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March 19, 2018 - The Ben Shapiro Show

57:15

Is A Constitutional Crisis Coming? | Ep. 498

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	President Trump edges closer to firing Robert Mueller, Vladimir Putin consolidates his grip, and Democrats battle over their future.
	Lots to talk about.
	I'm Ben Shapiro.
	This is the Ben Shapiro Show.
	I'm punch drunk already and it's just Monday.
	That's what's going on here at the studio.
	A little bit later today, I'm going to be flying out to Pennsylvania.
	I'm speaking at Susquehanna University, which is happening on Tuesday.
	And then I'm speaking at Georgetown on Wednesday.
	So it's going to be a packed week full of wonderful, wonderful things.
	And we have so many things to talk about today, including the president of the United States, who appears to be on the verge of at least considering maybe firing Robert Mueller.
	Maybe that's speculation.
	Maybe it's not.
	We'll go through all the details first.
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	All right.
	So, big news over the weekend is that President Trump thinks, which aren't?
	Yes, he's been tweeting that out all morning, this morning, on Monday.
	WITCH HUNT!
	And I don't know, that's not really how he says it, but it just feels like it should be that way because it's all capital letters.
	He tweeted that out this morning.
	Earlier, he tweeted out, the Mueller probe never should have been started in that there was no collusion and there was no crime.
	It was based on fraudulent activities and a fake dossier paid for by crooked Hillary in the DNC and improperly used in FISA court for surveillance of my campaign.
	All caps.
	WITCH HUNT!
	So President Trump really going off.
	Now what led all of this to happen?
	Well, on Friday afternoon, the president decided, well really the DOJ decided, to fire ex-FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe.
	Now, Andy McCabe should have been fired long ago, if you really will recall.
	Andy McCabe was the fellow whose wife had been paid basically by Terry McAuliffe when she was running for Senate in Virginia, and she lost, but it didn't matter.
	She was very close to the Clinton team.
	Andy McCabe had been far too close.
	Even Peter Strzok and Lisa Page, the FBI agents who were very anti-Trump, were texting with each other going, why is Andy still on this case?
	Legitimately, why is Andy still on this case?
	And then it turns out that Andy McCabe had leaked a bunch of information to the press.
	The information that he leaked to the press, by the way, It was not anti-Trump information, it was anti-Hillary information.
	Because what he leaked to the press, apparently with the approval of James Comey over at the FBI, was that the FBI wanted to reopen the Hillary investigation and Barack Obama's DOJ did not want to reopen the Hillary investigation in the aftermath of learning that there were Hillary Clinton emails on Huma Abedin's husband's server, on Anthony Weiner's server.
	So it wasn't like Andy McCabe is actually being investigated for being anti-Trump.
	In fact, what he was being investigated for was going to the press out of school in a way that was actually anti-Hillary.
	But on Friday, the Trump administration decided we can't let this slide.
	His pension's supposed to kick in on Sunday.
	So we'll wait till the very last minute, then we will screw him so hard, it'll be like Debbie Does Dallas.
	It'll be the worst thing ever.
	Okay, that's how hard they went after Andy McCabe.
	Which is such a burn, right?
	I mean, you spend 20 years working for a place, they wait until 30 seconds before you retire and get your pension, and boom!
	Andrew McCabe, late Friday, less than two days shy of his retirement, which is such a burn, right?
	I mean, you spend 20 years working for a place, they wait until 30 seconds before you retire and get your pension, and boom, there goes your pension.
	Ending the career of an official who had risen to serve as second in command at the bureau, McCabe had more recently been regularly taunted by President Trump and besieged by accusations he had misled internal investigators at the DOJ.
	In a blistering statement Friday night, McCabe said his firing is part of a larger effort to discredit the FBI and the Special Counsel's investigation.
	Quote, This attack on my credibility is one of a larger effort not just to slander me personally, but to taint the FBI, law enforcement, and intelligence professionals more generally.
	It is part of this administration's ongoing war on the FBI and the efforts of the Special Counsel investigation which continue to this day.
	Their persistence in this campaign only highlights the importance of the Special Counsel's work.
	Trump tweeted, quote, Andrew McCabe FIRED, all caps.
	Okay, so what exactly is Trump talking about?
	It's not totally clear.
	Here is where Comey may have lied.
	democracy, capital D. Sanctimonious James Comey was his boss and made McCabe look like a choir boy.
	He knew all about the lies and corruption going on at the highest levels of the FBI.
	Okay, so what exactly is Trump talking about?
	It's not totally clear.
	Here is where Comey may have lied.
	Okay, so what Andy McCabe said in his statement is that he had never talked out of school, right?
	That when he went to the press anonymously, that had been known by people higher up in the FBI.
	Well, there was only one person higher up in the FBI at the time.
	That would have been James Comey.
	Well, James Comey had said openly this would be this would be clip 17.
	James Comey had said openly in testimony that he had never approved any anonymous leaking to the FBI.
	Oh, there is definitely a problem.
	You know, this would seem to contradict what Comey said.
	Now, we already know that Comey is a leaker.
	The question is, is he a serial leaker?
	Because we know that after he was fired, he removed his memos, which, by the way, I believe were FBI material, at least seven of them, and gave them to a friend at Columbia Law School, some of which, at least the information, was leaked to the media.
	This is an even more serious allegation because it would be occurring when he was director.
	And it will raise questions of whether Comey is not just a leaker, but a liar.
	OK, and here are a couple of the issues that are at work.
	One, should Andrew McCabe have been fired or was it politically motivated?
	Now, the Democrats are already coming out to defend McCabe, which is hilarious.
	Because remember, McCabe was fired for leaking anti-Hillary information to the press.
	That's why he was fired.
	Should he have been fired?
	Yeah, he should have been fired a long time ago.
	And not only should have been fired, this case was not brought by Attorney General Jeff Sessions just out of hand.
	This case was brought because the Office of Professional Responsibility, which is a non-partisan group inside the FBI, which is known for not going after people very hard, went really hard after Andy McCabe and said he did something really wrong.
	They gave a recommendation to the FBI that he be fired, and to the DOJ that he be fired, and that his pension essentially be suspended.
	Now that brings us to question number two.
	And question number two is, why does this matter?
	Why isn't it just a guy did something wrong at the FBI and now he's been fired?
	And McCabe's take is, well, Trump is going to use this to try and blast the entire FBI as corrupt, and then suggest that they were out to get him and are still out to get him, and that's what the Mueller investigation is.
	And Trump's normal response to this would be, listen, I'm not trying to stop the Mueller investigation.
	They're doing their own thing.
	What you did is wrong.
	What Mueller is doing is what Mueller is doing, and we'll deal with that as it comes.
	But unfortunately, the president of the United States continues to make himself look more and more guilty.
	Now, do I think the president is actually guilty of collusion?
	No, I don't.
	Do I think the president is guilty of obstruction?
	No, because I think it's very difficult for the president to be guilty of obstruction according to the laws that are on the books, right?
	I've looked at all those laws.
	We've discussed them multiple times on the program before.
	Very difficult for the president of the United States to actually be guilty of obstruction.
	With that said, the president is making himself look more guilty by flailing around like a crazy person, like Kermit the Frog in that gif.
	That's what the president is basically doing on Twitter every day.
	So, after McCabe is fired, instead of him just saying, listen, McCabe had to go.
	McCabe was a problem.
	And then saying Comey had to go.
	Comey was a problem.
	Instead it turns into Comey was a problem, McCabe is a problem, and Mueller is a problem.
	So President Trump tweeted out, warning Robert Mueller, and this follows a week in which Mueller, it came out, is now investigating the financial ties that Trump has to all his financial dealings.
	Trump had said a long time ago that was a red line for him, that if Mueller started looking into his financial dealings, he'd seriously consider firing Mueller.
	So if you're on the left, here's what this lineup of events looks like.
	Mueller starts investigating Trump's finances.
	Trump fires McCabe.
	Or Jeff Sessions fires McCabe.
	And then Trump says, let's fire Mueller.
	Right?
	It looks like you could just skip the middleman.
	And it looks like Trump is trying to shut down Mueller because he doesn't like what Mueller is looking at.
	If you're on the left, I can't say that's completely implausible based on the president's behavior.
	What I really think this is, is Trump has been wildly annoyed.
	I know everyone in the White House is very, very annoyed.
	But the continuation of an investigation they think has no merit and they feel like it's just dogging the president day in and day out.
	Trump is a guy who fixates on things, whether it is unmentionables or whether it is Robert Mueller.
	The man fixates on things.
	And once he fixates, he doesn't let go.
	Also not a joke I meant to make.
	In any case, Trump tweeted this out.
	this out he said why does the muller team have 13 hardened democrats some big crooked hillary supporters and zero republicans capital z another dem recently added does anyone think this is fair and yet there is no collusion all caps whenever i yell like that it means it's all capital letters I do think there's a sort of E.E.
	Cummings quality to President Trump's tweets, you know, with the random punctuation and the capital letters.
	It is amusing to me.
	In any case, Trump also tweeted out, wow, watch Comey lie under oath to Senator G when asked, have you ever, that'd be Senator Graham, not like original gangster, Senator G when asked, have you ever been an anonymous source or known someone else to be an anonymous source?
	He said, strongly, never, no.
	He lied as clearly shown on Fox and Friends.
	OK, all of this is to say that the president of the United States is not making himself look particularly good here with all of this activity, even though Andy McCabe had to go.
	Because I don't understand what McCabe had to do with the Mueller investigation, per se.
	Remember, the Mueller investigation only began.
	The special counsel was only appointed because the president insisted on using Rod Rosenstein as his hitman to go after James Comey.
	And that meant that Rod Rosenstein now became a witness in the Comey matter, which meant that he had to appoint a special investigator.
	It really had nothing to do with Andy McCabe.
	Trump has basically seized on every piece of evidence that there are members of the FBI who didn't like him as evidence that everything against him is wrong and false and slanderous.
	And I don't see how you get from point A to point B. I'm willing to hear the case, but I don't really see what McCabe has to do with the Mueller investigation per se.
	And every attempt that Trump makes to connect the two makes it look like he's sort of desperate.
	Now, I know there are people on the right who are very angry with me when I say this, because they want to believe that President Trump is totally right on all of this, there's a deep state coup that's happening, and Andy McCabe was part of this deep state coup.
	Again, you're going to need the evidence.
	I need the evidence to see that in order for me to believe that.
	And there's a really good piece in The Wall Street Journal about how truth has sort of become tribal on both sides with regard to American politics these days.
	And unfortunately, people are believing what they want to believe instead of believing things are true.
	And if you say to them, I need the evidence for that, then this shows that you are not part of the tribe and therefore you are disloyal.
	So if I say, President Trump makes an assertion, I want to know whether the assertion is true, this is a symptom of my disloyalty.
	Whereas if I would just say, Trump said it, And if people attack him on the truth, then it's even more true because they're just attacking Trump.
	Then, you know, then I would be, I guess, a tribal loyalist.
	Well, I'm not into the tribal loyalty thing, as you may have noticed.
	So I'm going to ask again what McCabe's firing has to do with Robert Mueller and why the president is connecting the two.
	What's even worse is that President Trump's lawyer is coming out and saying the same thing.
	So his personal attorney on Saturday called on Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein to shut down the special counsel investigation into Trump's campaign associates' ties to Russia.
	Listen, I'm fine with the end of this investigation, but I think Trump firing him is not going to be a good look for him.
	I'll explain why this is a problem for Trump, why his lawyer was saying stupid things in just a second.
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	OK, so President Trump's attorney came out, John Dowd.
	And he said this, quote, I pray that acting Attorney General Rosenstein will follow the brilliant and courageous example of the FBI Office of Professional Responsibility and Attorney General Jeff Sessions and bring an end to alleged Russia collusion investigation manufactured by McCabe's boss, James Comey, based upon a fraudulent and corrupt dossier.
	This is what Dowd says.
	Just ended on the merits in light of recent revelations.
	So I guess the idea here is that we know that McCabe is corrupt, responsible.
	We know that McCabe has supposedly lied or at least Comey has lied.
	And so we are now going to attribute to James Comey that he let off the Mueller investigation on bad evidence.
	And so we should end this sucker right now.
	Now, again.
	Remember, the Mueller investigation was not originally predicated on the Carter Page FISA warrant that everybody is so hot and bothered about.
	Originally, it was predicated on the George Papadopoulos surveillance.
	Papadopoulos was a relatively low-level staffer, I think, for the Trump campaign.
	There's not a lot of evidence that he was a higher-up.
	But he was talking with Russian sources in London who said that they could smuggle him Hillary emails, and then he was telling that back to the Trump campaign.
	That's what led off this investigation in the first place.
	And again, we still don't know that everything in the Steele dossier that the FISA warrant was based on was false.
	We know that some of it was false.
	We don't know that the entire thing was false.
	We know that it was politically motivated, but a lot of OPPO research is politically motivated, and that doesn't necessarily mean that it's false.
	In any case, should this investigation have been begun on the evidence that we now see?
	I'm not sure that it should have.
	Should it be ended on this basis?
	Well, it's very difficult politically for the President of the United States to end this investigation on the basis that Andy McCabe got fired for a completely separate reason.
	And again, there's a bit of revisionist history going on here.
	The revisionist history is, if this was an attempt to get Trump, If this was always an attempt to get Trump, if they initiated this investigation in March 2016, right as Trump was about to win the nomination, and the attempt was to get Trump, then why didn't any of this leak until after Trump was already elected president?
	The only stuff that was coming out from the FBI during the election cycle had nothing to do with Trump.
	It had to do instead with Hillary Clinton.
	Remember, James Comey is the guy who basically sunk Hillary's chances.
	It's amazing to watch as people shift the narrative, right?
	So now Comey is a favorite of the Democrats again.
	When, for a few minutes, he was the worst guy in the world, according to Democrats.
	Now, James Comey is an absolutely insufferable doof.
	So, Comey came out in response to Trump ripping into McCabe and into Comey and into Mueller, and here's what he said.
	And so, I have just one note for James Comey, who is just, as I say, insufferable.
	very soon and they can judge for themselves who is honorable and who is not.
	And so I just want note for James Comey, who is just, as I say, insufferable.
	And this guy, when Trump said that Comey's a grandstander, that is 100% true.
	That is 100% true.
	When he says that Comey is sanctimonious, that is certainly true.
	How do I know this?
	Because if James Comey has such a great story to tell, why is he waiting for his book release to tell it?
	If it is vitally important that the American people know what James Comey knows, if it's vitally important that the American people judge for themselves who is honorable and who is not, then why is James Comey waiting to shill his book?
	Why is he waiting to get out there and sell his book in these tours where they're selling the tickets for $100 a pop?
	In order to tell his story.
	That doesn't sound like somebody who's a deeply honorable guy.
	That sounds like a guy who's trying to make some money on the side and make himself seem honorable at the same time.
	So it is quite possible that there are no good players here, right?
	It is quite possible that nobody is doing anything right on any of this.
	And so Trump's own lawyers started to walk this back.
	Ty Cobb, not the great batsman for the Detroit Tigers, but Ty Cobb, Trump's lawyer, he came out and he sort of backed off John Dowd's comments saying that Trump should fire Mueller.
	So Ty Cobb instead said Trump, it turns out, is not actually discussing firing Mueller.
	So he came out and he reversed himself.
	The White House lawyer said, in response to media speculation and related questions being posed to the administration, the White House yet again confirms that the president is not considering or discussing the firing of the special counsel Robert Mueller.
	This is what he says.
	OK, so that obviously is different from what Trump's other lawyer said.
	And then Trump's other lawyer, I love this, came out and said, well, I was speaking on my own.
	I didn't really mean that I was speaking for Trump.
	How many lawyers can come out and say they're not speaking on behalf of their client?
	We now have one lawyer of Trump's who said he didn't pay off A porn star on behalf of President Trump.
	And now we have another lawyer who says he wasn't speaking on behalf of President Trump.
	It is not good to be an agent, in fact, for the President of the United States.
	That is certainly true.
	Meanwhile, there are people who are making the obvious point here, which is that if Trump wants to look innocent here, he should just shut up.
	If Trump wants to look innocent here, he should let the wheels of justice grind exceedingly small.
	Trey Gowdy makes this point.
	Trey Gowdy, of course, is a hardcore right-winger from South Carolina.
	He's the head of the House Oversight Committee.
	And here's what he had to say about Trump's lawyers coming out and talking about Mueller.
	Chris, if you look at the jurisdiction for Robert Mueller, first and foremost, what did Russia do to this country in 2016?
	That is supremely important and it has nothing to do with collusion.
	So, to suggest that Mueller should shut down and that all he is looking at is collusion, if you have an innocent client, Mr. Dowd, act like it.
	That's exactly right.
	I mean, the fact that Gowdy is saying exactly what I'm saying, I take it as a point of pride, because the reality is that Trump should stop with all this stuff.
	And Republicans are saying this too, right?
	Republican senators are now warning the president not to fire Mueller.
	They say the president has to let the federal investigators finish what they're doing.
	Again, I think a lot of this has to do with Trump just being annoyed.
	I think he fired Comey because he was annoyed.
	I don't think this is all planned out.
	Again, I don't think you can have it both ways if you're a Democrat.
	Either Trump is a doof who just does things on the spur of the moment, or Trump is a master manipulator, behind the scenes, working with Putin.
	The guy can't even capitalize correctly.
	I'm going to go with he's just a doof doing things on the spur of the moment because I think that that fits the evidence a little bit better than he is nefariously plotting everything.
	Jeff Flake, who's become a rather irritating figure, he came out and he said that McCabe's firing was a horrible day for democracy.
	Of course, he said this on CNN.
	Well, when the President said it was a great day for democracy yesterday, I think it was a horrible day for democracy.
	To have firings like this happening at the top from the President and the Attorney General does not speak well for what's going on.
	So, I don't know what the designs are on Mueller, but it seems to be building toward that, and I just hope it doesn't go there.
	I don't think it's going to go there.
	I think a lot of this is loose talk by the president, because the president does a lot of loose talk.
	But, hey, I've been proved wrong before.
	The president usually has about a six-month time delay.
	He's got one of these — President Trump's policies, or at least his firings and staffing policies, are sort of like one of those cartoon bombs in a Bugs Bunny cartoon, where you light the wick and it's eight miles long, and then it takes a year for the bomb actually to go off.
	It's possible that's what Trump is doing.
	It's also possible that he's just talking like Trump talks.
	I do love that Jeff Flake looks like he just stayed a little bit late at a wedding and had to make it on time for this State of the Union hit.
	Again, I think a lot of this is Trump being frustrated.
	This is what Reuters is reporting.
	White House Legislative Affairs Director Mark Short said the Trump team was fully cooperating in the Mueller investigation and that the president was expressing his growing frustration with how long the probe has lasted.
	There's a shock.
	Lindsey Graham, meanwhile, says that Mueller shouldn't be dismissed except for cause.
	Trump has drawn a lot of criticism.
	And, of course, Senator Rubio says that he doesn't like the way that McCabe was fired.
	He says that he should have been allowed to finish through the weekend.
	I'm not sure that makes a big difference.
	Again, the OPR is a relatively nonpartisan opinion.
	Apparently, it's a pretty clean nonpartisan group.
	So I have a tough time saying that, you know, that it has to do with with Sessions just wanting to, again, Sessions has been pretty stalwart in not allowing Trump to interfere with Mueller.
	He's been pretty stalwart in not getting rid of Rod Rosenstein.
	He's been pretty stalwart in not getting rid of McCabe until the evidence came out from the Office of Professional Responsibility.
	So all of the talk about how Trump's people are acting as lackeys in this.
	I just, I don't see the evidence for that at all.
	Okay, meanwhile, there's a story that came out over the weekend that got all sorts of press, and I'm not really sure why.
	Yeah, let me correct.
	I have a very strong feeling why, but I don't think it's the reason that a lot of other people are saying.
	So there's a story that came out from the UK Guardian about Cambridge Analytica.
	Cambridge Analytica was the data firm that President Trump was using during his election.
	It's also been used by the Heritage Foundation.
	Originally, I believe it was used by the Cruz campaign.
	And the idea was that they were nefariously gathering data from Facebook.
	So it's a very long article by a woman named Carol Cadwallader.
	And it's about a guy named Christopher Wiley, who is an openly gay guy who worked with Steve Bannon and I guess maybe Milo Yiannopoulos.
	He said that he described a tool on Facebook called Steve Bannon's Psychological Warfare Mind F Tool.
	Now, as you know, I am no fan of Steve Bannon's.
	I think Steve Bannon is one of the worst persons I have ever met in my life.
	I think he's one of the worst people ever.
	I think Steve is garbage.
	This story does not hold up to scrutiny.
	I'll explain why in just a second.
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	Okay, so this story basically alleges that there is some sort of evil, nefarious corruption going on inside the Trump campaign with regard to data operations.
	So again, the UK Guardian is reporting that in 2014, Steve Bannon was Wiley's boss.
	The guy who we're talking about here is a guy named Christopher Wiley, who is a pink-haired guy.
	I mean, this is part of the article.
	He's a pink-haired guy who was apparently some sort of computer genius.
	And Robert Mercer was the guy who was funding Cambridge Analytica.
	The idea they brought into was to bring big data and social media to an established military methodology, information operations, then turn it on the U.S.
	electorate.
	It was Wiley who came up with that idea and oversaw its realization.
	It was Wiley who became the source for the UK Guardian.
	And here's what it basically says.
	Apparently, he ended up showing the author a tranche of documents that laid out secret workings behind Cambridge Analytica.
	In the months following publication, it was revealed that the company had reached out to WikiLeaks to help distribute Hillary Clinton's stolen emails in 2016, and then we watched as it became subject to a special counsel investigation into possible Russian collusion in the U.S.
	election.
	The Observer also received the first of three letters from Cambridge Analytica threatening to sue Guardian News and Media for defamation.
	We're still only just starting to understand the maelstrom of forces that came together to create the conditions for what Mueller confirmed last month was information warfare, but Wiley offers a unique, worm's eye view of the events of 2016, of how Facebook was hijacked, Okay, so what exactly is that extraordinary attack?
	He says that they broke Facebook.
	What exactly did they do?
	Well, apparently, they sent out a couple of links on Facebook that allowed them to gather information.
	That's pretty much it.
	Apparently, all they really did, I mean, they buried the lead all the way down in this story.
	You know, in the middle of this long biography of who this guy is.
	But essentially, all they did was they put out things like IQ tests and personality quizzes that give you access to somebody's Facebook, right?
	You've had these before.
	Somebody will send you to a site and they'll say, take this personality quiz.
	And they'll say, do you want to access this personality quiz through Facebook?
	So you say yes.
	Well, now they have access to the information on your profile.
	That's not illegal.
	You consented to it.
	It's not a big deal.
	That's all Cambridge Analytica did.
	They put out some of these quizzes, they gathered all the information, and then they had all this profile information of people that wasn't political information per se, but it was personality information, and personality gauges pretty highly with politics.
	It tracks pretty highly with politics.
	There are a bunch of studies that suggest that if you like certain types of food, or if you like certain types of music, that that's likely to mean that you are of a particular political party, for example.
	So, Christopher Wiley is one of the guys who was designing all of this.
	So, in 2013, Wiley met Steve Bannon, and he apparently said that Bannon got it immediately.
	And so, he decided to pitch the Mercers on making Cambridge Analytica the nexus for doing all of this stuff.
	Cambridge Analytica would be the great cyber warfare nexus.
	So Robert Mercer was going to pour millions of dollars.
	They flew to New York to meet the Mercers in Rebecca's Manhattan apartment.
	And Wiley said, she loved me.
	She was like, oh, we need more of your type on our side.
	Your type, the gays.
	She loved the gays.
	So did Steve.
	He saw us as early adopters.
	He figured if you can get the gays on board, everyone else will follow.
	It's why he was into the whole Milo thing.
	So Robert Mercer was very into it.
	So what did Wiley do?
	So apparently, what Wiley did was he executed a contract with SEL, which is the parent company of Cambridge Analytica, which shows they were in a commercial agreement with a company called Global Science Research, owned by Cambridge-based academic Alexander Kogan, specifically premised on the harvesting and processing of Facebook data so that it could be matched to personality traits and voter rolls.
	Cambridge Analytica spent $7 million to amass the data, about $1 million of it with the Global Science Research Center.
	She has the bank records and wire transfers.
	Emails reveal Wiley first negotiated with Michal Kaczynski, one of the co-authors of the original MyPersonality research paper, to use the MyPersonality database.
	And then they replicated the information in that database, and then they built up a store of data.
	Now, what exactly?
	Apparently, they collected millions of profiles in a matter of weeks.
	But none of this is illegal.
	There's nothing here that's illegal.
	Now, as soon as Wiley reported this, Facebook immediately suspended him.
	So here's the real question.
	Why are the media covering this?
	I'm not seeing anything here that says to me something deeply nefarious and horrible went on.
	It looks like data gathering that was done by the Obama camp, I'm sure, in 2012 and in 2008.
	This was playing catch-up on the right for all the data banking that had been done on the left.
	One of the big criticisms of the Romney campaign in 2012 is that their information system was so bad, that their data analytics were so weak.
	And so Trump was trying to fight that, and Bannon was trying to fight that, which seems to me a smart thing to do, not an illegal thing to do.
	So why exactly is everybody focusing on this?
	I'll tell you.
	The answer that everybody is focusing in on non-illegal behavior by Cambridge Analytica is because they don't want to pressure Cambridge Analytica.
	They want to pressure Facebook.
	And they want to pressure Facebook, and they want to pressure YouTube, and they want to pressure Google, and they want to pressure Twitter.
	There's a massive attack on conservatives going on right now in social media.
	Facebook's traffic, they've used their new algorithm to target people on the right who are open about their right-wing views.
	If you are a quote-unquote objective site, then they have not targeted you in the same way.
	There was a study that came out last week demonstrating that major sites, I'm talking about everybody from Breitbart to Daily Wire, has been targeted by Facebook and that our traffic has dropped pretty precipitously for all of those sites, right?
	Daily Caller, The Blaze.
	All of these, every single right-wing site saw a major hit in traffic since Facebook instituted its new algorithm.
	Wanna know what didn't see a major drop in traffic?
	You wanna know what didn't see any drop in traffic, essentially?
	The folks on the left.
	They saw virtually no drop in traffic whatsoever, which is not surprising.
	Why would they see a drop in traffic?
	After all, Facebook is a left-wing outlet, and the goal here is to pressure Facebook, right?
	Dianne Feinstein's been pressuring Facebook, and now the media are gonna say Cambridge Analytica used Facebook.
	They better crack down on these right-wingers.
	These right-wingers who are doing data mining.
	They better find a way to crack down.
	That's what this is all about.
	It's about militarizing Google and Facebook and YouTube and Twitter.
	It's why Louis Farrakhan is still being recommended as a follow for a lot of people, including me, right?
	Because I've tweeted about Louis Farrakhan, it will recommend that I follow Louis Farrakhan.
	He's not been suspended from Twitter.
	But you know who was suspended from Twitter?
	Steven Crowder for a week.
	All of these algorithms are being built by left-wingers, and whether they know it or not, they are biased against right-wingers, and it is really gross, and pretty soon, there's going to be no choice but for people on the right to build their own fora for distribution of material if this continues, because it truly is an insane thing.
	I want to discuss a little bit more about that, plus an update on Parkland, which just demonstrates, once again, this is not about the guns, this is about the failure of the authorities.
	But first, I want to say thank you to our sponsors over at Wondery's This Is War.
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	Okay, so I do want to discuss a little bit more about what's going on in Power Club because this is a pretty astonishing story that came out Plus, I want to talk about the Russian elections.
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	All righty.
	So the Parkland authorities, apparently, this is an amazing story.
	Apparently, the authorities actually knew not only the Parkland shooter was an evil piece of garbage, but they wanted to institutionalize him two years before he shot up that school in Parkland, According to Ryan Saavedra over at Daily Wire, shocking new details about the gunman who shot up Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School were released on Sunday.
	It was revealed that officials from the school and a sheriff's deputy recommended that he be forcibly committed to a psychiatric facility two years before his rampage.
	Nothing was ever done.
	The AP says the documents, which are part of the gunman's criminal case in the shooting, show that he had written the word kill in a notebook, told a classmate he wanted to buy a gun and use it, and had cut his arm supposedly in anger because he had broken up with a girlfriend.
	He also told another student he had drunk gasoline and was throwing up.
	Calls had been made to the FBI about the possibility of the gunman using a gun at school.
	The gunman's mother, Linda, is quoted as saying she had fresh concerns about her son's mental state after he punched holes in a wall at their home in Parkland.
	The clinicians at Henderson came to the home for interviews and said the gunman admitted punching the wall, but said he did so because he was upset at a breakup with his girlfriend.
	The documents say the gunman, quote, reports that he cut his arms three to four weeks ago and states that this is the only time he has ever cut.
	The gunman states that he cut because he was lonely, states that he had broken up with his girlfriend, This is about ensuring that law-abiding people can protect themselves when the authorities fail, as it is apparent they do pretty much every time at this point.
	They are failing on a regular basis.
	Again, this is not about giving the authorities more authority to do the right thing.
	This is about ensuring that law-abiding people can protect themselves when the authorities fail, as it is apparent they do pretty much every time at this point.
	They're failing on a regular basis.
	It truly is a horrifying, horrifying thing.
	Now, meanwhile, there's a big election last night in Russia.
	When I say election, I mean selection, because it was pretty obvious who exactly was going to win.
	And we all know the answer to that one, right?
	The person who was going to win, clearly, was going to be Vladimir Putin, and so it was, and so it ever shall be.
	So Putin has now been in power since 1999.
	He's been in power for almost 20 years.
	I don't count Dmitry Medvedev's reign in Russia as an actual reign.
	He was obviously a puppet of Putin, as everybody knew, including President Obama.
	So Putin has been continuously in power.
	For 20 years.
	There are so many points to be made about this.
	It's really quite fascinating.
	The first point to make is, number one, obviously there's some rigging going on in these elections.
	And when people know it's inevitable that Putin's going to be elected, they're not even going to show up.
	Here's some video of some of the election rigging.
	Okay, so you can see, here's a woman walking over and stuffing ballots into the ballot box.
	Right.
	And then you can see another woman who takes out another ballot.
	She hands it to the lady.
	Look at this.
	They're just taking ballots and shoving them into the ballot box.
	None of these people have voted.
	They're literally just walking over there and shoving ballots into the ballot box.
	So, yeah, this is all perfectly legit, though.
	Don't worry.
	Nothing nefarious going on here at all.
	They are legitimately just stuffing ballots Into the ballot box.
	Yeah, everything's cool, everything's above board over there in Russia.
	Garry Kasparov, who's been a dissident for a long time, obviously a world-famous chess player, maybe the greatest chess player in history.
	He says these elections are a sham, because of course they are.
	Well, of course that's true.
	I mean, I'd be afraid too if I were living in Russia, considering that Putin has legitimately murdered people with weapons of mass destruction abroad, right?
	- Right, saying that the turnout is the only challenge.
	It's not just because of apathy, because many people are scared actually to show up and to demonstrate that they disapprove Putin's policies. - Of course that's true.
	I mean, I'd be afraid too, if I were living in Russia, considering that Putin has legitimately murdered people with weapons of mass destruction abroad, right?
	I mean, the man poisoned, apparently a Soviet dissident, a Russian dissident, not too long ago.
	There was a false spring in Russia that happened right as the Soviet Union fell.
	And now they've fallen right back into what can only be described as a state capitalism tyranny.
	It looks a lot more like China over in Russia than it looks like the United States as far as state control of the economy.
	It is an oligarchy run by all of Vladimir Putin's friends.
	And a lot of that was a reaction that there a lot of it is a feeling in Russia of a romantic nationalism It's really fascinating article in The Wall Street Journal today Really really interesting or a couple days ago over the weekend about how Russian people particularly young Russian people feel about Vladimir Putin And the reason that this is important is for a couple of reasons.
	First, it's important because we in the United States are in the midst of what people are saying is a youth revolution.
	Very, very important that all the youth of America be treated with respect, because these are experts on politics.
	These are people who know whereof they speak.
	And young people are passionate.
	I mean, I've been reading over the last couple of weeks, op-ed after op-ed, from idiots saying that young people are more passionate and we can only hope to give the future to them.
	Hey, Putin's people are the young people.
	The young people like Putin.
	This is the Wall Street Journal.
	Nikita Ivlev doesn't really follow politics, but the high school student says he is sure that only President Vladimir Putin can manage a country as big as Russia.
	Anastasia Kuklina, who is studying law, values the peace and stability of Mr. Putin's rule and is thrilled with new shopping malls in her hometown.
	Daria Yershova says Russian life is better and freer than in the past.
	When we talk with our parents, they are sometimes shocked by the numerous opportunities we have today.
	The three young people, like all Russians of their generation, have known no leader other than the former KGB colonel who is on track to win another six-year term in presidential elections on Sundays.
	Over the course of their lives, Putin has transformed Russia from an at-times chaotic democracy to an authoritarian state.
	He has written a new social contract that offers citizens far better living standards and restored swagger on the world stage while limiting political freedoms.
	Polls, sociological research, and interviews with more than a dozen young Russians in four cities reveal a generation largely at ease with that trade-off, though there are those who are browbeaten dissenters.
	And they have some polls on this.
	OK, this is really, it's shocking.
	OK, so here are the approvals for Vladimir Putin in Russia.
	OK, so the approval among young people particularly.
	OK, this is the popularity.
	81% approve.
	Right now.
	And disapprove 18% in Russia as of right now.
	If that doesn't sound legitimate, it's because no one anywhere has that sort of popularity unless you are actually a tyrant.
	By age group.
	Here's by age group.
	So he's vastly popular across Russia, but he is most popular with young people.
	The 18 to 24s approve of Vladimir Putin at the highest rate, followed by 25 to 39s, followed by 55s and over.
	There has been a rise in living standards.
	They have slipped since 2014.
	A lot of that was based on Russia's oil boom.
	So thanks to fracking, the prices of oil in Russia dropped precipitously, and that stopped a lot of the growth in Russia.
	The percentage of total population with a monthly income below subsistence level has been dropping precipitously since 2000, thanks to the oil oligarchy that exists in Russia.
	But again, the popularity of Putin is largely linked to the fact that he is not only ensuring that a lot of the oil money is going to various public services, but also the fact that Putin is restoring a sense of national importance and greatness.
	There's something in human history, it happened really with the French Revolution, with regard to something called romantic nationalism.
	Romantic nationalism was the idea that your country is not only better than other countries because of the ideas it espouses, it is better because of its language, it is better because of its people.
	It's this idea of nationalism without patriotism.
	Russia isn't great because it promulgates great values, Russia is great because it deserves to be great, because Russia is great.
	America is great in the same way.
	This is the way that Barack Obama used to speak of American exceptionalism.
	Everyone believes in their own exceptionalism.
	There is a baseline level of truth to that that really started with the French Revolution.
	So the French Revolution changed everything, and in order to sort of understand what's been going on in Russian politics, I think you actually have to go back 200 years and look at a little bit of the history of romantic nationalism.
	So, when the French Revolution first broke out, there was a feeling that something magical was happening, right?
	The French Revolution, which began in 1789 with the fall of the Bastille, That was just months, actually, after the first meetings of the U.S.
	Senate under the U.S.
	Constitution.
	It's pretty amazing.
	When that happened, there was a feeling of international — there was going to be an international rise in freedom.
	The French movement wasn't just French.
	It was international.
	It was global.
	It was universal.
	And that quickly shifted into something else.
	It quickly shifted into a romantic nationalism.
	That romantic nationalism really took hold around 1793 in France when there was a threat of foreign war from the Austrians.
	So the Austrians thought they were going to waltz right into France and restore the monarchy in France and they were going to be able to take over the new French Republic because it was so chaotic and because it was crazy and because it was led by all of these nut job radicals.
	And so the French instituted something that had never been done before in world history, a general draft of the population, what was called the Levy en masse.
	That happened in 1793.
	And when they did that, when they issued the Levy en masse, they gathered 1.5 million people.
	1.5 million people were essentially drafted by the French government.
	And the French were able to fight off all invaders.
	They were able to throw off all comers.
	It was an amazing thing.
	And it totally shifted the balance of power in Europe because suddenly you had a country that was treating all of its citizens as part of the state bargain.
	It was treating all of its citizens as their individual's identity were wrapped up in the identity of the state.
	This sort of romantic nationalism was also being pursued in what was then not quite Germany yet.
	It was still Austria and some of the German states and Prussia.
	It was being pursued by people like Hegel at the time.
	A little bit later was Hegel.
	But at the time, there was a romantic nationalism that was being pushed that said that Germany, you should only speak German.
	Germany is a special place.
	And therefore, Germany should have its own pan-national state of Germans.
	You can see how this played out during the 20th century.
	Well, these sorts of feelings in the human heart were feelings that were described by George Orwell in 1940 with regard to the Nazis.
	What he was wondering was, why is it that there's so many people who are in the Nazi regime, who are young, when they could be part of Britain, right?
	They could be part of a global movement toward capitalism and freedom and toward prosperity, a sort of middle-class existence.
	And what he said was, there's part of the human heart that wants the flags, that wants the drums, that wants the blood, that wants the toil, that wants the sacrifice.
	There is that feeling today in Russia, too.
	If you look at the polls, Stalin is still very much admired inside Russia.
	And one of the reasons that he is so very much admired inside Russia is because Stalin stood for national greatness.
	Would you want to live in a country that wasn't great?
	It was prosperous, but it was Switzerland.
	Would you want to live in Switzerland?
	Would you want to live in a country that felt like it had a historical purpose?
	And when Hegel talked about the world history and how states were the great drivers of this history, how states were the The main forces behind pushing forward progress in history, and that progress in history was proof of God.
	When he said that, there were a lot of people who resonate to that on a normal, on a normative level, who say, that's how I want my state to be.
	I want my state to be a driver in world history.
	And at least you could justify your own poverty living in the Soviet Union by saying, well, we're trying something new, a grand experiment.
	At least we're trying something new.
	At least we're powerful.
	At least we're threatening the United States on the world stage.
	That's how powerful we are.
	Those big, bad U.S.
	greedy pokes, we're challenging them every single day.
	Well, when the Soviet Union collapsed, a lot of that purpose went away.
	There's a great book called Secondhand Time.
	I've recommended it on the show before.
	And that book talks with Russians before, during, after the Cold War.
	And what they say is that there's a certain nostalgia that exists in Russia for a time when Russia was a great power.
	And now Putin gets to kind of pretend that Russia is still a great power.
	And this is something that drives a lot of young people.
	A lot of young people are interested in that.
	Well, the problem with believing that your country must be a great power without any excuse for actually being a great power, you're not spreading liberty, you're not spreading democracy, you're not doing anything great.
	Is that it leads to war.
	It leads to an unmoored nationalism that turns very quickly into something violent and terrible.
	And that's why Putin is constantly invading countries around him.
	It's why he's invading Crimea.
	It's why the folks in Kazakhstan should be particularly worried, or Azerbaijan.
	There are a lot of states that border the former Soviet Union that are in danger, right?
	It's why Latvia and Lithuania, why those states are particularly worried right now, because Putin is trying to demonstrate to his public that he's part of this romantic nationalism movement Brought to the floor once again.
	History repeats itself.
	Putin is more comedy than tragedy, but not by much.
	So, that's the old saying, is that history repeats itself.
	The first time is tragedy, the second time is comedy.
	Putin, again, is not comedy.
	He's closer to it than Stalin was.
	But, all of this is to say that there is a yearning in the human heart that is not being met.
	A yearning in the human heart that is not being filled.
	And it's being filled, globally speaking, with a certain level of romantic nationalism, with a certain level of tribalism, with a return to socialistic ideas without God.
	And this is really disturbing.
	It's not just happening there.
	It's happening here, too.
	The romantic nationalism movement that says that America is great not because of any of its founding principles, but just because America is America.
	The folks who say that America ought to move toward equality because equality is what's going to fill that hole in the heart.
	And I don't mean social equality.
	I mean equality of finance.
	All of this stuff is indicative of a greater ill that is plaguing humanity right now.
	I'm writing an entire book on it right now.
	But the romantic nationalism that's taking place in Russia is something that should not be ignored, nor can it be ignored if you actually want to understand what's going on.
	OK, so meanwhile, Democrats are still trying to figure out exactly what it is they should do in the wake of Hillary Clinton.
	So as you recall, last week Hillary Clinton came forward and suggested that she was only not president of the United States because of these evil, terrible, horrible, no good, very bad Hicks and Rednecks and their wives, who are living in the middle of the country.
	Well, now she issued a very, very long statement, because she has never issued a short statement, talking about why she was wrong.
	But she doesn't really apologize.
	She says, during an interview last week with an Indian news publication, I was asked about 2016 and whether Trump is the virus or a symptom of something deeper going on in American society.
	Like most Americans, people overseas remain shocked and dismayed at what they are witnessing daily.
	My first instinct was to defend Americans and explain how Donald Trump could have been elected.
	I said that places doing better economically typically lean Democrat and places where there is less optimism about the future lean Republican.
	That doesn't mean the coast versus the heartland.
	It doesn't even mean entire states.
	In fact, it's more often captures the divisions between more dynamic urban areas and less prosperous small towns within states.
	Man, what's hilarious about this is this is supposed to be her apology, but instead, she just doubles down on all of this and says that, so, to those who are upset or offended by what I said last week, I hope this explanation helps to explain the point I was trying to make.
	We all got it, lady.
	We all got the point that you were trying to make.
	That's the problem.
	You wish we didn't get it.
	No wonder Democrats are running for her.
	Mary Harf, who was a former spokesperson for the State Department under Obama, she came forward and said Hillary should please just go away, like, enough.
	You're right, and she should go away.
	I hate to say that.
	I really do.
	The first female nominee of a major party has a historical role, certainly, and the right to speak up.
	She is not helping the Democratic Party, and I think she should take a very long vacation and leave the future of the party to other people.
	The future of the party is not with her, and the clearest indication of that is the fact that in the 20 special elections that have taken place so far in 2018, Democrats on average have gotten 24 more points than she did.
	The party of the future is not Hillary Clinton's party, and I get why she wants to keep explaining it, but it is not true.
	OK, so even Democrats are starting to realize they need to move away from Hillary Clinton if they hope to be successful in the future.
	OK, time for some things I like and then some things that I hate.
	And then we'll get to the the Federalist Paper.
	So things that I like.
	So I had the opportunity to interview Charlotte Pence about her new book, which is called Marlon Bundo's A Day in the Life of the Vice President.
	Her mom did the art.
	Charlotte Pence wrote it.
	So Charlotte is Mike Pence's daughter.
	Karen Pence is Mike Pence's wife.
	And the book is really charming.
	I read it with my daughter over the weekend.
	She really enjoyed it.
	So here is my sit down with Charlotte Pence.
	So here we are with Charlotte Pence.
	She's the author of Marlon Bundo's A Day in the Life of the Vice President, which is a children's book, as you can probably guess from the title.
	And it's illustrated by Karen Pence.
	She's, of course, the vice president's wife.
	And Charlotte, if you didn't guess, was the vice president's daughter as well.
	Well, Charlotte, welcome to the show.
	Thank you for having me.
	So first question is, and I was seriously considering this a little bit earlier.
	Why Marlon Bundo as opposed to Rabbit De Niro?
	There's actually a good answer for that.
	When we got Marlon, we had him in a student film project, so I had to go on Craigslist and get a bunny.
	And so I was texting the Craigslist owner, and he said to make him an offer.
	So it became this godfather joke.
	We were going to make him an offer, he couldn't refuse.
	And my friend loved Marlon Brando, and I said we have to name him Marlon Bundo to make it, you know.
	Nice.
	Okay, so where did the idea for actually doing a book on the rabbit come in?
	Yeah, so we started an Instagram for him right after the inauguration and just got pretty popular.
	People really liked him.
	We kind of made this bodice joke that he was, you know, having official duties as the bodice.
	And so my mom and I talked about doing a children's book and her illustrating it.
	And she's an amazing watercolor artist.
	And so we just went for it.
	And we were brainstorming ideas and said, you know, the first one at least should definitely be about the role of the vice president because a lot of people don't actually know the official duties of the vice president.
	So that's all in there.
	That's really cool.
	So, how long has your mom been doing watercolors?
	Because that is definitely something that nobody knows.
	Oh my gosh.
	Yeah, forever.
	I mean, ever since I've been alive.
	I mean, she used to have a business for it.
	She's a really talented artist, not just watercolor artist.
	She's amazing.
	Okay, so you're going to be doing a book tour with this, presumably.
	Yeah.
	And I hope that everybody treats you well, because obviously it's a very polarized political environment.
	Do you expect that it's going to get politicized when you do the book tour, or do you hope that I mean, I kind of think that Marlon can bring everyone together.
	I really believe this.
	I mean, the book is historically accurate.
	It's good for teachers.
	It's good for adults.
	It's good for kids.
	It is personal to my dad, a day in the life of the vice president with my dad.
	As you can kind of see at the end, his faith comes into it.
	But for the most part, it talks about what the vice president actually does, which is I think something I didn't really know until my dad was vice president, a lot of these little things.
	So one of the things that's really cool about your family is that all of the kids have different things that they do.
	So I've met two of the Pence children, and none of you seem to be supremely politically active, as opposed to just active in different areas of what you do.
	So how's it been having your father in the White House?
	It's like a boring answer, but I mean, he's just my dad at the end of the day.
	So I feel like, I mean, growing up, it was always like, this is my dad's job.
	You know, my mom's a teacher and my dad is a congressman for most of my childhood.
	And so we were always included in whatever we wanted to be included in as the kids.
	Um, but we also didn't have to do anything we didn't want to do and go to any event we didn't want to go to.
	So, at the end of the day, it's really, um, it's our family.
	It's my dad.
	You know, we talk about, um, current events on the phone when we're catching up, but then we talk about, you know, what I got at the grocery or whatever, and, um, at the end of the day, it's just my dad.
	And you work out here in Hollywood, so how has that been?
	Have people treated you decently in Hollywood?
	Yeah, I mean really they have.
	I think that once you meet people, you know, you get to know people better on a personal level.
	I think that always brings people together instead of seeing someone from a political lens on TV or in magazines or something.
	I think I've been welcomed out here in my job especially.
	It's been fun.
	Well, that's awesome.
	I've met enough members of your family to know you have an amazing family.
	And obviously, this is a book that you should get for your children.
	It is Marlon Bundo's A Day in the Life of the Vice President, written by Charlotte Pence and illustrated by Karen.
	Thanks so much for stopping by.
	I really appreciate it.
	Thanks for having me.
	This is awesome.
	So that was fun.
	So that's Charlotte Pence, who is just a charming young woman and her family is really filled with wonderful people.
	OK, other things that I like.
	So I just have to play a clip of this because it was funny.
	I was on CNN yesterday and my phone did go off in the middle of the interview.
	The real move, the real power move would have been to pick up and just take the call in the middle of the interview.
	But I didn't have my wits about me enough to do that.
	But Brian Stelter on Reliable Sources asked me about bias in the media.
	And I said, you guys, that would be you.
	Well, over the last three weeks, obviously, the coverage of the gun debate has been absolutely egregious.
	I mean, I don't want to single out your network, but CNN's been pretty bad on this from a conservative perspective.
	The idea that when there's a mass shooting that the media feel the necessity to put on TV not only survivors, but specific survivors, that there's a certain subset of survivors who make it on TV a lot, a lot, and there are certain other survivors who don't, and that they decide to single out certain events and not other events in order to make a particular case, or they allow certain people to go on TV and suggest that folks like Dana Lash or people at the NRA are evil, don't care, they're terrorists, and there's no pushback from the anchors.
	This sort of thing makes a lot of people on the right feel that the media are really using this as an opportunity to push gun control rather than objectively covering the legislative efforts that are going on in Washington, D.C.
	Okay, so that was a lot of fun.
	And I give a lot of credit to Stelter for having me on.
	He knew that I was going to hit CNN.
	He didn't mind.
	So good for him for doing that, because obviously he wanted to have some differing voices.
	He did say, my favorite part of this interview is where he suggested, well, if we at The Daily Wire are so critical of the mainstream media, why don't we try to infiltrate the mainstream media and then try and shift them?
	And my answer to him was, are you going to hire me?
	Like, really, is CNN gonna hire me?
	Because they have my phone number.
	Anytime they want to, they can call and offer me a primetime show.
	I'm going to seriously doubt that that is in CNN's plans anytime soon, which sort of proves my point.
	Okay, so, time for a quick thing that I hate, and then we'll get to a Federalist paper, if we have time.
	If not, then we'll do it tomorrow.
	OK, so the thing I hate today is Oprah Winfrey was on with Stephen Colbert, and it is just amazing to me how late night TV has become an exclusive propaganda outlet for the left.
	Stephen Colbert obviously has been a lefty for a very long time and an irritating lefty at that.
	Really, really irritating lefty at that.
	So, it's amazing, because folks on TV will rip Mike Pence up and down for suggesting that he has conversations with God, meaning he talks to God and God does the listening, or that he attempts to hear God in the events of his own life.
	You know, how crazy is that?
	That's wild, right?
	But Stephen Colbert, when Oprah Winfrey says, I'm waiting for God to give me a sign, Stephen Colbert actually tries to manufacture God and then pretend that God is telling Oprah Winfrey to run.
	This is what Democrats would love best?
	I would love nothing better than for Oprah Winfrey to run.
	First of all, I think Trump would smoke her.
	I think it would just be brutal.
	Because again, Trump is as dirty as dirty can be, and Oprah is perceived as this angelic figure.
	The minute that anybody finds out that her school in South Africa has been twice hit with serious violations of sexual abuse of children, she's pretty much toast.
	So, even though she may not be responsible for it, that's what's been going on with her school over in Africa, so that's a problem for her.
	But again, anything anyone says bad about Oprah is going to make her look a lot dirtier than anything anyone says about Trump.
	I mean, Trump's been hit with everything, including the kitchen sink, and none of it seems to stick to him in any serious way.
	In any case, here is Colbert mimicking God in order to try to convince Oprah to run.
	Oprah!
	Stephen!
	What's up?
	Hey!
	Oh, hey!
	Hey, God!
	It's God, everybody!
	Give it up for the Lord!
	Is there, you know, something you'd like to tell Oprah?
	Oh, yeah.
	I hear thou seekest a sign?
	Well, is this clear enough?
	How do I make this clearer, Oprah?
	Oh, I know!
	Oprah Winfrey 2020!
	Yes, she can!
	OK, so now you have late night hosts openly stumping for Oprah Winfrey to run against President Trump.
	Yeah, and doing so by mocking God and people of faith.
	So that's just wonderful.
	Well done, Stephen Colbert.
	That's not going to alienate anybody in the middle of the country or anything.
	Well done.
	OK, quick Federalist paper.
	Good news.
	This one will take me less than 30 seconds.
	So Federalist number 20.
	Every week I've been going through a Federalist paper.
	This is a continuation of the argument regarding the ineffectiveness of Confederacy.
	The idea that you can't have a bunch of powerful, sovereign actors and then a very weak coalitional government at the top.
	And he uses, this is James Madison, using the example of the United Netherlands, and he adds this telling line, "A weak constitution must necessarily terminate "in dissolution for want of proper powers "or the usurpation of powers requisite "for the public safety.
	"Whether the usurpation when once begun Most tyrannies begin by saying, the current system is not working.
	"to the dangerous extreme, "it must depend on the contingencies of the moment.
	"Tyranny has perhaps oftener grown out of assumptions "of power called for on pressing exigencies "by a defective constitution than out of the full exercise "of the largest constitutional authorities." This is a fantastic point and it's historically true.
	Most tyrannies begin by saying, "The current system is not working.
	"We need to move the current system aside "and overrun its boundaries." So suspension of habeas corpus during the Civil War would be an example of this, although we went back to habeas corpus afterward.
	Or the seizure of emergency powers by Hitler's Nazis in 1933 and 1934.
	All of that would be a perfect example of what Madison was talking about, that when you don't have a properly balanced government, even if the government appears to be too weak centrally, very often people will say the exigencies of the circumstances demand That we do X, and X is usually a permanent enlargement of the government.
	Every time America has a major war, there's an enlargement of the government.
	This goes even so far as the Patriot Act during 9-11.
	It's why we must be so careful, particularly during times of emergency, about handing the government extra powers.
	Alrighty, we will be back here tomorrow, broadcasting, I believe, from Pennsylvania.
	So we'll see you then.
	I'm Ben Shapiro.
	This is The Ben Shapiro Show.
	The Ben Shapiro Show is produced by Mathis Glover.
	Executive producer, Jeremy Boring.
	Senior producer, Jonathan Hay.
	Our technical producer is Austin Stevens.
	Edited by Alex Zingaro.
	Audio is mixed by Mike Coromina.
	Hair and makeup is by Jesua Alvera.
	The Ben Shapiro Show is a Daily Wire Forward Publishing production.

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