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April 20, 2018 - The Ben Shapiro Show

46:09

The Comey Memos | Ep. 522

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	Former FBI Director James Comey's Trump memos hit the press, President Trump brings in Rudy Giuliani, and we check the mailbag.
	This is The Ben Shapiro Show.
	As always, lots of breaking news today.
	James Comey, he had those memos that he wrote contemporaneously when he was FBI director and had conversations with President-elect Trump and then President Trump.
	And now those memos have hit the press.
	We'll go through them and tell you everything that you need to know.
	Plus, he's bringing in Rudy Giuliani.
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	Okay, so.
	There's been hubbub for literally over a year about James Comey's firing.
	James Comey was fired as head of the FBI because James Comey refused to say that President Trump was in the clear with regard to the Russia investigation.
	Or at least that President Trump was not under investigation.
	And Trump got mad about that, and so he fired James Comey.
	He made that pretty clear at the time.
	Well, James Comey immediately came out after that, just to recapitulate the history.
	James Comey came out after that, and he leaked some contemporaneous memos to one of his friends, a Columbia University law professor.
	He took these memos that he'd written that were supposed to be notes of meetings that he'd had with Trump, and he leaked them to one of his friends so that they'd get out in the press with the express purpose of trying to get a special prosecutor involved.
	The idea here was this, that President Trump had fired Comey, and now the DOJ had recommended that on the basis of Rod Rosenstein.
	So remember, Jeff Sessions had recused himself from everything Russia-related.
	And that meant that Rod Rosenstein, the deputy attorney general, was the guy who wrote a letter saying that James Comey should be fired.
	President Trump used that letter as the basis for firing James Comey.
	James Comey then leaked a bunch of memos about his relationship with Trump to the press in the hopes that Rosenstein would have to recuse himself and appoint a special prosecutor.
	Because once it became clear that Trump had actually done this over the Russia stuff, and Rosenstein had been involved in the firing of James Comey, then suddenly a special prosecutor is necessary.
	That's why these memos became a big issue in the first place.
	It was on the basis of these memos that James Comey was called in front of Congress to testify.
	It was on the basis of these memos that James Comey got his big book deal.
	And it's on the basis of those memos that James Comey is now running around on television every single night.
	Yesterday, the DOJ turned over these memos to Congress.
	There's some controversy related to this, because remember, the DOJ had suggested that originally these memos could not become public because it would be a serious infringement on national security.
	Classified material would make it into the public sphere if these memos were to be made public.
	And so here is what you need to know from the Comey memos.
	First of all, there's really nothing groundbreaking about the Comey memos themselves.
	He said, fine, we'll hand them over to Congress.
	And then within five minutes of them being handed over to Congress, the Associated Press had them, the Washington Post had them, everybody in the press had them.
	And so here is what you need to know from the Comey memos.
	First of all, there's really nothing groundbreaking about the Comey memos themselves.
	So everything that you knew that James Comey had already said, he said he said in these memos.
	So his contemporaneous memos are very consistent with what he has been saying publicly, and According to James Comey, he went to President Trump.
	He told him about the Russian dossier that was compiled by Christopher Steele at the behest of Fusion GPS, which was paid by the Hillary Clinton campaign.
	So try to follow me here.
	Hillary Clinton paid Fusion GPS.
	Which paid Christopher Steele to compile a dossier on President Trump, and that dossier made its way to the FBI, and James Comey showed the most salacious parts of that dossier to President Trump, and Trump and Comey at length discussed the infamous pee tape.
	Of course, this is the portion of the dossier alleging that President Trump went to Russia in 2013 and had Russian prostitutes pee on a bed once occupied by the Obamas, which is real weird.
	Okay, and then Trump apparently told Comey at one point, That Putin had bragged about the quality of Russian hookers, which is like, okay, whatever.
	And then apparently Trump joked about jailing reporters and Comey laughed about it.
	And Trump said that Michael Flynn had serious judgment issues, which is not a great shock.
	He ended up firing his national security advisor, Michael Flynn, and then asking James Comey if there was any way he could see himself cleared to letting Michael Flynn go, which is not obstruction since he didn't actually pressure Comey to let Michael Flynn go.
	Why do these memos matter?
	Why do these memos matter?
	Well, there are a few reasons these memos matter.
	So, on the left, they're suggesting these memos matter because James Comey now looks more consistent.
	It looks like he's been consistent in his story throughout.
	Okay, fair enough.
	But there are some problems for James Comey in the memos.
	Okay, first problem for James Comey in the memos.
	First of all, the memos themselves have some redactions.
	That means that some of the material in the memos is still classified.
	Well, that raises a question.
	Was James Comey leaking classified material from his memos to the press?
	If so, that's actually a crime.
	Now Comey says he only leaked one memo to his friend and that memo was unclassified, but we're going to have to figure this thing out because the fact is that according to the letter from the DOJ to Congress releasing these memos, quote, pursuant to your request, we are providing the requested memoranda in both redacted and unredacted formats for your convenience.
	The unredacted documents are classified and we'll provide those in a separate secure transmittal to the House Security Office tomorrow.
	Which seems to imply that Comey's memos were not all unclassified.
	Okay, also, this seems to suggest that the DOJ fibbed about the importance of the memos in the first place.
	As I mentioned, the DOJ refused to turn over the memos when requested under the Freedom of Information Act last year.
	They claimed that the release of the memos would somehow impede the Mueller investigation.
	Nothing in the memos seems to suggest this is true.
	The memos also do not suggest obstruction.
	So this is a point in favor of President Trump.
	After the release of the memos, Representatives Devin Nunes, Bob Goodlatte, Trey Gowdy, they tore into Comey.
	They said, quote, the memos show that the president made clear he wanted allegations of collusion, coordination and conspiracy between his campaign and Russia fully investigated.
	Furthermore, the memos demonstrate that Trump didn't want Russian election interference investigation ended, but the suggestion that he had engaged in lewd personal conduct, he wanted investigated.
	So he was much more concerned with the allegations about the P-Tape than he was concerned about the idea that Russia interfered in the election.
	He wasn't seeking to shut anything down or direct the investigation in any particular direction except on the P-Tape, according to the Comey memos.
	As the congressman points out, the memos also show former director Comey never wrote that he felt obstructed or threatened.
	Which is of course true.
	He didn't feel obstructed or threatened until he was fired, at which point it became sour grapes.
	Maybe I was fired because of obstruction as opposed to I was fired because I'm wildly incompetent at my job.
	It is also true that these memos show that James Comey held the Trump administration and President Trump to a different standard than he held members of the Obama administration.
	So, Comey has stated he interfered in the Hillary Clinton email investigation in an unprecedented way, right?
	He went out there, he did his big press conference where he announced basically why Hillary Clinton should be indicted and then said she shouldn't be indicted.
	He did that in an attempt to shield Loretta Lynch, the Attorney General, from Allegations of bias or corruption.
	Well, he never wrote contemporaneous memos about his meetings with Loretta Lynch or Barack Obama during that time, even though he was so worried about it that he interfered in the middle of an investigation in a way that is wildly unprecedented.
	He only reserved those memos for Trump.
	And this is what the congressmen point out.
	They say, quote, He chose not to memorialize conversations with President Obama, Attorney General Lynch, Secretary Clinton, Andrew McCabe, or others, but he immediately began to memorialize conversations with President Trump.
	These memos also lay bare the notion that former Director Comey Is not motivated by animus.
	Comey also never bothered to try to launch a special counsel investigation against Lynch and Clinton through leaks.
	Also worth noting in these memos, Comey defended McCabe repeatedly and personally to President Trump.
	It now turns out that McCabe was in fact lying repeatedly and now is under criminal investigation.
	That came out yesterday that Andrew McCabe has been now referred by the IG for criminal investigation on the basis of leaking to the press.
	A bunch of stories about his involvement in the Hillary Clinton Foundation scandal and his attempts to investigate it.
	So the Comey memos don't actually help Comey's case.
	In fact, they sort of hurt it.
	They don't show us anything we didn't already know, but they do undercut the case that Comey was being pressured in any real way by President Trump.
	All of this prompted President Trump to tweet.
	So here's what President Trump tweeted about all this, quote, James Comey memos just out and show clearly there was no collusion and no obstruction.
	Also, he leaked classified information.
	Wow.
	Will the witch hunt continue?
	Okay, so, again, do I think it's ill-advised for Trump to tweet this?
	Yes, but is he right?
	Yeah, he is.
	I mean, there's no collusion, no obstruction, and it is pretty clear that he may have leaked classified information.
	So, all of this, this whole thing, this whole special counsel investigation, which was launched on the basis, not the Russia investigation, the special counsel Mueller investigation, which was launched on the back of Comey's memos, seems really weak.
	There's another theory that is now being put out there by Molly Hemingway over at The Federalist that is worth noting here.
	What the memos really show is that James Comey and James Clapper, the former head of the CIA, and the press were in cahoots in their attempts to get the information about the P-Tape out into the public sphere.
	So here is what Molly Hemingway writes.
	So she writes, quote, in multiple memos, Comey specifically mentioned that CNN had the dossier, the famous P-Tape dossier, and wanted a news hook that would enable the network to report on its most salacious allegations, even though they had not been verified.
	So in the memos, it says this, quote, quote, in the memos, it says this, quote, quote, in I said media like CNN had them and were looking for a news hook, Comey added in his memo about the briefing with Trump on January 6, 2017.
	On January 28, 2017, Comey wrote that in a separate meeting, Trump mentioned the allegation about the alleged tape of prostitutes at the hotel and called it fake news.
	Comey said, I explained again why I had thought it important that he know about it.
	I also explained that one of the reasons we told him was that the media, CNN in particular, was telling us they were about to run with it.
	Well, this is all weird.
	Why is this weird?
	Because on January 10th, just four days after James Comey briefed the President of the United States about the P-Tape, there was a CNN story, and it said, quote, Extremely well-placed sources told CNN that the Obama administration's top intelligence appointees had briefed Obama, Biden, and Trump all about a dossier they took incredibly seriously and considered credible.
	But it sounded really bad, as the headline indicated.
	CNN declared Russian operatives claimed to have compromising personal and financial information about Mr. Trump.
	And just a few minutes later, BuzzFeed published the actual dossier, showing the world that the dossier was riddled with salacious gossip that lacked even a possibility of corroboration.
	So remember, here's the logic.
	James Comey and company?
	They tell Trump that we may have a media scandal on our hands if they can find a news hook.
	And then what does CNN use as the news hook?
	The fact that James Comey told President Trump that he may have a media scandal on his hand.
	You see how the circular system works here?
	So I'll explain more of that in just a second.
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	Okay, so.
	Back to the reports about the Comey memo that are really interesting.
	Now, this has not been substantiated, but the going theory now on the right seems to be that James Comey and company went to President Trump and informed him about the p-tape dossier, not just because they wanted to inform him, but maybe because they wanted to leak the news that that meeting had taken place so that CNN could use it as a news hook.
	This is what Molly Hemingway is saying over at the Federalist.
	She says, Keep in mind that nothing we now know about the dossier had been reported at the time.
	It wasn't yet reported that it was used by the FBI to provide a substantial basis to wiretap at least one Trump affiliate, despite the fact that it was unverified.
	It wasn't yet reported that the product was bought and paid for as a Hillary Clinton campaign operation, or that it was secretly funded by the DNC, using a law firm as a pass-through to hide its prominence in federal campaign filings.
	After nearly a year of wrangling, the seven memos written by Comey were finally handed over on Thursday to Congress, which oversees the operation and funding of the FBI and DOJ.
	The memos purport to show Comey's version of his interactions with the president before Comey was fired last May.
	But Molly Hemingway says, listen, Something weird is going on here, right?
	That Comey claims that James Clapper over at the CIA wanted Trump to be briefed on the p-tape and on the dossier.
	And in the briefing, in his notes, he told Trump, CNN has this information, they may run with it at any time, they just need a news hook.
	And the very news hook that CNN used was, Trump has now been briefed about this stuff.
	So if it wasn't Comey, then that does raise some questions about James Clapper, because Clapper obviously is a highly partisan player, and if James Clapper was basically using this as an excuse to get the p-tape nonsense out there in the first place, that is pretty damning and very, very troubling.
	In any case, none of this is particularly troubling for President Trump.
	I mean, the only material on the table right now that could be a serious problem for President Trump is whatever the FBI's got from Michael Cohen, right?
	That's the stuff that could actually hurt President Trump.
	But this P-Tape stuff, the dossier stuff, the Comey memos, none of them actually seem to be breaking any significant news.
	James Comey still won't leave our TV screens, however, because he's got a book to shill.
	And it's amazing to watch as James Comey backs off of his own strong position that Trump may be compromised.
	So he was asked by Jake Tapper yesterday whether President Trump has been compromised by Russia.
	Now, remember, the reason that he told President Trump about the P-tape in the first place is because of the possibility that Trump might actually be affected by so-called kompromat, right?
	James Comey says, actually, it's kind of unlikely that Russia has that sort of compromising information.
	I'm not going to talk about the investigation of possible cooperation between Americans and the Russian effort to influence our election.
	What you're asking about now is, why did I say what I said when people asked me whether I thought it was possible that the Russians had derogatory information on President Trump?
	I think it's unlikely, but I think it's possible.
	Unlikely but possible is different from what he said earlier, which is he said it was just possible.
	But now it's unlikely but possible.
	Bottom line is, Comey has no news to break, and the media are struggling for news.
	Well, in their struggle for news, James Comey tried to bring out another piece of information yesterday, and I'm going to explain that one here.
	So President—so James Comey says that, in the memos, Trump told him that he talked with Putin about hookers.
	So, according to the memos, James Comey told Trump about the p-tape allegations, and Trump responded by saying that he had not spent the night in Russia.
	That may or may not be true.
	And then Trump said that he doesn't need hookers because he's very famous.
	Probably true.
	And then, James Comey said to Trump that—and then Trump said to James Comey that Vladimir Putin does vouch for the hookers over in Russia.
	Okay, so James Comey is trying to break this as a big piece of news, and then we will explain why Trump probably said this in the first place.
	I can't recall.
	I think there was public reporting that he had spoken to Vladimir Putin as sort of a welcome, you know, congratulations on taking office thing at that point.
	I'm not suggesting they talked about how beautiful the hookers were in Russia, but I do know there was at least one publicly reported conversation.
	So what exactly happened with the hookers?
	Why exactly did Trump say that in the first place to Comey?
	Probably because just a few days beforehand, Vladimir Putin had announced to the world that Russia has the best hookers.
	This happened about, like, a week and a half before Trump told Comey about Putin talking about hookers.
	The chances that Putin actually talked directly with Trump about hookers are extraordinarily low.
	But he did speak to the world about hookers, which is weird.
	So here is Vladimir Putin at the time talking about how great hookers were in Russia.
	I find it difficult to believe that he ran to a hotel to meet with our girls of reduced social responsibility.
	I love that euphemism.
	It's so good.
	Although here we also have the best ones in the world.
	Got a hand to Vladimir Putin.
	When you're talking about prostitutes and you're bragging about the quality of your prostitutes, that is one leader of a country right there.
	That is probably why Trump said that, not because Putin actually told Trump that the hookers in Russia were actually the best.
	OK, so, meanwhile, the other breaking news from all of the Trump-Russia stuff is that apparently Rudy Giuliani has now joined the team.
	Rudy Giuliani, of course, was very close with the Trump campaign.
	He was very involved in the Trump campaign.
	He has a very close and weird relationship with President Trump going back years.
	In fact, here's some early audio and video of President Trump, then just Donald Trump with the mullet.
	I mean, really, business in front, party in back.
	And Rudy Giuliani is about 1990, I believe?
	You know, you're really beautiful.
	A woman that looks like that.
	Rudy Giuliani is dressed in a wig and fake boobs, by the way.
	Oh, thank you.
	Maybe you could tell me what you think of this set.
	This is a thing that happened.
	This may be the best of all.
	Oh, "Me Too" moment.
	Oh, you dirty boy!
	Oh, oh!
	Donald, I thought you were a gentleman.
	OK, and then Trump actually says, well, you can't blame me for trying, or at least I tried.
	And then later, apparently, he would talk about this with Billy Bush, right?
	He moved on Rudy Giuliani very heavily.
	He moved on like a bleep.
	OK, in any case, everything is very weird.
	Rudy Giuliani is joining the team because Giuliani does have some legal knowledge.
	Obviously, he was a prosecutor.
	And so he's joining the legal team in an effort to try and negotiate an end to the Mueller probe.
	That doesn't seem wildly out of bounds.
	It doesn't seem Out of the realm of possibility, either, because I'm not sure that Mueller actually has anything so far as this Russia collusion stuff goes.
	And the obstruction case is extremely weak, if by obstruction you mean that he fired James Comey.
	Even James Comey can't say that it was obstruction.
	Makes it very difficult to claim that there was serious obstruction by Team Trump.
	Now, again, the real danger to President Trump is not that.
	The real danger to President Trump is in the Michael Cohen stuff, in the fact that his personal lawyer's offices were raided on the basis of supposed campaign finance violations.
	Alan Dershowitz, who's been a pretty strong legal ally for President Trump throughout this process, He says that President Trump has to assume that people are going to flip on him.
	Prosecution has an enormous leverage.
	They can charge you with a dozen crimes, even if they're relatively technical crimes, that accumulate with the guidelines and tell you you're going to never see freedom again.
	You're going to serve the rest of your life in prison.
	That kind of pressure brings about not only singing, but sometimes composing.
	I think the president has to assume that his closest friends, his greatest associates, the people he trusts the most, if Exposed to the pressure, the risk of life imprisonment will flip.
	That has to be his working assumption.
	Okay, so then the question becomes, what exactly does Michael Cohen have on President Trump?
	Maybe the answer is nothing.
	But that's the place where Trump really has vulnerability legally.
	The Mueller investigation is going to come to nothing, and I think that Trump knows that.
	I think Team Trump knows that.
	I think that's why they're being cooperative with Mueller.
	I think that's why Trump is really not concerned with firing Mueller, because all of that After a year and a half of this nonsense, we'll finally come to an inglorious end.
	It'll really be on the Michael Cohen investigation.
	Democrats are now going to have to shift their hopes from Trump-Russia collusion to Michael Cohen engaging in some sort of illegal activity with Trump in order to push their impeachment hopes.
	OK, so meanwhile, I just have to tell you this story, and then we'll get to the mailbag, because I want to do some mailbagging it up today.
	But this is an amazing story.
	So you remember that D.C.
	lawmaker, Trayvon White?
	So Trayvon White is a Democrat from Ward 8 in Washington, D.C.
	He's a council member, and he had said, if you recall, that the weather was controlled by the Jews.
	He blamed the Jews for the weather in Washington, D.C., which is a real weird thing.
	Like, we, the Jews, the Juden, we control many things, but we do not control the weather, as far as I'm aware.
	If not, I'll have to talk to the elders of Zion about it at my Friday night meeting.
	I mean, it's already Friday, so I figure tonight we'll get together and we'll talk about whether we can control the weather, because if so, then there are a few places that ought to be hit with lightning.
	If not, it's real weird.
	So Trayon White, in an attempt to do penance for this, went to the Holocaust Museum in Washington, D.C.
	So he said that he apparently spent some time on this tour, and it got very weird.
	So he suggested that an image of a German girl being marched through the streets of Norden in 1935 as humiliation for an alleged relationship with a Jew was actually depicting her being protected by Nazi troops surrounding her.
	Here's a picture of a German woman.
	She's wearing a sign around her neck, being paraded through the streets.
	And the sign says, I slept with a Jew, basically.
	And this idiot, Trayvon White, actually thought that this was the Nazis protecting this woman from the population outside, which is very, very weird.
	And that's when the museum experts pointed out that this was untrue.
	And then it apparently got weirder and weirder.
	Apparently, he suggested that the Warsaw Ghetto was a gated community.
	I'm not joking about this.
	This is an actual thing that happened.
	So he saw a picture of the Warsaw Ghetto.
	He said, oh yeah, it's just like a gated community.
	No, it was more like a giant open-air prison.
	So there was that.
	That's why there was an uprising there.
	I love that he did this on the anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto uprising.
	Just tremendous awareness here.
	The other thing that I love about this, of course, is that the national media coverage has been relatively scant.
	So it was covered by the Washington Post.
	It was covered by Mediaite.
	But if this had been a Republican lawmaker of any caliber, it would be all over the front pages of every newspaper that this person went to a Holocaust museum and thought that the Warsaw Ghetto was a gated community.
	I mean, just absolutely asinine.
	But demonstrating once again that political correctness only runs in one direction.
	OK, time for the mailbag.
	So if you have questions, now is the time for them.
	Nicholas says, quote, Ben, I'm currently in the Marines.
	I've been living overseas for the past couple of years.
	I was recently having a discussion with another Marine about our Founding Fathers and their statues across the country.
	As a minority and someone who had ancestors that were slaves, he can't bring himself to respect them and doesn't understand why we still have statues honoring them.
	He asked why in the world should a modern-day person of color in America want statues of slave owners still all over the country?
	I've always had a passion for American history and have revered our Founding Fathers, but I'm starting to rethink my position as I look at it from his point of view.
	Well, listen.
	I totally understand why people of color or people who have ancestors who were slaves would be upset with the idea of statues of people who held slaves.
	With that said, the reason that we're honoring Thomas Jefferson is not because he held slaves.
	The reason that we're honoring Thomas Jefferson is because Thomas Jefferson was the author of the Declaration of Independence, the creator of the Louisiana Purchase, a president who stood for states' rights, and instrumental in the drawing of the Constitution of the United States.
	That's why we honor Thomas Jefferson.
	You don't honor him for his slaveholding.
	This is like a woman saying about Martin Luther King, you know, Martin Luther King, that statue right there, you know, I understand that Martin Luther King did some great things, but Martin Luther King was also really, really nasty about women.
	I mean, Martin Luther King had a very bad record of philandering with regard to his wife.
	And as a woman, it makes me very upset to see that statue of Martin Luther King.
	Well, the answer to that is that's not why we honor Martin Luther King.
	So, recognizing that we build statues to people for the things that they do well, not for the things they do badly, and yet that people are rounded human beings who do bad things sometimes, I think is really important.
	I think that statues generally should be taken as jumping off points for having exactly these sorts of discussions, but pretending that honoring Jefferson with the Jefferson Memorial, for example, is honoring slavery is just silly.
	It's just not true.
	It's like saying that the Lincoln Memorial, honoring Abraham Lincoln, is really about honoring his original sentiments with regard to the inferiority of black people.
	If you go back and read Abraham Lincoln in 1856...
	He was saying openly that he didn't think that black people were of the same capacity as white people.
	But that's not why we honor him.
	We honor him because of the Emancipation Proclamation and his belief in the end that black Americans were Americans and these were American citizens and these people should be freed from slavery.
	And so what we choose to honor people about doesn't obscure the rest of their history.
	But we should recognize that us honoring Thomas Jefferson or George Washington is about honoring their achievements.
	Not about honoring their demerits.
	And that we can discuss those demerits in the same breath as those achievements and recognize that people were people who lived of their time.
	It is also relevant to note that with regard to slavery, virtually everyone, virtually everyone for thousands of years was living in a slave-holding society.
	And again, there are lots of people who today I think are real garbage, but we still honor their works of art.
	How many artists do we know who are just bad people, like rotten human beings, but we still recognize that they made a good movie?
	How many politicians leave a woman to die at the bottom of a river, and yet are called the Lion of the Senate?
	In other words, When you look at human beings, it is worthwhile to look at them in their entirety.
	But when you're looking at a monument, the monument is really to the achievements of the human beings.
	Nick says, Ben, what is your stance on global warming, now climate change?
	I know a lot of conservatives seem to be split on the issue.
	I have heard you before say that you would like to do more research on the issue before you discuss it, but I'd really like to know your opinion.
	This is a big issue between my friends and me.
	We discuss this regularly, listen to you every morning, keep up the good work.
	Okay, so Nick, here is my feeling on this.
	My feeling is that Global warming, there are really a couple of issues.
	One is, is climate change taking place?
	And the answer is yes, climate change is taking place.
	Virtually everyone agrees climate change is taking place.
	The second question is, how much is man-made activity responsible for that climate change?
	In other words, what is the sensitivity of the climate to carbon emissions, for example?
	That's slightly more controversial.
	There are some scientists who say that it's 50% of all climate change is attributable to mankind.
	There are people who say 90%.
	There are people who say 30%.
	I don't know the answer to that.
	I would assume that it is a non-insignificant percentage.
	It's attributable to man-made activity.
	And then finally, there's the third question, which is, what should we do about it?
	And the what should we do about it question is really the hardest, because I've noticed that there's this kind of nasty conflation that happens all the time on the global warming argument, which is, if I say to you that I agree with the IPCC, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, that there will be a seven degree Fahrenheit change in the average global climate by the year 2100, if I say I agree with you, I agree with all of the premises of this,
	If I say to you that this is going to mean that things change on the globe, but if I also say to you, listen, I think that your solutions like the Paris Accords are not actually going to make enough of a difference to be worth sacrificing trillions of dollars in future income and development in a wide variety of developing countries.
	So really what we should do is let the market handle it, and we should aid people who need to move from particular areas if climate threatens the places that they live.
	But population movement and transition due to climate change has been true as long as human beings have been on planet Earth.
	If I say that, then you say, well, you're denying climate change.
	Well, no, I'm not denying climate change.
	I'm just saying it happens, but my solution may not be your solution.
	And I think that we ought to analyze whether a particular solution is actually calibrated to do good, So, you know, I was a big fan of Pope John Paul II.
	I was a big fan of Pope Benedict.
	I'm not a big fan of Pope Francis.
	climate change solutions seem to be.
	Seamus says, "Ben, what are your thoughts on Pope Francis?" So, you know, I was a big fan of Pope John Paul II.
	I was a big fan of Pope Benedict.
	I'm not a big fan of Pope Francis.
	I think that Pope Francis seems to me to be an emissary of liberation theology, the left wing of the South American Catholic movement that suggests that social justice and Catholicism are one and the same.
	I don't think that this is correct.
	It's hard to tell, honestly, what he's saying sometimes because obviously he speaks a different language than I do.
	And beyond that, some of the reporting is inaccurate.
	So sometimes you'll see people report things like Pope Francis says there's no hell.
	And then it turns out that it was just an atheist newspaper in Italy and they were misconstruing what he was saying.
	If you were to believe what the left believes about Pope Francis, I would say that I'm not as fond of him as a pope.
	If you were to believe, you know, what the right says about him, then maybe he's fine.
	But I will say that the headlines that I've seen him make, some of the things that he said about foreign policy, some of the things that he said about immigration, some of the stuff that he said about the environment, I don't find any of this to be deeply tied into theological concerns.
	I think it's much more political than theological.
	Well, my thought on Ph.D.
	is that if it's useful, it's useful.
	I'm not sure that it's a matter of one Ph.D.
	being a grand thing versus a terrible thing.
	Is it useful to you?
	Then do it.
	If it's not useful to you, then don't do it.
	But I don't think a Ph.D.
	necessarily confers a tremendous amount of expertise, depending on what you are getting your Ph.D.
	in and what your dissertation is about.
	The way that you get your dissertation is by taking some classes and then writing a giant paper, basically.
	And that doesn't make you an expert on everything having to do with social science, obviously.
	Okay, so we're going to do some more mailbagging it up, but first, you're going to have to go over to dailywire.com and subscribe.
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	All righty, more mailbags.
	So William asks, what can conservatives do to participate more in education and bring a diversity of thought to public education?
	Well, this is a real difficult thing because many states require that you be a member of a teacher's union in order for you to teach, right?
	California is one of these states.
	And that means the teacher's unions are obviously taking money from your paycheck and then using it for biased political curricula.
	You can do your best to teach straight politics.
	I would say start a private school, honestly.
	As far as the public education system, I think that it's run by the government, and as Ludwig von Mises suggested about bureaucracy, once a bureaucracy is owned by the state, it is very difficult for it not to promulgate the The strength of the state.
	Once you're being paid by the state, your interest, obviously, is in maximizing the power of the state.
	Michael says, Ben, my question is this.
	My daughter is a freshman in high school, and over the summer, I would like her to be reading material that will help prepare her to think critically, philosophically, and with purpose.
	I'm looking for suggestions of material that would aid in this.
	Political philosophy, general philosophy, history, mythology, et cetera.
	Anything that would allow her to think independently and critically, which seems to be lacking in today's public school education.
	So the number one book I always recommend is there's a book by Henry Hazlitt called Economics in One Lesson.
	It's 150 pages long, and it teaches you to think very solidly about economics in a very short period of time.
	Basically, all of economics is about recognizing that there are unintended consequences to the policies that you pursue.
	That book, Economics in One Lesson, begins with the broken windows conundrum.
	Basically, here's the question.
	You are a mayor of a city, and there is a criminal on the loose in the city.
	And this criminal is throwing rocks through plate glass windows.
	Is the criminal hurting the economy or helping the economy?
	Now folks on the left would actually say the criminal is helping the economy.
	Why?
	Because now that criminal has broken a window and the business owner is going to have to pay the glass manufacturer in order to fix the window.
	What Hazlitt points out is, of course, this is not true, that the criminal is, of course, hurting the economy because that baker, who had his window broken, could have been spending that money on hiring more employees to bake more goods and making his price cheaper.
	Could have been spending his money to repaint the place.
	Could have been spending his money on a yacht.
	Bottom line is, when you get to choose the products you consume, the economy runs better and to more to your pleasure than when the government controls what it is that you are consuming and what you must consume.
	That's the kind of thinking that goes into economics in one lesson.
	Check it out.
	That's book number one.
	And then I would recommend A History of America, A History of the American People by Paul Johnson.
	That is definitely worth reading.
	There are a lot of great books.
	I think we have a book list on the site.
	If not, we're going to put one up pretty soon.
	I've been promising that for a long time.
	I know we have one at the office.
	If you email me, I'll send it to you.
	Let's see.
	Someone else, anonymous, writes, Ben, I'm a white Catholic male and I'm going to be having my first son come September.
	I am excited but very nervous knowing that in the state of our country he will instantly be seen as privileged.
	Any ideas on how to combat these new white stereotypes or advise on raising a son would help.
	Thank you.
	First of all, your son is privileged if he is born into a two-parent family.
	Right?
	That is a privilege.
	He's born into the United States.
	That is a privilege.
	Does that mean that you should be guilty for that privilege?
	Hell no!
	It's not his fault what color he's born.
	And why should you be guilty about being born in the greatest country in the history of mankind?
	Why should you be guilty about making sure that your son is born into a two-parent family?
	That is a wonderful thing.
	You did something right.
	You made a good decision.
	Good for you.
	And your son shouldn't feel guilty about you making a good decision.
	The idea that you are guilty for making good decisions is so stupid.
	It's really interesting.
	There's a story that I saw the other day that was widely covered about a woman who had graduated law school and she had, I think it was, five children.
	Five children.
	She's a single mom.
	And I believe that the story was that she was never married in the first place, I think.
	If not, then this story is irrelevant.
	But let's assume for the sake of argument, because the media does this all the time, that the media glorifies single motherhood in a way that No one else does, right?
	The media will suggest that a woman who has a child, and she's not married, and then she overcomes obstacles, like having a child, in order to succeed in business, is somehow greater than the woman who actually made the decision to get married.
	This drives me up a wall.
	Privilege of decision-making is what matters in the United States.
	In a free country, the decisions that you make ought to have an impact on how you live.
	If you choose to get married before you have a child, that is something you did right.
	And we should be celebrating that a lot more than the person who had a child out of wedlock and then succeeds.
	It's great that the woman who had a child out of wedlock succeeds, but she did set up an obstacle to herself.
	She did set up an obstacle to herself in terms of succeeding, because now she obviously has higher costs, she has to do childcare, and she's deprived her kid of a father in the home.
	So, you know, this is why responsible decision-making matters.
	It really does.
	So, This is rather controversial.
	There are a bunch of different commentaries and rulings on contraception.
	The general rule on contraception according to orthodoxy, as I understand it, is that contraception is forbidden, except in cases of health.
	It is relatively widely prescribed, but it depends on the type of contraception.
	So, in Judaism, the birth control pill is recommended more highly over prophylactics, for example.
	Mark says, Ben, fan here from Texas.
	I have a question for you regarding end-of-life care and the role of government, Medicare, Medicaid.
	Well, I mean, sure, just the same as it would in the medical system, which is you save up a lot of money that did not go to Social Security and taxes from Medicare and Medicaid, and you set that aside for the day at the end of life when it's going to cost a lot of money.
	viable solution to the extremely expensive end-of-life care that does not involve government intervention.
	Well, I mean, sure, just the same as it would in the medical system, which is you save up a lot of money that did not go to Social Security and taxes for Medicare and Medicaid, and you set that aside for the day at the end-of-life when it's going to cost a lot of money.
	Plus, when you don't have government subsidies and when you don't have mandates that are crammed down on doctors to prescribe certain things, then competition should lower the cost.
	The fastest One of the fastest growing industries in the United States, for example, are assisted living facilities in the private sector.
	And because there's a lot of competition in assisted living facilities, the prices have actually been dropping pretty precipitously in certain areas of assisted living facilities.
	In certain areas, they're growing because the demand is outstripping the supply, but that's just going to lead to more supply.
	Supply and demand don't cease to work just because the cost of a particular product is particularly high.
	Daniel says, Hey, Ben, if slavery and indentured servitude are outlawed by the 13th Amendment, why is jury duty legal?
	Thanks.
	Have a great Shabbat.
	OK, so the answer is because jury duty is also covered by the it's also covered by the Constitution of the United States.
	And the real answer is because there are certain obligations that you have as a citizen that come along with citizenship.
	Uh, and that don't really fall under the purview of slavery.
	So, jury duty is one of those.
	Being drafted into the military is another one of those, but these are controversial propositions.
	I think libertarians would probably argue there shouldn't be jury duty.
	Uh, libertarians might argue that you should pay people to be on juries, which I think is actually not a terrible argument.
	Okay, someone else writes here, I mean, all of the above.
	What do you think is the cause of the country's rampant anxiety and depression?
	Lack of religion is Rachel.
	Lack of purpose, too much selfishness.
	I mean, all of the above.
	I think that lack of purpose is tied up with lack of religion.
	I think it's tied up with lack of values.
	I think it's tied up with a country where we have all determined to see ourselves as victims rather than active players in our own lives.
	And if we get beyond that, if we determine that the decisions we make in our own lives are important, and that we're not victims of circumstance, and that it is our job to seek the purpose that we are to live out, right?
	We are here to better the world in accordance with our reason, as Aristotle would put it, or we're here to live out God's will for us, as Judeo-Christian values would put it.
	I think that would alleviate a lot of this.
	Just, I think that so much of our culture is also designed to make you jealous of other people's material belongings.
	People tend to get depressed about their lack of material success when, in reality, success is not dependent on the amount of money that you make.
	You know, my dad spent a lot of my life not earning a lot of money, and I would say that he's a very successful human being because he also raised four fantastic kids.
	Danny says, Hi Ben, Danny here.
	I'm partly of German descent.
	Which is something I've always been somewhat proud of.
	Well, I think that it depends on time.
	So I think that to label Germany the worst country in the world as though there is a unique sort of German character is relatively inaccurate because Germany was only constituted formally in the middle of the 19th century as one state.
	Before that, it was several states, right?
	It was it was Prussia and it was Uh, Bavaria and various other principalities.
	But the notion that Germany is the worst country in the world now, I think is silly.
	Obviously it's not.
	It's not Afghanistan.
	It's not Iran.
	It's not North Korea.
	The idea that Germany was the worst country in the world in, say, 1805, I think is silly, considering that Napoleonic France was still on the rise, that it was the worst country during the French Revolution.
	That obviously is not true.
	Countries change, right?
	Some countries are good at certain times and bad at certain times.
	Germany has a very checkered history.
	But to ignore the achievements of some Germans and pretend that, you know, it's not the country that brought you Beethoven, Brahms, and Bach, and then to suggest in the same breath that Germany is responsible for the Nazis, Again, you know, as I said about individual human beings a little bit earlier, it's also true of countries.
	Countries can be good.
	Countries can be bad.
	Countries sin.
	We should look at all of these things in relation to one another without just labeling the entire country crap.
	Thanks.
	So, in Judaism, there is a difference between the soul, which is the neshama, and the spirit, which is the nefesh.
	The soul is sort of what makes you unique, and the spirit is what animates you.
	It's the life force within you, would be the easy way of describing it, I think.
	Okay.
	So, a couple of more questions here.
	Well, I think both.
	I mean, first of all, I think the values of rock music are essentially garbage and have been garbage for decades.
	But as far as the music itself, listen, I'm not going to pretend there aren't some rock bands that I like.
	I mean, I like the Doobie Brothers.
	Went to a concert a few weeks ago with the Doobie Brothers.
	And first of all, I think the values of rock music are essentially garbage and have been garbage for decades.
	But as far as the music itself, listen, I'm not going to pretend there aren't some rock bands that I like.
	I mean, I like the Doobie Brothers.
	Went to a concert a few weeks ago with the Doobie Brothers.
	I like Chicago.
	I like some of the old school, like 1960s, 1970s rock bands.
	I think some of those are actually pretty good and pretty creative.
	Stevie Wonder, I think, is a tremendous musician.
	But what I hate is the lack of musicality in rock music as compared to other forms of music, even jazz, is pretty astonishing on every level.
	Michael says, Hi Ben, I wanted to hear your opinion on the possibility of President Trump reinstating the draft.
	Well, I mean, if there were a draft, I think people would cooperate.
	Is the president going to restore the draft?
	three type scenario, that or if a war broke out between the states and somewhere like Iran or North Korea, do you think there's a realistic chance he would be president to restore the draft?
	No.
	Do you think society at large would cooperate?
	Well, I mean, if there were a draft, I think people would cooperate.
	Is the president going to restore the draft?
	No, I think the draft is a thing of the past.
	The fact is that we have a pretty large standing military, and the best way to increase the size of that military would be to offer people more money to join it, presumably, as opposed to reinstating the draft more broadly.
	Alrighty, so, now a couple of things that I like, or a thing I like, and then maybe one thing that I hate here.
	So, thing I like.
	There's a guy who I recently met named Brian Keating.
	He is a professor of cosmology over at University of California, San Diego, and he has a brand new book coming out next week.
	It is really good.
	It's called Losing the Nobel Prize, A Story of Cosmology, Ambition, and the Perils of Science's Highest Honor.
	The book is really pitched as a critique of the Nobel Prize and why the Nobel Prize is corrupt.
	But the book really is a really fascinating history into the investigation of the universe, the Big Bang, and the theory that the universe has been here in perpetuity.
	It's really a good, user-friendly history.
	I'm not going to say it's not difficult.
	At certain points, it definitely is.
	But I think Brian really dumbs it down to the point where folks like me, who don't have a tremendous scientific background, can understand it.
	The book is losing the Nobel Prize, so if you've ever wondered how it is that we discovered the Big Bang and what Cosmic background radiation is some of the terms that are used by astronomers.
	Then this book is really good for that.
	Also, it has some pretty interesting discussions of religion and science.
	So check it out.
	Losing the Nobel Prize by Brian Keating.
	You can pre-order it on Amazon right now and it should arrive sometime next week.
	Okay, time for a quick thing that I hate.
	OK, so first of all, I think that to look in the United States for incidents of racism is not all that difficult.
	I do think that there are people who are doing racist things, and they're doing them on a not infrequent basis.
	Now, we have to take that as a percentage of the population.
	But the reason that I want to show this is because there's been so much focus put on what happened at Starbucks, in which two black guys were allegedly told that they had to leave the restaurant, refused to leave the restaurant after not buying anything, demanding to use the bathroom, and then were arrested.
	And this has become a national issue on Good Morning America.
	Here's an actual racist thing.
	Okay, so this happened over at Syracuse University, and there was an idiotic frat party, and the frat brothers did stuff that idiotic frat brothers do, which is they said a bunch of racist, anti-Semitic, stupid crap.
	And this is not getting the sort of national attention that the Starbucks thing did, which is amazing because this is absolutely, clearly an indication of racist rhetoric, for example.
	Tonight, video from inside a Syracuse fraternity sparking outrage.
	This is sacred.
	You know what you signed up for today?
	I didn't know what I signed up for.
	We're not showing the full disturbing video obtained by the school paper, but the university calls it, and additional videos in its possession, extremely racist, antisemitic, homophobic, sexist, and hostile to people with disabilities.
	I solemnly swear, I solemnly swear, to always have hatred in my heart for, to always have hatred in my heart for, Okay, so this stuff is obviously idiotic.
	in the video go on to say for black people, Hispanics and Jews.
	The university sending out a letter about the video Wednesday morning, suspending the school's Theta Tau chapter, but declining to release other videos.
	Okay, so this stuff is obviously idiotic.
	This is one of the dangers of the alt-right that I was talking about last year is because political correctness has taken so much precedence at colleges all over the United States.
	There are a bunch of people who think that the way to fight political correctness is to be a piece of crap.
	And this is obviously a case of that happening in Syracuse.
	I also point this out because, again, if you want to talk about this sort of racism as a response to political correctness, or if you want to talk about racism existing in American society, stuff like this is a pretty obvious case.
	But instead, we're focusing on this Starbucks case, which I think is a lot less obvious.
	I think the reason for that is because there are some folks on the left who like to pick controversial cases and make them national issues, specifically because they know it'll draw opposition.
	If you say that this Syracuse tape is racist, everyone says, you're right, that's racist.
	But if you say the Starbucks incident, where we still don't have tape, was racist, and somebody says, well, you know, I'd like to see, like, the whole tape of that, they go, ah, you know, the reason that you're not paying attention to that incident is because you're covertly racist.
	I hate that kind of stuff.
	It's really stupid.
	Asking for more evidence when the evidence is not sufficient is not racist.
	That's asking for more evidence.
	And when the evidence is there, like here, then I'm more than happy to say Theta Tau should be suspended.
	They've got a serious problem over at Syracuse University with this fraternity.
	These kids are acting, at the very least, like idiots, and at the very most, like reprehensible human beings.
	So it's just, again, I think that if we're all going to be on the same side, then we can all be on the side against racism.
	All I ask is some evidence.
	Here you have evidence, so I'm on the side.
	All right, so we'll be back here next week with all of the latest.
	Have a wonderful weekend.
	I'm Ben Shapiro.

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