case is that in order to actually say that somebody has obstructed justice, you actually need to fulfill one of three laws.
And I've gone through the three laws a couple of times, explaining what exactly these three laws mean, because there are three different statutes.
Let's go through them again, because I think that we need to have this clear in our mind.
When people say that some sort of criminal activity went forward, or that Robert Mueller is going to get Trump, there's two ways to get Trump.
One is to hit him so hard politically the Democrats have a reason to impeach.
And the other is to actually suggest criminal obstruction of justice.
As I say, There are three types of obstruction of justice under the U.S.
law.
18 U.S.
Code 1503.
I'm going through this background again.
We did it a little earlier this week, but I think it's important.
The Omnibus Clause covers corruptly or by any threatening letter or communication influencing or impeding or endeavoring to influence, obstruct or impede the due administration of justice.
So the clause requires a pending judicial proceeding.
So that means that Trump would presume, like, an FBI investigation isn't enough.
It would be him trying to bribe a prosecutor or something.
The Supreme Court is pretty exacting on the application of the law.
The prosecutor would actually need to prove that Trump's conduct materially impeded the investigation.
Even James Comey said when he was fired afterward that Trump did not materially impede the investigation.
So if it is true that Trump tried to fire Robert Mueller, the special investigator, then that still is not materially impeding the investigation.
So this part of the code is probably not being fulfilled.
So there are a few questions about this.
So there are a few questions about this.
one, is an FBI investigation an official proceeding?
Two, you actually have to prove criminal intent.
You have to prove that Trump wanted to impede the investigation.
Now, this would be the area of the code where Trump would be in the most trouble.
But you also have to show that you took a substantial step toward the accomplishment of that goal, toward an accomplishment of an attempt to obstruct justice.
I'm not sure that that's fulfillable because, again, even if Trump wanted to fire Mueller, and even if you think that would constitute obstruction, he withdrew that.
He didn't actually fire Mueller.
And when he fired Comey, he had every right to do that.
You can fire your FBI director for any reason whatsoever.
So the idea that that is technical obstruction of justice is pretty weak.
It would be very difficult to convict Trump in a court of law, but in the court of public opinion, there is a different problem, right?
So here is the story from the New York Times.
With all that in mind, with the fact that there is a section of the U.S.
Code that theoretically might be applied against Trump, maybe, although you'd have to explain why it is that he doesn't have the executive authority just to fire Fire Mueller or fire Comey for any reason at all.
Obstruction of justice, by the way, by a president would look not like him firing somebody and then letting the investigation continue.
It would look more like him going to Robert Mueller and saying, you will find me innocent or I will fire you.
Right?
Those are the two choices.
You will find me innocent or I will fire you.
That would be obstruction of justice.
For him just to say, I don't like this investigation.
It bothers me.
You're fired.
Not quite sure that that is obstruction of justice, particularly if the investigation continues afterward.
Anyway, the New York Times broke this story.
So they say, back in June 2017, as it became clear that special counsel Robert Mueller was looking for a pattern of possible obstruction of justice in Trump's behavior, Trump ordered Mueller fired.
He only retracted the order when White House counsel Don McGahn threatened to quit.
So according to the Times report, Trump said that Mueller had a bunch of different conflicts of interest.
And you can tell that this report is probably true because of what Trump said was the conflict of interest.
That is not a conflict of interest.
Trump was that Mueller had resigned his membership at the Trump National Golf Club in Sterling, Virginia, years ago over a dispute over membership fees.
That is not a conflict of interest.
Again, that's silly.
Second, Trump said Mueller could not be impartial because his law firm had represented Trump's son-in-law, Jared Kushner.
Again, that is not really a thing, right?
Law firms represent lots of people.
If Mueller didn't work on that case, it probably wouldn't matter.
Plus, if you're talking conflicts of interest, Trump was interviewing Mueller as a possible FBI director before Mueller took the special counsel job.
Finally, Trump said Mueller had been up for the FBI director position before he was appointed special counsel.
It's unclear why that would actually be a conflict of interest.
OK, fine.
So the Times reports, after receiving the president's order to fire Mueller, the White House counsel, Don McGahn, refused to ask the Justice Department to dismiss the special counsel, saying he would quit instead.
They spoke on the condition of anonymity because they did not want to be identified.
Discussing a continued investigation, McGahn disagreed with the president's case and told senior White House officials that firing Mueller would have a catastrophic effect on Mr. Trump's presidency.
Mr. McGahn also told White House officials that Mr. Trump would not follow through on the dismissal on his own.
The president then backed off.
That, of course, was true.
Trump has been threatening to fire Sessions for over a year, has not fired him.
Trump has been threatening to fire—he's threatened to fire McGahn before.
He's threatened to fire everybody.
But the truth is that Trump really doesn't fire anyone.
Mike Flynn resigned.
He wasn't actually fired.
So why does this matter?
Number one, it's not what the left cracks it up to be.
So he didn't actually fire Mueller.
If he had fired Mueller, then we'd be talking about obstruction of justice.
It would look like the Saturday Night Massacre.
The Saturday Night Massacre going all the way back to 1973 with Watergate is when there was a special investigator, Archibald Cox, who was called in to look at Watergate.
And Trump asked his attorney general to fire Archibald Cox.
The Attorney General refused, and so Trump fired the Attorney General.
Sorry, Nixon, yes.
This would be Nixon back in 1973.
So, here is the... So, obviously, that's not happening here.
He didn't fire Mueller.
He didn't fire his Attorney General.
He didn't fire Rosenstein.
He didn't fire Sessions.
He hasn't fired anybody, right?
But here's what Mueller is going to do.
He's going to put together the following facts, and he's going to say, or he could say, that this is an attempt to obstruct justice, that Trump is attempting to skew the investigation.
So, here are all the things Trump has done.
And they're equally explicable by stupidity.
As always, I tend to believe the Trump is being an idiot, not Trump is being nefarious story, because I think that mostly Trump is being an idiot, not nefarious.
So, here are all the things Trump has done.
First, he fired National Security Advisor Mike Flynn.
Trump implied that that was prompted by Flynn lying to the FBI.
Then, he reportedly asked FBI Director Comey to lay off of Flynn.
Now, if he asked him to lay off of Flynn knowing that he had already lied to the FBI, is that obstruction of justice?
Not clearly, because he obviously didn't take any measures against Comey from February all the way until May, right?
And Comey continued to offer Flynn.
The president then fired Comey and acknowledged publicly it had to do with the Russia investigation.
But he was saying at the time that it wasn't because he wanted to stop the investigation.
It's because he is innocent and Comey wouldn't say openly that he was innocent.
OK, the president then had a continuous stream of invective against Attorney General Jeff Sessions for accusing himself on Russia again.
Is that obstruction of justice?
Not really.
The president attacked Deputy Attorney General Rosenstein, attacked Deputy FBI Director Andrew McCabe, and now the president's apparent attempt to fire Mueller.
Now, none of this amounts to legal obstruction, probably.
As I say, and as Alan Dershowitz has said, the president is the head of the executive branch.
The investigation has not been quieted in any way.
So whatever attempts were happening, it's hard to prove attempt when there was no actual impeding of the investigation.
So that is point number one when it comes to this Mueller stuff.
But it's going to be used as the left as evidence that Trump actually wanted to shut down the investigation, and then he wasn't able to do it.
And then he failed in doing so.
But if he had had his druthers, he would have.
That's going to be part of this broader suggestion by the left that Trump is trying to obstruct justice, even if there's no hard proof that Trump is trying to obstruct justice.
And the more plausible case is that Trump is just pissed these people won't say he's innocent, and so he's mouthing off a lot, which I've been saying for months is my read on the situation.
OK, so in just a second, I'm going to explain another scandal that is afoot.
And that, of course, has to do with the FBI's treatment of Hillary Clinton.
But first, I want to say thank you to our sponsors over at zeal.com.
If you are interested in getting a massage, you're stressed out, it's been a long week, it's been a while since the holidays, and now you just need a massage, this is the great thing about Zeal.
So, Zeal is the perfect solution for anyone who wants a high-quality massage in the convenience of their own home.
You don't have to go to the spa, you don't have to schedule weeks in advance, you can just literally go on their app and order a licensed masseuse to come to your house, and you can choose style, you can choose the gender of the masseuse, and then the person comes to your house with the table, With the oils, with the music, they turn your house into a spa.
It makes a great Valentine's Day gift, makes a great gift generally.
It's pretty amazing.
So to help you get started, our listeners can get $25 off their first massage by using the promo code BEN at checkout.
And it gets even better.
If you sign up for Zeal's Massage Membership, you get 20% off all your massages, plus a free massage table and sheet set, a $380 value, yours free.
There's no initiation fee to join the membership, just a great additional savings on top of the $25 discount you're going to get.
When you use promo code Ben.
So go to Zeel.com or on Zeel's iPhone or Android app and then make sure to click add promo code at checkout to use my code Ben and get that $25 off your first in-home on-demand massage.
And as I say, it is a fantastic, fantastic gift.
I've given it to my wife, to my mother-in-law, to my mom, to my dad, to my sister.
So I've given it to pretty much everybody in the family and I've used it myself.
7 days a week, 365 days a year.
Zeel Massage Therapist can be at your door.
It's just fantastic.
Zeel.com.
Make sure you use that promo code Bennett check and get 25 bucks off your first in-home on-demand massage.
Okay, so With all of the Mueller stuff Blowing up the internet with all the Mueller stuff blowing up the the the TV and blowing up the New York Times and blowing up all the media Oh my god, he thought about doing something.
They didn't do it, which again seems not supremely scandalous to me There is something that is supremely scandalous.
There are new texts between those anti-Trump FBI agents.
And one of the reasons that people don't trust the FBI, they don't trust the intel community on Trump, is because of this sort of stuff.
On Thursday night, Senator Chuck Grassley released seven pages of texts between FBI counterintelligence agent Peter Strzok and his FBI paramour Lisa Page.
Those texts Show that both Strzok and Page were interested in letting Hillary Clinton off the hook so as to earn the FBI's goodwill with the presumed next president.
So here's what the actual text said.
Page wrote to Strzok on February 25, 2016.
2016, this is before the interview with Hillary Clinton, quote, "One more thing.
She might be our next president.
The last thing you need us going in there loaded for bear.
You think she's going to remember or care that it was more DOJ than FBI?
The obvious implication, go easy on Hillary.
She might be the president, and then she might get angry at the FBI for having interviewed her in nasty fashion.
And Strzok wrote back, agreed.
I called the FBI counterintelligence head, Bill Priestap, and relayed what we discussed.
He agrees.
I will email you.
And redacted.
And someone else whose name is redacted.
Another one of the texts, from Page to Strzok, suggested that then-FBI Chief of Staff James Rybicki thought that the FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe, who is still on the job, should recuse himself from the Clinton matter because of his wife's relationship with Virginia Governor Terry McAuliffe.
Right?
McCabe has recused himself.
Has he recused himself?
He eventually did.
He recused himself from the Clinton stuff like a week before the election, but he should have done it months before.
Apparently, Page wrote, quote, So Grassley wrote a letter to the FBI's current director, Christopher Wray, quote, So all this is really damning stuff.
should be recused because of the perception.
So Grassley wrote a letter to the FBI's current director, Christopher Wray, quote, "In October 2015, "then-director Comey said, 'If you know my folks, "they don't give a rip about politics.' "They cared very much about politics to the detriment "of the Bureau's mission and objectivity." So all this is really damning stuff.
For all the talk about how the FBI is crystal clear, transparent, absolutely clean, for all of the talk about that, that is just not the case.
It's just not the case.
Now, does that mean that there's an FBI deep state coup to take down Trump?
No, the evidence isn't all there of that.
Especially because there isn't a countervailing text message from Strzok to Page saying he didn't want to be staffed on the Mueller investigation because he thought there was no there there.
I think that Chris Wallace is basically correct when he says that we're not there on the deep state coup.
Here's what Wallace said on Fox News.
Apparently, here is the Inspector General.
We only found out about this in the last week, and the Inspector General was able to come up with it.
So, again, look, there's a lot of things that are troubling.
There are a lot of questions to ask.
I fully agree that we need to pursue all of this.
I'm not sure that talking about deep state coups against the President, or corruption at the highest levels of the FBI, I'm not quite sure we're there yet.
Okay, and I think that's probably correct.
That's why I've been saying, just wait.
Just wait.
You know, hold it in abeyance.
There will be evidence that comes out on some of this stuff, but every time everybody jumps ahead of the story, it comes back to bite them, right?
Ron Johnson being the case in point, the senator from Wisconsin who had been talking about a secret society inside the FBI, and then yesterday he had to admit that maybe the secret society stuff was just a joke.
Senator, this text message seems to be a comment about secret society was unjust.
Do you agree that it appears to be it was unjust?
It's a real possibility.
Thank y'all.
Okay, so that seems to be a big step down from the notion that we were all going to find out that there was this big deep state coup happening against the Trump administration.
And now, with all that said, there's a way to jump in the other direction too.
So Shep Smith over on Fox News, who's made a bit of a cottage industry lately in quote-unquote debunking his other Fox News colleagues, He's very upset about the Devin Nunes memo.
So, you remember, Devin Nunes is the head of the House Intelligence Committee, and he wrote up a four-page memo talking about improprieties inside the intelligence agencies that he thinks discredit a lot of what's happening in the Trump-Russia collusion investigation.
Now, that memo's been made available to all the members of the House.
Democrats are saying it's a politically driven memo.
Republicans are saying that it's pretty damning.
The DOJ is saying that He hasn't even looked at the underlying classified documents, but they want to redact it before it's released.
Andy McCarthy, over at National Review, has been really good on all of this scandal-driven stuff.
He has a very good piece over at National Review talking about the Nunes memo and basically saying, listen, there's nothing inherently wrong with Devin Nunes writing a memo.
Maybe it's partisan, maybe it's not.
That's why it's good for the American public to see it.
And as for the notion that the DOJ hasn't gotten to review it and they're very upset about it, in order for this memo to be declassified, the President of the United States first has to sign off on it.
There's like a five-day delay mechanism specifically to allow the President to allow the DOJ to take a look at it, and then Trump can veto any attempt to declassify this material.
So it really isn't quite as corrupt as some people are making it out to be the memo.
Now it may turn out that it's just Newton's attempt to distract from the Trump-Russia collusion This memo, from which there—if there is a basis for it to be released, the Trump administration and its people could have done that.
They've asked to see it.
He won't even let them see it.
People are jumping to conclusions.
Here's Shep Smith jumping to some conclusions.
This memo from which there, if there is a basis for it to be released, the Trump administration and its people could have done that.
They've asked to see it.
He won't even let them see it.
It seems to be a classic weapon of mass distraction.
Okay.
And of course the left was cheering this weapon of mass distraction.
His own friends are going around talking about how this is a weapon, about how the memo is, Shep Smith's own friends at Fox News are talking about how the memo is the end of the world, and here's Shep Smith debunking them.
What a hero.
You know, I think everybody's jumping to conclusions a little bit too quickly.
Okay, in other news.
The economy continues to boom.
Story after story about companies offering bonuses, wage increases.
So in breaking news in literally the last couple of minutes, FedEx has now announced $3.2 billion in wage increases and bonuses.
This follows Starbucks announcing raises.
It's just Armageddon all over the place.
Remember, Nancy Pelosi said all of this was crumbs.
The Democrats continue to maintain that this was all the end of the world, that everyone was going to die from the tax cuts, and it turns out everything is going fine.
It turns out that the economy is doing just fine, and all of this was overblown, which is not a shock anyway.
None of it is really a shock, but it does demonstrate the bad faith in which so many members of Congress talk about politics.
Now, this is also breaking news today.
Adam Schiff, the ranking member of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, Democrat from California, and a very motivated political actor, he said the reports that the president not only considered firing Special Counsel Mueller, but went so far as to order it demonstrate the Nixonian lengths this president is prepared to go to protect himself.
Congress must make clear any effort to remove the Special Counsel or impede his work would touch off a constitutional crisis which would imperil this presidency and do grave damage to our nation.
Yet instead of protecting Mueller's investigation from undue interference, many Republicans in Congress have stepped up their spurious attacks against the DOJ, the FBI, and the Special Counsel.
It's time for them to put country and the rule of law before party.
Congress should not pass a law preventing the special counsel from being fired.
The special counsel works for the executive branch.
There is separations of power in our Constitution.
There is a way for Congress to check the president.
If the president gets rid of special counsel Mueller, and people in Congress think that's corrupt, and they think it's an attempt by Trump to get off the hook, they can impeach him.
That is the prescribed constitutional remedy for all of this.
It is not a remedy.
There is no prescribed constitutional remedy to the notion that the Congress is going to tell the president who he can and cannot fire.
If they don't like him firing Comey, they can impeach him.
If they don't like him firing Mueller, they can impeach him.
But this idea that Congress is going to step in and now Congress is going to dictate which executive branch officials can be fired by the president, that's foolishness because then that person is not a member of any branch.
The person can't be fired by the legislative branch.
The person can't be fired by the president.
So the person basically is in there for Well, the Congress doesn't have the power to do that.
Congress doesn't have the ability to do that under the Constitution.
There is this separation of powers in the Constitution.
Like it or not, the President does have the power to do this.
And that's what happened with Archibald Cox.
Nixon did have the ability to fire Archibald Cox, at least through the Attorney General.
He had the ability to fire the Attorney General.
He then put in place Robert Bork, who took over and fired Archibald Cox.
He had the ability to do that.
And then he was going to be impeached, so he quit.
Right, so there are constitutional remedies for all of this, but changing the Constitution in order to give Congress more power over the President's ability to fire a special counsel seems like a foolish thing.
Now, what's funny is people are going nuts, just to return to the Mueller thing for a second, people are going much more nuts over the Mueller stuff, this new Mueller story, that Mueller was almost fired back in June, than they are over the struck page text, which clearly suggests that the FBI was thoroughly corrupt in the Hillary Clinton investigation.
That is, that I think is Relatively insane.
Again, people are on my case because they're saying, well, you're saying that Trump didn't commit a crime, right?
I'm saying it's not a crime to consider firing someone and then not firing that person.
That's not actually a crime.
So if you're going to accuse somebody of a crime, you have to explain why it's a crime.
You can't just say it's criminal.
And the idea that this provides intent behind Trump for obstruction, you actually have to demonstrate how Trump attempted to obstruct.
Again, I have a hard time believing that Trump is attempting to obstruct when literally this investigation is on the front page of the newspapers every single day and has not been obstructed in any serious way, as even James Comey recognized.
So, again, I think that a lot of this is overblown, and I have a feeling a lot more information is going to come out that demonstrates that a lot of the particular Okay, so in just a second, we are going to discuss—you know what?
Let's just—let's go to it right now.
So let's discuss the new immigration framework.
A new immigration framework.
This new immigration framework is ticking people off on both sides of the aisle.
So, on the one side, you have Democrats who are calling him a racist.
I received an email last night from one of these leftist interest groups talking about how it was just terrible that Trump was proposing this immigration proposal.
So let's go through the proposal.
What exactly is Trump proposing?
Let's start there.
On Thursday, the White House released a rundown on its new proposal regarding the handling of illegal immigrants originally protected under President Obama's Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program.
That program mandated that illegal immigrants brought to the country as children through no fault of their own register with the government and, in return, receive papers allowing work authorization and freedom from deportation.
Now, Trump, in an attempt to push forward a deal with Democrats to avoid another government shutdown or to avoid this kind of fake deadline on March 5th, He's put together his framework.
So here's his framework, and it's making people on the left crazy, and it's making people on the right crazy.
So it says, number one, there will be full amnesty for 1.8 million illegal immigrants.
Now remember, only 700,000 illegal immigrants were actually covered by DACA.
The way DACA worked is you had to register with the government.
You had to come forward, say, I'm an illegal immigrant, I've been here since I was a kid, and then the government gave you essentially a green card to work in the country and not be deported.
Trump is extending that out to 1.8 million illegal immigrants.
So he's almost tripling that number, which is insane.
Within 10 to 12 years, those illegal immigrants would become full citizens.
That number includes, as I say, both the 700,000 illegal immigrants, so-called dreamers who registered, and other dreamers who did not.
The White House is designing this because they say that this is a big concession to Democrats.
What do they want in return for this rather generous policy?
Well, they want $25 billion for a fund for the border wall, which presumably will never happen.
You can put a bunch of money in a fund, If it doesn't get spent right away, then the government will just take it from there and use it somewhere else, like the Social Security Trust Fund.
Republicans would also theoretically receive an end to chain migration.
Now, chain migration is the leading way that new legal immigrants come into the United States.
So this is a significant limitation on legal immigration to the United States.
I think probably a smart move.
I think chain migration, the idea that you're here and you're great, therefore we have to bring your family in, is foolish.
Chain migration would still apply to people, and it would apply to people and their parents and their immediate minor children.
But There is a caveat, and this is what a lot of immigration hawks are upset about.
They're saying that the delay in the revocation of chain migration means that something like 4 million new illegal immigrants will come into the country because of chain migration.
This is what Mark Krikorian points out.
He says that over the course of the next 20 years, because there's going to be grandfathered in, because Trump is not just saying chain migration ends today.
He's saying everybody who's on the wait list gets in.
That wait list right now is something like 17 years long.
The original immigration hawk proposal said that if you're on the waiting list and you're within a year of getting into the country, then you get to stay on the waiting list and you get to come into the country.
But if you're not, then we will just refund your fee and that will be the end of chain migration.
So no cousins, no uncles, no grandmothers, none of this stuff.
We're not going to let just random relatives of yours come into the country if they're a year out from even having their application considered.
That's not in this proposal.
This proposal says that if you're on the waitlist right now, then you are going to stay on the waitlist so another 4 million people will enter the country.
That's a pretty massive swath of legal immigration coming into the country.
The visa diversity lottery would also be ended.
Now, Krikorian has been on Twitter encouraging people to burn their MAGA hats, and he explains why.
Over at National Review, here's what he says.
He says, the White House has botched the DACA issue, cutting Bob Goodlatte's House bill off at the knees.
Bob Goodlatte's House bill limited legal immigration and making it more likely that there will either be no bill at all or that the final bill the president signs, which is guaranteed to be even weaker than this, will fatally demoralize Republican voters in November.
If the latter happens, the president will be well on the way to joining Andrew Johnson and Bill Clinton in the impeached but not removed club.
Now, that's possible.
It's possible that Trump is preemptively surrendering.
That's what a lot of people are saying on the right.
That there's a betrayal, and Trump is allowing two million illegal immigrants into the country, who are in the country now to get citizenship, plus another four million legal immigrants into the country, and this is Trump caving, and why would he give away this as his opening bargaining position?
The notion here is that Trump has given away that bargaining position.
What he should have said is, I'm willing to deport everyone.
Now Democrats come to the table so we can make a deal.
That would be a stronger bargaining position.
And that's possible.
That's possible.
And Democrats are already trying to rail against Trump, as I say, calling Trump a racist.
I got an email yesterday.
Again, I don't understand how legalizing 2 million illegal immigrants, most of whom are not white, is racist.
There's a group called Credo, I guess, which is Credo Action.
They sent out a letter yesterday.
I mean, talk about being disconnected from reality.
This proposal is like a Jeb Bush proposal.
It is a Marco Rubio proposal.
And they're calling it a white supremacist fantasy to say that you want to let 4 million additional immigrants into the country who are results of chain migration, and you want to legalize 2 million illegal immigrants who are currently here, and give them citizenship 10 to 12 years in.
That does not sound particularly racist.
This is why I think that people who are suggesting that Trump is negotiating badly here are actually getting it wrong.
So I've said yesterday, I don't think Trump is a good negotiator.
But I don't think this is a negotiation.
I don't.
I don't think Trump is putting out this proposal because he's actually hoping to reach a negotiated end point with Democrats.
I think Trump is putting out this proposal because he is posturing for public consumption.
He knows the Democrats are never going to make a deal with him.
He knows the Democrats will always call him racist.
He knows no matter what he says, the Democrats are going to suggest that he is a racist.
So if he came out and he negotiated the way Krikorian wants him to, and he said, listen, I will deport everyone.
Now negotiate with me.
Then not only would Democrats not negotiate with him, they would then say, well, you're a racist, and that's why you want to deport everyone.
And then come March 5th, Trump would have to reinstate DACA himself, and he'd look like a weakling and a racist.
Right, so Trump, or at least his team knows that.
And so I think they're doing something else.
I think they understand no deal is in the offing here.
There will be no deal.
All the people who are talking about a deal are crazy and they don't know what they're saying.
OK, so here's what I think is what's happening.
I think that Trump is posturing for public consumption.
He's trying to demonstrate how much love he has for illegal immigrants.
He's trying to demonstrate that he is not racist.
He's saying to Democrats, listen, I'm giving you not only what you want, but more than what you want.
And you still won't give me border security.
So obviously I'm not a racist.
I want to let a bunch of illegal immigrants stay.
I'm letting more illegal immigrants stay than Obama would have under DACA.
I'm letting all these people stay.
Even if they didn't apply, I'm letting them stay.
That's how much I care about illegal immigrants.
But I also care about border security.
And so here's what I want in return.
And Democrats are saying, no, we don't care about the Dreamers, so we will let them suffer.
And we would rather let them suffer than give you any sort of border security.
So this is political posturing by the president.
And I think that it's not particularly unwise political posturing by the president.
There are some members of his base who will remember this proposal.
But it is a good counter-talking point.
When Democrats say he's racist about immigration, it's pretty easy for him to say, listen, I propose something more liberal than Barack Obama on immigration.
And Democrats turn that down because they hate the idea of a border wall that much.
They turn that down because they hate the idea of restricting our immigration system in any way.
So I think that this is all kabuki theater, in other words.
If you view it as kabuki theater, then Trump's proposal here is not a bad one.
If you view it as an opening bargaining position, then Trump's proposal is a bad one.
If you viewed it as a final negotiated position, I don't think it's the worst negotiated position in the world.
Most of the dreamers are going to stay anyway.
The idea there's going to be mass deportations was never true.
So it depends on the prism through which you are viewing this particular immigration proposal.
Are you viewing it as just a public relations ploy?
If so, it's smart.
If you're viewing it as an opening bargaining position, it's dumb, as Krikorian and Coulter point out.
And if you're viewing it as somewhere in between, it's sort of what Trump actually wants, it's not the worst proposal I've ever seen, but it is also not the Trumpian, MAGA, MAGA, MAGA, Jeff Sessions, Stephen Miller immigration plan that everybody was promised back during the election cycle.
Okay, so in just a second, we are going to get to some things I like and some things I hate, and then we'll also get to the mailbag.
But first, you're going to have to subscribe.
So for $9.99 a month, you can go over to dailywire.com and become a subscriber.
When you do that, when you become a subscriber to dailywire.com, you get the rest of my show live, Clavin's show live, Noel's show live.
You get to be part of our mailbag right now, like in the next two minutes.
In the next five minutes, we'll be doing the mailbag.
You get to ask me questions and make your life eminently better.
But not only that, on Tuesday, January 30th, Our president is going to speak to the nation in his second State of the Union address.
President Trump speaking in front of the entire nation as the president.
It'll be wild.
And you should watch it with us here at The Daily Wire.
We are having a full-on watch party starting 8 p.m.
Eastern, 5 p.m.
Pacific.
We'll be hanging out with you the whole time, leading up to, during, after the address.
We're going to do the red carpet.
It'll be great.
We're going to ask what people are wearing.
We'll be there for every wild hand gesture, all of the off-teleprompter remarks, and of course, The hilarious rebuttal from Democrats.
You know what Democrats are using, by the way?
They're now using Joe Kennedy.
Joe Kennedy.
Right?
Like Bobby Kennedy's grandson.
And they're saying he's a rising star.
What's really fantastic, I have to say, about America, one of the great things about America, is that anyone can be president if your last name is Kennedy, Clinton, Bush, or Obama.
Or Trump, right?
If you have a famous last name, you can be president.
That's one thing I love.
Any child who's born into a really rich family with famous ancestors can be president of the United States.
I mean, it really gives you hope.
Anyway, you can catch the livestream over at dailywire.com, dailywire.com, dailywire.com, dailywire.com, dailywire.com, dailywire.com, dailywire.com, dailywire.com, dailywire.com, dailywire.com, dailywire.com, dailywire.com, dailywire.com, dailywire.com, dailywire.com, dailywire.com, dailywire.com, dailywire.com, dailywire.com, dailywire.com, dailywire.com, dailywire.com, dailywire.com, dailywire.com, dailywire.com, dailywire.com, dailywire.com, dailywire.com, dailywire.com, dailywire.com, dailywire.com, dailywire.com, Our government, we're gonna mock political leaders, we're gonna mock all of the pomp and circumstance, which I dramatically hate.
And also, if you're a Daily Wire subscriber, you can ask us questions during the broadcast, and we're gonna take those live during the broadcast, which is one of the reasons you should subscribe.
Again, that's January 30th, 8 p.m.
Eastern, 5 p.m.
Pacific.
Follow us at Facebook and YouTube, and get notified when we go live, so we can spend every terrible moment together and get drunk, and my colleagues will smoke, and I will sit there imbibing their fumes and dying of lung cancer.
It'll be great.
So, check that out.
Next Tuesday, if you want the annual subscription, you get all of those things, plus you get this, the very greatest in all tumblers.
The leftist tier is hot or cold tumbler, which you will enjoy.
Everyone who has it has increased their income by double.
That is not an actual study, and I don't think that's true.
But you can try.
Maybe it'll work for you.
Who knows?
Correlation may not equal causation, but we can try.
Anyway, enough of that.
You want to check us out later?
Go over to iTunes, SoundCloud, YouTube, subscribe, leave us a review.
We always appreciate it.
We are the largest, fastest growing conservative podcast in the nation.
All righty, time for a thing I like and then a thing that I hate.
So, and then a few things that I hate.
Actually, lots of things I hate.
Let's get hateful today.
Okay, so things I like.
We'll begin, we've been doing fantasy books, so I don't think I've recommended this before, but this is one of those, it's more along the lines of Alice in Wonderland.
It's kind of fallen out of favor.
Did you guys read this growing up, this book?
The Phantom Tollbooth?
When I was growing up, this was sort of recommended reading for people who are in third, fourth grade, and it's pretty great, by Norman Juster.
It's about a kid who has to go on a quest, but his quest takes him to all of these kind of bizarre lands.
There's like a math land and there's a grammar land, but it's really fun and it's really clever.
I'm a big fan of The Phantom Tollbooth.
I really like this book a lot.
getting for your kid if your kid's seven, eight, nine years old, or if you're smart like my kid, four.
So in any case, The Phantom Toll Booth by Norman Juster, totally worth picking up for kids.
Great for kids.
Okay, time for 1,000 Things I Hate.
All right, so let us begin with CNN.
So CNN is doling out marriage advice now.
One of the things that CNN, New York Times, a lot of publications do now is they put out pieces in which they suggest that they know better about marriage than traditionalists have known forevers.
So now, CNN says that maybe one way to save your marriage is to get cucked.
You know, to be a cuckold, to let your partner sleep with another person.
The authors, David Lay, Justin Laymiller, and Savage Love, right?
Of course it's Dan Savage.
Of course it's Dan Savage.
Savage Love, writer and activist Dan Savage, who is always a proponent of promiscuity.
They want you to know that most people who try being a cuck find it a positive and rewarding experience, and that, quote, acting on cuckolding fantasies can be a largely positive experience for many couples and hardly a sign of weakness.
No, it's definitely a sign of weakness.
If you want to see your partner screwed by somebody else, I'm going to go with you're a weak person, and you have no idea what morality or love really are.
I'm pretty stringent on the whole, don't be happy with your partner having sex with others.
Leigh says, this fantasy has been around as long as marriage and sexuality.
By the way, Leigh has written a book called Insatiable Wives.
But we're hearing more and more about it these days, and more people are rejecting the social stigma about this fantasy.
The authors didn't actually talk to any heterosexual couples.
The study is titled, The Psychology of Gay Men's Cuckolding Fantasies, and the only people who were interviewed for the study were 580 men who self-identified as gay.
But what did CNN do?
They extrapolated the study's findings across the board.
Of course they extrapolated the findings across the board, because they want to pretend that men and women are exactly the same.
Anybody who believes that men and women are precisely the same when it comes to sexual fantasies?
Like, you know why men don't care about being cuckolded with other men?
Because men don't care about promiscuity.
If the deal is I get to have sex with whomever I want, they're probably willing to let their partner have sex with whomever their partner wants.
Men are men.
Gay men are still men.
Men, when it comes to sex, are pigs.
And so it's not particularly a shock that men who are involved in other relationships with other men tend to be more promiscuous than men who are involved in relationships with women, by numbers.
Lay says, overall, our research found that for the most part, cuckolding tends to be a positive fantasy in behavior.
It doesn't appear to be evidence of disturbance, of an unhealthy relationship, or of disregard for one's partner.
One of the authors, Lay Miller, appears to have spoken to heterosexuals about cuckolding.
He said that 58% of men and 33% of women had at least thought about the practice, but he didn't get much information on whether they had tried it, or whether they thought that it would be a good idea, or whether they were the ones being cuckolded.
But because the practice isn't quite as taboo in the gay community, he says it might be a little more prevalent among gay men.
Savage, of course, is enthusiastic about this.
He says, it's not cuckolding if there isn't an element of humiliation, degradation, or denial.
Our erotic imaginations have the ability to turn shame lemons into delicious kink lemonade.
Ah, Dan Savage.
So, I'm so glad that CNN decided to cover this fringe behavior and then pretend that it applies equally to everyone, men and women, male-female relationships.
Pretending that relationships between men and men are the same as relationships between men and women is patently insane.
If you've never met a man, this makes perfect sense to you.
If you were born on a desert island and you've never met a person of the opposite sex, maybe this makes perfect sense to you.
If you have ever met another man and you're a man, you know that this, the idea that any relationship you have with another man is equivalent to a relationship that you would have with a woman is totally bizarre.
It's totally crazy.
But this is one of the things that the left has put upon us is this notion that all distinctions between men and women are obviously social constructs.
That is obviously and eminently untrue.
Okay, other things that I hate.
So now, a Chicago man is accused of sexually assaulting two six-year-olds and an eight-year-old on repeated occasions.
So what did he tell the police officers?
He told them that he was, quote, a nine-year-old trapped in an adult's body.
There it is.
38-year-old Joseph Roman, charged with repeated predatory criminal sexual assault.
The numerous attacks began in 2015, continued until earlier this month.
Roman has reportedly confessed to some of the attacks to authorities.
The victims were the daughters of his friends.
So he's now identifying as a child in a man's body.
Well, I don't see why he can't do that.
I mean, we've been told that you can be a woman in a man's body or a man in a woman's body, so it seems to me a lot easier to get to the point that you say that I have the mentality of a nine-year-old, I have the developed brain of a nine-year-old, as opposed to I have the developed brain of a woman inside a man's body.
There's just as much evidence for one as for the other, meaning none.
So I don't see why everybody is anti-trans age.
I sort of made this point in one of the famous YouTube videos that I did.
It was based on a speech that I did where a transgender advocate got up and asked why I would not say a man was a woman, and I asked her what her age was, and she said she's 21.
I said, well, why aren't you 60?
And she said, because I'm not.
Well, this guy's not nine years old either, even though he says he is.
One more thing that I hate, and then we'll get to the mailbag.
The final thing that I hate here is that UN Ambassador Nikki Haley is now being accused of having an affair with President Trump.
I'm getting really, really annoyed with the foolishness of the left that suggests that anytime, anytime a woman of power is in Republican position, it's because she slept her way to the top.
And Nikki Haley is now being accused, kind of quasi, by Michael Wolff.
He appeared on HBO's Real Time with Bill Maher, and he said he was absolutely sure that Trump is having an affair, which would not be a giant surprise.
He then said that careful readers of his book could find a clue, saying, now that I've told you, when you hit that paragraph, you're going to say, bingo.
Politico says readers quickly homed in on a single sentence in the runaway bestseller, which has been criticized for everything from sloppy copy editing to gross factual inaccuracies.
Wolf writes, So now the entire media has jumped on this rumor, suggesting that perhaps Nikki Haley is sleeping with Trump.
I was seen to be grooming her for a national political future.
So now the entire media has jumped on this rumor suggesting that perhaps Nikki Haley is sleeping with Trump.
Again, there's no evidence to this whatsoever.
Haley says that this, of course, is absolutely not true.
She says, I've literally been on Air Force One once.
There were several people in the room when I was there.
And Haley said, he says, I've been talking a lot with the president in the Oval about my political future.
I've never once talked to the president about my future.
I'm never alone with him.
So the idea of these things come out, that's a problem.
It goes to a bigger issue we need to be conscious of.
At every point in my life, I've noticed that if you speak your mind and you're strong about it and you say what you believe, there's a small percentage of people that resent it, and the way they try to deal with it is to try and throw arrows, lies or not.
She said, I saw this as a legislator.
I saw this when I was governor.
I see it now.
I see them do it to other women.
And the thing is, when women work, they prioritize, they focus, and they believe if they're going to do something, do it right.
Others see that as too ambitious or stepping out of line.
The truth is, we need to continue to do our job, and if that means they consider it stepping out of line, fine.
This is why Nikki Haley is very popular, because she doesn't take this kind of crap.
It is insane that the media have been running with this rumor, but the media had nothing to say for years.
Apparently there's a New York Times story out today, it's a breaking story, that a senior advisor to Hillary Clinton's 2008 presidential campaign, who was accused of repeatedly sexually harassing a young subordinate, was kept on the campaign at Hillary's direct request, according to four people familiar with what took place.
So the left, that's happily willing to defend Me Too, is also happily willing to accuse Nikki Haley of sleeping her way to the top, And also to overlook Hillary Clinton letting a campaign aide off the hook, who is apparently sexually harassing young women.
The campaign advisor was Burns Strider.
Instead, Strider was docked several weeks of pay in order to undergo counseling, and the young woman was moved to a new job.
So just class all the way around for the left.
Well done.
Before I go any further, I do want to mention one more quick thing that I hate, and then we'll jump right into the mailbags.
That gives people a chance to actually get back into the stream.
Barack Obama took a picture with Louis Farrakhan, and the media hit it.
So there's that.
Okay, I'm just gonna put that out there, that there is this picture that exists.
Louis Farrakhan is one of the world's worst anti-Semites.
He's an absolute piece of human debris.
And Barack Obama was happy to take pictures with him, because Barack Obama was never a moderate.
He was always a radical.
We said so at the time.
It was denied by everyone, and they're all liars and terrible people.
Okay, so.
Now, time for the mailbag.
So if you have questions, send them in right this instance.
Okay, so let's start with Daniel.
He says, Hey Ben, do you think the government should be allowed to force someone to buy car insurance when a car is purchased?
How can the government force me to buy something I do not want?
So the reason that the government is allowed to force you to buy car insurance when the car is purchased is because there's an externality.
So the government is allowed to regulate Products that have an automatic externality.
When you drive a car, if you get in a car accident, the insurance is not to protect you.
The insurance is to protect the other drivers.
If you have a bunch of drivers on the streets who don't have car insurance, and then they hit you, and they damage your car, or they kill you, then you've created a serious problem.
Now, there's a possible solution to that that doesn't involve car insurance, and that is that you actually hold people accountable under tort law, and you get rid of bankruptcy law, right?
That would be the alternative.
But, if the idea is that there is a privilege that is driving, and that privilege Exists because their externalities to the privilege you don't have a right to drive you have a privilege to drive and That privilege comes along with externalities Then it's not wrong to have the government Make you buy car insurance if the government makes you buy health insurance is different because there it's not about externalities there it's about you are responsible for your own health and that is in that that is creating costs and But that's on you, right?
The cost is on you.
So if you don't have health insurance, people theoretically could say, we don't want to cover you, which is what people do.
The same is not true of car insurance.
If you hit me in an accident, then I don't have a choice as to whether I wanted you to hit me in the accident.
Seth says, Mr. Shapiro, I listened to your debate with Sam Harris, and I heard you repeat the question, how do you go from an is to an ought a couple of times?
Would you mind elaborating on that more?
Is this begging the question of how morality came into existence, and the ought is the moral implication, and the is comes from an evolutionary scientific perspective derived from observation of supposed fact?
Great debate, by the way.
Love listening to these conversations.
So, I'm glad that you enjoyed the conversation.
The point that I was making was a point that was originally made by David Hume.
He basically suggested that you cannot look at the universe and then just say that because things are a certain way, then you ought to act a certain way.
There is no connection, for example, between the way the universe is constructed and morality.
You could construct a thousand different types of morality.
There's nothing that dictates they have to go from what is to what ought to be or how you ought to act.
Now, this has significant ramifications for scientific materialists like Sam.
Now, Sam has a suggestion.
His suggestion is, well, if we knew everything in the known universe, then what else would we need to know to construct a morality?
I had two objections to that.
One is, when he says construct a morality, he's assuming A freedom of choice that I'm not sure that his philosophy allows to exist.
I mean, this is a real debate between Sam and me.
And I don't want to misconstrue his position or misstate his position, so you can read his book on free will if you think I am doing so, and get his more detailed perspective.
That's problem number one that I had, and I was trying to point that out to Sam, and I think we were talking past each other.
And problem number two is that Sam says, well, there's really three problems.
He says that if you know everything in existence, then you could be able to determine what's right and what's wrong.
I don't think that's true, because people have a unique capacity to look at the same set of facts and draw different conclusions.
And then problem number three is, if you knew everything in the universe, you would be God, right?
I mean, the premise that I use is that God does know everything in the universe, and therefore he was capable of constructing morality.
So you're just assuming that eventually human beings will be able to become gods, and I'm not sure that I buy into that premise.
But that is the is-ought distinction.
That is-ought distinction can be bridged in two ways.
One is with Revelation.
So you actually have a deus ex machina.
God suggests either Christ suggests, or the Judaic God at Sinai suggests, here are the rules.
He says, you know, you can't get from the is to the ought, so let me give you a hand with that.
Here's what you ought to do, and here's what you ought not to do.
That's Revelation.
And then there's the Greek reason argument that suggests you can look at what is and get to ought by saying, what is the purpose?
What is the telos?
You've heard me mention the Greek word telos before.
Telos is the suggestion that there is a purpose that is embedded in the universe.
So for example, The example that's typically used is, I'm wearing a watch, right?
The watch that I'm wearing is made to tell time.
It is either good at telling time or it is bad at telling time.
What dictates whether the watch is virtuous is whether the watch fulfills its purpose.
And you can look at the universe and say, what is man made for?
Man is made to use his reason because his reason is different from what animals have.
And so he should be using his reason, and whatever is in service to reason is good, and whatever is not in service to reason is immoral.
This is sort of the Greek view of why reason is important and what virtue is built to do.
So those are the two ways to reach purpose, to reach ought from is.
The West has rejected both of those in modern times, and I think because of that, we've landed on these aimless shores with people telling you that you can construct your own purpose, and we've failed at that.
Tyler says, Ben, what was the best way you studied for the LSAT?
Any good study books you'd recommend?
Well, actually, I use Testmasters, and I'll openly say so.
Testmasters is a great program, so consider that an endorsement, Testmasters, and also advertise with us, because as long as I'm giving you plugs, you may as well pay us some money for it.
Rahamim Cooperman says, hey, Ben.
I was wondering what your opinion is on making Haredim serve in the Israeli military, and if you lived in Israel, which political party would you vote for?
I've said for years that Haredim should serve in the Israeli military, but if you have universal military service, you should not be able to opt out of Israeli military service simply because you say you are studying.
If I were a secular Jew in Israel, and my kid were going to fight in the army, and your kid were studying in Yeshiva, and the suggestion was that your kid was doing as much for the state of Israel as my kid is doing, I would say that's ridiculous and self-serving.
Now, even if you want to say that you think that there's a spiritual component to study that does not exist for fighting, and that you need a few people studying, that's one thing.
But to say that everybody who wants to study gets out of military service is a cop-out, in the same way that it was a cop-out during the Vietnam War, to say that everybody in college got out of military service.
I think that that's a foolish thing.
I've always been a great admirer of what they call the Hester Yeshivot.
These are yeshivas where people study Torah, but at the same time they are serving in the armies.
They're doing both.
Everybody I've met, like, it's universal.
Everybody's been very respectful of my time and my privacy, which is great.
And in fact, I've made it a habit to ask people if they want pictures, because people are very shy, very often, about asking for pictures, so I'm not trying to be self-aggrandizing.
I know that people want pictures, and they're trying not to be rude.
People have been really, really good about it.
Find it irritating?
I find it flattering.
I'm glad that people listen to the show.
I'm glad that people take my ideas seriously.
And if they do, I think that that's wonderful and makes a difference.
Mark says, "I know it's probable that Trump's suggested immigration plan from Thursday won't go anywhere.
That said, if somehow this did pass through Congress, how would that affect the GOP for the midterms and beyond?
It would seem to me that it may help Trump's approval with independents and liberals, as it is quite generous for immigrants.
Also for Republicans, building the wall and enshrining long-term immigration fixes would overshadow the downsides to this possible legislation." Well, it's hard to predict how it would affect turnout.
Usually off your elections, the base is what has to turn out.
The base may not be happy with this, and so you might see a drop in turnout.
In a general election for Trump's 2020, it would probably help him.
For 2020, he would look more moderate.
People who are independents would probably flock to him more often.
Conservatives could point to the victory.
But for the midterms, I think it would probably hurt him in the short run.
in the short run.
Matt says, Ben, what ethical theory do you most often hold to, and which ethical theory do you think is the weakest?
Also, where do you land on Eurypthro's dilemma?
So, the ethical theory that I most often hold to is the Judeo-Christian biblical ethical theory, which suggests that there is an objective good and there is an objective bad, and the notion that...
You can construct your own good and bad is foolish.
So I agree with that.
Utilitarianism, everyone intends to be a little bit of a utilitarian, but I think that utilitarianism is open-ended and depends on what you define as your hierarchy of utility.
So it's open to various different rebukes.
I think Kant's categorical imperative is open to a bunch of different rebukes because There are plenty of things that I would be willing to do to other people and have them done to me that other people wouldn't be willing to have done to them.
I think that the categorical imperative is a little bit weak.
The Eryphthro Dilemma, which I, to be honest with you, just looked up again because I've been going through the Republic and my head is filled with things.
The Eryphthro Dilemma found in Plato's Dialogue is where Socrates asks Eryphthro, So in other words, is God above morality or is morality above God?
God's because it is pious, or is doing pious things is piety, loved by the gods because it is pious, or is it pious because it is loved by the gods?
So in other words, is God above morality, or is morality above God?
So my answer is that God is above morality, but we believe in the Judeo-Christian tradition that God has done us the great service of embedding morality in his own actions.
So God doesn't have to be moral.
He's God.
He can do whatever he wants.
He's all-powerful.
But, Judaism says that God also acts in moral fashion.
That doesn't mean we always understand the way that he is acting, but this is the entire reason that, for example, Abraham argues with God.
Right?
That God, and it's, that Abraham says to God, Would you kill, would you destroy the city if there are 50 righteous people, 40 righteous people, 30, 20, 10?
And the reason he's bargaining with God over this is because he's trying to remind God of his own morality, right?
That's the idea here.
Moses does the same thing.
Moses says to God, if you do this, you will be perceived by the world as immoral.
So why would you do this when God talks about wiping out the Jewish people in the desert?
Moses says this.
So, the idea here is that God is above morality, but has bonded himself to a morality which we can identify a shadow of.
We can't identify all of it.
We can see God's back, but we can't see his front, right?
In the section of the Torah where Moses asked to see God's face, meaning, I want to see your logic for the universe, God says, no one can see my face and live.
You can see my back, meaning you can see the shadow of my morality, but I'm never going to allow you to see my entire math of how this works.
So the answer is piety is loved by God because it is piety.
It is not piety just because it is loved by God.
God is above morality but has bounded himself to a certain sense of morality.
I recently listened to Tucker Carlson.
Apparently, China has recently successfully cloned a monkey.
They're heralding this is a crucial step to cloning humans.
If we limited human cloning to only clone and replace damaged organs, I don't see an inherent problem with it.
However, I do see an inherent problem with attempting to regulate and enforce a policy limiting cloning to only that.
What's your take?
Well, I agree that we should limit cloning to only organ cloning for those purposes.
I think trying to clone a human life, there are serious moral issues with it.
Beyond the question of the selfishness of wanting to clone yourself, right?
And or the or the idea that you're preserved like are you let's put it this way you have grandma grandma's about to die you decide you're gonna clone her and when you clone her she is presumably uh going to come out the the she's she's going to be birth right you take her dna You insert an egg and now you have cloned grandma.
Presumably she comes out as a baby because she's not gonna be born as a 99 year old person.
So if that's the case, then are you now putting on that person all of your preconceived notions about grandma?
Is that person actually a fully independent person?
It raises some serious ethical dilemmas.
We are kind of far scientifically from cloning a human being, at least in healthy ways, even when we've cloned animals.
Even when we've cloned animals, the animals My understanding is have not tended to live as long as the originals.
So I think there's still some kinks to be worked out in that process.
I think that the left has fallen deeper and deeper into a victim mentality that has forced them into tribalism of the highest order.
That victim mentality is now manifesting really strongly.
I think that Barack Obama's election was part of this.
I think Obama had such an opportunity to unify the country.
And when Obama decided instead to exploit political divisions between us for his own political gain, I think the people glommed on to that, and it made the country a whole hell of a lot worse.
I think we were much more unified in 2007 with all that was going on then than we are today.
And I think a lot of that has to do with Democrats embracing polarities not only among politics and political opinions, but polarities among tribal groups, tribal identity groups.
They're using identity as a substitute for logic, reason, or even political positioning.
Okay, so we will be back here tomorrow?
Well, no we won't.
Tomorrow's Saturday.
It's the end of the week.
Excellent.
Okay, we will be back here on Monday.
Have a great weekend.
▲
Export Selection