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Feb. 5, 2018 - The Ben Shapiro Show
54:59
Does The Super Bowl Matter? | Ep. 468
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So, I went to the Super Bowl, and I had lots of fun, and I have many thoughts about it.
I will give them all over to you.
Plus, we will break down the memo.
I've now had a chance to read it, peruse it, absorb it.
I have many thoughts about that as well.
I'm Ben Shapiro.
This is The Ben Shapiro Show.
So I will say, I'm a lucky son of a gun.
I went to the Super Bowl on Sunday, went down to the Super Bowl yesterday.
I'm still exhausted from that because I flew in very early there and then flew very early back so I could do the show today.
It's an amazing experience, and believe it or not, that's actually the first football game I've ever been to in person.
It's not the first football game I've watched, but I have a feeling the other ones I go to may be somewhat of a letdown in the future, but I have a lot of thoughts.
on the Super Bowl, and I want to share them with you.
I also want to talk about everything you have to know about the memo, the latest developments on that score.
Is it really the end of all scandals, the scandal to end all scandals, or is it a giant nothing burger?
The answer is kind of somewhat in between, and we'll go through a nuanced analysis now that I've had a chance to actually read the thing over a couple of times and check some of the legalities.
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So, yeah, my wife wasn't that thrilled about me going to the Super Bowl.
But in retrospect, in the end, in the end, she was happy that I went and I had a good time.
I brought my father.
I went with my business partner, Jeremy.
We went with the president of the company, Caleb.
And all thanks to Westwood Ones.
We want to thank our partners over at Westwood One for giving us the seats because it was pretty incredible.
So we were seated up behind the Patriots end zone.
And the stadium, first of all, in Minnesota is amazing.
It's an amazing stadium.
It's just beautiful.
I'm sure all those public dollars were put to good use when no one ever travels there again.
But it is incredible.
It's not a place you want to hang out.
In the summer, Minnesota is beautiful.
It's a beautiful state.
My family used to vacation in Minnesota during the summer.
During the winter, it is a hellscape.
I mean, we were there yesterday, and it was 15 degrees below zero with the wind chill.
And needless to say, I was not prepared for this.
So that's why I'm missing an ear at this point, and at least two toes.
Lost a frostbite.
There are a few things that really struck me about the Super Bowl this year, aside from the fact that it was a phenomenal game and no one knows how to tackle.
So those were the two big ones.
Great game.
No one plays defense.
And it's not on Tom Brady, guys.
I'm not the biggest Brady fan, although he is the best quarterback of all time, clearly.
Still, when you throw three touchdowns, no interceptions, and throw for 508 yards and lose, that's your defense's fault.
That's not your fault.
Everybody's on Brady about this.
It's ridiculous.
But the thing that really struck me, and what was pretty cool about it, is you get in the stadium, it's a bunch of people who hate the other team, right?
I mean, the Eagles fans hate the Patriots, and the Patriots fans hate the Eagles, and they have a long record of not liking each other very much.
And yet, in the stadium, there was a real feeling of camaraderie among everybody who was actually there.
Maybe it's because it was really cold outside and no one wanted to leave.
Maybe it's because just being part of an amazing event like that feels really cool.
I mean, it's a communal experience, and we're all taking part.
And there was a feeling of camaraderie among the folks in the stadium, regardless of which side you actually preferred to win, which side you were rooting for, to the point where after the game, maybe it's just because the Patriots have won every other Super Bowl for a decade.
But the Patriots fans were very gracious to the Eagles fans, and the Eagles fans were, I think, relatively gracious to the Patriots fans.
And everybody got along, and it was just a wonderful event.
The electricity in the stadium was incredible.
I mean, everyone was basically standing for the entire time.
I will say, what was one of the funny things is that one of the things people pay attention to at home, because I've watched every other Super Bowl from home, is you pay attention to the halftime show.
In the stadium, no one cares.
In the stadium, the level of attention paid to the Super Bowl halftime show is relatively nil, right?
That's when all the bathrooms fill up and you leave to go out and get a Coke for $1,000.
And you can't hear anything because the stadium is set up in such a way.
But the actual atmosphere was really cool.
And what was super cool is that—and it shows you what the NFL did wrong this season, how they really blew it this season.
One of the things the NFL really did wrong this season was they really handled the National Anthem kneeling thing poorly.
And the way that you could tell that is because the biggest rounds of applause happened for the National Anthem and for—there's a tribute to Medal of Honor winners.
It was patriotism and country, and people felt good about the country.
You felt good about the country being in there because, like, this is such an amazing place.
It's the most prosperous, rich, free country on the face of the earth, filled with all these celebrities who are going to these stadiums.
You can get on a plane and fly in the middle of nowhere and have a game where you bring 67,000 people into the stadium, and you can just do it.
Right?
You can do that.
I mean, it's an amazing, amazing thing.
Anyway, I want to show you some of the best moments, I thought.
So first of all, I want to point out that the people who actually won, Nick Foles, who's a backup quarterback, right?
And he played the game of his life, played an incredible game, wins the new Super Bowl MVP, and then probably will not be on the Eagles the year after next as soon as Carson Wentz is available again.
He had said a couple of days beforehand that he's a religious Christian.
He says when he retires, he wants to be a pastor.
I thought that's just wonderful.
Here was Nick Foles talking about it.
My faith in the Lord is everything.
I'm a believer in Jesus Christ.
That's first and foremost.
That's everything.
I wouldn't be able to do this game without Him.
I don't have the strength to go out here and do this.
This is supernatural.
But it's also an opportunity to go out there and share what He's done in my life.
And it's not about prospering at all.
It's about how He's humbled me.
In my weaknesses, He made me strong.
2 Corinthians 12, 9.
Whenever I was at my lowest, that's where my relationship with Christ grew.
I mean, that's an amazing, great religious statement.
It's something that's always true for Americans at large.
Now, you don't have to be a religious person to appreciate this guy's fervor and the fact that he saw God as strengthening him in his darkest moments.
That's true for the vast majority of people on planet Earth for most of history.
It wasn't just him.
Doug Peterson is the coach of the Eagles.
Amazing play calling yesterday.
I mean, there are a couple of really gutsy play calls.
There was a play call where they went for it on fourth down.
I think it was fourth and five.
And that's when he called the reverse two fulls as a receiver, which is amazing.
Here's Doug Peterson thanking Jesus at the award ceremony afterward.
How do you explain this, that nine years ago you're coaching in a high school and here you are with this trophy?
I can only give the praise to my Lord and Savior Jesus Christ for giving me this opportunity.
Yes, I mean, there are a lot of people paying attention to that, so there are a few people who made clear that, you know, at the beginning of the season it was all about kneeling for the anthem and now it's all about praying.
I mean, at the very end of the game, all the Eagles got together and they actually formed a circle and they prayed with foals, which is pretty amazing.
And that wasn't, by any stretch of the imagination, the only sort of patriotic and religious point to the evening.
During the national anthem, all the players were standing—it was electric.
I mean, during the National Anthem, people knew that it was infused with additional meaning because of all the folks who had been kneeling, and people were supremely enthusiastic.
Pink did a very good rendition of the National Anthem as well.
Oh, say can you see by the dawn's early light What so proudly we hailed at the twilight's last gleaming?
And good for all the players for standing.
You know, this is an amazing country.
You get to be rich and play football for a living and not have to fight for scraps.
I mean, it's an amazing, amazing country, and it's an amazing event.
And the level of care that goes into each and everything, like, for example, during the halftime show, and you see all those lights waving in the stands.
It's not a bunch of people who are spontaneously taking out their cell phones.
They're actual wristbands that have lights that are coordinated to go off at certain times.
It's really impressive.
I think the biggest round of applause of the night was not even for any of that.
The biggest round of applause for the night was the Medal of Honor winner.
So right before the game, They paid tribute to Medal of Honor winners.
J.J.
Watt tweeted this out about the Medal of Honor winners.
These were all the Medal of Honor winners who joined on the field together.
One of them actually flipped the opening flip of the coin.
And it was an amazing moment.
I mean, the entire stadium just erupted.
It was really terrific.
There was another moment later where they paid tribute to the Air Force, and the stadium erupted again.
One of the things that football needs to understand and one of the things the NFL needs to understand is that the popularity of the sport is deeply entwined with a good feeling about the country.
If you feel bad about the country, it's hard to enjoy sports because you feel like sports are frivolous.
If you feel good about the country, then sports are a distraction from the mundane, sure.
But they're also a reminder that All of our conflict is really play-acted.
And that's not true in politics.
In politics, there's a lot of our conflict that's not, that's real.
It's about issues that matter and I care deeply about.
But it's good for Americans to recognize every once in a while the things that the Super Bowl is for.
It's good for us to recognize every once in a while that there are these moments where we have more in common Then we are separated by.
So it's amazing the evening that's really about, you know, conflict between two teams is really more about the love for fans for one another.
It's really more about the love of country.
It was really more about what we are unified in favor of.
And that's why it was so entwined with the flag and entwined with the military.
And it's why it alienated so many fans when the players started kneeling.
Because like, why are you slapping one of the things that makes football great in the face?
Why are you doing that?
Well actually this isn't a sport that's global, this is an American sport.
And it's deeply been intertwined again with American patriotism for a very long time.
So in just a second I'm going to show you how things went down in Philadelphia afterward.
Because I talk about the power of a community coming together for something good.
And now I'm going to show you what happens when things don't go so great.
And that's what happened in Philadelphia.
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Okay, so when crowds are united by a common purpose, like they're there to watch a game, but they all understand that they like each other, that there's something to the community feeling, then great things can happen.
There's a study that Arthur Brooks over at American Enterprise Institute likes to cite that's really an interesting study, talking about the value of getting together in crowds, the value of meeting people on an individual level.
So in 1934, there's a sociologist who did a study Where he took a Chinese couple all around the United States, they went to something like 250 restaurants all around the United States, 250, 200 hotels, and they would walk into the restaurant, they would all be served, they would all be given a room.
And then the sociologist, remember this is 1934, calls up all the restaurants and all of the hotels, and he asks the restaurants and the hotels, would you serve a Chinese couple?
And all but one said no, we would not.
Well, what that means is that people are actually better than you think they are in a vacuum.
They're not worse.
We tend to think that people are worse than we think they are when we meet them, but that's rarely true.
Usually, most of the people who you hate when you meet them, they turn out not to be so bad, and it's why it's important to have these sort of communal events.
One of the things that's happened in our culture is we have fewer and fewer of these communal events.
The Super Bowl is a communal event because it's a water cooler event, but Most of us get our entertainment choices now through Netflix or Hulu that we cut the cord.
I've cut the cord twice, actually, because I got a cable back and then I went back to cutting the cord because it was a waste of money.
And that's great.
I mean, I love on-demand TV.
I'm not willing to give it up.
But it does mean that you need to engage with the community.
Otherwise, you end up not engaging with anyone.
And a polarized, atomized society is one where people dislike each other more.
Now, all of that said, I've been talking about sort of the power of community and communal experiences, communal events, a feeling of communal purpose, which I talk about in the book that I'm writing right now.
But when communities go wrong, then things can get kind of nasty.
So some of the highlights from Philadelphia were not particularly great.
Some of them were great.
So this one was terrific.
There were a couple of music students who opened up their window on the fifth floor of a building and started playing the Fly Eagles Fly Fight song while everybody downstairs was singing.
It was pretty cool.
Right there.
Look at this, from a fifth floor window at the University of the Arts, the Merriam Theater.
Don't get any better than that!
That's pretty awesome.
That was the good.
Then there was the bad.
Some dude decided that it would be worthwhile for him to legitimately eat horse crap.
I don't know why this would occur to you, why this would be a thing, unless it was a bet.
And even then, why would you bet on this?
You can get diseases from this.
But no, this is not good.
This is not a good thing.
No, don't do it.
Oh no.
Okay, we can cut it off there.
I don't actually need to see this guy eat the horse dung.
Oh, no.
Ah!
No!
Okay, when crowds are there, there can either be good things or there can be bad things.
The crowd can either be united toward a communal purpose or it can be united toward urging a moron to eat horse crap off the ground.
And there was a little bit too much of that in Philadelphia last night.
New England Patriots fans can rest assured that although the New England Patriots did not emerge victorious, the city of Philadelphia is apparently smoking wreckage by the morning.
It's just ridiculous.
That wasn't the only bad thing that happened in Philadelphia last night.
I don't want to pretend like everything that happened was bad, but the police were basically saying it was kind of out of control last night.
Here is a little montage of people destroying convenience stores, smashing Macy's windows, collapsing and awning.
just joy happening over there.
So... - Oh, sh--! sh--!
Okay, so these people were on top of the Ritz Hotel awning, and they were doing trust falls off the awning into the crowd because they're stupid, and then too many of them got on top, and then the entire awning collapsed.
So, geniuses at work.
So this is the problem with crowds, right?
If you don't have a purpose for the crowd, if the crowd is just there, then the crowd may turn to the most nefarious purpose.
It's one of the things that we need to recognize about why religious institutions and social fabric are necessary.
I'm not saying Philadelphia doesn't have any of those things.
Of course they do.
I'm saying the crowd last night, you know the ones that were breaking into looting stores, that was not their communal purpose.
It was not to go to church.
A crowd that is undirected can go bad very, very quickly.
A crowd that is directed cheers for Medal of Honor winners.
I don't think the people who make up the crowd are necessarily all that different.
I think that it's all about what's in their minds and what's in their heads and what they're there to do.
And if you're there to celebrate America and you're there to celebrate the fact that we can have these amazing spectacles and we can afford to go to games like this and we can afford to fly in, Then you'll get a different crowd than the one that wants to break into the convenience store because things are now apparently free.
It also shows how dumb the Democrats are, by the way.
All of this shows how dumb the Democrats are to embrace the destruction of the NFL, which is the national anthem-kneeling thing.
So, Nancy Pelosi yesterday felt the necessity to equate Colin Kaepernick to Rosa Parks, which is just an inane comparison.
Rosa Parks obviously is a victim of segregation.
Colin Kaepernick is the victim of receiving several Tens of millions of dollars worth of money in both advertising and in salary.
Nancy Pelosi tweeted out yesterday on the day of the Super Bowl, Rosa Parks proved that sometimes the best way to stand up is to sit down.
And that was supposed to be a slap at Trump because Trump had said that we all stand for the national anthem.
If this is the way Democrats want to go, they shouldn't be surprised when those of us who like the social fabric rebel at this.
We need our symbols.
We need our unifying moments.
And when you don't give us our symbols, when you don't give us our unifying moments, the country tears apart.
Because maybe the only thing holding us together at this point are the symbols.
Maybe the only thing holding us together is a vague love of country that has not been boiled down to specific philosophical principles.
If so, that's a problem.
We need to fill in those gaps.
If Democrats take away even the symbols, there's not going to be a lot left on the surface of the social fabric once the root has been eaten away.
So that's a serious problem.
Meanwhile, speaking of people who are eating away the root of the social fabric, late night over the weekend really outdid itself.
So Jimmy Kimmel has been the pace setter.
He's the new pope of the left, according to Guy Benson, a good label, I think.
And Jimmy Kimmel apparently appeared He apparently appeared at some event for Pod Save America.
So last week—remember, I criticized Stephen Colbert for having on Pod Save America after the State of the Union, because Stephen Colbert would never have me on after a State of the Union by a Democrat or a Republican.
We have about the same size audience.
Jimmy Kimmel obviously had to outdo his compatriot in the leftist terms because he is the new pope.
And so he actually said at this event, quote, it just so happens that almost every talk show host is a liberal.
And that's because it requires a level of intelligence.
So according to Jimmy Kimmel, the reason that he and his fellow talk show hosts are on the left is because they're smart, you see.
It's not because they have a certain point of view and they all live in a bubble and they've all lived in big cities most of their lives.
It's not because they spend all their time hanging out with other people on the left and never have a dissenting conversation.
It's not any of that stuff.
It's just because they're so smart, you see.
Right?
Because Jimmy Kimmel, like, on a pure IQ test, I'm sure Jimmy Kimmel, a guy who had women feel his crotch on national TV, would outdo me, I think, for example.
I think when it comes to talk show hosts, put Jimmy Kimmel next to Dennis Miller.
I'm sure that Jimmy Kimmel wildly outdoes Dennis Miller, a conservative.
And there'd be a bunch of people saying, well, isn't he right?
Aren't all the talk show hosts on the left?
Well, no.
The most successful talk show host of the last 35 years was Jay Leno, and Jay Leno is center-right.
Jay Leno is a libertarian.
So, no.
This is stupidity all the way up.
And it's so smug, and it's so smarmy.
And then you wonder why the culture is being torn apart.
Like, Jimmy Fallon showed up at the Super Bowl.
And one of the things that happened, I'm not sure if they showed it on TV, they showed it at the game.
There's a shot of him, and he kind of made a joke where he spilled water all over himself.
And it was charming, and it was funny.
And then after the game, Jimmy Kimmel has to join in the race to the political bottom.
Like, whatever you think of Trump, you don't have to like Trump.
But turning this into—everything has to be a partisan fight.
Turning our late-night show hosts into partisan fighters who can't make a joke about Barack Obama for eight years and then can't stop making jokes about Trump.
But not even jokes, just nasty riffs.
How does that unify the country in any serious way?
Serious criticisms of Trump?
I'm perfectly willing to hear, although not from the likes of Jimmy Kimmel, who does not know what he's talking about on virtually any issue.
We've debunked him a thousand times on this show at this point.
Having our late-night show hosts devolve into — take the places of common culture, take the places of common space, and devote those to polarization.
It's a huge mistake.
I think it's really bad for the culture.
Jimmy Fallon is trying to outdo Kimmel because Fallon was beating Kimmel during the election cycle.
Kimmel's been beating Fallon lately.
So after the show, Fallon put on his glasses and his wig, and he did his Bob Dylan routine.
Come athletes with platforms throughout the land Who by taking a knee are taking a stand And before you shout out that they should be banned Listen to what they are saying.
Perhaps they'd stand up if you reached out your hand.
Well, the times, they are a-changing.
Come journalists, writers who report the facts.
And brandish your pen to fend off his attacks.
Look past what he says and look at how he acts.
The fire and fury is raging For his words can hurt, but your words can't fight back New York Times, they aren't a failing So now he's defending the people who are kneeling for the anthem again.
That's a social place where we don't need the social fabric ripped.
And Jimmy Fallon is louding that.
He's saying that that's just a wonderful thing.
And then he also crooned, Okay, Jimmy, well, I mean, let's hear it.
Who in Hollywood's been harassing women?
I'm sure you know a few.
view for weak is the man who calls truth fake news.
Time's up.
Our silence, we're breaking.
Okay, Jimmy.
Well, I mean, let's hear it.
Who in Hollywood's been harassing women?
I'm sure you know a few.
You can name some names.
Then come on.
Come on, you hang out with all these people.
I'm sure you know at least a couple of guys who are into grabbing women by the behind.
And then in another verse he said, quote, come journalists, writers who report the facts.
First of all, Bob Dylan is so fricking overrated.
It's like a cat being run over by a lawnmower.
Bob Dylan.
Anyway, he says, come journalists, writers who report the facts and brandish your pens to fend off his attacks.
Look past what he says and look at how he acts.
The fire and fury is raging for his words can hurt, but your words can fight back.
New York Times, they aren't a Phelan.
It's just, come on.
Again, taking that common space, reducing it to partisan bickering, not smart.
I didn't like it when Trump did it about the NFL, by the way.
You remember, I said, I agreed with Trump.
I still didn't like it when Trump did it with regard to the NFL.
I thought that it was needlessly polarizing.
I don't like it when the left does it either.
We need these common spaces.
If we do not have these common spaces where we can come together, I promise you, everyone who's surrounding me, there are a few fans, we took some pictures, nice.
But I promise you, the vast majority of people who were there were from New England, which is a left area, or from Philadelphia, which is a left area, and Minnesota, which tends to be a left area.
And most of those people disagreed with me.
We all got along famously, because we understand there's still a common root that we all hold to.
Okay, so in just a second, I'm gonna get to memo talk.
Memo fight 2018, the return, the revenge, the grand finale.
It's not the grand finale, unfortunately.
There's so much more memo fighting to come.
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All right, so Memo Fight 2018.
So, Devin Nunes apparently says that he has new memos that are coming.
Democrats want to release their own memo.
We're just going to have memos up the wazoo.
Finding Memo.
It's going to be just, it'll just be entrancing.
I am super excited about it.
But, I finally had a chance, last Friday as you recall, the memo, the text of the memo was actually released in the middle of the show.
And so we read through it on the air and you saw my thinking evolving in real time.
Now I've had some actual time to gather my thoughts on the Devin Nunes memo.
Is it a nothing burger?
No, it's not a complete nothing burger.
Is it the end of the world?
The end of all things?
Mad Max?
Beyond Thunderdome?
It is not.
Okay, it is not.
Here is the most specific thing that it does.
It accuses the FBI of applying for a warrant on Carter Page, who is then a post he's done being a Trump foreign policy advisor.
It applied for a warrant on Carter Page, and the FISA application was apparently based on the Steele dossier, which was a Democrat OPPO research document.
And the Nunes memo says that the FBI lied about that to the FISA court and didn't inform them that this was in fact funded by the Democrats and was a piece of opposition hit research.
And supposedly they did this in an attempt to get Trump.
Now, it's the end of that statement that I have a problem with, that they did this in an attempt to get Trump, because it is possible that they thought that they were actually investigating real Russian collusion, even if nothing materializes.
Investigations happen all the time.
It is also possible that Carter Page is dirty, and they were investigating him.
He's been dirty, or at least he's been suspected of being dirty, since 2013.
There was a FISA warrant on him in 2014.
It is also possible they got overzealous with the warrant.
So there are a bunch of assumptions that have to be made in order to get to the worst possible conclusion.
So the worst possible conclusion is that in the waning days of the election, the FBI was trying to sink the Trump campaign by ordering a FISA warrant, which never was released, by the way, never leaked, never was released before the election.
This is a weird argument.
That they were trying to take down Trump from the inside.
The deep state was trying to take down Trump from the inside by going after Carter Page with a trumped-up FISA warrant based on the Steele dossier.
That's essentially the accusation.
Now, it's very possible that it's true, that the FISA application on Page was fatally flawed and driven by prosecutorial aggression.
But in order to get to this really deep conspiracy theory, where it was a bunch of people in the FBI trying to take down Trump and trying to Basically manipulate the fact into its Trump-Russia collusion?
You have to make a bunch of assumptions.
First, you have to assume that there is no there there.
Not only that there is no Trump-Russia collusion, but that there was no reasonable suspicion of Trump-Russia collusion.
That's the first thing you have to assume.
I don't know that that assumption is actually true.
I think that in the middle of the campaign, if you were an FBI agent and you saw Donald Trump sending emails to members of the Russian government or people who are close to the Russian government saying, if you can turn over a bunch of information to me and help me from the Russian government, I'm willing to hear it, that might make you somewhat suspicious.
If George Papadopoulos, a former Trump aide, had already been lying to the FBI, or was about to lie to the FBI, was already under investigation at that point for apparently shopping intelligence that he'd gotten supposedly from a Russian source about Hillary Clinton, Then maybe there's grounds for suspicion.
Even if the suspicion doesn't pan out, this is like saying that every time the cops take out a search warrant, that that's a problem.
Even if they don't find anything.
Well, not every search warrant comes up with something, right?
That's why you have to have a warrant.
Probable cause doesn't mean certain cause.
It means probable cause.
So, you have to first assume that Carter Page never should have been gone after in the first place.
You have to assume that, so first you have to assume that the FBI had no reasonable grounds for any suspicion about this campaign.
Second, you have to assume the entire Steele dossier is pure garbage.
All parts of it remain unverified.
At the time they saw the Steele dossier, the FBI may or may not have thought that.
It is unclear that the FBI knew that it was garbage and went to the FISA court with it anyway.
They knew certain parts of it were garbage.
But even when James Comey testified that there were parts that were unverified and salacious, he said there were parts of it that were unverified and salacious.
Not the entire thing was unverified and salacious.
Third, you have to assume that the FBI's attempts to garner a warrant against Carter Page were driven by anti-Trump bias, not serious suspicions about Page.
That's hard, because Page, again, had been under suspicion for a long time.
He advised Gazprom, the Russian official gas authority, in 2013.
The Russians attempted to cultivate Page as an intelligence source in that year and stated in intercepted communications that it was obvious he wanted to earn loads of money.
There was a FISA warrant taken out against him in 2014.
So Page has been on the radar for a very long time.
So the idea that it's just beyond insane, beyond nuts, that they would target Carter Page, I don't see the evidence for that.
Fourth, you have to assume that all of this wasn't just bureaucratic incompetence.
It wasn't just people got overzealous because they wanted Carter Page, or because they saw what they suspected was Trump-Russia collusion, they got overzealous with a warrant.
It's got to be they were attempting to get Trump to finish Trump.
That it was done out of pure animus for Trump, not out of any real suspicion.
And finally, we have to assume that the same supposedly bad actors inside the FBI and DOJ are now staffing the Mueller investigation, that Mueller is infused with that same bias.
That he wants to get Trump because he hates Trump, and therefore he's willing to look past all evidence.
Now, there's a problem with that, which is that Peter Strzok and Lisa Page, the two most anti-Trump FBI agents from their texts, Peter Strzok was saying in 2017 he didn't see any there there to the Trump-Russia investigation.
So to suggest that he was desperately attempting to trump up some sort of information there, the evidence there is really thin.
Now, this is not to say there wasn't corruption inside the FBI.
There was, but it was with regard to Hillary Clinton.
As I've detailed in the last couple of weeks, the corruption on the Hillary investigation is almost unquestioned.
The idea of the Obama administration was basically giving soft orders to the rest of the FBI and the DOJ to let Hillary off the hook.
It's pretty obvious from the timeline, Annie McCarthy has done a good job of breaking that down.
But I want to be very careful about what we allege here, so we don't get beyond the facts.
If there are additional facts, we can talk about them.
So, for example, there's a rumor going around today that there was a second Steele dossier.
And this Steele dossier was created when Hillary Clinton basically went to some foreign sources, had them funnel information to the State Department.
The State Department then funneled those foreign sources to Now, the question is whether Steele then took those and went to the FBI.
That part of the story isn't clear yet.
Then it would look like a pipeline was being set up.
But that pipeline already existed, right?
I mean, Steele was working for Hillary Clinton, working for Fusion GPS.
That wouldn't really be a surprise.
The only thing that would make it worse is if it was funneled through the State Department and then to Steele, right?
Then it looks like the State Department was being mobilized on behalf of Hillary.
That would be a real scandal, and we'll see if that develops, right?
It's still a little early for that.
Here's my point.
I'm willing to change my mind based on the evidence, but I need the evidence to actually be presented.
So, so far I haven't seen the evidence yet, because here's what we finally know in sum.
Right, we know, at least we suspect, that the FBI and DOJ lied to the FISA court about the grounds for a warrant on Carter Page.
That's exactly what Nunes suggests.
We know that Steele didn't like Trump.
It is controversial as to whether that information was included in the FISA application.
It's not completely clear.
It's very clear that the Trump-Russia investigation was not predicated on Carter Page, that it was predicated on George Papadopoulos, that was admitted by Nunes.
What that means is that there was more to the investigation than just Carter Page, which means that all the talk about firing Mueller based on this is a little bit over the top.
Now, Trey Gowdy essentially said this.
He said a couple of things.
He said, number one, the FISA warrant on Page wouldn't have happened without the Steele dossier.
But he also said pretty clearly that the Trump-Russia investigation is not just the Carter-Page warrant.
So to end it based on just the Carter-Page warrant, there's not enough evidence for that.
Would it have been authorized?
Were it not for that dossier?
No, it would not have been.
How can you say that?
Because it was authorized four times by separate judges, right?
Right.
And the information was in there all four times.
Okay, so, you know, the information was there all four times.
It's unclear whether by that point some of the information had been checked out.
But here's the thing that really bothers me about all of this.
Why are we reading them out?
Trump can declassify this anytime.
He can declassify the actual application anytime he wants.
So if he wants to declassify it and then we can all see the truth, then we can see the truth.
I want more information at this point.
Again, I'm perfectly open to the idea that there is a quote-unquote deep state and that it's against Trump, but I want to see evidence of it.
I'm not going to jump on a conspiratorial bandwagon just because it feels good to do so.
I want to read into this and determine whether it's malice, or whether it is corruption, or whether it is incompetence.
I want to find out whether the FBI really acted in insane ways here, or whether they were just sloppy.
And I want to know whether the corruption was about Hillary Clinton, which we already know, or whether it extended to we have to stop Trump, because the evidence for that I think is a lot slimmer.
Okay.
In just a second, I'm going to continue along these lines.
We'll talk a little bit more about what is coming along these lines.
Then we will analyze some Super Bowl commercials.
We still have a Federalist paper, lots to get to.
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So while everything I just said about the memo is true on the basis of evidence, I will say that the democratic resistance to the memo has been so extreme as to make it suggest that there is something to hide.
That's one of the problems here, is that the Democrats reacted to the Nunes memo not by saying, just put it out there, it's a bunch of crap.
Instead, they decided it was important for them to go nuts over it.
So Adam Schiff was one of the people going nuts over it.
He also leaked his own memo probably to the press.
He said that This memo could result in an Oklahoma City-style bombing.
I mean, this kind of language is not helpful if you're trying to look like you're not bothered by a memo.
In the future, the intelligence community is going to be very wary about sharing information with us because they won't trust us to be responsible stewards of it.
And sources of information are going to dry up.
If you have a neighbor next door who's buying a lot of fertilizer, and it seems odd to you because they don't have a yard, are you going to think twice before calling the FBI?
Because if they get a search warrant for your neighbor, and something is politicized, the political winds change, and there's an investigation, your identity is going to be revealed.
Because you really can't trust that this is going to be kept confidential anymore.
Okay, this is asinine.
The idea that the intelligence community does not have a legal responsibility to share information with the Congress is insane.
Again, if Democrats want to say that this is going to lead to a bombing...
In fact, the media were pushing this line for weeks before the memo actually came out.
That's what makes everybody so skeptical.
There are two things that make Republicans skeptical and willing to buy into conspiracy theories.
One is the feeling that the FBI was acting on behalf of Hillary Clinton, which is actually true.
And two is the feeling that the Democrats in the media are desperate to keep the memo from reaching the light.
which makes everybody jump to, okay, well, that must mean that everything in the memo and all the sort of allegations that are drawn from the memo must be true in their most extreme form.
Again, the memo itself does not call for Mueller to step down.
The memo doesn't make any connection to Mueller.
The memo doesn't call for Rod Rosenstein to step down.
It doesn't matter.
People are jumping to those conclusions.
Anyway, President Trump himself comes out and attacks Adam Schiff for leaking.
I mean, He tweeted this out a little bit earlier today.
Little Adam Schiff.
We need to find the president some new adjectives, because I think he's now done little for Little Marco, and like a thousand people are Little Adam Schiff.
Little Adam Schiff, who is desperate to run for higher office, is one of the biggest liars and leakers in Washington, right up there with Comey, Warner, Brennan, and Clapper.
Let's see.
Adam leaves closed committee hearings to illegally leak confidential information.
Must be stopped.
Must be stopped.
Okay, so I think that it's true that Adam Schiff is a leaker.
I don't know that this is worthwhile for the president to engage.
It seems to me the president has already cast enough shadow on this investigation that no matter what happens here, his defenders will have something to hang on to.
Engaging in this sort of fight is not useful.
It's also, it'd be a good time for the president to go around and talk up the economy a little bit.
There's been a drop in the Dow.
Over the last couple of days, that equates to over 1,000 points, where we basically erased all the gains made in the month of January in about three days.
So the market dropped 666 points on Friday.
It's down about 500 points at this point today on Monday.
So that is not good stuff.
Mr. President, there's more important things to be doing.
Meanwhile, if you want to let Devin Nunes go out there and do his thing, let him do his thing.
He called Devin Nunes a great American hero.
We'll find out.
Devin Nunes says there's more coming, by the way.
He says there will be more bombshells that will be released.
Memos that are going to come out?
Are there other memos?
You said this was phase one.
Yeah, so this completes just the FISA abuse portion of our investigation.
We are in the middle of what I call phase two of our investigation, which involves other departments, specifically the State Department and some of the involvement that they had in this.
That investigation is ongoing, and we continue to work towards finding answers and asking the right questions to try to get to the bottom of what exactly the State Department was up to in terms of this Russia investigation.
So Nunes is obviously using Byron York as his source for leaking information.
Byron York over at the Washington Examiner is the guy who reported what I reported earlier, that the State Department had received information via a Hillary compatriot about, I guess, Carter Page, and that that information was then funneled to Christopher Steele.
Unclear what happened with that part of the dossier.
Use of the State Department as Hillary's personal tool would be no shock whatsoever.
Again, the corruption in the State Department with regard to Hillary Clinton is not a surprise.
The corruption in the FBI with regard to Hillary Clinton is not a surprise.
We should be very careful.
We're tiptoeing in murky waters here.
Let's wait for all the evidence to come out, and then we can make some serious calls about it.
Okay, time for some things I like, and then we'll do some things I hate, and then we'll get to a Federalist paper.
So, things that I like.
So, I was on the plane yesterday, as well as today, and yesterday I watched the Oscar-nominated Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri.
Originally, for the first half hour, this thing was headed directly for things I hate.
And for the first half hour, I thought, this is just an awful film.
Not because the plot is uninteresting, but just because it's one of those films that tries to straddle the borderline between serious and absurd, with touches of funny.
And I'm not a big fan of that kind of feel.
Like, you don't know whether you're watching a comedy, you don't know whether you're watching a tragedy.
The last half of the film gets much better.
The performances are universally quite good.
The best performance in the film is Woody Harrelson, which is shocking to me because I'm not a Woody Harrelson fan.
But Woody Harrelson plays the sheriff in this town.
Basically, the plot is this.
Woody Harrelson is a sheriff in a small town.
Frances McDormand plays the mother of a girl who was killed and raped.
And she thinks that the police department has not been doing enough to track down the killers because seven months later and they don't have a suspect.
And she puts up these three billboards outside of her, outside of the town, that say that the police department isn't doing enough to track down the killer.
Sam Rockwell, who is going to win Best Supporting Actor, plays a sort of racist, nasty cop who, in the end, has sort of a transformation.
Here's a little bit of the preview.
So long, what you can and cannot say on a billboard.
I assume you can't say nothing defamatory and you can't say... Is that right?
Or... Amos?
I think I'll be all right then.
I guess you're Angela Hayes' mother.
That's right.
I'm Angela Hayes' mother.
So, Mildred Hayes, why did you put up these billboards?
My daughter Angela was murdered seven months ago.
It seems to me the police department is too busy torturing black folks to solve actual crime.
Dickson, I'm in the middle of my Easter dinner.
Sorry, kids.
I know, Chief, but I think we got kind of a problem.
I'd do anything to catch your daughter's killer.
I don't think those billboards is very fair.
Time it took you to get out here whining like a willoughby.
Some other poor girl's probably out there being butchered right now.
We've had two official complaints about those billboards.
From who?
The story of the film is not tracking down the killer.
So this isn't a mystery story about who killed the woman's daughter.
The real story is about what exactly Frances McDormand's character is doing because she's so angry that she's taking out her anger in every direction.
The whole story is really about anger and the wages of anger and not thinking enough about the consequences of your actions because you're angry.
And from that perspective, I think that there's a lot about the film that's quite good.
It's a little bit too clever by half.
It has situations like that one, where people are just doing things without consequence that make no sense, just in real life.
Or Frances McDormand is kicking teenagers in the crotch and nothing happens to her.
I mean, come on.
There are a couple other scenes where, like this one they're about to show, where she's throwing firebombs at things and nothing happens to her.
You know, I understand the whole thing is supposed to be a little bit surreal.
I guess that's the director's style, or the director-writer's style.
Still, it begs, because the mix is of stuff that is ultra-realistic and stuff that is not realistic at all, it's a little bit hard to tell what exactly the director is trying to do.
And some of the writing is really, really on the nose.
There are a couple of scenes that are supremely on the nose.
But Woody Harrelson's performance is great.
There are a couple of great scenes in it.
Is it the best picture of the year?
No, it's not the best picture of the year.
Come on.
Okay, come on.
And neither is Get Out, and neither is The Shape of Water.
The best picture of the year is clearly Dunkirk.
But I'm biased because I like good movies.
Okay, time for some other things that I like.
So let's go to some of these Super Bowl commercials.
We didn't actually see the Super Bowl commercials inside the Super Bowl.
That is the one drawback of watching the thing at the place.
I can live without the commercials, so I don't really care that much.
But there are a couple of these Super Bowl ads.
Some of them are funny, and there's one that's getting all sorts of flack that I want to talk about briefly.
So first, a couple of the funny ones.
So there's an ad for the NFL, I guess, with Eli Manning and Odell Beckham Jr.
The, uh, from Dirty Dancing.
It's pretty funny.
You all working on that thing?
Yeah, let's do it.
Let's get it.
Put, put!
They're practicing touchdown celebrations.
I love my life and I owe it on you.
So we take each other's hand.
Don't seem to understand the agency.
Just remember, you're the one that I can get in.
So it's ridiculous.
And it goes on like this for a full minute.
So that's funny stuff.
Another one of the ads that I thought was funny, the Tide ad was pretty good.
So this is David Harbour from Stranger Things doing an ad for Tide that looks nothing like an ad for Tide.
Yeah, just your typical Super Bowl car ad.
Right?
Or, a hilarious beer ad.
Or, whatever ad this is.
Whatever.
But, it's a Tide ad.
What?
It's a Tide ad.
What makes it a Tide ad?
There are no stains.
Look at those clean clothes.
What else would this be an ad for?
Diamonds?
A gift that lasts for a... No, Tide.
It's time for a cold refresher.
Tied ad.
Fall into the sleep of... No.
Tied.
No.
Tied ad.
Extreme.
No.
Tied.
Tied!
Meet the all-new... No, it's a tied ad.
Tied.
So, does this make every Super Bowl ad a tied ad?
Okay, so that's a very, very smart ad.
Okay, it's pretty great.
So, well done, Tide.
I will say the only thing that can actually fix eating horse bleep is apparently a Tide Pod.
So all the people who ate horse bleep yesterday, I'm not recommending you to Tide Pod because that could come with criminal culpability.
But if you do, I'll just say I don't think the world would be lessened by your absence.
Okay, other ads that are funny.
I can't actually vouch for this one.
Did you actually see the Amazon ad?
Was it any good?
So here's the Amazon ad.
ad.
We'll watch it together in real time and see whether it was any good.
In Austin, it's 60 degrees with its...
Alexa?
Amazon's Alexa lost her voice this morning.
Alexa lost her voice.
How is that even possible?
We have the replacements ready.
Just say the word.
And you're sure this is going to work?
Yeah. - Yeah.
Alexa, show me a recipe for a grilled cheese sandwich.
Pathetic!
You're 32 years of age and you don't know how to make a grilled cheese sandwich?
Its name is the recipe, you d***head!
Alexa, how far is Mars?
How far is Mars?
Well, how am I supposed to know?
I've never been there.
This guy want to go to Mars.
For what?
There's not even oxygen there.
Alexa, set the mood.
Now setting the mood.
You're in the bush.
And you're just so dirty.
And so sweaty.
Because it's hot in that bush.
Alexa, re-bush.
Re-reboot.
Alexa, play some country music.
No, no, Alexa.
Country music.
Alexa, call Brandon.
and then nothing thanks so much I know they tired of me.
What's the call, Brandon?
I'm afraid Brandon is a little tied up.
But do let me know if there's anything I can help you with.
Yes.
Okay.
Okay, that's a funny commercial.
Thanks, guys, but I'll take it from here.
Okay.
Funny commercial.
Okay, here's the one that got all the criticism.
So, Dodge Ram did an ad where they featured Martin Luther King Jr.' 's voice.
And this drew all sorts of criticism for reasons that I find kind of stupid.
Here's the ad.
It's Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
speaking from February 4th, 1968, 50 years ago.
And here's what he had to say.
If you want to be important, wonderful.
If you want to be recognized wonderfully, if you want to be great wonderfully, but recognize that he who is greatest among you shall be your servant.
That's a new definition of greatness.
By giving that definition of greatness, it means that everybody can be great.
You don't have to know about Plato and Aristotle to serve.
You don't have to know the theory of relativity to serve.
to serve.
You don't have to know the second theory of thermodynamics in physics to serve.
You only need a heart full of grace.
Okay, so this ad got all sorts of crap because it was juxtaposing people serving and the words of Martin Luther King with the Dodge Rams.
People were like, oh my God, how could they use Martin Luther King to sell Dodge Rams?
Okay, number one, I don't really think that that's what the ad is about.
Okay, I remember that there was, I think it was GM did an ad with Clint Eastwood a few years ago at the Super Bowl, and the ad was all him talking about how great the country was, and nobody felt like, oh my God, how could they possibly use patriotism to sell product?
I didn't see any of the critics of this ad actually noting something.
The messages that are being promoted by the ad are good.
Put aside the fact that you don't like commercialism.
Put aside the fact that you may not like capitalism all that much.
The ad is spending millions of dollars to promote an ethos of service to others.
That's an amazing thing.
They spent probably $15 million on this ad to promote the idea that you should help other people.
And if our Dodge Ram can help you help other people, then maybe you should get a Dodge Ram.
That's basically what the ad is.
And people are losing their minds about this.
I just find that utterly insipid.
The other thing that people are saying about this is, how could they use Dr. Martin Luther King's words while people like Colin Kaepernick are kneeling?
The answer is Dr. Martin Luther King would not be kneeling with Colin Kaepernick because Dr. Martin Luther King understood that his whole job was to hold on to that flag as tightly as he possibly could and say, this flag is mine, too, and therefore I stand for the flag with you.
Now you stand for me.
That was what he was doing.
So again, people who are going after this hat, I didn't really understand that.
I thought that it was a little bit over the top.
OK, so time for a quick thing that I hate.
OK, so a couple things.
One, a Colts linebacker was actually killed over the weekend in a DUI.
The person who killed him was an illegal immigrant.
The media didn't really report that.
His name was Cabrera Gonzalez.
His name was, I'm looking for it, Alex Cabrera Gonzalez, 37, drove his truck into an emergency shoulder on the highway and plowed into a rideshare vehicle, killing Edwin Jackson and 54-year-old Jeffrey Monroe.
Gonzalez was booked at Marion County Jail.
Records show he's wanted for deportation.
He was using an alias.
His real name, apparently, is Manuel Oregosavala, an illegal alien who had been deported multiple times from the U.S., once in 2007 and once in 2009.
So, well done, INS, or ICE.
Well done, federal government, which fails to fix the immigration problem over and over and over, another dead American as a result of an illegal immigration problem that you refuse to fix.
So, that, of course, is in a thing that I hate.
Other things that I hate.
So, in the middle of the Super Bowl, they did a preview for Solo.
No, just no, no, no, no, no, no.
So here's a, we'll show you a little bit of this.
I've been running scams on the streets since I was 10.
10. I was kicked out of the flight academy for having a mind of my own.
I'm gonna be a pilot.
The best in the galaxy.
Hey, kid.
I'm putting together a crew.
You in?
That's yes.
I might be the only person...
Who knows what you really are.
What's that?
Okay, first of all, no, no synthesizers, please.
No synthesizers.
Okay, yes, I see.
It's the Millennium Falcon.
Yes, we've all seen the Millennium Falcon.
Okay, so a few things about this preview.
So, the iconic use of the Millennium Falcon over and over and over and over again.
You can't do it again, right?
I mean, you already did the callback in Force Awakens, and that was nice.
And now you can't go back to this.
Also, Han Solo has the coolest entry in film history, right?
His entrance in Star Wars, episode four, is one of the coolest entrances ever.
He's literally sitting in a cantina and shoots a guy in the middle of a conversation about how he's a rogue.
Okay, that's awesome.
And yes, Han shot first.
And now, everybody is, now you want the backstory?
Like, I don't need the backstory.
He was only 31 when he did, I think he was 29, he was a kid when he did Star Wars, episode four.
And in the movie, he's supposed to be even younger.
He's supposed to be like late 20s.
What could have happened to him that was so formative?
Also, I'm not seeing the tremendous sense of humor that was sort of necessary in Han Solo.
Han's whole thing is that he was cynical, and now they're going to make him—if they make him not cynical, it's going to be so obnoxious.
If they make him just an innocent, right, that deep down he's good—we know deep down he's good, but that was the whole discovery of episode four, right?
Why are you ruining it?
The whole discovery of episode four is that deep down Han Solo's good.
He spends the entire time being a rogue, and then he comes back at the end and saves Luke because deep down he's actually a softy.
That's the whole point.
Just, stupid, stupid, stupid.
But there was no way it was gonna be good.
Maybe it'll surprise me, but the reason Rogue One worked is because they were using ancillary characters, not because they were trying to recast the original characters.
It's why I think the prequels for Star Wars don't work.
I don't want Darth Vader's backstory, I just want Darth Vader.
In Rogue One, none of these characters were in the main film, except for Darth Vader, who appears exactly the way he appears in the main film.
So we will see if it is as bad as it looks.
Maybe it won't be.
I'll go see it anyway because, hey, it's Star Wars, but we'll save our rip on it for actually seeing it.
Okay, quick note on Federalist No.
14.
So every week we do an episode of the Federalist Papers.
Federalist No.
14 is by James Madison.
This talks about why republics work over large regions.
So Madison writes, "As the natural limit of a democracy is that distance from the central point, which will just permit the most remote citizens to assemble as often as their public functions demand, and will include no greater number than can join in those functions, the natural limit of a republic is that distance from the center, which will barely allow the representatives to meet as often as possible." So the idea here is that a republic can only be as large as the capacity to travel to the central point and then travel back home at relative intervals.
That means that you can have the idea of a large republic over time.
You can't have the idea of a large democracy.
The founders were opposed to direct democracy.
They liked the idea of a republic.
They also suggested that because the republic was so large, states would have to have extraordinary powers in order to do all the local services that things would need.
One of the big problems now is the federal government has overreached so much that it feels like the federal government does most things and the state government does very few.
The relationship should be reversed.
In fact, James Madison says, Finally, he gives an inspiring statement he gives an inspiring statement that's kind of like what I said about the Super Bowl, except more eloquent.
He said,
Know, my countrymen, shut your ears against this unhallowed language, shut your hearts against the poison which it conveys, the kindred blood which flows in the veins of American citizens, the mingled blood which they have shed in defense of their sacred rights, consecrate their union, and excite horror at the idea of their becoming aliens, rivals, enemies.
We should remember that, whether we're watching the Super Bowl, whether we're arguing politics, or whether we're talking about the American founding.
All right, we'll be back here tomorrow with much, much more.
I'm Ben Shapiro.
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